AM EoV/ Shaman FoDG

[Kalell]

Since Energy of Vaul/ Fury of Da Green was changed, rather hasty, some thoughts and suggestions.
If you think you already reached peak balance for this skill, feel free to drop this.

The problems:

EoV/FoDG are hard to be balanced.
Since it is AoE and scales extremely well, hitting more people must be rewarded, hitting few isn’t severely punished. As it is right now it’s healing to much, in the wrong place.
This makes it rarely useful, and overpowered at the same time.

As high raw healing skill (nearly) it’s impossible to counter.
Nothing works against it, no incoming / outgoing heal debuff affects the raw healing value. Only changing classes to rdps and kiting, thus reducing the number of targets hit, can reduce the healing, that’s not really an option for most.

On a 5 sec CD, nearly always usable.
Even with the changed, reduced, healing it is:

Code: Select all

(300 + ( about 300) ) * ( 1 + 4 ) + willpower-bonus

So about 4k irreducible healing with 1.2s cast time and (up to) 5s cooldown. With any other healer (or even a 2nd AM/ Shaman) it’s nearly impossible to kill something guarded/ a tank. To kill a single target you need (2 * 4k/5s) * 2 (guard/ detaunt) = 3.2k dps burst, ignoring everything outside of 2 AMs using this group heal every 5 sec, to just kill a single target.
The only thing left is crowd control, which is always a possibility. Since a single AM/ Shaman can easily burst heal for 3-6s, it would require incredible coordination, just to kill something. Compared to just abilities needed against any other group composition.

With SMs Whispering Wind (-5s CD) or Choppas Chop Faster buff, it has no cooldown whatsoever. Increasing the healing potential 3 fold, and with preparation 5 fold, for 5 casts.



Basic Boundaries:
EoV/FoDG has to

• stay an AoE damage, AoE healing skill, that scales with the number of targets hit, and, in the best case, damage dealt
• have an attack range of 75 to 100
• have a AoE damage effect range from 30 to 45
• have a AoE healing range from 45 to attack range (75-100)
• as for numbers, non crits should heal less than 4k per person/ 24k per cast. Anything above this is definitely too strong
• damage a trivial amount of (spirit) damage, 100-300
• be able to hit 4-9 targets, less, and it's not scaling at all, more and it gets out of hand in larger fights

Needed changes:

No raw healing.

Spoiler:

Raw healing makes it impossible to counter it in any way.
There already is a counter for too much healing, heal debuffs, a single AM/ Shaman skill should not be exempt from this, without a proper reason, just like Balance Essence/ I’ll Take That! aren’t.
With this it’s a higher group heal with different downsides.

No small range around the caster.

Spoiler:

This makes the skill clunky to use in a "normal" (up to 12 man) scenario and way to strong in niche situations, where the caster is safe, within, say, a warband.
Either heal around the hit target, rewarding target choice, or the defensive target, like Balance Essence/ I’ll take That!.

Solutions:
First things first, like DoKs/ WPs AP heal, no cooldown reduce should affect it, if it stays at 5s. Otherwise it’s simply too strong when used in a 6+ vs 6+ situation with SM/ Choppa.

1) a) Change max targets from 1+4 now to 1+8, but reduce base damage to 100.

Code: Select all

(300 + (about 100) * # of targets) + willpower-bonus

Spoiler:

This would reduce healing based on number of targets significantly, but keep high numbers when warbands are clashing.

This would

• make it harder to pull of insane numbers
• reward skill, and target choice
• allow organized groups/ wb's to not stack everything to play around it. (not pugs, but with a 6 man, you don't need to actually stack on the same spot...)
• would heal more reliable in larger fights. 1 block meant you lose 20% healing sometimes, now it's 11%, but more likely to happen consistently.

