I appreciate the constructive dialogue here, but let me try to explain what that’s not likely going to do it.
The Absolved passive perk means my light/heavy attacks as a healer don’t take any mana. The only way I run out is through active skill spamming.
Light’s Embrace is one of the cheapest heals for a healer. I’m not running out of mana due to that easily.
I get that there’s a cohort of people pissed about healing in heavy, but this isn’t really the issue. It’s the limitless +30% healing per buff that a healer can turn on themself to survive encounters. It’s great and necessary for end game PVE contests. But it shouldn’t be a multiplier on themself.
And I’m not suggesting all kinds of nerfing to healing. I’m suggesting one edge case to one skill…that just happens to be the reason healers are so tanky in PVP, whether it’s 1v1 or group encounters.
the fact is, all posts are aim PvP, their forget this changes will f*** the PvE, and each time we wilol lost more healers, so like i said, if the heal is the game problem today, so lets remove life staff from the game, and problem will solve
I play as Cerek Tree, level 60 healer on Mu server as part of Covenant faction.
Feel free to make inquiries. And I don’t want to see more healers lost from the game. I’m honestly arguing about something that would make it better for pretty much everyone.
I know it’s not popular to post for self-nerf, but that’s exactly what I’m doing…in a very limited fashion that has near 0 impact on PVE or other areas.
Think it’s more of a heavy armor issue than lifestaff issue right now, a fully specced lifestaff users heal like crazy sure, but the survivability and tankiness is the main issue, a lifestaff user in light/medium armor class melts like steel beams, a heavy armor user lifestaff or not can take 800 damage from a firestaff heavy crit that can deal 3k to medium/light users.
the most brainless person can just autowin or atleast be guaranteed to survive by stacking constitution and using a great axe/life staff/hatchet + heavy armor, if the same player used light or medium they would die in 4 seconds because all they do is spam left click
Btw, I’m not opposed to nerfs on life staff / heavy combo. In the case of that combo it’s the passives of Protector’s Touch and Defensive Light that make it so damn tanky regardless of healing.
I’m simply unaware of another build in the game which gets this kind of buff stacking on a skill that costs next to nothing and can be repeated every few seconds. It’s a concern in ANY kind of armor, and all I’m proposing is to remove the case of self-heal bonuses, regardless of armor being used.
If you read through what I’m saying, it won’t affect healing in PvE to any material degree.
In my proposal a PvE healer would be able to case Light’s Embrace on themselves and only forego the +30% per buff to themselves. It’s not a meaningful PvE nerf at all because it retains their ability to heal team-mates at current power.
Light’s Embrace can burst for a large amount if the stars are aligned. However, it’s not that easy to maintain every single buff possible in group PvP. How you do in a duel is irrelevant and means nothing. No MMO balances PvP around 1v1.
I frequently only heal people for 2-3k with Light’s Embrace in OPR because I can not fully buff them and plop them down in a SG on-demand to maximize its effect every cast. When I was speced into orb and had a lot of buffs in a SG I think I’ve seen 9k at my highest. The amount varies a lot based on the combination of factors you listed, but it’s not reasonable to think you just casually pump out massive single target burst heals every 4 seconds with little effort.
To maximize Light’s Embrace you have to be using orb of protection for two buffs, which means you’re not using beacon, which means you’re automatically using a weaker overall build for group PvP. You have to maintain 3 stacks of the heavy attack buff which in a hectic group PvP situation with a lot going on is actually something you have to put effort into. You have to have just dodged. You have to be below 50% health (if healers are so godly and OP, how did they get to below 50% in the first place?!). You have to also be standing in Sacred Ground, which despite what some people say, is very easy to get knocked out of and stunned/rooted out of in group PvP.
Mana wise, healers do not have nearly infinite mana in group PvP. Especially not if you’re casting Light’s Embrace a lot. Your mana regen briefly turns off every cast. If you’re casting Beacon, SG and Light’s Embrace near CD, you will run OOM fairly quickly in OPR, especially if you’re casting SG on people on the front lines and don’t have one in the back to stand in. Even if you’re standing in SG a lot you will OOM if you’re casting on CD (which you often will in group PvP with a lot of people fighting). You can get it back quickly in a few ways, but you can’t just endlessly cast forever. That’s just not an accurate portrayal of the reality of life staff play in a group setting.
