Healing/Spell Power questions & answers

[MadFloyd]

I did not make it through the entire thread, but here are some answers for now:

1. Is it difficult to put the actual percentage that an effect is reduced/increased by Spell Power? One of my reasons for asking this is due to how you stated Rune Arms have a variable reduction based on what type of Rune Arm, but we have no way of knowing which Rune Arms have which degree of reduced Spell Power gains. Is Force Shot 50%, 65%, 80%? Is Exploding Cannonball Shot 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%? And the other Rune Arm shots? Actually giving the percentage would be helpful in the tooltip noting that the effect has reduced/increased Spell Power gains.

No this isn’t that difficult and we will pursue it.


2. So many have been noting that divine light spells are only getting .5 as well, is this a bug?

The only light damage spell that is getting half spell power is Summon Archon, which is on the list we provided in the forum post.


3. It feels like, as a Cleric, we are being pushed into one roll or another, which I despise. I don't like weapon swapping, especially when it means a quarterstaff, to get the same result as I used to

You may want to find another item slot where you can get Devotion in that case. You can easily find rings or helmets with Devotion, and named items that fill other body slots have Devotion as well.


4. Why isn't Reconstruct on this list?

This was missed and will be in Update 15.


5. Is it true that we need 100 devotion item to break even? Here’s some math:
Take the Heal spell.

For a character with the max life magic line (life magic IV), and no metas. I also exclude healing amp since it applies equally to both cases.

Old system, with superior potency or superior devotion:

150 x (1+.4+.5) + 150*1.9 = 285

New system, with the SAME equipment (sup potency VI converted, so assume sp 48 with an implement bonus of 9)
SP = 100 + (40+48+9)/2 = 168.5. Times 150 = 252, a 12% loss.

Now, we'd all agree that equipment is gimp, so let's toss it out, and use better at-level equipment. Say a devotion 72 item, with a 15 implement bonus. That is STILL

SP = 100 + (40+72+15)/2 = 183, times 150 = 274, a 4% loss.

In fact, in order to get back to your old level for heal, you would need a 100 devotion item just to break even, and get back to the old level (since half of 100 is 50, the old bonus you got in the old system, and the enhancement bonus of 40 remains the same).

100 devotion is very high level in this new system, certainly > level 20. And that's just to get back to the old, pre-expansion level.

While looking into the gameplay experience of healers, we’ve determined that a number of tools available to you are not performing to a satisfactory degree in higher level play. To that end, we are increasing the amount of Spell Power that the following spells benefit from: Cure Light Wounds (115%), Cure Moderate Wounds (115%), Cure Serious Wounds (115%), Cure Critical Wounds (115%).

6. Wasn’t on the list, but:
1) Positive Energy Burst: I'm hitting for significantly less. My cleric was 12 before the patch and is 12 now as he is apart of a static group. Nothing on him has changed, why the difference?

2) Positive Energy Aura: Same as above, I've lost 5-9 points of heal per tick. Nothing has changed.

We would need more info to comment on this, namely level and equipment being used.

7. My belief is that the current heal multiplier is too low, and that it is reducing the power of a lot of people's Heal spell, especially those that relied on empower healing. I do not believe this was your intention, and would suggest some tweaking.

Mass heal has been boosted for pretty much everyone not decked out in T3 alchemicals. This is a good thing(TM) for pretty much everyone but the most obstinate grinders out there, who should be the ones most compensated for their effort.

Moreover, Heal is worse for a lot of level 20s too, as I will show in a minute. I'd like to note that, to break even with the new system, if you have empower healing, it's very hard, because the empower healing multiplier has itself been reduced.

The previous multiplier for Heal (and mass heal if you had an alchemical weapon) was 1.9 (superior devotion gear and life magic enhancements) * 1.5 (empower healing) = 2.85, which is the equivalent of 185 spell power. Discounting empower healing and enhancements: 185 - 75 - 80/2 = 70 effective spell power. This means you would need 140 devotion spell power in your gear to compensate for it, that is, a +120 devotion, +21 implement bonus staff just so you can break even. This is ridiculously harsh, especially since this does not exist in level 20 gear, and makes it even worse for clerics/souls that want to swing melee weapons.

I'd seriously suggest this 50% multiplier is raised a bit, so that a level 20 character with 90 devotion (appropriate gear for a level 20 character) slotted gets the same benefit as before.

90 * x + 80 * x + 75 = 185
x ~ 0.65 ~ 65%.

If this base 50% multiplier were raised to 65%, people with level appropriate gear and empower healing would get the same benefit as before, and people without empower healing but with level appropriate gear would see a greater boost due to the way empower healing works, which I believe to be more in line with your original intent.

We’d prefer to boost cure spells as mentioned in the response to question 5.



8. I went to all the time and effort to make my Alchemical Dev IX shields because of the increasing level cap, hp, and damage I knew was coming in U14. So, what now? What do we do to compensate for the loss of healing?

How has it actually affected gameplay? How much of a healing loss have you experienced? Either healing is not difficult (in which little further change is needed) or some adjustments on our part is necessary.


9. With the massive hp inflation from expansion, heal (not mass heal) is relatively less powerful (hp incrased by 20-50% while heal is the same as before). While you could before refill someone in one cast, it is no longer possible. To compensate people need to slot more healing amp... But we know that some people already don't carry some needed items (such as fortification), is it really wise to add a new must have?

Heal still increases as you get into the expansion pack and get better gear. Keep in mind that it’s not all about what tools the healer has but what tools the players taking damage have. With the AC changes we expect players in the highest level/difficulty content to take fewer hits than they did previously.

10. Does the Light Monk Healing Finisher get full Spell Power from Devotion items?

Yes.


11. Please check Silver Fire spell 200% sure it's broken. Description says about 100-160 dmg base - we are getting 50% less. I would also like to ask why only Druids have new divine spells and why Avenging light was nerfed by 50% in u14.1?

Silver Fire is not a player spell. It’s ‘Searing Light’. The description was accidentally overwritten by the NPC ability “Silver Fire”. Searing Light is dealing the proper amount of damage and the description will be back to normal as of patch 2.

12. Will heal and mass heal always be last if our hp goes past 2k and stuff like that? i would hope that you will boost the % so we can heal our toons hitting those insane hp ranges because before motu a heal or mass heal would nearly heal them.

Now it barely touches 25% of their life meaning you need to spend more sp to heal someone back to full. So im just saying will we see a % increase if hp keeps going up because honestly 400hp wont cut it if their hp at 2k.

See answer to #9.


13. Why you decided to make wizard PrE slas reduced spell power, instead of using 1d3 damage per level and full spell power? Could you just half the damage/heal of the original spell/SLA and leave spell power alone?

Spell damage dice are not very granular, so any adjustment is a large change, while spell power coefficients can be set to any percentage we need. It’s a much simpler and more effective tool for balancing spell effects.

[Scraap]

Spellpower+wands/scrolls: WAI? If so, I could actually see those finally being a decent(ish) platsink for the general population aside from heal-scrolls.

[mystafyi]

thanks for boosting cure spells.