1) b) And change the center to defensive-target

Spoiler:

Keep the 45 radius, just not around the AM.
That’s fine for a mele healer, who has to be in the fray, but a graceful high elf is not meant to be close to swords and axes. And poor gits just get stomped on.
But seriously AM/ Shaman are cloth wearing backline healers, there is no reason, other than destroying an OP ability, to make it small centered around the caster.
Keeping the range smaller means, that you have to decide who should get the healing, you can’t just spam group heals and expect everyone to be at full health. Meles have to stay close together, and to heal a single ranger Balance Essence/ I’ll take That! should be better. (At least when there aren’t 5 guys without block/ disrupt standing close to each other)

2) Out of group heal AoE (Old mele DoK/ WP style)

Spoiler:

Some time ago DoK/ WP had a very potent mele heal, healing up to 9 targets around their defensive target, for the mele damage dealt (in a small radius).
The same could be done for EoV/ FoDG.
Deal 100 dmg and heal for 100 + dmg + willpower around the hit target. Would result in similar as the above mentioned numbers, make the skill unique, distinguish it from every other heal, remove the raw healing, and the mindless every 5s usage.
The problem would be, that it no longer heals your party, your target or even yourself. If that is too limiting, healing in a very small area around the defensive target would be an option, too.
This would make it "just" the AoE version of Balance Essence/ I’ll take That!. The only relevant information would be how many friends and foes you are able to hit.

3) Increase the CD

Spoiler:

A big part of the potency of this skill comes from its cooldown. You cannot out-damage it, and that is the key problem I see. So the boring solution is to just change the cooldown, instead of the mechanic itself.
Simply increasing the cooldown, would help to make this skill more of an emergency big heal, with 10 or 15s CD the numbers are fine and could simply be used as healing instead of raw healing.

[Penril]

Moving to Discussions.

[shaggyboomboom]

Make it like it used to be: 100ft from caster, but not raw healing archetype. Making it 50ft from caster and normal healing made it unusable. Perphaps making it a 10s CD would be good as well.

[Tesq]

Let's start with there are several problems with these lifetaps

the original problem which lead to this was i belive the lack of the am/sh of a group hot as dok/wp. This lead to a life tap which is able to heal burst whole group better than dok/wp.

Some of these problems are linked also to how lifetap in general work, link heal to dmg done with multiplers is " always " a bad idea, the more open you allow something to scale to worst resutls you can expect we had alredy plenty of exemple with procs on procs and crits in general since live (live could also be considered a beta test ground since we see from there the crit problem); since all heals in game heal with fixed values is rather strange have an expection which make 1 heal which do not and for so much

OP of lifetap meccanic escalate in problems related to these skill

1- five sec CD mean CD reduction make it spamable for not a few ammount of time
2-no heal debuff
3-scale with dmg (and multiplers)
4-indirect value buff Or heal voer time buff by enemy debuff


The disrupt vs no heal debuff on lifetaps argument is always the same ; is too hard to balance, so hard it is.... too many variable influence the outcome:
-dmg buff
-resistences debuff /armor debuff for melee hitters
-avoidance debuff
-(or avoidance ignore such sham/am, idk if is still present since last patchnote about sh/am changes).


The most stable solution imo is let em behaviuour as all other heal , always work even if the target disrupt it but always let work vs heal debuff (to some degree)

The dmg component and the heal component should be separate each one indipendent from each other; if you are going for a dps am/SH then you also healing as the same value of a group heal of healing sh/am (since the value should be the same x cast time).

More, not less style of play , + diversification and a bit of customizaion in play the class but
1 heal still need have the same characteristic of another heal.
Exeption can be made but they must not have a so much impact on the fight; since this is a tool which is required to be used often then he need to have some kind of equiparation with all the rest of heals in game.

Another problem is the CD aspect which let's say is a kind of problem on his own; if the skill would not make so high ammount of heals (basically be just like a group heal, but on the move and with less cast time + do dmg ) then what is really important would be that the am/SH spec right mastery would just act for some kind of time as a pure heal sh/AM which is fine as this i think is a good kind of synergy; CD will give you some kind of flexibility which if you are going to play hybrid class you need.

