[DoK/WP] Willpower based melee healing

[altharion1]

For absolute clarity for anyone else reading this thread. My proposal can simply be broken down as follows.

By slotting my adjusted Empowered Transfer tactic the healing output from rend soul, transfer essence and devour essence would no longer be dependent on the damage dealt. The heal would be calculated by some kind of formula using willpower and healing power to multiply it up to a significant value. Thereby removing the issue of having to invest significant renown points into offensive stats and using offensive gear. Thus you can retain survivability, healing gear and useful healing output on your ranged heals when necessary.

The longer cooldown on Blood Offering forces the dok into melee, ensuring that they don't have both the powerful melee heals and consistent ranged healing in this spec.

- The melee DoK/WP is unchanged.
- The current cookie cutter ranged healing spec for DoK/WP is unchanged.

Cast range heals are countered by heal debuffs. As melee heals would not be affected by heal debuffs they would need a counter. In the same way that your are rewarded by being able to counter cast heals when you choose to spec a heal debuff, then you should be equally rewarded by being able to counter melee heals when you choose to invest significant renown points into parry or slot specific tactics.

Therefore making melee heals defendable makes logical sense within the proposal. Being able to successfully hit with every melee heal ability, every time, would be unbalanced and too strong (if the types of healing output values I mentioned above were to be implemented).

My proposal assumes that if you came up against a target with very high parry or block (or no had no target in melee range), then the user would have a modicum of intelligence and instead of continuing to try to melee heal they would instead, temporarily, simply switch to the standard cast heals, until a better target became available.

Yes, sometimes your melee heal will be parried and end up not healing anyone. But sometimes cast heals are interrupted and therefore don't heal anyone. Bad things happen sometimes, its part of the game. If it didn't, no one would ever die.

[Penril]

I have one question before I reply to OP.

I thought devs had a lot of plans for WP/Dok (basically continuing with their .ab ex and fixing one or 2 things) but they decided to wait until client control because these changes required a lot of tooltip changes. Is this still true or are they considering tweaking Dok/WP in the near future? Because if the client control issue still remains, then there's probably no point in discussing these classes atm?

[freshour]

I have one question before I reply to OP.

I thought devs had a lot of plans for WP/Dok (basically continuing with their .ab ex and fixing one or 2 things) but they decided to wait until client control because these changes required a lot of tooltip changes. Is this still true or are they considering tweaking Dok/WP in the near future? Because if the client control issue still remains, then there's probably no point in discussing these classes atm?

Yeah this is what I was kinda waiting to see if anyone clarified. I have a lot of ideas to improve melee healing. Complicated and simple ideas too. Tactics that are perfectly designed for melee healing if tweaked that could really really help. Life tap being changed to a direct heal or direct healing tactics being set to also encompass lifetaps and so forth. If there is any clarification on the matter I'd love to post my feedback for this thread.

(Sorry Gerv if this is off topic, just wanted to clarify before I go into detail about the OP)

[wargrimnir]

This subforum is not a place for guaranteed changes based on consensus, but a moderated place where any balance discussion should be held to attain high quality posts on the topics at hand. Discussion made in any thread related to Dok/WP will be taken into account when those classes are being worked on, as they may bring new ideas instead of rehashing old ones.

If you have your own ideas, post a new proposal that's structured within the guidelines. Each thread should stick the to topic posted by the OP.

[Penril]

Thanks Wargrim.

@OP: I disagree with your proposal. Ab ex was pulled back due to TE being too strong, and your proposal is pretty much a "buff TE". You will either end up with an immortal, guarded Dok/WP that just spams one skill and ends up with 600k+ healing, or with a slightly stronger (but still not viable) skill. So unless other things are introduced (which I won't mention here as per Wargrim's request) we will end up in the same place we were a few months ago.

I also disagree with giving Wil contribution to Rend Soul. It is a good ST heal skill atm which can work even on tanks since it does Spirit damage. In a group, you can have a Chosen, Magus or Sorc debuffing Spirit resists for you. Let's be real: some specs are only viable in certain setups; I don't see a reason why it should be different for melee healers. Has anyone checked how much Divine Assault heals on a target that was double-spirit debuffed by a SM? Rend Soul should be pretty good as well on a target that was debuffed by Shadow of Disaster, for example.

As for Devour Essence, the healing is also good enough (if you add a Rend Soul and 2nd healer). It shouldn't be keeping anyone alive by itself, so i also disagree with giving it Wil contribution.

[freshour]

@OP - I think rend soul should have its base healing value increased, but no related to will power and I will say why. Rather it might make more sense to have it have like 20% parry strikethrough, so it still won't work with a timely M1, but it won't be able to be scaled so high that it heals like a shaman/am does now.