Any thoughts of removing the .5 penalty for using empower healing metafeat with heals? It is a feat spent after all :rolleyes:

[Systern]

While looking into the gameplay experience of healers, we’ve determined that a number of tools available to you are not performing to a satisfactory degree in higher level play. To that end, we are increasing the amount of Spell Power that the following spells benefit from: Cure Light Wounds (115%), Cure Moderate Wounds (115%), Cure Serious Wounds (115%), Cure Critical Wounds (115%).

Does this apply to just the single target versions, or the mass versions as well?

My Warchanter would definitely appreciate a boost to her Mass Cure Moderates. :D

[DarkForte]

Oh mah gawd, a dev actually read what I posted. Makes it feel worth the trouble to keep posting in here. I actually like the idea behind your solution: boosting the single-cures feels kind of right. I'll have to wait until it goes live and see how that plays out before saying any more though.

Also, prepare to see a number of raging WF arcanes.

[Ebondevil]

I would personally argue that Heal, Mass Heal and Reconstruct should gain the full benefits of Spellpower for various reasons:

1) Heal/Heal, Mass are meant to Beneft from Empower Healing, The reason given for why Spellpower was doubled was to compensate for the weakening of the metamagic feats, this should obviously include Empower Healing and everything it effected and were meant to get a slight improvement. Currently Heal is effectively getting the same benefit from Spellpower as it used to get from the enhancements, but it's also getting less benefit from Empower Healing (old +50%, new +37%) which itself was altered in respect to healing provided.
Old +40% enhancements, +60% from Potency = +100% (available at level 14)
150 +100% = 300
Empower Healing = +50%
300 + 50% = 450

Current +80 Spellpower From enhancements + 90 Spellpower from Devotion Item = 170 Spellpower (available at level 20)
Halved = 85 Increase
+75 Spellpower from Empower healing
= 160% Increase
150 + 160% = 390(Overall -60 Healing)

Suggested +80 Spellpower From enhancements + 90 Spellpower from Devotion Item +75 Spellpower from Empower healing = 245 Spellpower
150 + 245% = 517 (Overall +67 Healing)
2) Reconstruct and Repair spells are intrinsically weaker than their counterpart Heal/Cure spells as they don't remove the debuffs that Heal does, they can't benefit from Empower healing and they are limited to a much smaller percentage of the playerbase, a playerbase that can not get the full benefits of Heal, thus it needs the extra boost to compensate.

3) It's counter-intuitive having some effects not gain the full benefits of Spellpower;. Knowing that 1 Spellpower is 1% extra damage/healing is simple and makes a lot of sense.
However 1 Spellpower normally being 1% extra damage/healing, but sometimes 0.5% better or maybe 1.15% better is very confusing. It might make it easier for the Dev's to balance effects but it makes it a lot harder for players to work out what things do and how much benefit they provide. I would rather see Heal dropped down to 5 healing Per caster level and the level cap on the healing removed and for it to gain the full benefit from Spellpower, than for it to gain half the benefit of spellpower.

4) Warforged keep getting shafted please stop it. Like seriously, Stop it!

[Coldin]

*snip*

Madfloyd, with all due respect, I think you guys are way overthinking the whole spellpower thing. I feel it might be prudent to remind you of K.I.S.S.

Keep it Simple, Stupid. :)


The more special cases you have for spell power, the more complicated it's going to get.

[Auralana7214]

I did not make it through the entire thread, but here are some answers for now:
3. It feels like, as a Cleric, we are being pushed into one roll or another, which I despise. I don't like weapon swapping, especially when it means a quarterstaff, to get the same result as I used to

You may want to find another item slot where you can get Devotion in that case. You can easily find rings or helmets with Devotion, and named items that fill other body slots have Devotion as well.


4. Why isn't Reconstruct on this list?

This was missed and will be in Update 15.


Thanks for answering my questions! I would love to see some named devotion items (other than weapons and the Epic Mask of Comedy) with greater than +60.

[Thar]

[QUOTE=MadFloyd;4594061][I]

9. With the massive hp inflation from expansion, heal (not mass heal) is relatively less powerful (hp incrased by 20-50% while heal is the same as before). While you could before refill someone in one cast, it is no longer possible. To compensate people need to slot more healing amp... But we know that some people already don't carry some needed items (such as fortification), is it really wise to add a new must have?

Heal still increases as you get into the expansion pack and get better gear. Keep in mind that it’s not all about what tools the healer has but what tools the players taking damage have. With the AC changes we expect players in the highest level/difficulty content to take fewer hits than they did previously.

I had 3 high ac toons that took very little damage before the update, now i'm taking a beating in the 3 pre raid quests. My pally ac can reach 108 which is higher than it used to be although not close to the 139 that i'm being told is the point where it's worthwhile. This has been discussed, but running epic hard the mobs are 5-6 lvl's above us probably negates a lot of the defensive percentage. it was much better before. The only benefit appears to be physical resistance and I do see some dodges once in a great while. Giving us dodge bonus to ac back would help and make dodge items worth wearing and not game breaking since it's capped by armor. I'm not swapping out something for a just a 1 or 2% dodge bonus.

[bbqzor]

I realize you stated you didn't make it through the whole thread. But there are a few new comments in light of the responses you've made so far. Also, I'd like to point to my post here (http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p=4580452&postcount=116) for further details, and because of that will use short versions here. I've taken the liberty of shortening your reply as well, using the question numbers you provided, to try and cut down the post size too.


1.No this isn’t that difficult and we will pursue it.
This would be very useful, and in fact if it wasn't done I would have been very disappointed. Thank you.



4. Why isn't Reconstruct on this list?
This was missed and will be in Update 15.
This change will only put Reconstruct in an even worse position than Heal is in now. Detailed in my post with specifics, that position is "really horrible". Under ideal conditions it would land for around 388 at level 25, which is just not anywhere near appropriate for the only large repair spell in game. It needs to be left off the list, or (preferably) both it and Heal need a better than 0.5 coefficient. Frankly, as rightful as I think the above notation for Rune Arms is, I feel wrongful about this change.


5. While looking into the gameplay experience of healers, we’ve determined that a number of tools available to you are not performing to a satisfactory degree in higher level play. To that end, we are increasing the amount of Spell Power that the following spells benefit from: Cure Light Wounds (115%), Cure Moderate Wounds (115%), Cure Serious Wounds (115%), Cure Critical Wounds (115%).
This might benefit Paladins and Rangers, who were horribly hit by the changes to Devotion itemization, but its not going to matter one whit to anyone used to casting Heal and Mass Heal on a regular basis, unless it is extended to affect the Mass Cure versions. As Mass Cures are the one thing which was arguably made better by all the previous changes, I see little reason to add even more now. Bottom line, this change is good, and useful to some classes... but it has absolutely nothing to do with assisting the Heal and Mass Heal users, whose position is being used as justification for the change. In other words, saying this is a fix on behalf of Heal is foolish, but that doesn't mean its not a useful fix on behalf of Hybrid classes.


