Olupajmibanan wrote: »Thank you!
One thing to note about Nord. In a perfect 4 horn rotation, other healer and tanks must be Nords as well in order to to achieve somewhat higher Major Force uptime. That's the only situation where we can realisticaly think about Nord healer.
Olupajmibanan wrote: »Thank you!
One thing to note about Nord. In a perfect 4 horn rotation, other healer and tanks must be Nords as well in order to to achieve somewhat higher Major Force uptime. That's the only situation where we can realisticaly think about Nord healer.
Yes, that is why I estimate the impact to be under one percent for a single healer.
Silver_Strider wrote: »Stalwart: Gain 6% Max Stamina and 20% Health Recovery → Increases your Max Stamina by 1500. When you take damage, gain 5 Ultimate. This effect can occur once every 10 seconds.
I want to bring attention to the bold part of this passive and I want someone to continue to tell me a Nord Healer is going to keep that on CD with any sense of reliability. In hectic fights, sure, you might get a proc or 2 here and there but let's be realistic here, 90% of mechanics now are "you get hit, you die". There is no reliable way a Healer is going to get hit enough to justify rolling a Nord to make that passive worth a damn in any practical sense.
Silver_Strider wrote: »Stalwart: Gain 6% Max Stamina and 20% Health Recovery → Increases your Max Stamina by 1500. When you take damage, gain 5 Ultimate. This effect can occur once every 10 seconds.
I want to bring attention to the bold part of this passive and I want someone to continue to tell me a Nord Healer is going to keep that on CD with any sense of reliability. In hectic fights, sure, you might get a proc or 2 here and there but let's be realistic here, 90% of mechanics now are "you get hit, you die". There is no reliable way a Healer is going to get hit enough to justify rolling a Nord to make that passive worth a damn in any practical sense.
I agree for dungeons, but every trial has more or less constant small amounts of incoming damage.
Silver_Strider wrote: »Silver_Strider wrote: »Stalwart: Gain 6% Max Stamina and 20% Health Recovery → Increases your Max Stamina by 1500. When you take damage, gain 5 Ultimate. This effect can occur once every 10 seconds.
I want to bring attention to the bold part of this passive and I want someone to continue to tell me a Nord Healer is going to keep that on CD with any sense of reliability. In hectic fights, sure, you might get a proc or 2 here and there but let's be realistic here, 90% of mechanics now are "you get hit, you die". There is no reliable way a Healer is going to get hit enough to justify rolling a Nord to make that passive worth a damn in any practical sense.
I agree for dungeons, but every trial has more or less constant small amounts of incoming damage.
While I won't deny that all trials have plenty of residual damage, there are periods in which its entirely possible to not be hit within the 10 second CD timer on Stalwart that diminishes the overall value of the passive. It's 0.5 Ultimate/sec at the absolutely best case scenario and it's possible that even a Nord Tank won't hit that 100% of the time, every time. If a Healer could only get it about 60% of the time (a far more realistic uptime on a Healer), you're looking at 0.15 Ultimate/sec and that's such a small amount that it's not even worth it. It would take ~8-9 minutes with a 100% uptime just for Stalwart to generator enough ultimate to get 1 Warhorn on its own but at 60% uptime, you're looking at a whooping 27 minutes. No vet trial lasts that long, you'll have died to enrage long before that point, meaning the racial is practically useless outside of Tank roles or PvP. The only thing this racial is doing is speeding up the times between Warhorns by a handful of seconds, at best, but Warhorn uptime itself isn't that huge of a thing but rather the uptime of Major Force is and getting Major Force slightly faster isn't going to warrant much of a shift in the Trial Meta game as it's entirely possible that will have you sit on a Warhorn BECAUSE of the racial, for several seconds anyways which just makes it completely moot at that point.
Something to note as well is Healer DPS. Between WoE, Shards, etc. a Nord Healer just is not going to be pumping out the same numbers as a Breton or Altmer Healer, not by a long shot and unless that Ultimate regen is powerful enough to offset that discrepancy of weaker Healer DPS, is it worth the potential loss of damage for this? I don't think it would.
