Time to add a ramping cost to Resto Staffs?

StihlReign

Resto Staff users in groups seem to have unlimited ability to cast and heal. Perhaps some ramping costs would make PvP more enjoyable for players encountering large groups and, make healers feel more valuable and skilled when making casting decisions.

Necrotech_Master

resto staff gets the best sustain due to its +30% additional mag restored on heavy attacks

and adding a ramping cost would likely destroy pve healing, since this would likely be something applied to the skill that couldnt be done through battle spirit

the thing what everyone has been asking for with this is limiting stacking heal over times, which is what would solve most of the issues

Soarora

Not sure how ramping costs would fit into restro in the first place. Totally just need to limit instances of healing to 2. There are some strats in PvE nowadays that involve vigor stacking with DPS but… can always sacrifice damage for defense in those scenarios.

Tommy_The_Gun

Better solution for reducing PvP group healing effectiveness is to add a cap on how many HOTs there can be active in PvP (Battle Spirit). Right now there is no cap, so that groups in PvP can have like 10 Vigors & Radiats and it is pretty much the equivalent of 20K - 30K health regen, so it is kinda broken. Before that groups tended to spam purge, but Plague Breaker caused meta to shift, so they moved to the next broken gameplay mechanics.

In PvP, ramping cost on healing would hurt your average solo player the most, while groups would not feel that as they usually have tons of sustain due to group synergy, so it would make make groups actually stronger.

Araneae6537

No, limit HoT stacking (should solve PvP problem and not hurt PvE or small group PvP). Running healer is oftentimes thankless enough as it is, we don’t need to be even less effective.

TybaltKaine

Leave my heals alone please. Limit HOT stacking and you fix the issue. "Ramping costs" seems to be a buzzword around these parts lately.

stybbe17b16_ESO

The vampire debuff "you cannot be healed by allies for 3 seconds" should be put into a set. This combine with plague breaker and the ball groups have to split to dispel or fight for themself.

StihlReign

Solo Players don't really spam themselves with heals from a resto. While the +30% sustain on resto heavy attack is the optimal way to sustain magicka, this would probably be enough for a PvE group - PvP is faster, much faster. So we don't see many players (and rarely grouped players, using the mechanic for sustain).

I once used resto for about 6-8 months exclusively and really practiced playing with it as a damage option to see what it could do.

Heal-wise (can I say that?), it seems to be an almost infinite spam tool (weapon). Group buffs magnify the issue. ZOS' combat team seems opposed to any suggestion dealing with HoTs or vigor.

Resto ramping cost, seems to be the way to go. Should be good for PvE as well...there are too many armors designed to "do more damage/reduce more damage in dungeons" to over-tuned npc's. Adding a resto ramping cost should add more value to the healer and help tone down npc damage.

Araneae6537

No, I don’t see how ramping cost would “add more value to the healer” in PvE. It would definitely make the role less fun and would be a pain point in trials and emergency situations in dungeons, when your probably already low on resources.

LunaFlora

would be fine if it is only when Battle Spirit is active, as it should be for any changes people want because of PvP.

ramping cost for restoration staff would be really awful for PvE healing

reazea

Heal stacking is an issue in PvP, but heavy attack resource restore is very much needed in PvE situations.

Desiato

It's not a resto staff issue so targeting would result in less resto staff usage without really solving the problem.

IMO, the core problem is one that most players probably don't want to see resolved because they like other aspects of it: Resource management has become too easy. At least with CP enabled.

It's the biggest reason stalemates are so common.

When I watch streamers, I see they have the same resource management experience I have. Unless they are significantly outnumbered, they're never running out of resources and can easily reset with a via LOS, streak or cloak. Most don't seem to play with a sustain set and neither do I.

Ball groups never stop spamming abilities, so obviously it's the same for them.

It wasn't this easy before I quit for a few years around 2019.

The OP's suggestion ultimately targets this issue, but it's not an ideal approach and is too narrowly focused on one weapon skill line.

StihlReign

reazea wrote: »

Heal stacking is an issue in PvP, but heavy attack resource restore is very much needed in PvE situations.

I agree; however, Resto staff users too easily spam abilities for extended periods of time with little to no loss in resources, and no penalty. It's almost mindless. The ablilities should be reworked, starting with a ramping cost, and ending with a targeting skill focus.

Pointing a staff in the air and randomly hitting users, feels spammy and makes healers look unskilled.

We'd be better off with a passive that gives healers the ability to "see damaged/injured players" based on some color chart (call it Aura or something) and assists them when pointing and targeting heals at these players....add a speed boost and a range buff (increased heal) for getting closer, call it combat healer...

The current system just feels bad...and spammy.

Turtle_Bot

There's 2 major issues with the idea of adding a ramping cost to the resto staff line:

1. The skills already cost twice as much, at base, as DPS abilities.

By adding a ramping cost to resto staff, all that does is delete that weapon line as an option for anyone who's not a dedicated group healer with dedicated group sustain support. It also doesn't make healing anymore skillful, all it does is make players switch to class or global skill line based healing abilities (most of which are already significantly stronger than the resto skills) and spam those instead.

2. Echoing vigor (the real culprit of the current absurd passive group healing) is not a resto staff skill and thus unaffected.

As mentioned, echoing vigor also remains completely untouched by this change, allowing the problematic issue of ball groups passive healing that is immune to negate and travels with the ball groups via stacked sticky HoTs to remain completely unchecked.


If you want to make healing "more skillful", then start by limiting the ability to stack the same sticky healing over time effects to 2-3 of the same HoT (the reason for 2-3 and not 1 is to not affect the PvE side of the game where there's typically only 2 healers and maybe a DD also has echoing back bar where the vHM trials require that healing).
By limiting the ability to stack healing over time of sticky HoTs you significantly reduce the passive healing of ball groups, forcing them into running a more active and skillful defense of group burst heals/shields, etc or they stack ground based HoTs instead that requires much more skill in coordinating their "defensive location" around the designed counter play options (negate/siege/bombs) that haven't been effective since ZOS reworked HoTs years ago to be what they are today.

StihlReign

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

There's 2 major issues with the idea of adding a ramping cost to the resto staff line:

1. The skills already cost twice as muc

Vigor isn't a resto staff ability.

Resto Staff costs seem to be in line with, and (some) cheaper than DPS. (Not that we can trust tooltips at this point).

Resto staff group users too easily spam abilities for extended periods of time with little to no loss in resources, and no penalty. It's almost mindless. Clearly "dedicated group sustain support" has made it exponetially worse.

Pointing a staff in the air and randomly hitting users, feels spammy.

The staff's abilites definitely need a ramping cost, and a rework should be done to make heals much more targeted.

Kartalin

Lol, if you want a ramping cost on a weapon, let’s put a ramping cost on every weapon, just to be fair. Why single out one weapon.

If resto is doing too much then nerf resto. Or just get to the root of the problem and nerf heal stacking.