Dear Zos,
Just as dps in trials have spammables like elemental weapon, force pulse, Necro skulls, etc, healers too have a spammable. We use Combat Prayer, which offers a nice directional aoe heal, plus two very helpful buffs that organized groups depend on, minor berserk and minor resolve. Before this new patch, it was the best, most well rounded skill in a healer's toolkit. However, with this patch, it received a massive cost increase alongside a rather sizeable healing increase. This cost increase is making it impossible to use this skill as a spammable, making it more difficult to keep up the needed buffs and provide our groups with the needed maintenance healing in fights.
Here's the thing: literally no one asked for the healing increase. It doesn't even add to our toolkit in any sort of useful way. No healer ever has ever said "Man, I really wish my already strong AoE heal hit harder. We might have survived that boss fight". That's just not how healing in this particular game works. We rely on carefully keeping up a selection of strong heals over time, and use bursts to fill in any needed gaps. If your Hots are kept up properly on a proper build, you shouldn't need big burst heals to fill those gaps.
Combat Prayer is also a smart heal, meaning it targets players in its field of effect who are missing the most health. This is a fantastic mechanism that was added to the resto skills. However, the buff is not a smart buff, which necessitates casting the skill more than twice for the healers to cover the entire group, and so, it becomes a spammable heal. We've found workarounds like separating dps into two distinct stacks so the buff is easier to keep up, but not all content allows that, and some content even requires dps to spread out, which means several casts of the skill are needed to distribute the buff. In its current iteration, healing feels terrible. On certain fights, I've had to swap out my spell dmg jewelry glyphs for all recovery, which decreases my healing output, which is super detrimental in some of the newer content, and even then with all recovery glyphs, I'm still hurting for resources. I will be trying the Atro mundus next, but it's absolutely ridiculous that we have to spec entirely into sustain just to function properly. If dps were forced to do this, they'd have a meltdown. Healers should not have to build this way either.
There are some possible solutions:
1. Revert the change. It was not needed, and there are not enough aoe burst heals in the game for an "AoE burst heal standard" to have existed, as was claimed. Especially since the only two that are ever used were both changed this patch. A standard was created ex nihilo this patch in order to justify these changes, so it [the standard] can be adjusted to make the skills more usable.
2. Separate the heal from the buff, and make the buff a smart targeted buff like the treatment PA was given (We loved this btw. Absolutely brilliant change to the skill and very well implemented). This would help halfway, since we really don't have room on our bars for two maintenance AoE heals, but halfway is better than nothing.
3. Leave the Combat Prayer heal as-is and revert the cost increase. There is still no need for a burst heal that strong, but if people are really adamant about hanging onto it for some reason, the cost is still far too high and needs to be adjusted. We just cannot sustain it while properly keeping up buffs.
4. Any combination of the previous three. Giving Combat Prayer a smart targeted buff (like PA) while reducing the cost would be the gold standard ideal in any situation, but I'm not really holding my breath with that one.
PS. Yes, I'm aware that Kinras exists, but anyone who has used it extensively already knows it's an unreliable proc and tends to go to summoned pets as often as it targets actual players. The uptimes on it are also not stellar. It cannot supplant a diligent healer applying the buff.
Edited by p00tx on March 19, 2022 8:49PM PC/Xbox NA Mindmender|Swashbuckler Supreme|Planes Breaker|Dawnbringer|Godslayer|Immortal Redeemer|Gryphon Heart|Tick-tock Tormentor|Dro-m'Athra Destroyer|Stormproof|Grand Overlord|Grand Mastercrafter|Master Grappler|Tamriel Hero