Finally, there's the Decisive trait. You can try and justify that Stalwart has some synergy with Decisive and technically it does but an Infused Weakening/Crusher Enchantment is just way too good for a Healer to pass up, especially since 1h+S is getting indirectly nerfed by the enchantment changes and Healers will be more than likely looked at to pick up the slack now, even if only in part. Coupled with the RNG nature of Decisive and I just don't see an argument for Nord Healers being suddenly this overwhelming presence in the healer end game. It'll have a highly specific niche that revolves around taking as many unnecessary hits on purpose to try and make the most of its only useful racial to play catch up to the Magic races that completely mop the floor with it, hand over fist in that role and honestly, that's not a particularly attractive niche to be caught in.
Silver_Strider wrote: »Silver_Strider wrote: »Stalwart: Gain 6% Max Stamina and 20% Health Recovery → Increases your Max Stamina by 1500. When you take damage, gain 5 Ultimate. This effect can occur once every 10 seconds.
I want to bring attention to the bold part of this passive and I want someone to continue to tell me a Nord Healer is going to keep that on CD with any sense of reliability. In hectic fights, sure, you might get a proc or 2 here and there but let's be realistic here, 90% of mechanics now are "you get hit, you die". There is no reliable way a Healer is going to get hit enough to justify rolling a Nord to make that passive worth a damn in any practical sense.
I agree for dungeons, but every trial has more or less constant small amounts of incoming damage.
While I won't deny that all trials have plenty of residual damage, there are periods in which its entirely possible to not be hit within the 10 second CD timer on Stalwart that diminishes the overall value of the passive. It's 0.5 Ultimate/sec at the absolutely best case scenario and it's possible that even a Nord Tank won't hit that 100% of the time, every time. If a Healer could only get it about 60% of the time (a far more realistic uptime on a Healer), you're looking at 0.15 Ultimate/sec and that's such a small amount that it's not even worth it. It would take ~8-9 minutes with a 100% uptime just for Stalwart to generator enough ultimate to get 1 Warhorn on its own but at 60% uptime, you're looking at a whooping 27 minutes. No vet trial lasts that long, you'll have died to enrage long before that point, meaning the racial is practically useless outside of Tank roles or PvP. The only thing this racial is doing is speeding up the times between Warhorns by a handful of seconds, at best, but Warhorn uptime itself isn't that huge of a thing but rather the uptime of Major Force is and getting Major Force slightly faster isn't going to warrant much of a shift in the Trial Meta game as it's entirely possible that will have you sit on a Warhorn BECAUSE of the racial, for several seconds anyways which just makes it completely moot at that point.
Something to note as well is Healer DPS. Between WoE, Shards, etc. a Nord Healer just is not going to be pumping out the same numbers as a Breton or Altmer Healer, not by a long shot and unless that Ultimate regen is powerful enough to offset that discrepancy of weaker Healer DPS, is it worth the potential loss of damage for this? I don't think it would.
Finally, there's the Decisive trait. You can try and justify that Stalwart has some synergy with Decisive and technically it does but an Infused Weakening/Crusher Enchantment is just way too good for a Healer to pass up, especially since 1h+S is getting indirectly nerfed by the enchantment changes and Healers will be more than likely looked at to pick up the slack now, even if only in part. Coupled with the RNG nature of Decisive and I just don't see an argument for Nord Healers being suddenly this overwhelming presence in the healer end game. It'll have a highly specific niche that revolves around taking as many unnecessary hits on purpose to try and make the most of its only useful racial to play catch up to the Magic races that completely mop the floor with it, hand over fist in that role and honestly, that's not a particularly attractive niche to be caught in.
Shouldn't 60% be 0,3 U/s? Decisive should not be a factor for this passive, 0,1 tick per second is under 10% increased efficiency for the trait.
