Question for Endgame PvE Players: Necessity of Health-Based Heals for Tanks and Relevance of Healers

HankTwo

Hello guys,

as some of you may have noticed, the current meta in no CP PvP lead to a sharp increase of health stacking builds that ignore their offensive stats and instead get their damage from proc sets. A key element of how this playstyle can work defensively, apart from high resistances and high health pools, are either health-based heals or the stacking of health regen. Based on my experience and observations, I came to the conclusion that health based heals are inherently unhealthy for PvP. However, this is not what this discussion is about. Instead, here I'm interested in the relevance and necessity of health-based heals for endgame PvE.

I already know that such heals (and damage shields) are found on basically any endgame tank build. However, the first key question for me here is: Are health based heals a necessity for endgame PvE content, or could a group with a tank that doesn't have access to such skills still successfully clear any content?

The second point I want to examine is the relevance of healers. I know that they are still used in trial groups, however, when it comes to vet DLC 4-man content like blackrose prison or dlc dungeon hardmodes, it seems that 1 tank + 3 dds is the way to go, and I guess the new ring of the pale order has just pushed that trend even more. So, my second key question would be, do you guys think that tanks having access to good self-healing via health-based heals are a key reason that enables this trend? Would healers become more relevant again if said heals would be reworked, and tanks being more reliant on receiving heals from the group?

I'm not asking for any nerfs or reworks before I know what the situation in PvE is, so I would be grateful for some input.

Vevvev

They may not be a necessity if you have a good healer, but in some trials and pug dungeons the tank cannot rely on a healer to save them when poop hits the fan. Health based heals are how they rebound from near death experiences since magicka and stamina scaling heals are going to be significantly weaker due to requirements for stacking health and resistances.

Take for example Green Dragonblood vs Coagulating Blood for Dragonknights. GDB's healing scales off missing health while CB scales off max magicka. They both have a value that increases the healing based off missing health, but GBD is going to scale much better on a health stacked tank than CB. I've used both while tanking and I'd pick GDB over CB every time when using the tank role. I would use Vampiric Drain if it was not channeled, but due to the fact it is a channeled ability it makes being able to use it in a chaotic veteran ranked battle a difficult affair.

Edit: I'd also like to add tanks like myself have been making ourselves self sufficient long before that ring of the pale order came out. Due to the random nature of group finders, the fact the whole group's survival is dictated by how durable the tank is, and how some mechanics can push the tank away from the party has necessitated this kind of tanking style for years.

HankTwo

Vevvev wrote: »

They may not be a necessity if you have a good healer, but in some trials and pug dungeons the tank cannot rely on a healer to save them when poop hits the fan. Health based heals are how they rebound from near death experiences since magicka and stamina scaling heals are going to be significantly weaker due to requirements for stacking health and resistances.

Take for example Green Dragonblood vs Coagulating Blood for Dragonknights. GDB's healing scales off missing health while CB scales off max magicka. They both have a value that increases the healing based off missing health, but GBD is going to scale much better on a health stacked tank than CB. I've used both while tanking and I'd pick GDB over CB every time when using the tank role. I would use Vampiric Drain if it was not channeled, but due to the fact it is a channeled ability it makes being able to use it in a chaotic veteran ranked battle a difficult affair.

Edit: I'd also like to add tanks like myself have been making ourselves self sufficient long before that ring of the pale order came out. Due to the random nature of group finders, the fact the whole group's survival is dictated by how durable the tank is, and how some mechanics can push the tank away from the party has necessitated this kind of tanking style for years.

Yes, ofc with how scaling works a skill like GDB is better for a tank than coagulating. But the main point of this thread was to discuss if tanks being able to heal self-sufficiently is a) necessary and b) healthy for the game when it comes to the relevance of healers.

Maybe lets put it this way: Do you think it is healthy for the game that tanks can be self sufficient and survive vet DLC hm dungeons without a healer involved?

You pointed out mechanics that might force players to move away from the tank and this is indeed a good point. Do you think those mechanics are either too long, so hots from a healer would run out, or too tough damage wise, so a tank without health based heals would not be able to survive even if a good healer that pre-casted hots on you is present in the group?

Im not unfamiliar with vet DLC 4-man content but it has been a long time since I tanked myself, thats why Im asking for more details.

Araneae6537

I think that damage should always be based on stamina and/or magicka and heals on magicka (or mostly at least) although I am not against the max health of the target of a heal being taken into account.

lolo_01b16_ESO

I'm sure you can keep the tanks alive as a healer even if they don't have hp based self heals. However this would require some changes when it comes to group setups and tactics. It would probably result in a noticable lower trial scores and groups that are currently just barely clearing content, will struggle.

For dungeons I'd say the main reason why people run with 3dds is not hp based heals. It's the fact that you can avoid a lot of damage taken, if you have high enough dps. But for some of the hard hitting bosses you probably would want to have a healer if hp based heals didn't exist.