7.We’d prefer to boost cure spells as mentioned in the response to question 5.
This line is what I mean in the above comment on #5... preference has little to do with it... a tweak to CLW isn't going to replace heal, and I'll be honest even feels slightly insulting to suggest. Even CCW won't come close to Heal, although it may result in essentially having two timers for weaker spells, which combine into something similar to the pre-change version. That is, obviously, still a much weaker setup for a player to use.


8.How has it actually affected gameplay? How much of a healing loss have you experienced? Either healing is not difficult (in which little further change is needed) or some adjustments on our part is necessary.
Again, as detailed in my linked post, there are two main effects:
1) Anyone relying on Heal and Mass Heal as staple spells is essentially forced to take Empowered Healing to maintain their returns. This has a very large halo effect with the importance of feats increasing due to epic feat prereqs, to say nothing of any punitive effect on builds which could previously reach those values without it.
2) With player HP seemingly at 600-1500 at lv25 across almost all classes/races/builds, and the value of Heal being dropped from ~570 to ~380-540, it can easily take 2-3 times the casts for the same effect. In other words, previously the general HP range was 400-1000, meaning 1-2 casts to heal anyone; now its more like 2-4 casts to heal anyone. Twice the casts out of combat means only more mana, but in combat it means twice the real time, and half the efficiency. Obviously the intention was to put more weight on Mass Cures, so I won't go into further detail here, but I firmly believe you may have over-reacted on that... proportionally lowering the in-combat effects on the main healing spell by essentially holding or reducing its effects, while everything else scaled up, is something I hope to find was unintentional... at least on this scale (slightly worse is ok, twice as bad is rough, etc)


9.Heal still increases as you get into the expansion pack and get better gear. Keep in mind that it’s not all about what tools the healer has but what tools the players taking damage have. With the AC changes we expect players in the highest level/difficulty content to take fewer hits than they did previously.
Again, after referencing both my linked post, and the previous answer to #8, it comes across very poorly saying "we know Heal is worse, but everyone should have AC now so you don't need to heal as much". Um, that's not really how it plays out...


13.Spell damage dice are not very granular, so any adjustment is a large change, while spell power coefficients can be set to any percentage we need. It’s a much simpler and more effective tool for balancing spell effects.
I don't think the dice should have been changed at all (ie, I agree with your response, redoing the dice is not helpful), but it relates to something I asked specifically in my linked post so I'll ask again... why the complete turnaround on this stance? Eladrin specifically said PMs would see an increase, now we are being specifically told its intentional there is little/no increase. Is there some overall design direction we should be aware of... changes happen but not usually a full 180 degrees.

Thanks for taking the time, I know I'm being tough but it is very difficult to see everything else go up with work, parallel to needing to work to get back to where you were (if its even possible, fitting Empowered Healing can be rough on some builds), on what is already one of the most stressful things in game. Coupled with the drastic design changes (here and elsewhere, I just haven't had time to make that post yet, but as one example so many of the new things disallow saves, which was the whole point of several other changes like Poison... they don't make sense alongside each other) which stress my belief these have been thought all the way through. I understand, and even support, the whole "spells need coefficients" concept... I just do not think that Heal and PM SLAs, were necessarily good targets of one as severe as 50%. Cheers.

[Auran82]

I had 3 high ac toons that took very little damage before the update, now i'm taking a beating in the 3 pre raid quests. My pally ac can reach 108 which is higher than it used to be although not close to the 139 that i'm being told is the point where it's worthwhile. This has been discussed, but running epic hard the mobs are 5-6 lvl's above us probably negates a lot of the defensive percentage. it was much better before. The only benefit appears to be physical resistance and I do see some dodges once in a great while. Giving us dodge bonus to ac back would help and make dodge items worth wearing and not game breaking since it's capped by armor. I'm not swapping out something for a just a 1 or 2% dodge bonus.

That is something worth mentioning, our character sheet talks about 'defence chance Vs things of the same level, which is almost always useless because enemy CRs are all over the place. You expect us to take less hits, thats fine, but at the same time you bumped up the amount of damage taken per hit (especially on Elite) while not allowing our main healing spells (heal and mass heal) to scale at a similar rate.

I also agree with what someone said earlier, it seems like this whole spellpower system was put in to make things easier to understand, then you implement a million exceptions to the rule of 1sp = 1% damage, and THEN you decide that it's not important to have this number actually listed anywhere. It's been this way for a long time with stuff like spell penetration, where I need to go over my gear, feats and enhancements to add up what my spell pen is for a certain spell. It's getting getting really silly, nearly any other game (online or standalone RPG) has *all* that kind of information available at the press of a button if required.

[goblean]

Madfloyd, with all due respect, I think you guys are way overthinking the whole spellpower thing. I feel it might be prudent to remind you of K.I.S.S.

Keep it Simple, Stupid. :)

The more special cases you have for spell power, the more complicated it's going to get.

this /signed

One of the reasons for this change was to simplify all the sources of how spell damage may stack. Now we get all sorts of various little stacking bonuses that need to be managed, and exceptions to rules that keep changing and increasing in number. We now have this overly complicated system, that I would have no desire explaining to a new player. One of the things I always think of is how do you explain this to a person with no understanding of the current system. And no just saying get the highest spell power item you can, doesn't cut it.

[sirgog]

Heal still increases as you get into the expansion pack and get better gear. Keep in mind that it’s not all about what tools the healer has but what tools the players taking damage have. With the AC changes we expect players in the highest level/difficulty content to take fewer hits than they did previously.


AC is not scaling well from Epic Normal to Epic Elite.

A just-dinged-20 in random lootgen gear (target audience for EN) on a defensively specced toon might have 90 AC and be missed 60% of the time by the CR 21 mobs in EN quests.

OTOH, a 23 in nearly best-in-slot gear and a level 5 Destiny with one or two defensive twists (target audience for EE) on a defensively specced toon might have 130 AC and be missed 25% of the time by the CR 48 mobs in EE quests.

CR bloat on EE and the massive To-Hit bloat that goes with it make AC unreliable at best in EE. PRR does scale well with difficulty setting but it doesn't scale with gear at all.


My suggestion on healing and spellpower is simple: Change Healing Amplification from a "Heals hit you for X% more" to "Heals hit you for an additional X points". That latter would make Cure potions worth something at high level, keep Heal in check, and would be easier to understand too. Plus you could then add higher Healing Amp items without breaking the game. You would need to have a lower healing amp coefficient on Radiant Servant Auras and Druid HoTs possibly (getting hit for 125 a tick by an Aura might be silly), but that could be worked out on Lamannia.

[Auran82]

My suggestion on healing and spellpower is simple: Change Healing Amplification from a "Heals hit you for X% more" to "Heals hit you for an additional X points". That latter would make Cure potions worth something at high level, keep Heal in check, and would be easier to understand too. Plus you could then add higher Healing Amp items without breaking the game. You would need to have a lower healing amp coefficient on Radiant Servant Auras and Druid HoTs possibly (getting hit for 125 a tick by an Aura might be silly), but that could be worked out on Lamannia.

