The obsession with this one single skill is out of control, reading this thread is proof for that. About time something is done about it.

If you don’t like the change maybe come up with some other suggestions than “keep it as it is on live“ and ZOS might listen, see their intervention of making the Orb synergy usable by multiple players.

It's both funny and frustrating seeing people who have no clue on end game healing comment about this so let me try to get rid of some false assumptions people have.

Spamming skills: Smart healers layer springs reactively to counter large burst of damage (like frost hard mode in sunspire) or execute in HoF. What 'big heals' would you suggest people use instead? Springs is perfect here because it more efficiently distributes its healing to all allies in the radius as opposed to a strong aoe burst heal which waste its potential by overhealing 6 people and ignoring the rest. If I as a warden were to spam budding seeds instead, odds are half of the group would die in HoF waiting for the second detonation of the heal, which is why people aren't using it. Spamming orbs is another thing as we try to provide resources to 10 people every 20s, or an orb every other second, which will still be a pain with the upcoming pts patch when you need to provide resources in different directions while waiting for the slow orb to EVENTUALLY get there.

Overhealing: Orbs tick twice a second, healing 6 people in range. If ANY of those people are above 100% health, boom, overhealing. If a healer layers springs to prepare for big damage ahead of time, like a competent healer would, boom, overhealing. The best skill to avoid overhealing in the entire game, the necromancers ghost, still overheals by 50% because its a strong enough heal to push dps well beyond full health, despite only firing when there is healing to be done.

Look, the game has been designed around these two skills for a long time and you can't just remove them without doing a balance patch on literally all pieces of content that have come out, and for springs since the skill has barely changed since launch, all content. There aren't alternatives because there never needed to be alternatives, and all this does is either force all content to be made so easy dps can self heal themselves or so all classes lose a skill to get it replaced with a healing springs clone. That is a waste of time and only serves to be frustrating. If you feel these changes are fine great, I have a sinking suspicion you've never done vet trials before, and until you do them I honestly think you shouldn't be the voice on what path the skills should take. Before I did trials I also though springs was overrated, but after having actually run the content I know its a valuable tool that has a time and place to be used, and even when used lightly still 'tops the log charts'.

Varana wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

If you don’t like the change maybe come up with some other suggestions than “keep it as it is on live“ and ZOS might listen, see their intervention of making the Orb synergy usable by multiple players.

But why? Why "fix" something that's not broken? Why think of alternatives if we have absolutely no clue (by Word of God) why this change was even done? If going back to what it's on live is the best solution, why not use it? Change for change's sake is nonsense.

It was literally done to stop easy overhealing was and to hopefully reduce the lag a bit.

You still get the resources but not the insane heals spamming 5 of them will give.

leepalmer95 wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

leepalmer95 wrote: »

If the trails are impossible with the new changes then zos will change them, they already stated that.

Im sorry but not everyone should be able to do trials, that is literally the hardest thing in the game with pve. It should be the ultimate goal.

I don't know. If they introduce sweeping and radical changes like these ones*, shouldn't they have tested before going into finetuning on the PTS that their content is doable with these changes? That's ZOS' job, not the players'.

Also, this "we may be changing trials" came in the same post as those infamous "just use Cleansing Ritual and Circle of Protection" suggestions, i.e. just vague ideas thrown out there showing that there isn't really a plan behind all this.
And third, if you have healers in your game, it's kinda stupid to remove those parts of your content that actually require capable healers.

* I'm still not convinced they realised what they were doing with these changes.

The pts is where the testing is done.

Healing in this game is very overtuned in both pve and pvp. In pve people heal 1000% more than they need too, there is no real thought apart from spamming 2 skills really. Most content and even most phases of vet trials don't need that sheer amount of healing and the steps that do can be helped by a few dd's using an aoe heal or a protection ult.

Maybe the thought is that they don't want end game healing to be to build to sustain and then just spam 2 skills, maybe use a utility skill/ proc sets.

So what you're saying is its a bad idea for healers to place springs on the group before damage comes out, and only heal when people are injured? Oh, and then cutting ALL healing when they get close to full because, woah, if you heal someone at full health thats overhealing. Can't have pre-emptive heals now can we.

leepalmer95 wrote: »

In pve people heal 1000% more than they need too, there is no real thought apart from spamming 2 skills really.

Why don't you actually show some numbers that you didn't just pull out of your derriere?

Assembly General Execute:


Lokkestiiz HM Beam/Static:


1000% overhealing? More like 50-60%. And it's good to have margins for error. The nerfs to orbs/springs are on the order of 75-85%, mostly through the elimination of their stacking. The amount of overhealing in critical trials mechanics do not warrant that kind of change.

leepalmer95 wrote: »

Maybe the thought is that they don't want end game healing to be to build to sustain and then just spam 2 skills, maybe use a utility skill/ proc sets.

It's clear from statements like this that you have no idea what healers actually do. Fortunately, we have this nice thing called esologs that lets me as a raid lead see what my healers are actually doing.



So... just two skills, right? Maybe you should get to know what healers do before giving us any further demonstrations of your ignorance.

leepalmer95 wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

leepalmer95 wrote: »

If the trails are impossible with the new changes then zos will change them, they already stated that.

Im sorry but not everyone should be able to do trials, that is literally the hardest thing in the game with pve. It should be the ultimate goal.

I don't know. If they introduce sweeping and radical changes like these ones*, shouldn't they have tested before going into finetuning on the PTS that their content is doable with these changes? That's ZOS' job, not the players'.

Also, this "we may be changing trials" came in the same post as those infamous "just use Cleansing Ritual and Circle of Protection" suggestions, i.e. just vague ideas thrown out there showing that there isn't really a plan behind all this.
And third, if you have healers in your game, it's kinda stupid to remove those parts of your content that actually require capable healers.

