Healer toolkit U35 Week 3 feedback

SeaUnicorn · July 2022

There does not seem any kind of standardization for PVE Healer toolkit at all. And the costs of abilities are all over the place and currently unsustainable due to increase on cost of our primary spammable heal that took place 2 patches ago and was not addressed since then.

Observastion #1: Sticky HOTs
Of all "sticky" heals only Echoing Vigor got the duration increase to 16s. While Radiating Regeneration is still at 10s duration, Rapid is still at 5s, but with a hefty 40% healing reduction comparing to live. Sorcs Powe Surge still ticks every 3s. DK Cauterize still ticks every 5s.
In comparison Sticky DOTs are all at 20s+ duration with 24s being prevalent.

Observation #2: Ground HOTs
Ground HOT standardization is not finished either. Templar Ritual is 30s up from 24s on live, but it still ticks every 2s, instead of 1s.

Observation #3: Durations
Any given class healer toolkit will have HOTs varying wildly. In the End Game PVE Healing we do not "pick and choose" we must run 1 class HOT along with 4 additional weapon and guild line HOTs to keep people alive. And that is because latest trials that were released are designed with heavy healing checks.
So we will have to have Orb, Echoing, Illustrious, Radiating + Class HOT on our bars.
The out of class utility hots are wildly varying: 2x10s, 15s, 16s. In addition class HOTs are wildly varying too: 5s, 6s, 12s, 18s, 30s, 33s.
This is not helping and this is worse than what we have on live.

Observation #4: Costs
Does not seem to be any skill cost pass through from what I see. Costs of maintenance of HOTs per second is very much different depending on the class. And Healing is not sustainable. Especially considering that Healers in End Game trials are expected to run Spaulder and expected to make up for loss of HPS by using spammable heals. And somehow DD spammables cost less than DOTs per cast, but healer Spammables cost more than HOTs per cast? Clearly this cost balance decision was made with PVP in mind, but PVE implication on healer role was not considered here.

Here are the examples of what combat preview claims, vs what we actually got. I am using PTS Illustrious tooltip as HPS comparison point. HPS shows healing per target. Effective HPS shows how much this skill outputs when all targets it heals are considered, i.e. 6 target HOT would have better effective group healing than 1 target HOT.

“Sticky” over Time effects will retain their initial PTS iteration of 20+ second durations, 2 second frequencies, with .105 coefficient potency per second (their scaling modifier divided by time), and a baseline cost of 135 per second (2700+)

Radiating Regeneration
- Cost/s to maintain on 3 people is 270 mag/s, on 6 people 540 mag/s
- Duration 10s
- HPS 80% of Illustrious
- Effective HPS 40% of Illustrious (only 3 targets per cast)
- Loss of HPS compared to live 40%

Rapid Regeneration
- Cost/s to maintain on 1 person is 540 mag/s, on 6 people 3240 mag/s
- Duration 5s
- HPS 165% of Illustrious
- Effective HPS 27.5% of Illustrious (only 1 target per cast)
- Loss of HPS compared to live 40%

Echoing Vigor
- Cost/s (6 people) 186.5 stam/s
- Duration 16s
- HPS 72% of Illustrious
- Loss of HPS compared to live 22%

Cauterize - Tick frequency 5s
- Cost/s (1 person) 144 mag/s Impossible to maintain on 6 people.
- Duration 15s
- HPS Same as Illustrious
- Effective HPS 16% of Illustrious (only 1 target per cast)
- No loss of HPS compared to live 22%

Power Surge - Ticks every 3s. Has 33s duration
- Cost/s (6 people) 115 mag/s
- Duration 33s
- HPS HOT 105% of Illustrious
- No loss of HPS compared to live

Static over Time effects will return to their original duration of 10-15 second durations, 1 second frequencies, with .14 coefficient potency per second (U35 PTS Combat Feedback & Upcoming Changes down from .1575 on Live, but up from .105 on PTS), and a baseline cost of 270 per second (2700+)

Illustrious Healing
- Cost/s (6 people) 234 mag/s
- Duration 15s
- HPS -
- Loss of HPS compared to live 22%

Energy Orb
- Cost/s (6 people) 378 mag/s
- Duration 10s
- HPS same as Illustrious
- No loss of HPS compared to live

Budding Seeds
- Cost/s (6 people) 405 mag/s
- Duration 6s
- HPS HOT 90% of Illustrious; w/burst 150% of Illustrious
- No loss of HPS compared to live

Refreshing Path
- Cost/s (6 people) 292 mag/s
- Duration 12s
- HPS same as Illustrious
- Loss of HPS compared to live 31%

Extended Ritual - Ticks every 2s. Has 30s duration up from 24 in live
- Cost/s (6 people) 154 mag/s
- Duration 30s
- HPS 94% of Illustrious
- Loss of HPS compared to live 4%