People complain about not being able to 1v1 healers, but the problem is their belief that they should be able to with apparently any weapon. They should not. That wouldn’t make any sense. I have actually encountered geared hammer users that put a lot of pressure and damage on me all by themselves, but the idea that any random weapon should be able to put out enough DPS alone to challenge my healing is nonsensical at best. The fiction going around on the forums that healers can just face-tank multiple DPS with ease is simply not the reality in outpost rush at all against geared DPS, particularly the ones with weapons that actually have knock backs and CC. I get stun locked all the time in OPR. I get knocked back. I get rooted. I die.
TLDR: the problem is a flawed belief people have where they think any random weapon and build should be good against a healer or that they should be able to easily 1v1 healers. Healers are not generally overpowered in group PvP currently.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I’m glad to have some constructive discussion on this. I also find myself in agreement with your (and others) thoughts that much of the anger about perceived ability to 1v1 a healer is misplaced.
I totally agree that targeted healing of others isn’t easy in OPR/Wars because of the chaos.
I don’t run with Orb of Protection because Sacred and Beacon are very helpful. But Light’s Embrace dominates the other options due to the issues I laid out. The cost/benefit over Orb in my mind is really clear.
Without buffs or starting from scratch, I can self-heal with Light’s Embrace for a bit under 2000 every four seconds. Eat a food buff and tradeskill buff (because god knows that logging carrots should make me a better healer), I can put it over 3000 every 4 seconds, and I’m not standing in sacred or anything else yet. Not stacking up heavy attacks, dodge or anything (it’ll go up even more if I do).
I am offering up here a very small edge case in PvP that a healer shouldn’t get these unlimited stacks of 30% boost to casting Light’s Embrace ON THEMSELVES every four seconds (less with light attack cooldowns). They get a capped version only and when they cast it on anyone else (even another healer), the current mechanics continue.
It’s very targeted and addresses a core frustration that others have. Regardless of how we come out on an issue, I think it’s important to try to understand how the other side might have a point. That’s what led me to this testing and this post.
It’s also why I started this reply with where I agree with you.
I don’t think it would make sense to completely eliminate the core functionality of Light’s Embrace +30% per buff aspect on self. It’s supposed to play into the theme of that entire side of the tree. I also think soloing and in PvE it’s not really overpowered. Enemies are constantly knocking you back. You have to put thought into maximizing the buffs for it.
I would say making food buffs not count for it might make sense as a change (though that would nerf it for everyone). I wasn’t even sure if that was an intended functionality currently or if it’s a bug. The tooltip just generally says buffs and not specific types, so I guess it’s intended to work that way.
If it didn’t respond for food buffs, that could help, but the key to me is that I’m not sure there’s an active skill in the game that has dps equal to the hps of Light’s Embrace once you’re wearing a ton of buffs. That’s fine, until the healer starts turning it on themselves in PVP.
Another one I didn’t put in there is Protector’s Touch. You’ll have Fortify up almost all the time and there’s another 30%. And if you’re in the middle of the fight, each melee block gets you 5% of mana back through Defensive Light. I’m rarely out of mana (unless I’m backline healing).
Nonetheless, I appreciate the thoughtful discussion on it. Too much knee-jerk anger nowadays.
Hiyas. Thanks for contributing. Perhaps what’s confusing is what’s implied:
“Does [a targeted heal equal to] 100% weapon damage, +30% more for each buff on target [including yourself]”
To test this today before I posted, here’s what I did:
Went to Cutlass amongst the boars and cougars.
Stripped down to my undies.
Let 4 of them beat up on me.
With no other buffs/combat/anything, observed Light’s Embrace heals came in a range of 1500-2000 points.
Then popped food and attribute/tradeskill food (2 buffs), held staff and repeated…over 3000 healing every 4 seconds.
And I still haven’t wound up Sacred Ground, Beacon, stacked bonuses for 3 heavy attacks (+30%), dodged (+20%), made attacks recently (+15%), etc…or got myself below 50% for the boost on Divine yet.
What’s somewhat missing is one more buff via food/etc. or fortify is worth all the keeping 3 stacks of heavy attack benefit put together.
That’s probably true, but I think that just brings us back to the core disagreement people have over whether or not a single player should be able to out dps a single healer. Some think they should. I would argue no, they shouldn’t.
If a single person could out dps my hps, they would never even need to think about any strategy to kill anyone, even if they’re being healed. The timing of CC wouldn’t matter since you could just spam click and eventually win simply based on your output. If you did hit a healer with CC, it would be over really quickly with a single CC every time.