* I'm still not convinced they realised what they were doing with these changes.

The pts is where the testing is done.

Healing in this game is very overtuned in both pve and pvp. In pve people heal 1000% more than they need too, there is no real thought apart from spamming 2 skills really. Most content and even most phases of vet trials don't need that sheer amount of healing and the steps that do can be helped by a few dd's using an aoe heal or a protection ult.

Maybe the thought is that they don't want end game healing to be to build to sustain and then just spam 2 skills, maybe use a utility skill/ proc sets.

That's a pretty strong statement @leepalmer95 and it mostly indicates you DON'T know the role of an end-game healer. Yes, those two skills make up a significant portion of healing (and overhealing), but they're also used to preemptively counter dmg. Far too often when you're trying to react to members taking dmg it is already too late to save them assuming you even know the damage is coming at a given level to a specific member (hoarfrost damage from holding it and ball dots in vCR as an example or dmg coming faster than 1 tick increments which is the gcd healers have to operate on). Yes, healers used these heals to preemptively heal, but it also let them use a TON of other skills to support the group. As an example on a templar healer, you had spear shards (placed resources for far away tanks as an example and targeted olorime procs), blockade to proc enchants like weakness or crushing (if wearing torugs) and set enemies off balance, ele drain so mag could even attempt to sustain (this puts mag at an even bigger disadvantage than it already is on a parsing dummy on PTS cycle 1), rune focus (to sustain and keep themselves alive), combat prayer (buff), power of the light (general debuff on the enemy), heavy attacking bosses/adds to apply minor vulnerability (infallible aether set), bone shield (which is NOT instantaneous on dps), etc. A lot of people claim endgame healing is easy - true endgame healing is an art to do it correctly... you have to preemptively spot heals for when you know they will be needed just so you can optimally maintain buff and debuff uptimes. Not having the right tools to do so now is detrimental as it means healers will likely be having to spam burst heals far more often and sacrifice more buffing/debuffing potential.


Edit: While coincidental, if you don't believe me, just look at @code65536's log he posted. I hadn't even read his comment before posting this and it pretty much just overlaid EXACTLY with what I just said about skill diversity on a templar healer.

leepalmer95 wrote: »

It was literally done to stop easy overhealing was and to hopefully reduce the lag a bit.

Can you please direct me to the developer statement where they are saying that?

Or is that just a general uneducated guess, like most of what you're writing about healers?

I will have to say that after reading all these posts in the forums concerning the upcoming patch, ZOS has polarized the community more than I’ve seen in a long time. Pitting PVP vs. PVE, casuals vs. elites, healers vs. non-healers, and even healers vs. healers. If anarchy was your goal ZOS, well done, you succeeded

I’ll admit, I was too drunk to read the whole thing. But I like orbs because it means I will have to cast it less often to give everyone a synergy.

TheNightflame wrote: »

if these healing changes go live I don't think i'll be playing anymore, at least not the healer role. it'll feel way too redundant and add significantly less to groups than it would need to be any bit rewarding.

What exactly feels redundant when the spamming capabilities of your two main skills have been removed and you need to use other skills to compensate for that? And no, Combat Prayer spam isn’t the new thing.

If something was redundant then the ways of healing we had now by simply layering Springs, shooting Orbs and then doing something else but not healing.

I mean how can it be more redundant than it is now?

code65536 wrote: »

leepalmer95 wrote: »

In pve people heal 1000% more than they need too, there is no real thought apart from spamming 2 skills really.

Why don't you actually show some numbers that you didn't just pull out of your derriere?

Assembly General Execute:


Lokkestiiz HM Beam/Static:


1000% overhealing? More like 50-60%. And it's good to have margins for error. The nerfs to orbs/springs are on the order of 75-85%, mostly through the elimination of their stacking. The amount of overhealing in critical trials mechanics do not warrant that kind of change.

leepalmer95 wrote: »

Maybe the thought is that they don't want end game healing to be to build to sustain and then just spam 2 skills, maybe use a utility skill/ proc sets.

It's clear from statements like this that you have no idea what healers actually do. Fortunately, we have this nice thing called esologs that lets me as a raid lead see what my healers are actually doing.



So... just two skills, right? Maybe you should get to know what healers do before giving us any further demonstrations of your ignorance.

I mean look at those two skills being spammed! IT'S OUTRAGEOUS. /s

In seriousness though, I agree. @leepalmer95 please put up some data to back up your claims or shut up.

please bring on the one orb change. This is a good and healthy change. Maybe tweaks are needed in some other healing abilities to compensate, but this is a good change. People afraid of change will adapt once they have new guides to follow.

code65536 wrote: »

radbeard wrote: »

please bring on the one orb change. This is a good and healthy change. Maybe tweaks are needed in some other healing abilities to compensate, but this is a good change. People afraid of change will adapt once they have new guides to follow.

ROTFL. You... realize that the people saying that this change is bad are the people who make those guides, right?

Then it should be easy for them to come up with other solutions or workarounds, right? Unfortunately I haven’t read one yet although - if not them who else - they should be capable of figuring out ways to counter the nerfs by new set / build ideas.

Seraphayel wrote: »

The obsession with this one single skill is out of control, reading this thread is proof for that. About time something is done about it.

If you don’t like the change maybe come up with some other suggestions than “keep it as it is on live“ and ZOS might listen, see their intervention of making the Orb synergy usable by multiple players.

Problem with that is they it should of been on week 2 by now. But it isn't the orb still disappears on single activation. meaning if it is to be discussed, debated and theory crafted and turns out to be bad it will still hit live regardless.