Rapid Regen and its Target Prioritization

Nax · August 2016

I am curious to hear others' feedback about Rapid Regen (or the Mutagen morph) and how frequently it successfully targets all members of their 4-person groups. In my opinion, it would be ideal if after casting the skill twice in a 4-man group, it would target everyone; however, a large majority of the time in my experiences, that ideal is not the case. I will try to post video soon, but until then, a couple of written examples:

My group was running the last boss of vRoM, and I, as the healer, was trying to make sure that Rapid Regen was on everyone, just in case I was selected for Inner Fire spam on the statues. Sure enough, I was chosen, and I made sure to cast Rapid Regen AT LEAST twice before this phase, hoping that it would have targeted both DDs and the Tank while I was busy killing the statue; however, while I was Inner Firing as fast as I could, I noticed that one DD's health was dropping dramatically, and naturally he then died as I could not heal him due to my skill bar being full of taunts. Rapid Regen had NOT actually targeted him in spite of my multiple casts, while it did hit myself, the other DD and the Tank.

vRoM, last boss again. Same scenario. I am chosen to spam taunt a statue, except this time, Rapid Regen for some reason did not target ME even though I am 100% sure that I cast it multiple times only seconds before the phase began so I would get heals just in case. Many times, the Rapid tick would have saved me during the attempts where I unfortunately wasn't quick enough to avoid ground AoE. Many times without, I died.

vWGT, Planar Inhibitor boss. I make sure to have Rapid on my bar just in case I am selected to kill portals, so my group has a bit of HoTs on them while I am busy dealing damage. A LOT of the time, in spite of my casting Rapid much more than twice in a row, the skill never targets one or more people in the group, even though I can see that they are well within my range. I wind up needing to spam Breath of Life as I cannot rely on Rapid Regen to target everyone in the group, which does work, but is way more stressful than it would be if Rapid would simply choose to hit everyone.

I could go on and on, and I am interested to know if others are having similar issues with this target prioritization. ZoS, is it possible to look into this and improve upon it?

Berenhir · August 2016

The targeting system has been broken by ZOS without explanation with DB patch. The issue has been ignored ever since. The smart system of buffing those without HoT first has been replaced by pure RNG. That's why I don't run mutagen on my magblade in pvp anymore, synergized well with ward ally and funnel health before. Now it's utterly useless as neither do I reliably get the HoT nor do those that are about to die from siege DoT or being pressured. It's a shame as the combo was far superior compared to the healing ward solution

See also:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/3212695

Brutusmax1mus · August 2016

Completely broken heal, drop t, they don't plan on fixing it.

Armitas · August 2016

Ideally.

Rapid regen should prioritize targets that dont have it.
Mutagen should prioritize targets that are low health.

Also, rapid regen is not rescaling after a weapon swap. It retains the resto staff weapon power when you swap, you lose your resto staff trait if its powered and it will not recalculate the spell power of the weapon you swapped to. So if you switch from a resto to a nirn weapon the nirn will not boost your rapid regen. That is kind of a big deal since nirn is balanced against sharpened because it improves your healing and dps.

If this is done due to lag then make it retain the powered trait on swap and were good.

Wrecking_Blow_Spam · August 2016

Can aggree I think it's been this way since DB release on console. In 4 man dungeons I've had to spam 5+ times just to hit all people.

Needs fix ASAP.

Robbmrp · August 2016

The so called "Smart Healing" on this thing is utterly broken. I wasn't even in a group last night messing around in Grahtwood with animation spell casting and ended up hitting two NPC's who caused the guards to attack me. I'm sitting there at 1/3 health and cast this thing and it flies off to two other people in the room I was in who were at full health... It has NO priority on healing anyone that I've seen.

Multiple times in PVP i've seen it do the exact same thing, people in the group with lower health and the spell goes right to those with full health instead.

Autolycus · August 2016

I don't have anything particularly insightful that hasn't already been mentioned here, but I look at RR/Mutagen a little bit differently now than I used to.

For quite some time, Mutagen + Healing Ward was the go-to clutch healing in lieu of BoL (I don't play a Templar healer). Despite its inability to target who you want it to, it is very low cost. As such, casting it 4, 5, even 6 times is often inconsequential on your magicka pool. I've started making a practice of hitting it 4+ times when I use it.

That being said, I now keep it on my off-bar and do not rely on it for clutch healing. It is purely supplementary in my build now. The way I view RR/Mutagen is simply as a HoT that procs SPC. It's something I can do from range, even people are spread out, and again is just supplemental, or reassurance that I keep buffs running. With this in mind, for it to proc SPC, my target must be at full health, which means my active healing is done via Combat Prayer and Healing Springs, mostly.

This perspective does little to help in the situations you described in the OP, unfortunately. However, in an effort to help you through those tricky situations, I might suggest dropping a Cleansing Ritual just before someone is designated for statue duty, in the middle of the arena. It is reasonable to expect (to some extent) that your dps and tank will have a means of taking care of themselves for that period of time, but Ritual will help. It does a fair bit of healing on its own.

I believe, however, that more important than this is effective communication within the group. After a little experience running this fight, anticipating statue duty is fairly easy to do, and the boss sends a pretty obvious tell for it too (she turns around and throws something at the person for statue duty. It looks just like the boss in FG that puts the purple tether, starts at the waste and throws it out like a frisbee). With this in mind, your group can help anticipate this and as soon as the tell is given, anyone without the "vision" for statue duty should be looking for that statue and and telling where it is. Yes, the synergy to narrow down the options should always be done if possible, but I've found it to be far less time consuming, and thus more efficient, to call it out. Not everyone has the luxury of voice chat, though, so if this is the case, be sure to coordinate your strategy beforehand.