Sanguinor2

Health based heals are absolutely needed in endgame PvE. Well I am talking vet hm trials and not so much dungeons or arenas.
The easiest way to see how bad a tank without a health scaling heal is is to play a templar tank and let me tell you thats a miserable experience compared to any other tank. In Kyne´s Aegis for example the adds alone hit so hard that you need a health scaling burst heal at all times since you will just die if you dont get a burst heal after a group of adds light attacked you.
I played sorc, warden, nightblade and templar offtank in Kyne´s Aegis. On sorc, warden and nightblade I would take big adds off of the Mt, I could take over the boss if need be and I could take adds in the bossfights themselves. On templar tank in comparison we decided that it would be safer to just have the dk maintank tank everything and me just guard the mt and play as healer otherwise since as a templar tank you cannot recover from high damage by yourself and everything does high damage in Kyne´s Aegis, unblocked light attacks of some adds can hit a tank for over 30k damage for example.
While it would theoretically be possible to play without health scaling heals, with the way most burst heals work they might actually miss the tank and go on a low health dd and the tank would just die since there are very little burst heals that you can actually target on one person.
To be even more specific with my example of Kyne´s Aegis. On the 2nd boss when the 3 adds come out of the portal im basically casting a self heal every 2nd or 3rd ability while permablocking and only getting damaged by light attacks (aka i need a 20k heal every 2 or 3 seconds when getting hit by non enranged adds), since there is constant lightning strike damage, the mt getting damaged and possibly a conduit damaging dds target capped heals might not go on me at all or only too late.

Additionally tanks not being able to heal themselves efficiently in emergencies feels really really bad. I´ve started playing FFXIV and there most tanks dont have a burst heal at all and it can get very frustrating to just stand there and inevitebly die, without being able to do anything about it, if a healer doesnt pay as much attention as they should or the healer is dead.

HankTwo

Sanguinor2 wrote: »

Health based heals are absolutely needed in endgame PvE. Well I am talking vet hm trials and not so much dungeons or arenas.
The easiest way to see how bad a tank without a health scaling heal is is to play a templar tank and let me tell you thats a miserable experience compared to any other tank. In Kyne´s Aegis for example the adds alone hit so hard that you need a health scaling burst heal at all times since you will just die if you dont get a burst heal after a group of adds light attacked you.
I played sorc, warden, nightblade and templar offtank in Kyne´s Aegis. On sorc, warden and nightblade I would take big adds off of the Mt, I could take over the boss if need be and I could take adds in the bossfights themselves. On templar tank in comparison we decided that it would be safer to just have the dk maintank tank everything and me just guard the mt and play as healer otherwise since as a templar tank you cannot recover from high damage by yourself and everything does high damage in Kyne´s Aegis, unblocked light attacks of some adds can hit a tank for over 30k damage for example.
While it would theoretically be possible to play without health scaling heals, with the way most burst heals work they might actually miss the tank and go on a low health dd and the tank would just die since there are very little burst heals that you can actually target on one person.
To be even more specific with my example of Kyne´s Aegis. On the 2nd boss when the 3 adds come out of the portal im basically casting a self heal every 2nd or 3rd ability while permablocking and only getting damaged by light attacks (aka i need a 20k heal every 2 or 3 seconds when getting hit by non enranged adds), since there is constant lightning strike damage, the mt getting damaged and possibly a conduit damaging dds target capped heals might not go on me at all or only too late.

Additionally tanks not being able to heal themselves efficiently in emergencies feels really really bad. I´ve started playing FFXIV and there most tanks dont have a burst heal at all and it can get very frustrating to just stand there and inevitebly die, without being able to do anything about it, if a healer doesnt pay as much attention as they should or the healer is dead.

Thanks for the input, this was exactly the information I was looking for since I have admittedly zero experience myself when it comes to vet trial tanking. So, this would mean reworking health-based heals into max stat scaling ones would be a big no go then, unless damage in certain trials also gets adjusted or smart targeting gets reworked.

A shame, really, at least when it comes to PvP imo. Not sure how ZOS could tackle this issue then without screwing PvE.

Sanguinor2

HankTwo wrote: »

Thanks for the input, this was exactly the information I was looking for since I have admittedly zero experience myself when it comes to vet trial tanking. So, this would mean reworking health-based heals into max stat scaling ones would be a big no go then, unless damage in certain trials also gets adjusted or smart targeting gets reworked.

A shame, really, at least when it comes to PvP imo. Not sure how ZOS could tackle this issue then without screwing PvE.

Well the easiest way would be to do something to health scaling heals with battle spirit. Or if Zos would decide to do sepparate skills in PvE and PvP but atleast the 2nd one is never gonna happen. Alternatively nerfing all the damage tools of the 40k health wardens to only be efficiently usable by max stat builds would also make everything but troll tanks go away.

In older content you would probably get by without health scaling heals in most cases simply because high dps groups nuke everything before it does too much damage and most things dont do very much damage compared to newer content. You might even be able to make it work in newer content but it could always easily go wrong if there is one unlucky high damage window with a burst heal going onto the wrong person. Another case where you would really feel the missing health scaled healing is vCR execute. In there the maintank gets reduced to I think 10% health and then a debuff on them that is like 85% or 90% healing reduction that only goes away if you hit 100% HP. Without the tanks healing healing 30k+ health when working against 85% or 90% reduction really takes a while, and if the debuff is on you for too long you just die.
I think it would be doable but only if healing gets changes so that you can actually make sure you heal your tank and it would require some changes in builds too I guess. Or if it were possible some tanking specific passives that only work in PvE and increase your healing done on yourself.
With full raidbuffs for example a tank can achieve pretty high weapon and spell damage (admittedly I cheesed a bit with being dunmer and having an infused weapon dmg enchant) so depending on the scaling it might be workable, you wouldnt be able to reach the values of the health scaling heals but in the build editor atleast you can hit a 10k coag TT and 18k Vigor TT fully buffed with a bit of cheesing involved. The downside is that to reach those tooltips you´d need: major mending, minor vitality minor and major brutality/sorcery/courage on your tank at all times, while also being a dunmer and having an infused weapon dmg enchant on your backbar instead of crusher and being a more tankyish race (not that race matters too much in tanking since you can tank on pretty much any race).