Braided Tether - Requires Corpse to activate
- Cost/s (6 people) 247 mag/s to create a corpse
- Duration 12s
- HPS HOT 90% of Illustrious
- No loss of HPS compared to live

Renewing Undeath - Requires Corpse to activate
- Cost/s (6 people) 702 mag/s + 247 mag/s to create a corpse
- Duration 5s
- HPS HOT 105% of Illustrious; w/burst 203% of Illustrious
- No loss of HPS compared to live

Cinder Storm
- Cost/s (6 people) 351 mag/s
- Duration 18s
- HPS 146% of Illustrious
- No loss of HPS compared to live

Spammable Healing costs:
Hasty Prayer 5002 mag
Combat Prayer 4361 mag
Breath of Life 4361 mag
Obsidian Shard 4050 mag
Render Flesh 4320 mag
Fungal/Enchanted growth 4590 mag
Soothing Spores 3902 stam
Healthy Offering 3590 mag + 1080 health
Nature Grasp 4050 mag
Twilight Matriarch 3510

Styxius · July 2022

SeaUnicorn wrote: »

There does not seem any kind of standardization for PVE Healer toolkit at all. And the costs of abilities are all over the place and currently unsustainable due to increase on cost of our primary spammable heal that took 2 patches ago and was not addressed since then.

Observastion #1: Sticky HOTs
Of all "sticky" heals only Echoing Vigor got the duration increase to 16s. While Radiating Regeneration is still at 10s duration, Rapid is still at 5s, but with a hefty 40% healing reduction comparing to live. Sorcs Powe Surge still ticks every 3s. DK Cauterize still ticks every 5s.
In comparison Sticky DOTs are all at 20s+ duration with 24s being prevalent.

Observation #2: Ground HOTs
Ground HOT standardization is not finished either. Templar Ritual is 30s up from 24s on live, but it still ticks every 2s, instead of 1s.

Observation #3: Durations
Any given class healer toolkit will have HOTs varying wildly. In the End Game PVE Healing we do not "pick and choose" we must run 1 class HOT along with 4 additional weapon and guild line HOTs to keep people alive. And that is because Game is designed with heavy healing checks.
So we will have to have Orb, Echoing, Illustrious, Radiating + Class HOT on our bars.
The out of class utility hots are wildly varying: 2x10s, 15s, 16s. In addition class HOTs are wildly varying too: 5s, 6s, 12s, 18s, 30s, 33s.
This is not helping and this is worse than what we have on live.

Observation #4: Costs
Does not seem to be any skill cost pass through from what I see. Costs of maintenance of HOTs per second is very much different depending on the class. And Healing is not sustainable. Especially considering that Healers in End Game trials are expected to run Spaulder and expected to make up for loss of HPS by using spammable heals. And somehow DD spammables cost less than DOTs per cast, but healer Spammables cost more than HOTs per cast? Clearly this cost balance decision was made with PVP in mind, but PVE implication on healer role was not considered here.

Here are the examples of what combat preview claims, vs what we actually got

“Sticky” over Time effects will retain their initial PTS iteration of 20+ second durations, 2 second frequencies, with .105 coefficient potency per second (their scaling modifier divided by time), and a baseline cost of 135 per second (2700+)

Radiating Regeneration
- Cost/s to maintain on 3 people is 270 mag/s, on 6 people 540 mag/s
- Duration 10s
- HPS 80% of Illustrious
- Effective HPS 40% of Illustrious (only 3 targets per cast)
- Loss of HPS compared to live 40%

Rapid Regeneration
- Cost/s to maintain on 1 person is 540 mag/s, on 6 people 3240 mag/s
- Duration 5s
- HPS 165% of Illustrious
- Effective HPS 27.5% of Illustrious (only 1 target per cast)
- Loss of HPS compared to live 40%

Echoing Vigor
- Cost/s (6 people) 186.5 stam/s
- Duration 16s
- HPS 72% of Illustrious
- Loss of HPS compared to live 22%

Cauterize - Tick frequency 5s
- Cost/s (6 people) 186.5 stam/s
- Duration 15s
- HPS Same as Illustrious
- Effective HPS 16% of Illustrious (only 1 target per cast)
- No loss of HPS compared to live 22%

Power Surge - Ticks every 3s. Has 33s duration
- Cost/s (6 people) 115 mag/s
- Duration 33s
- HPS HOT 105% of Illustrious
- No loss of HPS compared to live

Static over Time effects will return to their original duration of 10-15 second durations, 1 second frequencies, with .14 coefficient potency per second (U35 PTS Combat Feedback & Upcoming Changes down from .1575 on Live, but up from .105 on PTS), and a baseline cost of 270 per second (2700+)