It would also help with the weird and confusing stacking with regard to healing amp (especially when something like the fleshmakers necklace is involved)

To be honest, you would almost be better off playing around with the numbers given by the spells themselves to make it give the numbers you want and leave spell power at 100% for all spells.

[nivarch]

9. With the massive hp inflation from expansion, heal (not mass heal) is relatively less powerful (hp incrased by 20-50% while heal is the same as before). While you could before refill someone in one cast, it is no longer possible. To compensate people need to slot more healing amp... But we know that some people already don't carry some needed items (such as fortification), is it really wise to add a new must have?

Heal still increases as you get into the expansion pack and get better gear. Keep in mind that it’s not all about what tools the healer has but what tools the players taking damage have. With the AC changes we expect players in the highest level/difficulty content to take fewer hits than they did previously.


> With the AC changes we expect players in the highest level/difficulty content to take fewer hits than they did previously

Your answer ignores the fact that heal is not the usual healing spell you use in an epic elite run. In an EE quest the main sources of healing are heal scrolls, FvS capstone and renewal (unless you want to blow pots) and mass heal from time to time.
Heal is an emergency heal and as such it needs to be able to be big enough to absorb the next damage spike. And when you are in need of an emergency heal, it usually means that your AC, PRR and Saves are not sufficient to reduce incoming damage to manageable values (otherwise you would be healed by a free heal).

But maybe the issue is that since heal is already a cheap HP per SP spell that doesn't have a long cooldown you don't want it to be used as an emergency heal. That's fine, but just give us another tool for emergencies then (no not unyielding sovereignty, 5 minutes cooldown is way too long). Until we have that, heal has to be powerful enough to be the only emergency healing spell in the divine arsenal.

Note: Three examples of what emergency heal spells could look like... This is not very D&D like but with the game moving away from core D&D it may be time to borrow some new mechanisms from others MMO.
Power word Heal: Automatically quickened, 100SP, 30 second cooldown. Heal 10HP per caster level. If target is below 50% HP, heals an additional 10HP per caster level. If target is below 25% HP heal an extra 10HP per caster level.
Devout sacrifice: Automatically quickened, 10 SP, 15 seconds cooldown. Caster loses 50% of his current HP. For each HP lost, target is healed 2HP. This spell generates increased threat.
Unyielding protection: 75 SP, 30 seconds cooldown. Target is healed for 10 HP per caster level. If target is below 50% HP, it gains a shield that will absorb the next 300 damage from any source. The shield dissipated after 3 seconds if it hasn't absorbed all damage.


EDIT:


3. It feels like, as a Cleric, we are being pushed into one roll or another, which I despise. I don't like weapon swapping, especially when it means a quarterstaff, to get the same result as I used to

You may want to find another item slot where you can get Devotion in that case. You can easily find rings or helmets with Devotion, and named items that fill other body slots have Devotion as well.



Why, oh why, is there no named item with devotion in the expansion?
With the change to spell power you knew this would be a needed item for a lot of divines, yet we have to rely on the random generator to get some crappy devotion helm; or to use old named who end up with subpar values of devotion.

Please, I dunno if I must beg, but for next update add a new devotion named item, this will make all divines happy.

[ShadowFlash]

Simply Stating that melee cleric's will have to slot devotion somewhere else sounds really nice...except..

Pre-U14: Base*(1+meta)*(clicky/item+enhancement+1).
That is, for a heal with RSII empower healing, clickies, and Life IV: 150*1.75*(.75+.4+1) = 564.375

U14: Base*(1 + meta + ½(item + clicky + enhancement + implement)).
That is, for heal with empower healing (100), 20 SP clickies, Life IV (80), 18 implement and 102 item:
150 + 150 + ½(1.02+0.2+0.8+0.18)*150 = 465

So, based off this, RSII Heal hits for 18% or so less. The problem is, even this gear (120 sp staff) is not available to anyone level 20 or below resulting in a grind to re-reach mediocrity. Worse, the Pre-U14 numbers were attainable at LEVEL 14! what this means, for a melee cleric to reach comprable "heal spell" capabilities, at LEAST 7 levels are needed to be able to equip any reasonably close gear, just to break even(ish).

You're not going to change this....I get it...these are not the droids you're looking for...smoke and mirrors...everything is fine, it's your gear...moving on...

Let's address the RS burst next...
Level 17 Cleric (leaving 3 to represent common melee splashing)=CL19
1-8+1 per CL = 4.5+19 = 23.5 base
All Meta's (which even melee cleric usually take)

Pre-U14: Base*(1+meta's)*(clicky/item+enhancement+1).
That is, for a heal with RSII empower healing, clickies, and Life IV: 23.5*3.25*(.75+.4+1) = 164.2

U14: Base*(1 + meta + ½(item + clicky + enhancement + implement)).
That is, for heal with empower healing (75), 20 SP clickies, Life IV (80), 18 implement and 102 item:
23.5 + (23.5 x 3.5) + ½(1.02+0.2+0.8+0.18)*23.5 = 131.6

So, based off this, RSII Burst hits for 20% or so less. This is another huge one for leveling, as it practically makes the burst useless using highest available devotion gear ML's while leveling 14-23ish, and even 23+ will be underpowered, and again, not possible to even reach a net zero without the higher sp bonuses found on staffs, further restricting melee clerics to weapon swapping

Coincidentely, the Unyielding Sentinel T4 "light the dark" is so much better than the RS burst, further marginalizing a core PrE ability. I certainly feel light the dark is great as-is, and the burst should be improved.

All formula's used have been tested as accurate with varying spell power item/clickie combinations.

ShadowFlash

[varusso]

4. Why isn't Reconstruct on this list?

This was missed and will be in Update 15.


OK so its an oversight that will be corrected -- fair enough.

Quid Pro Quo: Since you stripped WF of their Pois/Dis immunities (and have confirmed that we are NOT going to keep the extra heals from Recon as a balancing effect), then the top-tier Repair-line spell (Recon) should include some "extra" benefits like the top-tier Cure-line spell (Heal). In particular, Remove Disease, Poison, and Curse. Get rid of that silly buff it gives (which is useless, especially given the fact that the spell is almost always cast by a player that can ALSO cast Haste), and replace it with one that wipes the Rust Monster stun and gives a temporary immunity to it (similar to the current Remove Poison timer).

And no, giving WF "sort of" immunities and bonuses to saves is NOT the same as actually BEING immune.

Also, you should consider upping the LVL cap on Heal to match M.Heal. This would give most divines the bone they are looking for -- the ability to raise those red bars a bit more, using something other than just M.Heal. In raids and hard 6-man content, M.Heal is the go-to spell anyway, so giving Heal this buff would be a nice token.

Thanks for taking the time to reply, Mad.

[Nick_RC]

2. So many have been noting that divine light spells are only getting .5 as well, is this a bug?

The only light damage spell that is getting half spell power is Summon Archon, which is on the list we provided in the forum post.




This is not correct. I have THE best gear possible and my numbers are substantially smaller post update. Please check again.