Dagoth_Rac

You may be coming at this from the wrong angle. The high health and tankiness of PvP builds is frustrating, but most PvP players don't want to just survive. They want to kill enemy players. You can stack health and mitigation and put all your stats into tankiness. But then use items with offensive output that does not scale at all. Things like proc sets and weapon enchants just deal flat damage, not scaled on your stats. That seems like more of an issue than tanks being able to survive. If tanky builds could survive but do little to no damage, I bet most PvP players would get bored quickly and move on to a different build. But the ability to have high survivability and still dish out pretty good damage is too tempting for most PvP players to pass up.

Basically, I think some way of limiting damage output of builds with low offensive stats would be a better way to discourage this in PvP without affecting PvE too much. Nobody cares if the tank in PvE cannot kill anything.

HankTwo

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

You may be coming at this from the wrong angle. The high health and tankiness of PvP builds is frustrating, but most PvP players don't want to just survive. They want to kill enemy players. You can stack health and mitigation and put all your stats into tankiness. But then use items with offensive output that does not scale at all. Things like proc sets and weapon enchants just deal flat damage, not scaled on your stats. That seems like more of an issue than tanks being able to survive. If tanky builds could survive but do little to no damage, I bet most PvP players would get bored quickly and move on to a different build. But the ability to have high survivability and still dish out pretty good damage is too tempting for most PvP players to pass up.

Basically, I think some way of limiting damage output of builds with low offensive stats would be a better way to discourage this in PvP without affecting PvE too much. Nobody cares if the tank in PvE cannot kill anything.

Yes, there are definitely other angles to solve current PvP issues, health-based heals is just one of them.

zvavi

it really depends. some content i will be fine with running parse food (some fights in dlc dungeons) but some i would like to have bi-stat for a bit more beef. same for tanks, some i will like 30k hp, some i will want 40k+ to feel comfy.

YandereGirlfriend

I don't see a lot of dinosaurs running around in PvP so I'm going to advance a motion to remove the Sorcerer Health-based heal from this conversation about problematic Health-based heals.

Apart from that, Battle Spirit is probably the most appropriate venue to implement a more nuanced change but for whatever reason ZOS is forever loathe to conduct more granular balancing with it.

UntilValhalla13

Like stated above, health based heals for tanks are a must in endgame hm trials. Healers are also still going to be needed. For me, a great example is Baneful Mark in vcr execute. I've both healed and main tanked it, and I can say, if you're not getting some type of heals, (there's not always an altar/bone shield synergy in some prog groups) that tank is going to have issues getting rid of the debuff. Self heals don't really cut it, in that instance.

Joy_Division

HankTwo wrote: »

Hello guys,

as some of you may have noticed, the current meta in no CP PvP lead to a sharp increase of health stacking builds that ignore their offensive stats and instead get their damage from proc sets. A key element of how this playstyle can work defensively, apart from high resistances and high health pools, are either health-based heals or the stacking of health regen. Based on my experience and observations, I came to the conclusion that health based heals are inherently unhealthy for PvP. However, this is not what this discussion is about. Instead, here I'm interested in the relevance and necessity of health-based heals for endgame PvE.

I already know that such heals (and damage shields) are found on basically any endgame tank build. However, the first key question for me here is: Are health based heals a necessity for endgame PvE content, or could a group with a tank that doesn't have access to such skills still successfully clear any content?

The second point I want to examine is the relevance of healers. I know that they are still used in trial groups, however, when it comes to vet DLC 4-man content like blackrose prison or dlc dungeon hardmodes, it seems that 1 tank + 3 dds is the way to go, and I guess the new ring of the pale order has just pushed that trend even more. So, my second key question would be, do you guys think that tanks having access to good self-healing via health-based heals are a key reason that enables this trend? Would healers become more relevant again if said heals would be reworked, and tanks being more reliant on receiving heals from the group?

I'm not asking for any nerfs or reworks before I know what the situation in PvE is, so I would be grateful for some input.

The problem is not health based heals in PvP. The problem is that ZOs allows health based builds to do high damage with proc sets that do not care about their stats.

To answer your question, tanks tell me in the newer trials even the mobs hit so hard that they need all the healing they can get. Also if I was a PvE tank, I'd be pretty miffed that PvE elements are getting unnecessarily nerfed because this is the third time ZOS has allowed proc sets to be too strong.