Silver_Strider wrote: »Silver_Strider wrote: »Silver_Strider wrote: »Stalwart: Gain 6% Max Stamina and 20% Health Recovery → Increases your Max Stamina by 1500. When you take damage, gain 5 Ultimate. This effect can occur once every 10 seconds.
I want to bring attention to the bold part of this passive and I want someone to continue to tell me a Nord Healer is going to keep that on CD with any sense of reliability. In hectic fights, sure, you might get a proc or 2 here and there but let's be realistic here, 90% of mechanics now are "you get hit, you die". There is no reliable way a Healer is going to get hit enough to justify rolling a Nord to make that passive worth a damn in any practical sense.
I agree for dungeons, but every trial has more or less constant small amounts of incoming damage.
While I won't deny that all trials have plenty of residual damage, there are periods in which its entirely possible to not be hit within the 10 second CD timer on Stalwart that diminishes the overall value of the passive. It's 0.5 Ultimate/sec at the absolutely best case scenario and it's possible that even a Nord Tank won't hit that 100% of the time, every time. If a Healer could only get it about 60% of the time (a far more realistic uptime on a Healer), you're looking at 0.15 Ultimate/sec and that's such a small amount that it's not even worth it. It would take ~8-9 minutes with a 100% uptime just for Stalwart to generator enough ultimate to get 1 Warhorn on its own but at 60% uptime, you're looking at a whooping 27 minutes. No vet trial lasts that long, you'll have died to enrage long before that point, meaning the racial is practically useless outside of Tank roles or PvP. The only thing this racial is doing is speeding up the times between Warhorns by a handful of seconds, at best, but Warhorn uptime itself isn't that huge of a thing but rather the uptime of Major Force is and getting Major Force slightly faster isn't going to warrant much of a shift in the Trial Meta game as it's entirely possible that will have you sit on a Warhorn BECAUSE of the racial, for several seconds anyways which just makes it completely moot at that point.
Something to note as well is Healer DPS. Between WoE, Shards, etc. a Nord Healer just is not going to be pumping out the same numbers as a Breton or Altmer Healer, not by a long shot and unless that Ultimate regen is powerful enough to offset that discrepancy of weaker Healer DPS, is it worth the potential loss of damage for this? I don't think it would.
Finally, there's the Decisive trait. You can try and justify that Stalwart has some synergy with Decisive and technically it does but an Infused Weakening/Crusher Enchantment is just way too good for a Healer to pass up, especially since 1h+S is getting indirectly nerfed by the enchantment changes and Healers will be more than likely looked at to pick up the slack now, even if only in part. Coupled with the RNG nature of Decisive and I just don't see an argument for Nord Healers being suddenly this overwhelming presence in the healer end game. It'll have a highly specific niche that revolves around taking as many unnecessary hits on purpose to try and make the most of its only useful racial to play catch up to the Magic races that completely mop the floor with it, hand over fist in that role and honestly, that's not a particularly attractive niche to be caught in.
Shouldn't 60% be 0,3 U/s? Decisive should not be a factor for this passive, 0,1 tick per second is under 10% increased efficiency for the trait.
My mistake, you're correct. Doesn't really matter though since even with that adjustment, it's still a ~13-14 minute wait to get Warhorn from this passive and it doesn't really make much of a difference to the argument.
Class reps are just like our politicians. They promise mountains made of gold for us, but in the end, whenever they can they try to push their own agenda.
JPcrazysquirrel3 wrote: »ZOS: "We feel like our players should be able to play any race, any way they want. So we've reworked all racial passives to better fit our vision."
*makes Nord passive that only procs from damage taken*
basically saying that Nords will only be good for tanking or soloing
GG, ZOS
PvE Healer Race Guide (Wrathstone DLC/PTS)
Imperial
Both health and stamina are potentially useful stats for a PvE healer, however, they make Imperial very inflexible in terms of stat-balance, making it, in my opinion, one of the worst picks for a healer.