[Scraap]

13. Why you decided to make wizard PrE slas reduced spell power, instead of using 1d3 damage per level and full spell power? Could you just half the damage/heal of the original spell/SLA and leave spell power alone?

Spell damage dice are not very granular, so any adjustment is a large change, while spell power coefficients can be set to any percentage we need. It’s a much simpler and more effective tool for balancing spell effects.

One thing I will request, purely as a selfish thing, so no real skin off my nose if not: auto-heighten the slas. No metas with half spellpower on save-for-halfs with no heighten means you'll see a lot of low-ball numbers until you've got hefty DC overkill.

[Theolin]

How does the new spell power interact with the Arti infusion healing spells, it seems to have really borked them badly. I do wish my memory was better but this is what I remember.

Have a 13/6 cleric/arti - same gear & same enhancements, using the level 1,2,&3 arti healing infusion spells:

Before: with a 75% pot running & empower healing & RS2 I was getting about 40,70,100
Now: with just the sora kell set(I know I need better) which I believe is 40 spell power & empower healing & RS2 they are hitting for 25,35,55

Which seems about right by the numbers if healing is 50% spell power added

Which if I can do the math correctly & understand how it works & remember the old numbers
Old: 1.75[75% clickie]*1.75[RS2]*(pot healing) = 3.2*(pot)
New: with a outrageous guess at best gear[100 devotion item]
New: 100[given]+100[RS2]+(100[Gear]/2)*(pot) = 2.5*(pot)

so (3.2-2.5)/3.2 = ~ 22% reduction in healing,
but more likely to be worse due to only being able to find about 80 spell power non hand items

(The reason for harping on the NON hand items is for raids I was doing rune arm + scrolls + arti infusions, so I have no place to put an item there), & this Character is now parked as it does not work at all due to the changes.

So I do believe the numbers are correct that it is spitting out, it is just a huge decrease in healing, even if I had a piece of awesome gear that probably does not even exist for 100 spell power I would still be nerfed by 22% or so ....

Now as a side note I did notice a large increase in the healing of the cleric mass cure spells.


TLDR: Check the nerf to arti infusion healing spells, was this intentional?

[Jacoby]

I'm really trying to like this game again after a 5 month hiatus but wow the nerf ninja hit hard this time. I like the new spell power system in concept only, in game functionality is lacking big time to the point that your experienced players are clueless. 1) We have no idea what are spell power is, how it stacks and how Meta's improve this total. I've read the posts over, and over explaining the formula's but I'm still at a complete loss at how it all functions together.

What we need is a spell power total in the character sheet to let us know what are total spell power is for each damage type along with the multipliers for crit. That was we can see how this new system, equipment and Meta's are impacting our spell damage.

[TreknaQudane]

4. Why isn't Reconstruct on this list?

This was missed and will be in Update 15.


In the spirit of this change, will you ever introduce Repair Amp? Or better yet just change Healing Amp to 'Improved Recovery' and have it work on all forms of "Healing" be it Positive Energy, Reconstruction, or Negative Energy if applicable.

[Monkey_Archer]

Let's address the RS burst next...
Level 17 Cleric (leaving 3 to represent common melee splashing)=CL19
1-8+1 per CL = 4.5+19 = 23.5 base
All Meta's (which even melee cleric usually take)

Pre-U14: Base*(1+meta's)*(clicky/item+enhancement+1).
That is, for a heal with RSII empower healing, clickies, and Life IV: 23.5*3.25*(.75+.4+1) = 164.2

U14: Base*(1 + meta + ½(item + clicky + enhancement + implement)).
That is, for heal with empower healing (75), 20 SP clickies, Life IV (80), 18 implement and 102 item:
23.5 + (23.5 x 3.5) + ½(1.02+0.2+0.8+0.18)*23.5 = 131.6


This is not the formula used for burst in U14. Burst is correctly applying 100% of all spell power, from all sources.

Tested on my level 18 cleric (caster level 20) with:
40 Life magic II
100 empower healing
75 empower
150 maximize
78 devotion item
9 spell casting implement
---
452 spell power

Base burst value of d8+20 (21-28) would expect a minimum of 115.92 (21 + 452%) and maximum of 154.56 (28 + 452%)

Tested values were: 115, 121, 126, 132, 138, 143, 149, 154

So it is working correctly, and nearly identical to the pre-U14 expected range of 116.025 (21 * 3.25 metas * 1.7 item/enh) to 154.7 (28 * 3.25 metas * 1.7 item/enh)

[Monkey_Archer]

While looking into the gameplay experience of healers, we’ve determined that a number of tools available to you are not performing to a satisfactory degree in higher level play. To that end, we are increasing the amount of Spell Power that the following spells benefit from: Cure Light Wounds (115%), Cure Moderate Wounds (115%), Cure Serious Wounds (115%), Cure Critical Wounds (115%).


Will radiant servant burst or aura be affected by this change as well?

[Ape_Man]

With the AC changes we expect players in the highest level/difficulty content to take fewer hits than they did previously.

That is absolutely laughable. For real?

So maybe if you have a very high AC build you'll get missed 2 hits in 20 instead of 1 in 20 . . . but the mobs/bosses hit at least twice as hard. The dragon in EE Don't drink the water hits for over 500 on a non-crit.

Have you actually played epic elite with god-mode turned off? I cannot believe you have if you're going to make the above statement.

[ShadowFlash]

This is not the formula used for burst in U14. Burst is correctly applying 100% of all spell power, from all sources.

Tested on my level 18 cleric (caster level 20) with:
40 Life magic II
100 empower healing
75 empower
150 maximize
78 devotion item
9 spell casting implement
---
452 spell power

Base burst value of d8+20 (21-28) would expect a minimum of 115.92 (21 + 452%) and maximum of 154.56 (28 + 452%)

Tested values were: 115, 121, 126, 132, 138, 143, 149, 154

So it is working correctly, and nearly identical to the pre-U14 expected range of 116.025 (21 * 3.25 metas * 1.7 item/enh) to 154.7 (28 * 3.25 metas * 1.7 item/enh)

Funny, my testing on my 17/2/1 using the above formula showed exactly the correct number...in my case exactly 127...far less than pre-U14 (granted I always thought it was weak, but useful for managing cooldowns or mid-melee). I think the burst uses stacked dice as well, because I show very little variance from 127 other than crits. There's been many posts by other clerics stating very weak bursts, but in light of everyhting else, has mostly been overlooked.

ShadowFlash

[arkonas]

I really don't see why wf are getting affected with this nerf. Their spells are already limited and don't give any real extra like the heal spell. for me i know reconstruct is buggy atm. We click on it and either it doesn't get cast or it hits for a only a decent amount.

Remember Reconstruct is wf only and has no real special abilities when compared to the fleshy part of heal which does a lot more. But honestly the way its going. More you keep stripping from wf. The less that race is going to be seen played. They have horrible choices of docents and keep falling behind in caster related with motu hitting. (named wise) I'm just wondering when wf will lose all immunities and no longer be worth it anymore. Spidersilk robes for example. when will we see a docent with this? i understand stone heart and ancient gemstone can be added to sets but yet again i don't see any of them having the power spidersilk robes has.