Stahlor

Health based heals are needed as soon as you run hard dungeons without a healer. A lot of people like to do so, therefore it shouldn't be nerfed due to PVP.
The PVP issue is, that you can have high health + great heals, while still dealing insane damage. It shouldn't be like that. You should get rewarded playing squishier builds in PVP and not being punished for it. So I would suggest, like I already did in another threat, to reduce damage based on max health e.g. starting at 20k health 1% damage reduction every 500 health --> means 30k health/20% less damage, 40k health/40% less damage and so on.
You wouldn't nerf PVE like that and prevent unkillable 40k health PVP machines, that are still able to 2-shot everybody.

the1andonlyskwex

Health based heals are awful for PvE healers. They make healers completely unnecessary in easier content, and turn them into buff-bots in harder content. I would love to see a day where healers actually have to heal for a change and can consider running sets other than SPC and Olorime, and skills other than Combat Prayer, Energy Orb, and Aggressive Horn.

Sure, if you got rid of health based healing group DPS would go down a little, and DPS players would probably have to provide some of their own buffs, but I think that would be good for the overall health of the game, even if it would make things a little harder.

I generally love healing in MMORPGs, but in ESO the healer power fantasy is totally missing. Instead of being the hero that keeps your group alive, your primary role is to enable/enhance the DPS power fantasy, which is just sad/disappointing.

lolo_01b16_ESO

Sanguinor2 wrote: »

Health based heals are absolutely needed in endgame PvE. Well I am talking vet hm trials and not so much dungeons or arenas.
The easiest way to see how bad a tank without a health scaling heal is is to play a templar tank and let me tell you thats a miserable experience compared to any other tank. In Kyne´s Aegis for example the adds alone hit so hard that you need a health scaling burst heal at all times since you will just die if you dont get a burst heal after a group of adds light attacked you.
I played sorc, warden, nightblade and templar offtank in Kyne´s Aegis. On sorc, warden and nightblade I would take big adds off of the Mt, I could take over the boss if need be and I could take adds in the bossfights themselves. On templar tank in comparison we decided that it would be safer to just have the dk maintank tank everything and me just guard the mt and play as healer otherwise since as a templar tank you cannot recover from high damage by yourself and everything does high damage in Kyne´s Aegis, unblocked light attacks of some adds can hit a tank for over 30k damage for example.
While it would theoretically be possible to play without health scaling heals, with the way most burst heals work they might actually miss the tank and go on a low health dd and the tank would just die since there are very little burst heals that you can actually target on one person.
To be even more specific with my example of Kyne´s Aegis. On the 2nd boss when the 3 adds come out of the portal im basically casting a self heal every 2nd or 3rd ability while permablocking and only getting damaged by light attacks (aka i need a 20k heal every 2 or 3 seconds when getting hit by non enranged adds), since there is constant lightning strike damage, the mt getting damaged and possibly a conduit damaging dds target capped heals might not go on me at all or only too late.

Additionally tanks not being able to heal themselves efficiently in emergencies feels really really bad. I´ve started playing FFXIV and there most tanks dont have a burst heal at all and it can get very frustrating to just stand there and inevitebly die, without being able to do anything about it, if a healer doesnt pay as much attention as they should or the healer is dead.

I disagree. Talk to any experienced healer, I'm sure they could keep you alive if they wanted to do that.
The issue is, healer have become so used to tanks that are independant, that they don't heal them in many situations and therefore tanks feel like they need the hp based heals. But from a healer PoV, i could certainly keep a tank without self heal alive, if I actually tried to do that.
Just look at the builds current raid healers use. Usually you have two 5-piece armour sets, a monster set and an arena weapon all dedicated to increase group sustain and damage. On the skillbars you'll find mostly buffs and debuffs and some aoe hots. But apart from specific fights (like Ice healer on Lokke) you rarely see powerful burst heals being used anymore.
The healing done by a healer could be increased by a lot compared to the current level, if there was actually need for it.

HankTwo

Stahlor wrote: »

Health based heals are needed as soon as you run hard dungeons without a healer. A lot of people like to do so, therefore it shouldn't be nerfed due to PVP.
The PVP issue is, that you can have high health + great heals, while still dealing insane damage. It shouldn't be like that. You should get rewarded playing squishier builds in PVP and not being punished for it. So I would suggest, like I already did in another threat, to reduce damage based on max health e.g. starting at 20k health 1% damage reduction every 500 health --> means 30k health/20% less damage, 40k health/40% less damage and so on.
You wouldn't nerf PVE like that and prevent unkillable 40k health PVP machines, that are still able to 2-shot everybody.

Ok so first of all I have to say that I really dislike your suggestion. Actively nerfing people for getting a certain stat is not the way to go. The disadvantage when building into health should be that you will be lacking max mag or stam and therefore your damage and healing will be weaker. Proc tanks circumvent both because proc set damage doesnt scale with your stats and there are certain defensive build options that will still heal you a lot, even if your max stats are bad. Namely health-based heals, health regen and sets like crimson/defending warrior. So instead of doing a weird and illogical band aid fix, how about looking at the real problems?

And second of all, 40k hp proc tanks dont two shot anybody who has a decent build. At best a more glass canon like build that *** up their defense and didnt avoid an incoming burst proc combo, but thats about it. Proc tank damage is decent, but definitely not better than a well build glass canon. What sets them apart is their extremely tough defense and good sustain. In no CP if you duel a good proc tank build, the most likely way they can kill you is by outsustaining you with constant dot proc pressure.