+ 2000 Max Health and Stamina
PvE Healer Race Guide (Wrathstone DLC/PTS)
In this guide, I have calculated, tested, and compared the impact of all the different racial passives on a PvE healer build. All presented values are just reference points and the exact numbers differ depending on the build and situation. I am, additionally, giving my own opinions and interpretations in order to present the information. Should any of the racial passives be changed over the course of the PTS or in the transition to the live server, I will update the guide accordingly.
Sustain
I split up my calculations into drain and recovery because both values behave very differently. In each category, I have looked at all races that have any passives affecting those areas.
Drain
To give a general overview of a healer’s magicka cost and the behaviour of Breton’s and Redguard’s cost reduction passives, I have calculated two possible rotations with 30 abilities (~30s). Both rotations are similar in terms of provided buffs and represent a realistic sequence in a static raid environment. Please keep in mind, however, that a healer’s rotation is highly situational. All calculations were made with seven pieces of light armor giving which give 14% cost reduction and no additional effects like glyphs or the Worm Cult cost reduction bonus.
As you can see a Breton has a significantly lower average and total cost, even though a Redguard’s weapon skills have a lower cost. The majority of a healer’s magicka is usually not spent on weapon skills which makes the effect of a Breton’s magicka cost reduction outperform a Redguard’s weapon ability cost reduction.
The effect of both passives is noticeable with a Breton having an average of ~8% less magicka drain and a Redguard having ~3%.
Recovery
I then calculated the additional magicka gain for each race with a recovery passive (Altmer, Breton, Argonian, Khajiit); again the results vary depending on the exact build being used. The following is a theoretical calculation of a generic build that fits the rotations used in the previous section.
It can be seen that all the results are very close. The high amount of different modifiers make the impact of each modifier very small and in an actual combat situation with additional magicka gain from synergies, potions, Magickasteal, and class abilities it gets even smaller. Nevertheless, I want to give you my personal ranking:
1. Breton
Apart from having one of the highest totals, a Breton’s magicka recovery scales very well and isn’t tied to a mechanic which makes it very strong and reliable.
2. Khajiit
Similar to a Breton, a Khajiit has magicka recovery as a passive which means it scales well and is also reliable. That being said, the numbers are lower than a Breton’s thus putting Khajiit in second place.
3. Argonian
Argonians have a little bit more recovery than Khajiits (in my calculation), however, it is tied to an additional mechanic which forces Argonians to take potions on cooldown to get the maximum effect. This makes their recovery passive, in my opinion, a little bit worse than Breton’s and Khajiit’s; however, the passive is still very reliable.
4. Altmer
In order to achieve the numbers in my calculation, Altmers would need to activate their passive on cooldown. Using a class ability every six seconds does not fit well in many rotations and is in my opinion highly unreliable. The effectiveness of this passive is also dependent on class, for example it is better suited to Wardens than Templars due to their increased use of class abilities. In a realistic fight, Altmers have a high chance of having the lowest recovery of the four compared races.
Healing Power
In order to determine the healing power of each race, I used ingame testing instead of mathematical calculations, because this is easier for me. All tests were done on a Warden using the Elinhir Private Arena to inflict damage. I did use a representative amount of modifiers that I would usually have in a combat situation (Major Sorcery, Major Courage, Minor Mending, CP), except health based scaling, because it would falsify the results. The magicka-health balance was adjusted to ~17,200 HP such that races with health passives were fairly scaled.
The results show that Altmers and Dunmers with their offensive stat bonuses will outperform Argonians percent scaling, however this is not by much. Bretons and Khajiits are close behind with their magicka passives. ‘Other’ sums up the stats for all races without additional magicka or health passives and the races with a health bonus that are not included can all get results in between Bretons and ‘Other’ with a corresponding magicka-health balance.
I therefore conclude that, in general, races with max magicka, spell power, healing, and spell critical are better in terms of healing power and overall stat balance. Races that have a max health bonus can compensate for this with an appropriate build in most situations, however, they can struggle with having too much HP in certain situations or builds.
Survivability
Since many races have bonuses for different types of resistances I also calculated their impacts. In this section, however, the interpretation is the most important part.