My point about wf is they keep getting the short end of the stick so they keep falling behind now. Im hoping they will get some sort of bone to make up for the constant problems they suffer.

I also don't understand the use the cures argument either. So you want me to use a spell that heals for less and therefore i will burn through my sp more just to make up for what were lacking? Is that what im understanding?

When we get up to the level of receiving heal spell were happy. It was the ultimate heal spell. worst part right now with wf amp broken. It requires SOOOO much more healing just to keep one alive.

last point you mention for them to use other cures besides heal in higher level content. What i hear from a dev use MORE sp so you run out. Buy MORE pots now. In any mmo when the best heal spells are unlocked its what they use. the other healing spells are used less. I don't see a reason to nerf the best and up the weaker ones. It will just consume more sp which people will really complain about if their burning through more pots.

Please understand Heal spell has not only been our best cure spell ever but now its even more important with disease and poison the way it is now. A lot of people are now suffering a lot of stat damage. So not only does it help their hp but removing the negative effects is a huge bonus. cure spells itself cant fix this.

[Nyvn]

I did not make it through the entire thread, but here are some answers for now:

1. Is it difficult to put the actual percentage that an effect is reduced/increased by Spell Power? One of my reasons for asking this is due to how you stated Rune Arms have a variable reduction based on what type of Rune Arm, but we have no way of knowing which Rune Arms have which degree of reduced Spell Power gains. Is Force Shot 50%, 65%, 80%? Is Exploding Cannonball Shot 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%? And the other Rune Arm shots? Actually giving the percentage would be helpful in the tooltip noting that the effect has reduced/increased Spell Power gains.

No this isn’t that difficult and we will pursue it.


5. Is it true that we need 100 devotion item to break even? Here’s some math:
Take the Heal spell.

For a character with the max life magic line (life magic IV), and no metas. I also exclude healing amp since it applies equally to both cases.

Old system, with superior potency or superior devotion:

150 x (1+.4+.5) + 150*1.9 = 285

New system, with the SAME equipment (sup potency VI converted, so assume sp 48 with an implement bonus of 9)
SP = 100 + (40+48+9)/2 = 168.5. Times 150 = 252, a 12% loss.

Now, we'd all agree that equipment is gimp, so let's toss it out, and use better at-level equipment. Say a devotion 72 item, with a 15 implement bonus. That is STILL

SP = 100 + (40+72+15)/2 = 183, times 150 = 274, a 4% loss.

In fact, in order to get back to your old level for heal, you would need a 100 devotion item just to break even, and get back to the old level (since half of 100 is 50, the old bonus you got in the old system, and the enhancement bonus of 40 remains the same).

100 devotion is very high level in this new system, certainly > level 20. And that's just to get back to the old, pre-expansion level.

While looking into the gameplay experience of healers, we’ve determined that a number of tools available to you are not performing to a satisfactory degree in higher level play. To that end, we are increasing the amount of Spell Power that the following spells benefit from: Cure Light Wounds (115%), Cure Moderate Wounds (115%), Cure Serious Wounds (115%), Cure Critical Wounds (115%).




Thanks for the discussion, but what I really want to know is. Why are you making the simple system more complicated? Why don't you change the base damage done by spells (and Rune Arms) you're not happy with. That way players have a more uniform experience, and can make informed decisions about spells, and gear.

[justagame]

Thank you for the reply, but heal is the best single target heal spell available in the game, to the point where other than scrolls, it's the ONLY option for someone who's way down on hp. Cure crit without metas doesn't come close. With metas, it's still less healing, and actually MORE EXPENSIVE than heal.

With epic levels and destiny abilities, melee character HP has gone way, way up. Not 10%, not 20%. It's not uncommon to find pugs that have melees at 700, 800, 900 hp, have even seen one over 1,000.

And even with BETTER gear available in the update, heal is down a little. With the BEST devotion gear, it's about 3% up.

Let me share this experience. It's not even new content, but I was getting some gear ready for a future TR, and need to run a couple of shrouds. (I only mention shroud because it's been my only raid in the last couple of weeks, other than that I've mostly been running epics with guildies and the new content.) This is a well-geared, 3rd life evoker FVS. Full life magic line, devotion 96 item + 12 implement bonus. Obviously, better gear than pre-update. (But, a weapon I need to swap out of to do any offensive casting now).

In each run, most melee characters all over 700 hp. One over 1,000, 1-2 over 900, a few over 800. Mass heal was good, up about 30% from before. Of course, hit points are up about 50% from before, so the proportion of health healed is less. During mass heal cooldowns, there was always one or two who got hit hard and needed emergency healing.

Heal often didn't do the job in those cases, only partially filling red bars. And that is predictable -- Even with the devotion 96 item, heal is only about 2% better than before. Non-defender melees have gone from 600 to 900+, a 50% increase, and the only realistic single target healing spell in the game is 2% better, with good equipment. Adding another 30 spell power (no -- 15!) from the EA destiny only makes that total 10% better. THAT is why divines keep telling you they feel like they are being left behind.

And let's be clear on something: Adding 15% to the cure xxx wounds spells helps Rangers and Paladins, not clerics and FVS. Those spells can't even come close to replace what heal is doing. If you try to heal high end groups with cure spells and mass cures, you will run out of spell points in no time.

Heal was already made more expensive in the great spell pass. And now it's getting left behind in a big way. And I don't think the AC system negates this in any sense. Sure, the rogue in leather armor gets hit a little less, but he wasn't the problem. The 900 or 1000 hit point defender is the problem, and he's getting hit MORE. Besides, forget AC, enemy spellcasters are also hitting for more.

Bottom line:
Player hit points are up, in many cases as much as 50% higher or more.
Mob damage is greater, and faster.
Heal, the biggest single target healing option, treaded water at best, and only with epic gear upgrades.
Mass heal got better, it's very slow even then, the boost is less than the HP increase.

Heal needs better than 50% spell power. Maybe not full, but 75% at least.

[bigolbear]

Dear MAD, Id like to address point 4 and point 6.


------------------------------------------------------------
4. reconstruct.
BALANCING RECONSTRUCT VS HEAL, AND REPAIR VS CURE.

I would care to remind the devs that reconstruct does not benefit from any metamagcis other than quicken, heal on the other hand benefits from empowered heal. Further more repair amp does not exist, whereas heal amp is highly prevalent(required for tanks) post lvl 20.

Reconstruct is not just a spell used by wf arcanes to heal them selves, it is used by arcanes to reapir wf tanks. those wf tanks have upwards of 1000 hp. In the current implementation it is actualy WORTH having an arcane repairing the wf rather than the cleric healing them, and on a wf with only a moderate amount of healers freind and no heal amp the numbers are comparable.

In current end game a fully repair specced wf arcane is 'healing' for the same numbers that a fully heal specced cleric is. the difference is that the clerics heal is additionaly curing stat damage, poisons, diseases etc.

I completely agree that repair and curative spells should be balanced to each other. there for upping cure spells to 115% should ALSO mean you up repair spells.