Araneae6537

Stahlor wrote: »

Health based heals are needed as soon as you run hard dungeons without a healer. A lot of people like to do so, therefore it shouldn't be nerfed due to PVP.
The PVP issue is, that you can have high health + great heals, while still dealing insane damage. It shouldn't be like that. You should get rewarded playing squishier builds in PVP and not being punished for it. So I would suggest, like I already did in another threat, to reduce damage based on max health e.g. starting at 20k health 1% damage reduction every 500 health --> means 30k health/20% less damage, 40k health/40% less damage and so on.
You wouldn't nerf PVE like that and prevent unkillable 40k health PVP machines, that are still able to 2-shot everybody.

IMHO that is a reason to eliminate health-based heals. There are too many things to make the healer role less necessary and less fun in PVE as well as PVP. In PVE, the problems are health-based heals and the only real enemy damage being one-shot mechanics. That’s why running dungeons with a tank and three DPS is a thing. Sure, I keep the group buffed and resources up, but as has been posted, it’s not making the healer role fun and fulfilling. Of course much damage should be avoidable if you have the skill and follow mechanics, but I’d like to see where healers ARE necessary for optimal group runs because they enable people to stack and burn through damage or something like that — basically more damage that can be healed through only by a dedicated healer but must otherwise be avoided. As it is, it is most fun to be a healer in sub-optimal groups, where people are still learning or you’re running without a dedicated tank. Of course I appreciate how much easier a good tank can make a fight, but the same is not said of healers — we’re considered expendable — and while one can do content without a tank, healer or with DPS that only tickles, the optimal set-up should be tank, healer and two DPS with everyone fulfilling their role.

edited for clarification

Jameson18

I main a warden tank with SPC/Senchal, SnB / Maelstrom Resto staff. Attributes and Stone are health.

Haven't come across very many occasions where anything more is needed. Vet trials need more heals for the rest of the group of course. But, that's because people like to stand in stupid.

Stahlor

HankTwo wrote: »

Ok so first of all I have to say that I really dislike your suggestion. Actively nerfing people for getting a certain stat is not the way to go. The disadvantage when building into health should be that you will be lacking max mag or stam and therefore your damage and healing will be weaker. Proc tanks circumvent both because proc set damage doesnt scale with your stats and there are certain defensive build options that will still heal you a lot, even if your max stats are bad. Namely health-based heals, health regen and sets like crimson/defending warrior. So instead of doing a weird and illogical band aid fix, how about looking at the real problems?

And second of all, 40k hp proc tanks dont two shot anybody who has a decent build. At best a more glass canon like build that *** up their defense and didnt avoid an incoming burst proc combo, but thats about it. Proc tank damage is decent, but definitely not better than a well build glass canon. What sets them apart is their extremely tough defense and good sustain. In no CP if you duel a good proc tank build, the most likely way they can kill you is by outsustaining you with constant dot proc pressure.

Why should a tank be a damage dealer? Then you could also bring out health based damage skills. Beside that, its not only the proc sets. You meet quite some people with almost 40k health, that deal 20k+ damage with a dizzy + executioner combo. If you think that's right then I don't know what to say...

MirandaSharp

HankTwo wrote: »

as some of you may have noticed, the current meta in no CP PvP lead to a sharp increase of health stacking builds that ignore their offensive stats and instead get their damage from proc sets. A key element of how this playstyle can work defensively, apart from high resistances and high health pools, are either health-based heals or the stacking of health regen. Based on my experience and observations, I came to the conclusion that health based heals are inherently unhealthy for PvP. However, this is not what this discussion is about. Instead, here I'm interested in the relevance and necessity of health-based heals for endgame PvE.

I already know that such heals (and damage shields) are found on basically any endgame tank build. However, the first key question for me here is: Are health based heals a necessity for endgame PvE content, or could a group with a tank that doesn't have access to such skills still successfully clear any content?

Today I had a 5 minute long tank to tank PvP duel, which is a heck of an improvement in the PvP department than the 1-2-hit-you're-dead experience so common in PvP content.

But to answer your question about PvE, I think we mostly run self heals and self healing sets to not be dependent on a healer. I run with pugs 90% of the time and I'd rather have the healer(when he's a real healer) focus on keeping the dps alive than worrying about survivability of the tank. Also a tank that keeps dying(for whatever reason) will get scorn and abuse, which makes the experience with playing the game less than fun..

Araneae6537

MirandaSharp wrote: »

HankTwo wrote: »

as some of you may have noticed, the current meta in no CP PvP lead to a sharp increase of health stacking builds that ignore their offensive stats and instead get their damage from proc sets. A key element of how this playstyle can work defensively, apart from high resistances and high health pools, are either health-based heals or the stacking of health regen. Based on my experience and observations, I came to the conclusion that health based heals are inherently unhealthy for PvP. However, this is not what this discussion is about. Instead, here I'm interested in the relevance and necessity of health-based heals for endgame PvE.

I already know that such heals (and damage shields) are found on basically any endgame tank build. However, the first key question for me here is: Are health based heals a necessity for endgame PvE content, or could a group with a tank that doesn't have access to such skills still successfully clear any content?

But to answer your question about PvE, I think we mostly run self heals and self healing sets to not be dependent on a healer. I run with pugs 90% of the time and I'd rather have the healer(when he's a real healer) focus on keeping the dps alive than worrying about survivability of the tank. Also a tank that keeps dying(for whatever reason) will get scorn and abuse, which makes the experience with playing the game less than fun..

