I’m a healer with over 400 hours in the game. I’m not a fantastic duelist, but I listen to those who are upset. It’s really hard to kill a healer in heavy, even after the resilient nerf, and I’d like to provide detailed feedback as to why and a potential fix. It’s all about Light’s Embrace and the stacking bonuses on it.
Crux:
Light’s embrace is a 3.8 sec cooldown skill that’s cheap, almost non-cancellable because it’s so quick. Does 100% weapon damage, +30% more per buff on target. This last part is the issue, and the single fastest/targeted fix in the game is to say that this 30% extra can’t be self-targeted (stays for others but not yourself).
Why:
Blessed staffs offer 30% healing bonus
Protector>Protector’s strength is 10%+ to healing if you have a buff
Healing>Sacred Ground>Blessed is 50% more healing if you’re standing in Sacred Ground when you cast Light’s Embrace. This text says allies, and I haven’t tested this with another healer if standing in your own circle counts or not.
Healing>Intensify is 3 stacks of 10% bonus healing for heavy attacks
Protector>Bend Light is 20% healing buff for a dodge move.
Divine Blessing is 30% buff if you cast that heal while below 50% health (again says ally, not tested if it counts for self-cast)
And don’t forget food/attribute/trade-skill food buffs. Those amp it up as well.
Even if Blessed/Divine skills aren’t self-cast, the boost Light’s Embrace scaling (30% more healing PER BUFF) is huge. And with Healing>Revitalize, all light attacks drop cooldowns by 5%.
Light’s Embrace can be self-cast too frequently with too many scaling modifiers, in my opinion for self-casting.
EDIT: Again this isn’t a nerf for healing others in PVP or PVE. It’s a nerf for a healer to heal themself every 4 seconds for upwards of 5k, on top of the AOE heals of beacon/sacred ground.
The simplest change here to address one of the ongoing complaints here is that +30%more for each buff per target on Light’s Embrace can’t count for a self-cast.
Just wanted to post my recent thread to shed my thoughts on the topic.
I’ve delineated in certain comments throughout the post what I think could ultimately balance the Life Staff with regards to all combat types, pve included. Take a read through the original write up, and read this comment:
First of all, thanks for contributing. I read the linked thread (and replied previously in that other thread). I’m not for removing healers, but I see your frustration on it.
But I concede to the anti-healing side that self-casting Light’s Embrace every 3-4 seconds is OP as a self-heal. Just making it 60% stronger by popping cheap food buffs is ridiculous. No DPS in the game can get that kind of bump from cheap food.
Literally any tank can be impossible to kill in a 1v1 too, and any ranged/mage is impossible to even touch let alone kill depending what weapon YOU are using.
Your mistake here is trying to balance based on 1v1, and based on a circumstance that you have artificially made.
Try saying healers are OP when two healers duel eachother, guess what nobody dies.
My main problem with the Life Staff is actually in Sacred Ground. It provides entirely too many things to have such a relatively low cooldown that can also be further reduced by the correct perks, to the point where you can cast it as soon as it disappears.
Take away the 1v1 and my point still stands. The effective self-heal per second to Light’s Embrace due to +30% per buff is very overpowered.
But I take your point. I don’t do a whole lot of 1v2 duels, and I’m trying to understand how the other side may have a point. If I start popping food and building stacks of buffs, the hps I can do on Light’s Embrace is just sick. Not a problem on others because healing targeting is so hard.
I don’t even think it’s a mana regeneration issue Onyx.
With the right passive perks, light and heavy attacks for light staff don’t cost any mana.
It takes a pretty long fight before I even need a mana pot.
Both stamina and mana is way too easy to come by. Near infinite supply of stamina makes all classes super hard to chase and hit, and near infinite supply of mana makes healers and mages have never ending supply of casted abilities.
In my opinion, although I never played before beta when it was implemented, Stagger is needed to fix both these issues.
And Stagger can be changed in whatever manner to make it better, but its likely needed to shut down healers and dodging/people running away in general.
For example Currently, depleting your stamina or using most of it up (99% of it in the case of rolling twice in a row) has zero punishment to you because it simply gets you out of melee range or to cover and therefore you have plenty of time to regenerate it.
I have done a basic video recording and in my editor I found that stamina begins to regenerate approx 1 second after you use it up, and tehn it only takes about an additional 3 seconds to fully regenerate from 1 to 100 stamina.
Gents, I’m sure there’s tons of issues of things that could be fixed or improved.
What I’m trying to tell you and others as a healer with 400 hours in the game… the overwhelming majority of it as a healer, is the cost/benefit on Light’s Embrace is the the primary issue right now where healing is concerned.
Have you looked at sacred ground + orb of protection + beacon build? Personally I don’t even use lights embrace because if I did I would have to switch to life staff constantly (I prefer to use my offensive weapon most the time).
Also they need to make Divine Embrace and Splash of Light make much more sense. Currently they are super awful to use because there are too many situations where they are useless.
Thanks for contributing. The reason my suggestion is how it is…is because it ONLY affects the buff on SELF-healing for Light’s Embrace, a single skill.
It literally doesn’t affect the value of a healer in a group at all.
You can get fully healed as a 14k hp tank in sub-2s, and stay there effectively forever in pve. The damage concern of pve fights isn’t in sustained damage, it is in big hits from bosses.