As warforge are now susceptable to these factors and you want to make sure that recon is balanced vs heal id propose the folowing modifications:

1. empower metamagic to effect reconstruct.
2. reconstuct modified to same % from spell power as heal.
3. reapair spells modified to same % from spell power as cures.
4. reconstruct now cures everything heal does - stat damage, diseases, poisons etc, the speed boost is removed(it never stacked with haste anyways)
5. repair amp: the simplest way i can see for increasing the amount of repairs that wf mele tanks get without increasing the amount wf arcanes give them selves is if WF recieve an amount of repair amp based equal to the %damage reduction from PRR. Thus a warforge in heavy plating (ie not an arcane) will recieve a greater total benefit from a reconstruct, and a warforge in mithril plating(ie a scout or battle caster) will recieve a small boost. Additionaly come the enhancemnt pass repair amp should be addressed - this would only be a quick fix. an alternative quick fox would be to give all ITEMS that currently grant heal amp to also grant repair amp - but that would have an impact on wf arcanes as well.



---------------------------------------------------------------
6. healing aura and burst.

AURA: the aura is working fine, nothing wrong here after some regearing.

BURST: somethign is definately borked here. the burst is not the undead nuke it once was. and its healing is sub par.

burst healing: on my cleric, the burst is hitting for 130 is points of healing on average. Infact its thwoing out the same kinda numbers as mass CLW. IT should be giving more. It should be according to the description be giving d8 + 1 per CL - with no indication of a max CL. according to that logic i should be seeing numbers comparable to my mass cure serious.(250+) I beleive the burst is maxing out its CL, or it is not being fully effected by either spell power or metamagics.

burst vs undead: again this ability is much much weaker than it was before. it sayd D6 per CL - no cap., now thats what most of my sorcs spells are so i know the kind of damage i should be getting.. ie in the 400 to 600+ range considering i have maximise, empower heal, and lots of positive spell power.

What im seeing is more along the lines of 110 on a passed save and 220ish on a failed. Again I think either metamics, spell power or an unlisted MAX caster lvl is to blame here.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

General points of note related to this discussion:

1. Have you considered making the spells that take reduced effectiveness from spell power take instead: full spell power from enhancements/EDs etc. 0 spell power from items. Alternativly and better simply take the highest of either.

I mention this as an idea because it occurs to me that this could be used to reduce slot dependancy (but only for these spells). Without unbalancing the game it would make a lot of battle clerics very happy. It would also be beneficial for nuker arcanes, meaning they only need to slot impulse and radiance - or slot all 3 but save on healing enhancements. both could of course swap to healing items come raid time. TRUE healer clerics would gain the benefit of cheap efficient cure spells - they are the only ones that use them as the rest of us are too busy doing damage to micromanage to that extent.

Conversely for WF it would mean that any arcane could become 'recon specced' for a given encounter by swapping to a reconstruction item, wheras an actual wf arcane would not need an item becuase they have spent the enhancement points.

[Skavenaps]

with ranged damage been subpar with melee and spells, cant still understand why nerf the rune arms.

[PNellesen]

This is not correct. I have THE best gear possible and my numbers are substantially smaller post update. Please check again.

/signed

Why can my level 8 Sorcerer do more damage with Scorching Ray (on a percentage basis) than my level 23 Cleric can with Avenging Light?

Please give Clerics a little more love in the offensive casting department, ok?

[FrozenNova]

Put me down as also claiming that the idea of having spells be varyingly influenced by spellpower is a silly one. The biggest driving force behind the spellpower change seemed to have been to simplify the mechanics. That was done, now we have an additively stacking percentile bonus. Only, if spells benefit from varying percentages of spellpower, your actual spellpower number is not directly meaningful, which is exactly what the simplification was aiming for.

[MadFloyd]

I'm really trying to like this game again after a 5 month hiatus but wow the nerf ninja hit hard this time. I like the new spell power system in concept only, in game functionality is lacking big time to the point that your experienced players are clueless. 1) We have no idea what are spell power is, how it stacks and how Meta's improve this total. I've read the posts over, and over explaining the formula's but I'm still at a complete loss at how it all functions together.

What we need is a spell power total in the character sheet to let us know what are total spell power is for each damage type along with the multipliers for crit. That was we can see how this new system, equipment and Meta's are impacting our spell damage.

This is coming in patch 2.

[Auralana7214]

4. reconstruct.
BALANCING RECONSTRUCT VS HEAL, AND REPAIR VS CURE.

The point of the exceptions to Spell Power are not to balance certain spells against each other. The point is to balance them to what they were before the update.

If your reconstruct is working better than it did before the update (or would be if all the wf bugs were fixed) then that is where balancing comes in. If your reconstruct is not working as well as before the update (again, taking current bugs into consideration), that would be a valid point to post in this thread.

[Hordo]

This is coming in patch 2.

That is awesome news. :D

[Feather_of_Sun]

We'd like to apologize for any accidental misinformation.
The 15% numbers Madfloyd posted regarding Cure spells are not final. We haven't yet internally decided on the exact extent (numbers) or scope (which spells affected) of any spell buffs in Update 15.

[MRMechMan]

When player HP, mob damage, player melee damage , sorc/wiz spell damage are all going UP...

why was keeping divine spell damage/healing constant even a goal?

Do you sell that many sp pots to the divine classes?


ps FIX healers friend or at least ACKNOWLEDGE the problem.

[morticianjohn]

Spell damage dice are not very granular, so any adjustment is a large change, while spell power coefficients can be set to any percentage we need. It’s a much simpler and more effective tool for balancing spell effects.

You know the range of boosts that are availible in the game for example

maximize, empower, empower healing, and spellpower from items and enhancements. With that knowledge and the additive system of spellpower it would be easier to balance the spells at the base. Currently the way spellpower works this is what could happen going forward.

Lets say that right now the average lvl 20 healer has 100 devotion spellpower from items. Currently you've worked to balance the heal spell against the cure spells (meaning a slight buff to the cures and a slight nerf to the heal spell). In some future update the level cap goes up to 30 and ML 30 spellpower items grant 200 devotion spellpower. Cure moderate wounds gets 115% but heal get 50% spellpower. Therefore as gear gets better and levels go up Heal becomes worse and worse compared to cures eventually requiring it to be rebalanced to remain effective.

If you were to balance the spells at the base they would stay relative to each other in power no matter what you add to the game in terms of spellpower, feats, enhancements etc...

In addition it would be easier for the players to figure out the effectiveness of each spell because even if you list the % of spellpower in the description (as you've said you want to do in some future update) they still have to take their overall spellpower subtract the spellpower they get from feats and then multiply by whatever % you give them to get the correct spellpower. Do this for 10-20 different spells with varying spellpower and you've essentially turned something very simple (spellpower) into one of the most complicated aspects of the game.

In otherwords easier for the devs to balance (short term) but much less intuitive and more difficult for the players than balancing at the base.

[morticianjohn]

This is coming in patch 2.

and yet I'll still have to recalc everything for each spell with differing spellpower percentages.