By that logic, we should make enemies not hit so hard so we’re not dependent on a tank and enemies should have fewer hitpoints so we’re not dependent on dps...

Of course a tank needs to have adequate health, armor and/or other mitigation, but self-healing should not be a requirement of the role. While it is an oversimplification, assumes everyone follows mechanics, and in no way to be taken completely seriously, I keep in mind what I learned in my first MMO:

Tank dies —> Healer’s fault
Anyone else dies —> Tank’s fault
Boss enrages —> DPS’s fault

But yes, when I play healer I do my best to keep everyone alive regardless of role or what they’re standing in!

MirandaSharp

Araneae6537 wrote: »

Of course a tank needs to have adequate health, armor and/or other mitigation, but self-healing should not be a requirement of the role. While it is an oversimplification, assumes everyone follows mechanics, and in no way to be taken completely seriously, I keep in mind what I learned in my first MMO:

Tank dies —> Healer’s fault
Anyone else dies —> Tank’s fault
Boss enrages —> DPS’s fault

But yes, when I play healer I do my best to keep everyone alive regardless of role or what they’re standing in!

You're right.. But my real world experience is different.. With a good healer at my back I can drop all self heals and use entirely different sets. I guess you're one of the very few good healers around(at least in pugs). I used to run gear without self healing, but kept running into pugs where it all became a blame game. Seems most less experienced players think the tank must be immortal or else they suck at being a tank.. So I go with the flow. Yet I totally agree with what you say. In an ideal virtual world....

Calm_Fury

lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

Sanguinor2 wrote: »

Health based heals are absolutely needed in endgame PvE. Well I am talking vet hm trials and not so much dungeons or arenas.
The easiest way to see how bad a tank without a health scaling heal is is to play a templar tank and let me tell you thats a miserable experience compared to any other tank. In Kyne´s Aegis for example the adds alone hit so hard that you need a health scaling burst heal at all times since you will just die if you dont get a burst heal after a group of adds light attacked you.
I played sorc, warden, nightblade and templar offtank in Kyne´s Aegis. On sorc, warden and nightblade I would take big adds off of the Mt, I could take over the boss if need be and I could take adds in the bossfights themselves. On templar tank in comparison we decided that it would be safer to just have the dk maintank tank everything and me just guard the mt and play as healer otherwise since as a templar tank you cannot recover from high damage by yourself and everything does high damage in Kyne´s Aegis, unblocked light attacks of some adds can hit a tank for over 30k damage for example.
While it would theoretically be possible to play without health scaling heals, with the way most burst heals work they might actually miss the tank and go on a low health dd and the tank would just die since there are very little burst heals that you can actually target on one person.
To be even more specific with my example of Kyne´s Aegis. On the 2nd boss when the 3 adds come out of the portal im basically casting a self heal every 2nd or 3rd ability while permablocking and only getting damaged by light attacks (aka i need a 20k heal every 2 or 3 seconds when getting hit by non enranged adds), since there is constant lightning strike damage, the mt getting damaged and possibly a conduit damaging dds target capped heals might not go on me at all or only too late.

Additionally tanks not being able to heal themselves efficiently in emergencies feels really really bad. I´ve started playing FFXIV and there most tanks dont have a burst heal at all and it can get very frustrating to just stand there and inevitebly die, without being able to do anything about it, if a healer doesnt pay as much attention as they should or the healer is dead.

I disagree. Talk to any experienced healer, I'm sure they could keep you alive if they wanted to do that.
The issue is, healer have become so used to tanks that are independant, that they don't heal them in many situations and therefore tanks feel like they need the hp based heals. But from a healer PoV, i could certainly keep a tank without self heal alive, if I actually tried to do that.
Just look at the builds current raid healers use. Usually you have two 5-piece armour sets, a monster set and an arena weapon all dedicated to increase group sustain and damage. On the skillbars you'll find mostly buffs and debuffs and some aoe hots. But apart from specific fights (like Ice healer on Lokke) you rarely see powerful burst heals being used anymore.
The healing done by a healer could be increased by a lot compared to the current level, if there was actually need for it.

Also, with the way the newer content works, without independent tanks you would basically have a "pocket tank healer" all the time.

I bet most healers would end up HATING just having to spam heals on one tank the whole fight while 10 other people (or 2) do their thing.

Healers in ESO have always been half-healer/half-support. With some design decisions that basically just make the damage be either irrelevant or one-shots, that balance has shifted. That is why we see 3DD1T groups and healers basically being buff machines on trials.

They are either overhealing or can't do anything because mechanic is a one shot.

I'm telling you, as someone who, a long, long time ago used to main a healer in a group with a tank that thought that healing was not his problem: it is BORING to heal a tank through the most recent content if they don't have a very good self heal.

And this is very easy to test. Just go into any vDLC HM dungeon or Trial with a Templar tank, that has very limited self healing options.

You will become a "pocket healer" and hate it. I guarantee you.