OR

I like your ideas I really really do, my only concern is that they may be able to overperform which is what got DoK in the situation it is in now with an ICD, and AB EX mode lol. So if your idea was going to stick as is - I would suggest a cap on the amount of healing willpower can offer to rend soul specifically since it is essentially our "burst" - but allow it to make it through and not be absorbed and only parried if they use an M1.

The other changes sound pretty awesome though. Sure they will need tweaked, and I know there are a lot of DoK's who would like to test. I would recommend adding in a form of a cap for maximum HPS. For instance a shaman with 2 hots, 1 with cleanse and a crit lifetap can heal around 7-9k hp per second with no other buffs. If you take this into consideration with your ideas and hitting squishie targets, anything more than 1200-1400 per lifetap would get to be quite a lot. But something that is never less than 700-800 at the same time would add some much needed consistency in the playstyle.

Summary: I love your ideas. I think they need to be set up with a cap in HPS (Heals Per Second) - make sure you have a good DoK test this as there are very few who actually play the melee healing portion of the class. But if this change focused primarily on making the bottom of the healing go from the 200-350 range to near where the top is now 700-800 and the absolute max 1200-1400 with TE specifically. These changes could make for a damn good healer.

[Bozzax]

Have you considered the impact of IB/BG willpower buffs on op since they are quite strong?

[altharion1]

Thanks Wargrim.

@OP: I disagree with your proposal. Ab ex was pulled back due to TE being too strong, and your proposal is pretty much a "buff TE". You will either end up with an immortal, guarded Dok/WP that just spams one skill and ends up with 600k+ healing, or with a slightly stronger (but still not viable) skill. So unless other things are introduced (which I won't mention here as per Wargrim's request) we will end up in the same place we were a few months ago.

I also disagree with giving Wil contribution to Rend Soul. It is a good ST heal skill atm which can work even on tanks since it does Spirit damage. In a group, you can have a Chosen, Magus or Sorc debuffing Spirit resists for you. Let's be real: some specs are only viable in certain setups; I don't see a reason why it should be different for melee healers. Has anyone checked how much Divine Assault heals on a target that was double-spirit debuffed by a SM? Rend Soul should be pretty good as well on a target that was debuffed by Shadow of Disaster, for example.

As for Devour Essence, the healing is also good enough (if you add a Rend Soul and 2nd healer). It shouldn't be keeping anyone alive by itself, so i also disagree with giving it Wil contribution.

Fundamentally this change isn't about being able to do both damage and healing. It is about using melee abilities to produce pure healing results, by changing a single tactic. Thus this change would not be in effect all of the time. Its about challenging the healing dok/WP players to play in an alternate play style that involves being in danger to produce decent viable heals. The change would mean DoKs/WPs would spend most of their time in melee positions, doing little to no damage, but putting out decent heals with different melee healing abilities. While having a few ranged heals and hots, that can be relied on temporarily while melee healing isn't possible. Without these 2 options melee healing can never be reliable or viable.

Also I'd argue within any decent group whoever is guarded is already close to immortal anyway. If the tank has to swap guard to the melee healer all the time then that's a DPS without a guard that is susceptible to a fast target swap, thus I don't see it as being a huge problem. If you get CC'd, debuffed and have your guard punted at the right time you are going to die regardless of whether you are a melee healer or range healer.

I believe the healing output numbers on TE, and the changes to rend soul and devour essence, that I mention in my original post would prevent TE becoming a 1 button spam spec. In my proposal I suggest a maximum heal value of 800 on TE, with 700 willpower. A spammable 800 heal is not going to save anyone under any sort of dedicated focus, its useful, but not OP.

The idea behind changing transfer essence, devour essence and rend soul together are fundamental to the proposal, that is to create a full melee healing spec that has different heals depending on the type of damage being dealt to your party members (in the same manner as range healing). This change is the most simple change I could think of to produce these results, whilst also preventing knock on effects to the DPS dok or the range healing specs. If you don't have multiple tools for melee healing, then melee healing can not work, you'd end up with 1 button TE spammers, or people just not melee healing at all as range heals would still be better. If you don't include changes to rend soul or devour essence, then haven't you just forced it to be a Transfer essence spammmer?

I'll have to disagree with you on rend soul and devour essence. At the moment rend soul and devour essence only produce good results when fully speced into DPS. If your base damage you do to a target is only say 150, it doesn't matter how many spirit debuffs the target has on them, the reduced mitigation will have negligible affect due to the low numbers. I would recommend you role a heal spec DoK and try to do any sort of useful healing with rend soul or devour essence. The essence:heal output compared to using the range healing abilities will always show that rend soul is not an efficient skill to use. Those people that still wanted to heal while dealing decent damage would just not use my altered tactic.