Illustrious Healing
- Cost/s (6 people) 234 mag/s
- Duration 15s
- HPS -
- Loss of HPS compared to live 22%

Energy Orb
- Cost/s (6 people) 378 mag/s
- Duration 10s
- HPS same as Illustrious
- No loss of HPS compared to live

Budding Seeds
- Cost/s (6 people) 405 mag/s
- Duration 6s
- HPS HOT 90% of Illustrious; w/burst 150% of Illustrious
- No loss of HPS compared to live

Refreshing Path
- Cost/s (6 people) 292 mag/s
- Duration 12s
- HPS same as Illustrious
- Loss of HPS compared to live 31%

Extended Ritual - Ticks every 2s. Has 30s duration up from 24 in live
- Cost/s (6 people) 154 mag/s
- Duration 30s
- HPS 94% of Illustrious
- Loss of HPS compared to live 4%

Braided Tether - Requires Corpse to activate
- Cost/s (6 people) 247 mag/s to create a corpse
- Duration 12s
- HPS HOT 90% of Illustrious
- No loss of HPS compared to live

Renewing Undeath - Requires Corpse to activate
- Cost/s (6 people) 702 mag/s + 247 mag/s to create a corpse
- Duration 5s
- HPS HOT 105% of Illustrious; w/burst 203% of Illustrious
- No loss of HPS compared to live

Cinder Storm
- Cost/s (6 people) 351 mag/s
- Duration 18s
- HPS 146% of Illustrious
- No loss of HPS compared to live

Spammable Healing costs:
Hasty Prayer 5002 mag
Combat Prayer 4361 mag
Breath of Life 4361 mag
Obsidian Shard 4050 mag
Render Flesh 4320 mag
Fungal/Enchanted growth 4590 mag
Soothing Spores 3902 stam
Healthy Offering 3590 mag + 1080 health
Nature Grasp 4050 mag
Twilight Matriarch 3510

Hey Sea! Love that the post highlights a lot of core healer issues that are not addressed. One potentially minor hiccup is compared to its live component. Extended ritual and the DPS morph have always ticked on 2s intervals so they may have left it that way intentionally to operate how it does on live. Whether this is a failure on the devs for not being the best at communicating these intended changes on the servers with their proposed adjustments to AoE HoT's/DoT's who knows. They haven't been that transparent or clear on their intentions or goals for abilities.

SeaUnicorn · July 2022

Styxius wrote: »

Hey Sea! Love that the post highlights a lot of core healer issues that are not addressed. One potentially minor hiccup is compared to its live component. Extended ritual and the DPS morph have always ticked on 2s intervals so they may have left it that way intentionally to operate how it does on live. Whether this is a failure on the devs for not being the best at communicating these intended changes on the servers with their proposed adjustments to AoE HoT's/DoT's who knows. They haven't been that transparent or clear on their intentions or goals for abilities.

Sup! yes those changes are so wildly inconsistent and not following through with the intended goals that I don't even know what to think anymore. But all and all healers are loosing HPS and vDSR HM will be harder to do. Will have to rely on barriers + cross healing or mitigation on DD part. Which will be great point of contention between supports and DDs, ala "why do you expect me to loose damage when you are a healer and you supposed to heal me".

sirtadzio · July 2022

Thank you for the post Sea. I appreciate your work in bringing up how the proposed PTS changes will be harmful for PVE healers in competitive raid scenarios .

Further to your post, I'd like to add a few additional thoughts re: PVE end game healing.

- In combat logs the majority of our "healing done" is over heals.
- Over healing in ESO for PVE isn't a *problem*; from a strictly healing perspective, it's often necessary so that a baseline of heals is established to manage "high incoming damage" moments: Baneful burst in CR3 execute, Telarial maelstrom, stacking atro bleed/fire dot on Bahsei as some examples.
- Combined with the increased cost of burst heals, non-smart targeting, 6 target healing cap, it makes these fights challenging, and the currently proposed healing changes are A) very punishing for making this content more accessible for upcoming healers and B ) frustrating for healers already working on this content.

Referencing 2 quotes from the developer's comments from Gina's post on July 11th:

1) In order to preserve the more reactive gameplay our healer and support roles fulfill, we opted to not make Healing over Time effects easier to keep up in most cases (with a few exceptions with class skills).

- I would contend that for the most part, PVE healing isn't super reactive. Effective PVE healing comes from practicing a fight, layering HOTs in predetermined places, and filling in the gaps with burst heals. In Cloudrest execute if I was to be completely reactive to baneful, we would wipe. HOTS need to be established proactively with the anticipation of needing reactive burst when the mechanic hits. Having strong HOTs as a proactive measure is essential to manage reactive healing effectively.