Araneae6537

Calm_Fury wrote: »

lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

Sanguinor2 wrote: »

Health based heals are absolutely needed in endgame PvE. Well I am talking vet hm trials and not so much dungeons or arenas.
The easiest way to see how bad a tank without a health scaling heal is is to play a templar tank and let me tell you thats a miserable experience compared to any other tank. In Kyne´s Aegis for example the adds alone hit so hard that you need a health scaling burst heal at all times since you will just die if you dont get a burst heal after a group of adds light attacked you.
I played sorc, warden, nightblade and templar offtank in Kyne´s Aegis. On sorc, warden and nightblade I would take big adds off of the Mt, I could take over the boss if need be and I could take adds in the bossfights themselves. On templar tank in comparison we decided that it would be safer to just have the dk maintank tank everything and me just guard the mt and play as healer otherwise since as a templar tank you cannot recover from high damage by yourself and everything does high damage in Kyne´s Aegis, unblocked light attacks of some adds can hit a tank for over 30k damage for example.
While it would theoretically be possible to play without health scaling heals, with the way most burst heals work they might actually miss the tank and go on a low health dd and the tank would just die since there are very little burst heals that you can actually target on one person.
To be even more specific with my example of Kyne´s Aegis. On the 2nd boss when the 3 adds come out of the portal im basically casting a self heal every 2nd or 3rd ability while permablocking and only getting damaged by light attacks (aka i need a 20k heal every 2 or 3 seconds when getting hit by non enranged adds), since there is constant lightning strike damage, the mt getting damaged and possibly a conduit damaging dds target capped heals might not go on me at all or only too late.

Additionally tanks not being able to heal themselves efficiently in emergencies feels really really bad. I´ve started playing FFXIV and there most tanks dont have a burst heal at all and it can get very frustrating to just stand there and inevitebly die, without being able to do anything about it, if a healer doesnt pay as much attention as they should or the healer is dead.

I disagree. Talk to any experienced healer, I'm sure they could keep you alive if they wanted to do that.
The issue is, healer have become so used to tanks that are independant, that they don't heal them in many situations and therefore tanks feel like they need the hp based heals. But from a healer PoV, i could certainly keep a tank without self heal alive, if I actually tried to do that.
Just look at the builds current raid healers use. Usually you have two 5-piece armour sets, a monster set and an arena weapon all dedicated to increase group sustain and damage. On the skillbars you'll find mostly buffs and debuffs and some aoe hots. But apart from specific fights (like Ice healer on Lokke) you rarely see powerful burst heals being used anymore.
The healing done by a healer could be increased by a lot compared to the current level, if there was actually need for it.

Also, with the way the newer content works, without independent tanks you would basically have a "pocket tank healer" all the time.

I bet most healers would end up HATING just having to spam heals on one tank the whole fight while 10 other people (or 2) do their thing.

Healers in ESO have always been half-healer/half-support. With some design decisions that basically just make the damage be either irrelevant or one-shots, that balance has shifted. That is why we see 3DD1T groups and healers basically being buff machines on trials.

They are either overhealing or can't do anything because mechanic is a one shot.

I'm telling you, as someone who, a long, long time ago used to main a healer in a group with a tank that thought that healing was not his problem: it is BORING to heal a tank through the most recent content if they don't have a very good self heal.

And this is very easy to test. Just go into any vDLC HM dungeon or Trial with a Templar tank, that has very limited self healing options.

You will become a "pocket healer" and hate it. I guarantee you.

In that case I would say that the tank hasn’t enough armor or health or isn’t blocking what they should. What you describe is what I expect to do if someone is kind of fake-tanking but at least taunting the boss (otherwise it’s chaos and burst healing everyone).

MirandaSharp wrote: »

Araneae6537 wrote: »

Of course a tank needs to have adequate health, armor and/or other mitigation, but self-healing should not be a requirement of the role. While it is an oversimplification, assumes everyone follows mechanics, and in no way to be taken completely seriously, I keep in mind what I learned in my first MMO:

Tank dies —> Healer’s fault
Anyone else dies —> Tank’s fault
Boss enrages —> DPS’s fault

But yes, when I play healer I do my best to keep everyone alive regardless of role or what they’re standing in!

You're right.. But my real world experience is different.. With a good healer at my back I can drop all self heals and use entirely different sets. I guess you're one of the very few good healers around(at least in pugs). I used to run gear without self healing, but kept running into pugs where it all became a blame game. Seems most less experienced players think the tank must be immortal or else they suck at being a tank.. So I go with the flow. Yet I totally agree with what you say. In an ideal virtual world....

If you’re on PC NA feel free to send me a message and I’d be glad to run vet dungeons with you! I used to PUG vet dungeons all the time but have been doing so less as I focus on other characters (and I don’t feel vet level with my DPS or tanking yet). I hate to be carried or superfluous but very much enjoy working with people to overcome a challenge!

HankTwo

Stahlor wrote: »

HankTwo wrote: »

Ok so first of all I have to say that I really dislike your suggestion. Actively nerfing people for getting a certain stat is not the way to go. The disadvantage when building into health should be that you will be lacking max mag or stam and therefore your damage and healing will be weaker. Proc tanks circumvent both because proc set damage doesnt scale with your stats and there are certain defensive build options that will still heal you a lot, even if your max stats are bad. Namely health-based heals, health regen and sets like crimson/defending warrior. So instead of doing a weird and illogical band aid fix, how about looking at the real problems?