So the solution imo are 2, either fix this or redesign it as a hot (so that it have a group hot as dok/wp)

1-FIX

-Heal value scale exatly at the normal group heal value
-dmg can be disrupted
-the heal will regardless always happen
-heals influenced by heal debuff (with 3 variable):
A) maybe not both only outgoing (let's say give some edge to IB/BG, WE/WH/WL/Chopp)
B) maybe both (most secure solution but also flat/simple )
C) maybe only incoming (a dps need to apply it instead of also a tank instead as the case of the outgoing; but order have rdps heal debuff would be more equal the first one than this)

- Since is not anymore based on dmg and the base value = of the one from group heal it should crit (with 3 variable) with:
A)summ of offensive/healing crit (most freely pick up should allow any playstile)
B) only with one of the two (force the skill in only 1 of the 2 playstile bad choice)
C) the higest between these 2 (let you focus on whaever you want with otu be too much penalized still allow the skill to be used in multiple spec with out force you into a fixed one)

-Leave CD reduction as it is as it allow flexibility and not spam of OP stuff since the base value and crit output are the same of AM group heal.

I think what above with heals influenced by outcoming heal debuff with then either A or C in teh second pick wold be the best long term fix the skills might recive


2- re-design

AS what wrote above but make it a hot with similar values as other group hot in game (this would probably be around 10 sec CD 9 sec duration and so the CD reduciton would not be have a synergy anymore if it then see a lot like a problem).

Probable more in line with the original lack of the AM/SH group hot tough take a different approch to the mastery, woudl probably like more at this point FIX solution.

Conclusion

these skill problem is yet again a all lifetap problem (too good or too bad) you allow to extremism, either dmg and heal or no dmg and no heal; make all lifetaps work according to a middle ground will definetly help balance them. The criteria is in the point 1 of the post.

P.S: range is not that much important; it depend on how strong the heal is and on how much it can be used regardless on CD decrease, shoudl somewhat then balanced keep in mind these 2 factors.

P.P.S: a small value based on dmg done can be left to make it more rewarding by make more dmg on thr enemy but it need to be a small encourage for those playing it as dps and not as second mastery for pure heals spec; hence should be a % of the dmg done and not a % of the dmg done multiplied for 150% for exemple. Let's say i heal for 2k crit (like crit group heal) then i do 200 dmg then i will heal for 2300 (2000+ also crit the 200 from dmg ).

[Toldavf]

Certainly being affected by heal debuffs is a good start to reign in these skills. It is quite frustrating to hear life taps go off and see a target start to actually gain life through the dps that was just killing him.

[dansari]

I absolutely disagree with making it a hot. That goes against what the ability is supposed to do. We want less carryover into other classes, not more; meaning, if you want a group hot, grab a WP/dok. I also don't think allowing it to be affected by heal debuffs is the right answer.. it doesn't act like a regular heal (that will always heal the target). There is an avoidance factor from the enemy to consider, and I think allowing both to exist cripples the ability unnecessarily.
Agreed with 1a, 1b, and 3. Iffy on solution #2.

Edit: changed my mind. #2 could be cool and would provide a unique niche for AM in wb v wb situations.

[Tesq]

Spoiler:

@pen i do think my post is relevant because solutions offer by op would not solve the problem in long term due the problem nature be at the peak and not on the valley; the problems are how life taps work not these 2 skill x se; these 2 skill are exagarating results which every lifetap in game can give. So hence op solution wont fix this because they are trying to fix the wrong problem. The main one is another one or to better say in a previously point of the proces.

done this as clarification if main post it's still not pertinent for you np

[Arteker616]

im confused , Heal debuffs did affected lifetaps , atleast incoming ones prety sure they did .

[Penril]

@tesq that's why I removed my comment and the spoiler tag.

[shaggyboomboom]

im confused , Heal debuffs did affected lifetaps , atleast incoming ones prety sure they did .

This isn't a general lifetap topic, just EoV and FodG.