Depends on kind of content you play, if you need some serious healing, that thing isnt best idea cause you lose damage if you need to drop rotation for more self-healing abilities. And as its constant damaging you, you increase the need for self-healing.

So lets say in an environment where you basically take only low or medium damage, you can do that stuff, but actually there you already dont need a healer right now. In critical high damage environments or with lots of area effect, that ability will not change anything on the Healers cause you wont be using blood frenzy as its impossible to sustain and would either require to stop it and heal or focus to much time on self-healing which cuts your dps totally off.

The smart heals are the only thing that concerns me about it, all those healing abilities and sets that auto target the lowest health group member, I seriously doubt they have bothered to plan for that and will make up some excuse about it being for solo play not group play so they don't have to.

Just imagine wasting an Earthgore/chokethorn proc for instance. Or a tank running battalion defender for off heals all being wasted on someone it can't heal.

I just hope at the bare minimum that the toggle auto turns off when the player is stunned or feared etc... or caught up in other PVE mechanics that don't let you interact with your ability's and have to rely on group members to save you.

idk wrote: »

It is quite simple. If a player is using that in an organized raid and they keep dying then the raid leader will tell them to stop using it. There is not much more to say.

Assuming they are not dying, it just seems strange that AoE heals would have no effect. In dungeons it would reinforce the 3 DPS Strat, and in trials we may see a shift toward 1 buff/debuff focused healer. Obviously we don’t know how it works yet, but I’m curious if Combat Prayer will even apply Minor Berserk to targets that don’t get healed, or if the Master Resto will restore resources to someone that gets 0 ticks of Illustrious.

Vevvev wrote: »

Imagine a healer using that ability though. They are already keeping themselves alive and now they get 900 spell damage?! That's a large spike in your magicka healing ability's potential, and I imagine its even better if you give yourself the major and/or minor Sorcery buff.

Very interesting point. Yes I could see healers themselves using this skill if they have a bar slot.

bmnoble wrote: »

The smart heals are the only thing that concerns me about it, all those healing abilities and sets that auto target the lowest health group member, I seriously doubt they have bothered to plan for that and will make up some excuse about it being for solo play not group play so they don't have to.

Just imagine wasting an Earthgore/chokethorn proc for instance. Or a tank running battalion defender for off heals all being wasted on someone it can't heal.

I just hope at the bare minimum that the toggle auto turns off when the player is stunned or feared etc... or caught up in other PVE mechanics that don't let you interact with your ability's and have to rely on group members to save you.

True. I was thinking about the heart attacks healers will experience when someone hits 5% health and your heals don’t hit them. Had not even thought about them stealing smart heals or set procs, hopefully they will be smarter than that.

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

If the developers remember to turn off auto-targeted heals for people using that skill, fine, it's either anybody's own funeral or something they will learn to master. I'll just learn to ignore their health bar dropping. However, if my costly emergency burst heals end up targeting them in vain, I will definitely not be happy.

this.

I know, I know, the response is going to be "organized group will tell them to stop using it" but how about dungeon pugs? say I have a situation where AoE damage is happening and more then one person needs that emergency heal.. but instead of going to someone that would actualy benefit from it, the heal ends up being wasted on a person who can NOT be healed.

in games where healing triage is a thing and you can target specific players for heals like that and ONLY those players? this would not be an issue, as i would just ignore the person with blood frenzy on them and heal everyone else. but in ESO with its smart heal system.. I'm not allowed to make this type of choice. so if there is no contingency for that? its going to really suck.

I dont want my all 6 healers to be a vampire and look that ugly.

It is a neutral thing.

I feel like my spell damage and crit heals are enough. Adding more would increase the heals for sure but in trials what I see I heal myself the least when I check the logs. So sounds risky. If you are dead you can not heal others.

50/50

Linaleah wrote: »

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

If the developers remember to turn off auto-targeted heals for people using that skill, fine, it's either anybody's own funeral or something they will learn to master. I'll just learn to ignore their health bar dropping. However, if my costly emergency burst heals end up targeting them in vain, I will definitely not be happy.

this.

I know, I know, the response is going to be "organized group will tell them to stop using it" but how about dungeon pugs? say I have a situation where AoE damage is happening and more then one person needs that emergency heal.. but instead of going to someone that would actualy benefit from it, the heal ends up being wasted on a person who can NOT be healed.

in games where healing triage is a thing and you can target specific players for heals like that and ONLY those players? this would not be an issue, as i would just ignore the person with blood frenzy on them and heal everyone else. but in ESO with its smart heal system.. I'm not allowed to make this type of choice. so if there is no contingency for that? its going to really suck.