And second of all, 40k hp proc tanks dont two shot anybody who has a decent build. At best a more glass canon like build that *** up their defense and didnt avoid an incoming burst proc combo, but thats about it. Proc tank damage is decent, but definitely not better than a well build glass canon. What sets them apart is their extremely tough defense and good sustain. In no CP if you duel a good proc tank build, the most likely way they can kill you is by outsustaining you with constant dot proc pressure.

Why should a tank be a damage dealer? Then you could also bring out health based damage skills. Beside that, its not only the proc sets. You meet quite some people with almost 40k health, that deal 20k+ damage with a dizzy + executioner combo. If you think that's right then I don't know what to say...

Mate, what you are asking for is to actively penalize people for upgrading their gear sets and glyphs (if they got health in it), getting passives like heavy armor juggernaut and undaunted mettle, getting emp or Ayleid well buff in Cyro, or hell even just getting healed by a warden because of the maturation passive. If thats not plain stupid I dont know what is. Optimizing a build by squeezing out extra stats, no matter where they come from, should never penalize you directly unless it comes from a specific source that is balance that way (like new moon acolyte).

And I hate to break it to you, but if you are regularly getting two shotted by just a dizzy and executioner from a 40k hp build I dont know what to tell you except that your build and playstyle are very bad.

ExistingRug61

Question: do sorc tanks use a health based heal (clannfear?) or rely on dark deal/exchange? Or shields, which I guess are somewhat health based?
Reason for asking is whether it is a health based heal that is important or if simply having one that doesn’t scale with mag/stam is enough?

Stahlor

HankTwo wrote: »

...Optimizing a build by squeezing out extra stats, no matter where they come from, should never penalize you directly...

I wouldn't call it "Optimizing" to put points in health without loosing much damage and even benefitting from health based heals.

HankTwo wrote: »

And I hate to break it to you, but if you are regularly getting two shotted by just a dizzy and executioner from a 40k hp build I dont know what to tell you except that your build and playstyle are very bad.

I might not be the best player, but HA + dizzy + LA + Executioner (+glyph or poison) is dealing high damage very often.

If you think tanks dealing insane damage in PVP is ok, that's completely fine. Then handle it and stop crying for health-based heals nerfs, that affect PVE heavily. The problem is not the heals, it's the high damage of high health characters. So you basically get penalised by playing a squishy character in PVP, since you can't kill high health characters, but they still can kill you easily.

HankTwo

Stahlor wrote: »

HankTwo wrote: »

...Optimizing a build by squeezing out extra stats, no matter where they come from, should never penalize you directly...

I wouldn't call it "Optimizing" to put points in health without loosing much damage and even benefitting from health based heals.

How convenient of you that you just ignored all the examples I gave you that show that your suggestion is bad. And yes, going 5/1/1 to get the full benefit from undaunted mettle is one way of optimizing a build. Going for a trainee heavy chest or light girdle (depending on the rest of your armor) on a 5 piece frontbar + second 5 piece backbar + monster set + mythic item build is a common example.

Stahlor wrote: »

HankTwo wrote: »

And I hate to break it to you, but if you are regularly getting two shotted by just a dizzy and executioner from a 40k hp build I dont know what to tell you except that your build and playstyle are very bad.

I might not be the best player, but HA + dizzy + LA + Executioner (+glyph or poison) is dealing high damage very often.

As I said, If you die to just dizzy, executioner and glyph procs you really have to take a look at your build and playstyle. This should not happen and to me it never does (and I dont play 30k+ hp).

Stahlor wrote: »

HankTwo wrote: »

And I hate to break it to you, but if you are regularly getting two shotted by just a dizzy and executioner from a 40k hp build I dont know what to tell you except that your build and playstyle are very bad.

If you think tanks dealing insane damage in PVP is ok, that's completely fine. Then handle it and stop crying for health-based heals nerfs, that affect PVE heavily. The problem is not the heals, it's the high damage of high health characters. So you basically get penalised by playing a squishy character in PVP, since you can't kill high health characters, but they still can kill you easily.

Ok, so first of all show me where I'm crying for nerfs that affect PvE when I was specifically telling people in the original post the following: 'I'm not asking for any nerfs or reworks before I know what the situation in PvE is'.

Furthermore, health tanks usually don't deal insane damage with skills, its simply not true. There are at best some niche ways how that can happen like a high balorgh proc + clever alchemist +malacath which together have a low uptime. And the penalization you perceive here is fundamentally different to what you suggest above, since it is not an active one. Imagine players stacking max stam/mag or weapon/spell damage would get a damage received penalty akin to the debuff you ask for stacking health. Doesn't sound good now, does it?

Maybe you could instead ask for something more sensible, like increasing the max stam/mag scaling coefficient of skills to something more than ~ 1/10.5 of the weapon/spell damage coefficient.

Stahlor

HankTwo wrote: »

Maybe you could instead ask for something more sensible, like increasing the max stam/mag scaling coefficient of skills to something more than ~ 1/10.5 of the weapon/spell damage coefficient.

This would cause PVE players dealing even more damage and people are already complaining about that.

I mainly see dizzy/executioner in my death cap. Sometimes some snipes, but I usually get my head smashed by a bunch of stams spamming dizzy and executioner.

So what do you suggest to give PVP more variety without having unkillable high health damage dealers or any heavy nerfs in PVE?

And why do you think a damage penalty depending on health would be so bad?