To further expound this point, purely reactive healing is very, very, *very* punishing both in terms of healing efficacy and on resources. Last 30% of Bahsei with a bad cone, an OT that's on fire, curses out, flame walls and ghosts - if you end up in a panicked reactive healing cycle, you are going to be sitting at 0 mag, and now with proposed nerf to resource return on resto heavy attacks, you really are a fish out of the water.

2) Neither of the adjustments should make healing in PvE environments terribly difficult either, as there is an overabundance of over-healing in those encounters, and the boost to Area of Effect-based Healing over Time should help improve some skill options.

- I think I've addressed this point already in excess; overabundance of over-healing isn't an issue, it's a necessity to establish baseline heals to appropriately addressed high incoming damage moments. Any HOT cast on a full health group is over healing; but if there are no hots present at the start of HM Telarial Maelstrom, that would be very punishing to spend my first couple GCDs to cast ritual, then healing springs, a couple radiating regens, and then start burst healing. It would be....risky.

MidniteOwl1913 · July 2022

That layering of healing that is most effective in PVE is what PVP has been complaining about (when they talk about healing "stacks") and I believe that is the main reason behind the healing nerfs. And yes they are bad. I pug a lot in base game normal and the ground-based heals aren't as useful as no one stays in the same place for very long. It's not exactly headless chickens, but it is not an orderly efficient group that can benefit from those heals either.

SeaUnicorn · July 2022

MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »

That layering of healing that is most effective in PVE is what PVP has been complaining about (when they talk about healing "stacks") and I believe that is the main reason behind the healing nerfs. And yes they are bad. I pug a lot in base game normal and the ground-based heals aren't as useful as no one stays in the same place for very long. It's not exactly headless chickens, but it is not an orderly efficient group that can benefit from those heals either.

In PVP it could be solved by limiting how many instance of certain sticky heal one can have. Limit it to 2 - boom PVE not affected, PVP problem solved. So many people suggested this so many times

why nerf tooltips when you can solve the underlying issue

vgabor · July 2022

sirtadzio wrote: »

Referencing 2 quotes from the developer's comments from Gina's post on July 11th:

1) In order to preserve the more reactive gameplay our healer and support roles fulfill, we opted to not make Healing over Time effects easier to keep up in most cases (with a few exceptions with class skills).

The end game PvE trial healing is not reactive. That's one of the most common misconception beginner trial healers have, and when they try to do reactive healing in a trial they end up wiping their party as result.

Trial healing is proactive, you layer and keep up your heal over time on the group preemptively so when damage hits people the hots immediately heal on the next tick. That's one of the reasons why as a trial healer you have to know both the trial mechanics and your group so you can anticipate when and where to put your heals beforehand, and also can anticipate when some additional supplementary "reactive" healing will be needed. But even that "reactive" healing isn't really reactive as you do not afterwards react to health loss of party members but preemptively react to incoming trial mechanics and already healing your party alongside while that mechanics happens (like for the flare mechanics in sunspire fire boss or the similar flare in cloudrest)

As of current the importance of healing skills: illustrious healing, energy orb, class aoe hot (ritual for templar, seeds for warden), radiating regen, with sone additional healing from: echoing vigor, overflowing altar, bone surge, templar purifying light, warden healing ult, barrier ult. Combat prayer (and the warden mushrooms) predominantly is a buff with some healing on the side, and while can and will be used to supplement the aforementioned hots when it needed, they aren't the main healing source (and after previous update cost changes combat prayer simply even unsustainable for general healing). Single target heals (honor the dead for templar, vines for warden, healing ward from resto) are only for very special situations (like cage healing at sunspire ice boss), but as general healing are useless in a trial as they heal one target and you have 12 people there to heal.

As of the amount of healing needed, an example in vKA HM execute as rule of thumb the group will need 200k+ sustained overall raw group hps. There is a reason why one of the strategies here is that the off tank have a resto backbar and/or being warden to act as a third healer during execute unless you have a group with two very high healing output healers capable to provide 180k+ raw hps just between the two of them... Similarly for vCR+3 execute, below 150k+ raw group hps the group will have very hard time to survive the baneful in execute with all the others mechanics keep happening on top of it as well...

MidniteOwl1913 · July 2022

"1) In order to preserve the more reactive gameplay our healer and support roles fulfill, we opted to not make Healing over Time effects easier to keep up in most cases (with a few exceptions with class skills)."

No, good effective healing isn't reactive. That's too late. The layering of healing, the "stacks" as PVPers call them are what are the best practices in PVE. So what they are saying is that they want to nerf effective healing, and they didn't mention at all that it was to make the PVP community happy.

In the end, I don't think PVP will be happy with the changes either, be careful what you wish for.

SeaUnicorn · August 2022

As of 8.1.3 none of this feedback is addressed.