Hello, this is my first time writing anything on forum, and I would like to share some thoughts regarding the new DK changes on pts U49, particularly those that involve healing and buffs related to it.

As a player who has mainly played the healer/supportive role in 12-man raids for several years, I have some frustrations towards how healing abilities work in this game. It has come to our realization that players get assigned healing priority based on how early they arrive in "chunks" of world space. We came up with the nickname "chunk" to describe what are typically 5k by 5k world unit squares which are arbitrarily laid out in the game. Not all "chunks" in a zone are these perfect squares though, e.g. a bridge or a hallway can be a chunk of its own. In situations where players are full on health, the first 6 players who enter a chunk first will always be the ones the healing ticks select. This applies to majority of the multi-target healing skills. As for situations where some players are injured, these AoE over time healing skills will target the 6 most injured players on the first tick, and lock onto them for the remainder of the duration. So there we have our dilemma: Most healing skills will target the same 6 players, and the buffs that are applied through healing will only go to these 6 targets.

As a result, the buffs that get applied to players when they receive healing ticks, are almost impossible to maintain on everyone. (Eg. Minor berserk that comes from Combat Prayer, Minor heroism that comes from Fire Keeper, Minor Courage that comes from Blood of the Elder Dragon). In order for a raid group to rely on these skills to provide these sought-after buffs, raid group will have to be highly disciplined, to constantly be in 2 groups of 6, so their supports can aim and shift these ground targeting healing skills back and forth among the groups, or run far enough to outrange 1 group follow by running to the opposite direction to outrange yet another group. These methods are highly unreliable (some more than others) and impossible for less experienced groups. As a result, players will simply abandon these skills as a source to provide said buffs and seek for simpler and more reliable options. I think I can quite confidently say that, the newly changed Fire Keeper and Blood of the Elder Dragon, will NOT be the skills of choice to provide Minor Heroism and Minor Courage in a raid environment. At least, no groups will have their players pick up a skill line just for these skills. In stead, people will go back to using expensive heroism potions, and skills that are guaranteed to provide Minor Courage to everyone like Banner Bearer. Another good example is the change to Zenas' Empowering Disc to provide minor courage to only 6 made Curative Runeforms drop from a must-have skill line into one that is rarely used. If ZOS intends that these long-forgotten skills and skill lines can see the light of day again, the targeting of these skills needs to be redesigned.

Last but not least, I hope that the targeting of AOE healing over time skills can be changed to smart target every tick (just like Illustrious healing), because watching your allies dying and not getting healed despite standing in your healing circles, is every healer's nightmare T.T