If you can push Light’s Embrace to say 9k+ and just reliably heal yourself for that large a heal every 3-4 seconds on top of SG and possibly beacon, then you’re at a point where you could out HPS multiple DPS. I don’t think in group PvP that’s realistic or happens very often though (or for very long). The DPS on you would have to have no CC and no ability to move you out of SG. I would have to reliably keep all my buffs up, have the stamina to dodge every LE when I might be using some to block and effectively be free-casting with multiple people on me.
While it may be technically possible since not every weapon has useful skills against healers, in OPR there’s usually a lot of players with stuns, knock backs and roots. I think people tend to take those kinds of skills into PvP modes. In a game with collision, multiple players on you can even effectively potentially root you via body blocking.
This is true, if there are melee on me I’m probably not oom, but I don’t seem to need to run oom to die. If there’s multiple melee on me, that’s usually when a lot of the CC starts coming.
@Borg
I think we see this mostly the same. I don’t have a problem with healers by and large, but just this one skill and edge case. And I’m happy to throw the other side a bone in the name of progress and resolving conflict rather than trying to win it all the time.
I leveled up in light armor and loved the dodge, but I had to switch to heavy for PVE. I am constantly pulling threat whenever my party has to fight more than 1 mob, so I end up tanking a couple mobs all the time. Either that or constantly getting ranged by archers/caster mobs. And the benefit of light armor is too low for how fragile you are in it. I end up healing light armor dps in my parties way more than the tank because they take so much damage and this is what kills my mp. This has become even harder now that our light attacks don’t splash heal. I also have to use LE on myself frequently because I’m targeted by PVE mobs so often, so please don’t advocate for nerfing our CDs more or increasing mp cost.
As for PVP, I’m nearly impossible to kill 1v1 in OR, but I get 0 1v1 kills also. I think this is a reasonable trade-off. Any players worth their salt burst me down first on a push anyway.
If they address the threat created in PVE by healing, and make light armor worth wearing for healing, I would switch back in a heartbeat. Aesthetically I prefer light armor in general, but I’m not going to gimp myself for a cool dodge. DPS that wear light armor before they’re ready need to stop wasting my MP.
Edit: I mostly talk about PVE because I use the same armor set for PVE and PVP. If PVE was good in light I would use it for PVP also. I’m in the camp that the solution lies in adjusting the light armor benefits.
I’d back pretty much all of your suggestions. in land of keeping it simple, if light armor was best against elemental dmg and heavy best against physical, a lot of the heavy armor healer arguments would wash out, because they’d be melted by fire mages faster than they are.
No you’re not. I believe it is better to nerf heavy armor for casters than nerf the skill itself. I have way more hours than you and Light Embrace is really good for soloing certain areas (PvE). It is already bad that Orb of Protection doesn’t buff the user anymore, it is currently broken. So I use Light Embrace, and you’re saying to nerf that too? Why should a whole class be nerfed because of 1v1 scenarios when the real pvp comes from wars and group pvp in the open world? Sounds like another DPS whining post with the OP saying “I’m A hEaLeR, nErF mE”. Nerfing heavy armor for casters is the most logical thing to do OR give anti-healing debuffs to staggering moves.
I can back the majority of solutions healers want without backing all of them.
(If your first sentence was meant to imply that I cannot possibly be a healer with over 400 hours in the game and come to the conclusions that I have, then I don’t really know where to go from here with you, but then again, if that were what you meant, you weren’t intent on constructive discourse in the first place).
And if you believe that the person with the most hours played wins an argument, then you do you, and we’re back to the same agree to disagree, with a side order of whatever you’re bringing to the ‘table’.
Now, having said that, if you look at PTR what’s on the docket to be coming is exactly what most of the really angry healers didn’t want (and some good)
All healing skills will drop by 20% base (Sacred Ground, Beacon, Life’s Embrace)
The buff for light armor is coming.
There’s tons of healers pissed. I can roll with it, even if what I was suggesting was far more targeted than what they’ve gone with (I was lobbying to only a self heal on one skill in PvP and not PvE). And FS/IG has been taken out to the woodshed and beaten senseless.
Then again, ‘nerfs’ only matter in a relative sense to other builds.
Now, one might actually think that means that we’ll see less of those evil ‘paladins’ in the game in heavy because they defy some people’s notions of a ‘holy mmo trinity’ that have been done so many times I can’t see how they’re fun any more (personal opinion).
I highly suspect that the opposite is true after testing the new void gauntlet for a bit. It doesn’t really do more damage than Life Staff as a weapon, scales off of int/foc, but man does it have some interesting buffs/debuffs in group play. Including PBAOE stuff that would require someone using it to be up close…say in heavy armor.