The actual damage decrease of all those resistances is between 3.5%-9.5%; in order put those numbers into context I have calculated an example with a standard healer build.
With a PvE healer’s normal damage mitigation being between 30-50% an additional 3.5% is a considerable amount. However, the majority of PvE fights are heavily weighted towards a single damage type (like elemental damage) and groups have options for additional mitigation in phases where heavy damage occurs, leading to situations like the second example, reducing the impact of those racial passives. Furthermore, healers are, in most cases more survivable than DDs which further reduces the need for those specific bonuses.
In general PvE content is strongly balanced towards magical damage types, particularly magic, fire, and shock, which makes the specific resistances towards disease, poison, and frost of Bosmer, Argonian, and Nord less effective. The spell and fire resistances of Breton, Nord, and Dunmer are more useful, especially when countering vampires vulnerability to fire.
Healing and Max Health
Some races also have additional healing or max health bonuses, both which generally count towards survivability, however, are in my opinion less impactful and harder to properly calculate. Especially healing has very little impact because it does not influence the effective health. Max health, on the other hand, does count towards the effective health, however, goes into the general magicka-health balance and as such has many other, as well as, better sources.
Stamina and Movement
In my opinion, stamina and movement both influence survivability. However, I just want to generally explain them without a mathematical approach. PvE healers generally have access to enough stamina sustain and movement tools which makes a particular race choice not necessary (in my opinion). Kiter or hybrid roles, regularly performed by healers, are however an exception and often require increased stamina sustain and over 30% movement speed. In order to meet those requirements, healers have to run specialized builds and being a race with better movement and sustain as Bosmer or Orc can actually be interesting in those scenarios. I personally would nevertheless not make this a criteria for choosing my race.
Ultimate
Nords unique bonus to ultimate generation make it a potentially good choice therefore I constructed this section to determine the actual impact of this passive. My calculation is under ideal circumstances, due to this passive being triggered by incoming damage, the ultimate gain will likely be lower in real encounters.
The additional ultimate generation is actually significant, however, it is important to include that the general Warhorn uptime is over 100% in the majority of fights which reduces to the added uptime to Major Force only. I could not get any exact numbers but I estimate that the DPS impact for a raid group is ~0.1%, given that the uptime would only increase by 13% which applies to only one half to one fifth of the total Major Force uptime and Major Force in general only a few percent of the total DPS.
Additionally, this passive only ticks once every 10s making the scaling with the decisive weapon trait very weak.
Conclusions
I have come to a conclusion for every race, including those that don’t have any direct benefit for healers so that non-meta players may see the benefits their race might situationally bring and so that nobody can complain about elitism or favouritism.
Altmer
Despite its sustain passive being in my mind too unreliable for a healer, High Elf is still a very solid choice providing the strongest healing while still having additional recovery. The race only lacks in survivability and stamina sustain.
+ 575 Magicka up to every 6 Seconds (~96 M/s | which does not scale )
+ 2000 Max Magicka
+ 258 Spell Power
Bosmer
A unique movement speed bonus and very good stamina sustain can make Wood Elf a potentially good choice for a kiter role. However, apart from that, it does very little for a healer.
+ 258 Stamina recovery (129 S/s | scales with %-recovery)
+ 2000 Max Stamina
+ 20% Movement Speed for 3s after Roll Dodge
+ 2310 Poison Resistance
Dunmer
Dunmer provides high healing values with an overall good stat balance and survivability which synergizes well with vampirism. It lacks in magicka sustain but is still a very solid choice in my opinion.
+ 1250 Max Magicka and Stamina
+ 600 Max Health
+ 2310 Flame Resistance
+ 258 Spell Power
Orc
Like Bosmer, Orc has increased movement and stamina sustain, making it potentially good for a kiter role. Otherwise Orc has no other relevant passives for a healer.