In the case of selectively ignoring unhealable players, we would need some sort of indicator. Maybe their health bar could grey out while this was active, so if you are watching group frames you know not to waste a Breath of Life if that particular player drops in health.

There would also need to be an instant indication when they have toggled it off. IMO this could just be their health bar becoming red again. Otherwise, if a healer associates a player name with not receiving heals, they may ignore that player even if the ability has been deactivated for an emergency heal.

Bloodscion gives you 65% healing for the damage you deal (aside from increasing your damage by boosting your max stats by 10k, which is why a DPS would slot it in the first place), so you don't need to slot an extra healing skill. And then there are magSorcs who also heal on every crit, which considering there is a skill that always crits when you are low on health, makes for a pretty nasty combination. It also remains to be seen how this interacts with Minor Lifesteal, because healers could potentially still apply this to help the vampires in the group.

The problem you bring up is a very important one though, especially for healers who spam breath of life instead of stacking HoTs. The BoL spammers are already struggling with sustain and having that healing be completely negated and the cost wasted will not feel good for beginners. Trial healers that stack HoTs probably won't care at all because if the DPS needs health, they'd already be standing in the healing skills and would just need to drop their Blood Frenzy to get healed back whenever needed. Visual clarity would be appreciated though, so none of the non-vampire DDs think it's the healer's fault for the wipe because they weren't healing...

Maybe the health bar should turn blue or get stripes in the missing health portion to indicate that they cannot receive healing?

I stack my hots habitually, but there are pugs that manage to take more damage than even hots can deal with (not to mention all the headless chickens groups where no matter how hard you try to adjust your positioning, there will be that one person standing too far). if i have a moment, I would ask in chat that they move out of the bad, or even trade them some food, but more often then not - that falls on deaf ears, so as much as its probably a bad habit, I'd rather just heal them through it and get through a run faster, then keep trying to create teaching moments. you know?

I'm reasonably sure that organized groups will have no issues with this ability, but ESO group content is not always run by organized groups. this feels like its unnecessarily punishing on a pug healer.

This is a great design for an ability. I hope it goes live like this.

Xv1 it becomes near worthless, because most of the players that participate in the X within this scenario would die in seconds if they weren't getting spam healed with ridiculously overtuned cross healing from their dedicated healer. At the same time it's a great ability for 1v1 or 1vX scenarios. I wish we had more tools like this in the game.

I have played a healer as my main since beta. She is a Templar. I also have a two Warden healers (one magicka, one stam) and one Necro healer.

I have said in other posts that I'm not a theory-crafter, and I stick by that assertion. However I am a very experienced healer and I think the vampire changes for magicka healers are extremely disheartening. Not just this ability (and this topic has raised some good points about the potential issues it could cause) but the overhaul in general combined with the current proposal to change light and heavy attacks.

I think these abilities clearly had solo and/or sneaky PvP DPS and PvP/PvE tanks in mind (because stealing blood is life blood, and therefore health, I guess??) which is a shame since as a healer I had a reason to be a vampire before. But there were theories kicking around that the healing role was being phased out for all DPS with self heals, when healing was gutted for "performance issues," and if you think about all of these "heal self only" abilities being used in PvE, it does seem to be another huge step in that direction. As pure support/heals, I bring zero value healing myself. As support/heals, I bring zero value if the group is spamming abilities that only allow self-heals.

Obviously that's a dramatization, as people will slot some other abilities, but as someone who has chosen to play ESO because I specifically enjoy the healing role and its unique place here, these changes seem extremely disappointing so far. Sure, I can adapt to players being immune to my heals, but it's the bigger picture of repeated, consistent choices de-prioritizing healing as its own specific and valued role that seems problematic.

The other side of the coin is what TheFM is saying... it may be that these skills aren't viable or even close to BIS depending on the actual values and how they scale, in which case no one will use them and people will be disappointed about the vampire rework but it won't wreak havoc with smart heals and the healing mechanic in general. Supernatural Recovery is still a big loss and de-motivation to even explore the tree, as a healer, though.

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

I don’t heal often enough to know all the effects

Healing isn't really a thing in this game. The healer role in groups is kind of a lie.

A healer will mostly dps, buff and spam aoe heals. Occasionally when a boss throws out one of their inevitable big hits, heal that, if players don't just pop a potion to heal it themselves.

So this?

No big deal.

Vevvev wrote: »

Imagine a healer using that ability though. They are already keeping themselves alive and now they get 900 spell damage?! That's a large spike in your magicka healing ability's potential, and I imagine its even better if you give yourself the major and/or minor Sorcery buff.

Was thinking the same thing, but tbh I heal enough and I don't have any idea what I could remove for something who don't help the group.