This proposal was based on producing the best possible results, with the simplest change. If you want to completely redesign the class and its abilities when the client patcher is available then that is fine. This would be a lot less work.

P.S yes I have considered willpower buffs. There are enough willpower debuffs in the game already to counter it. Almost every proper group runs main stat buffs already for all of the classes in party, it would have no more of an unbalancing effect than buffing the intelligence on a lifetapping AM.

P.S @Fleshour I agree on limiting the heals per second. That's why testing would be necessary. In my original post I suggest the values for the healing output of the different skills to keep it balanced.

[Tesq]

i disagre with the proposal as the change would not fix the flaw which are more base than a simple stat increase

there are several flaw which ab ex put in light:

1-bad design about make heal be a dmg value + a % increase: this have not changed and thew more you increase that base value the skill gon be op and more op

2-not have debuffable heal is retarded op

3-assume 2 is balanced because skill can be block/parry is dumb ( it really is as it work more reliable and so balanced in both way for attackers and defender if the heals always go on but are subject to heal debuff)

4-this tactic do not fix the main problem about crit. Melee heals should be totally separated from melee dmg and any melee stuff such block /parry so is mandatory if you wanna be a melee caster you need to have 1 and only chance to crit which should be heal crit for both caster and melee heals

5 you dont need to force a tactic on dok/wp for fix all the point above

6-i dont get how the proposal should work in fact around str and will; should the op just suggested TE etc should just be buffed by willpower too with out remove the % increase in heal or the dmg as main value? because the base value is another thing which make these heal hard to balance. Till the base value of TE etc is not fixed to be balanced x GCD spent with the group heal etc these classes as melee caster will never be balanced also melee casteris a conept that cannot work if the class cannot cast due set back and his main absorb tactic only work on castable heals. This feel only a bland buff to some skill and a really not balanced option and pretty much exploitable option in some other cases.

[altharion1]

i disagre with the proposal as the change would not fix the flaw which are more base than a simple stat increase

there are several flaw which ab ex put in light:

1-bad design about make heal be a dmg value + a % increase: this have not changed and thew more you increase that base value the skill gon be op and more op

2-not have debuffable heal is retarded op

3-assume 2 is balanced because skill can be block/parry is dumb ( it really is as it work more reliable and so balanced in both way for attackers and defender if the heals always go on but are subject to heal debuff)

4-this tactic do not fix the main problem about crit. Melee heals should be totally separated from melee dmg and any melee stuff such block /parry so is mandatory if you wanna be a melee caster you need to have 1 and only chance to crit which should be heal crit for both caster and melee heals

5 you dont need to force a tactic on dok/wp for fix all the point above

6-i dont get how the proposal should work in fact around str and will; should the op just suggested TE etc should just be buffed by willpower too with out remove the % increase in heal or the dmg as main value? because the base value is another thing which make these heal hard to balance. Till the base value of TE etc is not fixed to be balanced x GCD spent with the group heal etc these classes as melee caster will never be balanced also melee casteris a conept that cannot work if the class cannot cast due set back and his main absorb tactic only work on castable heals. This feel only a bland buff to some skill and a really not balanced option and pretty much exploitable option in some other cases.

4. Here I do agree with you. Crit is an issue with my proposal. To get around crit issues could mean the tactic would force the users melee cruit stat to match its heal crit stat. Not the best solution, but it does mean there would be a skill based element in selecting a target with a high chance to be crit as the best melee healing target.


6. It would work as follows: Transfer essence would strike your target for 100 damage. This would result in 315 heals + 50 heals = 365 heals. Then a calculation would follow to to multiply the heal up based on the users Willpower and healing power. Something like this: (I know nothing about how the calculations work in this game btw)

Transfer Essence
(Healing bonus x 0.015) x Transfer Essence heal = Total Heal

@150 healing bonus
100 damage hit (150 x 0.015) x 365 = 821
200 damage hit (150 x 0.015) x 415 = 934
@180 healing bonus
100 damage hit (180 x 0.015) x 365 = 986
200 damage hit (180 x 0.015) x 415 = 1,121


Rend Soul
(Healing bonus x 0.015) x Rend Soul heal = Total Heal

@150 Healing bonus
100 damage hit (150 x 0.013) x 350 = 683
150 damage hit (150 x 0.013) x 525 = 1024
200 damage hit (150 x 0.013) x 700 = 1365
@180 Healing bonus
100 damage hit (180 x 0.013) x 350 = 819
150 damage hit (180 x 0.013) x 525 = 1229
200 damage hit (180 x 0.013) x 700 = 1638 ( this skill would be capped at a max healing value of 1800)

P.S Maybe these skills would be better as undefendable rather than not effected by heal debuff. I wouldn't care either way.