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.