+ 500 Max Stamina and Health
+ 380 Stamina every 4s (~95 S/s | not scaling)
+ 12% Sprint Cost Reduction and 10% Sprint Speed
Breton
Having the best magicka sustain, with the lowest overall drain and the highest and most reliable recovery makes Breton a very strong choice. Additionally, the increased spell resistance allows for more offensive builds, further profiting from the max magicka bonus, and synergizes very well with vampirism. The only downside is its lack of stamina sustain and thereby movement.
+ 7% Magicka Cost Reduction
+ 100 Magicka Recovery (50 M/s | scaling with %-recovery)
+ 2000 Max Magicka
+ 2310 Spell Resistance
Redguard
A PvE healers magicka output is not caused by many weapon abilities and therefore the cost reduction is rather underwhelming. The excellent stamina sustain can be beneficial but that alone does not make Redguard worth playing ( in my opinion ).
+ 8% Weapon Ability Cost Reduction
+ 2000 Max Stamina
+ 950 Stamina every 5s (~190 S/s | not scaling)
Imperial
Both health and stamina are potentially useful stats for a PvE healer, however, they make Imperial very inflexible in terms of stat-balance, making it, in my opinion, one of the worst picks for a healer.
+ 2000 Max Health and Stamina
Nord
Since Nords are the only race that can actively increase Group-DPS by using Warhorn more often, it could be argued that they are therefore the best choice for a PvE healer. In my opinion however, this effect is too weak and unreliable to make Nords a definitive best race. They do have a wide spectrum of other useful stats and are therefore still a great choice if magicka sustain is not a problem.
+ 5 Ultimate every 10s ( 0,5 U/s | 1 tick every 10s for Decisive)
+ 1500 Max Stamina
+ 1000 Max Health
+ 3960 Physical and Spell Resistance
+ 2310 Cold Resistance
Argonian
While being a little bit behind the top picks in sustain and healing power, everybody's favourite slave race is very well rounded. The additional stamina sustain and survivability make Argonian a very good choice for any kind of kiter or hybrid role, but they also perform well as a regular healer.
+ 3600 Magicka and Stamina every 45s ( 80 M/s | 80 S/s | scales with potion cooldown)
+ 1000 Max Magicka and Health
+ 4% Healing done
+ 2310 Disease Resistance
Khajiit
Khajiit is a generally well-balanced race for a PvE healer however it lacks distinct advantages and is generally weaker than some other choices like Breton, Altmer, or Argonian. Spell critical chance is unreliable and scales badly for healing.
+ 75 Stamina and Magicka Recovery (~37 S/s | ~37 M/s | scaling with %-recovery)
+ 750 Max Magicka, Stamina and Health
+ 8% Spell Critical Chance
As a general conclusion, I have to say that race is secondary for a healer and only becomes important in top tier endgame PvE. Any race can potentially perform flawlessly, as a healers efficiency is mostly not dependant on stats. Playing a more well-suited race, however, makes performing well noticeably easier.
I have used many tests, calculations, and addons that were created by other players in the creation of this guide therefore a big thank you to all those amazing theory crafters and addon creators!
Thank you for proof reading and editing Lotte!
Sources:
Magicka Recovery vs. Cost Reduction
Damage Mitigation: Explanation
Is Decisive Trait Worthwhile? ~Tay's Ultimate Generation Simulator~
A comprehensive guide on damage dealing in Elder Scrolls Online
JPcrazysquirrel3 wrote: »ZOS: "We feel like our players should be able to play any race, any way they want. So we've reworked all racial passives to better fit our vision."
*makes Nord passive that only procs from damage taken*
basically saying that Nords will only be good for tanking or soloing
GG, ZOS
That statement is complete nonsense anyway, as a lot of races are either complete magicka or complete stamina.
I love that, according to your calculations, Argonian, which racials are focused on making them the best healer, are behind Khajiit, which racials are supposed to make them jack-of-all-trade.
I love that, according to your calculations, Argonian, which racials are focused on making them the best healer, are behind Khajiit, which racials are supposed to make them jack-of-all-trade.
They announced that Argonians will be buffed soon. From what is known so far they will probably be stronger then Khajiit in Sustain and possibly healing as well. We will have to see.