Heal 50%
Cures 101%
Rune arm 80% for some

edit:// Sorry I said I won't troll any longer. I think I'm just going to take a break from the forums so players who still play the game will have more input than me (who hasn't played since the update).

See you all in 9 months.

[NytCrawlr]

My suggestion on healing and spellpower is simple: Change Healing Amplification from a "Heals hit you for X% more" to "Heals hit you for an additional X points". That latter would make Cure potions worth something at high level, keep Heal in check, and would be easier to understand too. Plus you could then add higher Healing Amp items without breaking the game. You would need to have a lower healing amp coefficient on Radiant Servant Auras and Druid HoTs possibly (getting hit for 125 a tick by an Aura might be silly), but that could be worked out on Lamannia.

All of this. Time to cut down some of the insanity that is healing amp. While I am rightly enjoying my 230% healing amp tank character at the moment, I definitely see that it is too much, and since this is the main sore point for giving the heal spells (heal and mass heal) only 50% of SP, it's time to attack this part of the equation too so you can balance everything out.

[Scraap]

My suggestion on healing and spellpower is simple: Change Healing Amplification from a "Heals hit you for X% more" to "Heals hit you for an additional X points". That latter would make Cure potions worth something at high level, keep Heal in check, and would be easier to understand too. Plus you could then add higher Healing Amp items without breaking the game. You would need to have a lower healing amp coefficient on Radiant Servant Auras and Druid HoTs possibly (getting hit for 125 a tick by an Aura might be silly), but that could be worked out on Lamannia.

Went from a 'forged SD to a helf one (not just due to the healing amp bit, but also looking down the line to when the racials will be making the pre redundant), so almost full-spectrum shift. Much, much more noticeable.

Thinking something along the lines of 'effective spell power' would fit their new system best long term.

[Atree]

...

3. It feels like, as a Cleric, we are being pushed into one roll or another, which I despise. I don't like weapon swapping, especially when it means a quarterstaff, to get the same result as I used to

You may want to find another item slot where you can get Devotion in that case. You can easily find rings or helmets with Devotion, and named items that fill other body slots have Devotion as well.


...

I've yet to find any non-weapon/shield devotion item for my lvl 16 FvS. Can you please give me an example of an item I can loot/craft to get 100+ devotion at this level?

Before U14 I was using Superior Ardor clickies to boost my Heal and mass CLW/CMW. Heal was consistently hitting for over 400 per cast. Since the update I only get 240-270. My wands were downgraded to Improved Ardor, which does not make a noticeable difference and is no longer worth the inventory slots and clicky management.

Have you even considered what effect the changes would have on a heroic divine that chooses not to take the Empower Healing feat? Melee specced divines were hard enough to build before (and biased against in PuGs), so why force them to take an extra feat that drains their shallower sp-pool faster?

[countfitz]

While looking into the gameplay experience of healers, we’ve determined that a number of tools available to you are not performing to a satisfactory degree in higher level play. To that end, we are increasing the amount of Spell Power that the following spells benefit from: Cure Light Wounds (115%), Cure Moderate Wounds (115%), Cure Serious Wounds (115%), Cure Critical Wounds (115%).



At this point, you realize that you're ruining the gameplay experience of DIVINES, and that you're making it impossible for groups that require healers to play have any success in getting a PUG together because we're refusing to PUG anymore (FYI, it is easier to solo than try to heal PUGs because of your changes, most players DO NOT, like you think, try to make it easier for us, they just expect us to work harder for them) so you fix it by MAKING IT MORE COMPLICATED.

Is that seriously the answer? At least you've acknowledge you've made such a huge mistake in this. I know you didn't say it, but we all know from the fact that you posted any of this at all, and constantly defend your position, that the game must be slowly dying right now, and of all the bugs, game breaking changes, and lack of the new raid, this is probably the biggest reason. That's just sad.

Solutions:
1) Go back to the old system.
2) Make all spells react exactly how they should. No modifying, changing %, or anything else. Spell Power 48 gives 48% more of everything. Everything. In the end you won't have complaints, and, though not a programmer, I fail to see how this could be more complicated. I just see bug upon bug upon bug by doing it your way.

Lets be honest. We're mad enough that our former Greater Potency IV items, that were perfect for all our spells, now give Spell Power 48 and are pretty meaningless. That alone nerfed us.

But you're dropping more overpowered loot you say? That would cause problems if you don't change things you say?

Guess what. It was the choice to drop so much overpowered loot, NOT anything else, that caused all these problems (nightmares, anyone?). Now you know Monty Haul doesn't work. Stop THAT problem, and everything else will fix itself.

And finally, one of the BIGGEST problems here is that you devs feel that it is the DIVINES job to just heal. Most of us play this game because it is one of the few MMOs that, before this update, seemed not to pigeonhole use like that. Don't do that.

[EatSmart]

What im seeing is more along the lines of 110 on a passed save and 220ish on a failed. Again I think either metamics, spell power or an unlisted MAX caster lvl is to blame here.


From its original implimentation as an ability picked up at character level 12, it should be a level 6 spell capped at caster level 15 unless anything has been overly fiddled with this year.

[Chette]

While looking into the gameplay experience of healers, we’ve determined that a number of tools available to you are not performing to a satisfactory degree in higher level play. To that end, we are increasing the amount of Spell Power that the following spells benefit from: Cure Light Wounds (115%), Cure Moderate Wounds (115%), Cure Serious Wounds (115%), Cure Critical Wounds (115%).

While I certainly appreciate this threat MadFloyd, this answer doesn't even remotely answer the question. The poster asked if we indeed needed 100 devotion just to "break-even" on heal, and your answer was to not even mention the heal spell, but to tell them about other spells they could use. It's like if I took my washing machine in to Sears complaining it was broken and they handed me a wash board instead.

Heal should not have been reduced below its previous power. A Cleric or FvS should be able to cast a heal of the same effectiveness as they were before the update, with reasonable at-level gear. Level 12-20 divines are now seeing significant reductions in the power of their heal spell. Yes, I'm sure that level 21+ divines have access to better gear, but telling me that I can now heal for more in epic content on an epic character than I used to be able to on a heroic character doesn't mean anything. My level 8 wizard does more damage then my level 3 wizard...that's not hard to figure out, and shouldn't treated as a "bonus".

There is a HUGE problem with expecting divines to be casting single target cures, and boosting their spell power isn't going to fix that problem. The main problems are:

1. Cost: The single target cures, even with added spell power, will still be higher cost to cast than heal, because the cost of metamagics doesn't scale. It costs the same to maximize a level 9 spell as it does to maximize a level 1 spell. As a result, low level spells, like the single target cures, are very inefficient and costly.

2. Effectiveness: Single target cures do not heal stat damage, remove poison, or disease, all of which are very prevalent in the new content.

3. Spell slots: I do not have a single cure spell (other then 2 masses) loaded on my favoured soul because I have other spells loaded. Buffs, debuffs, crowd control, and other utility spells. You claim you're not trying to force us into a heal-bot role, yet you are trying to force us to water down our spell books with many different healing spells.

4. Hotbar slots: Even if I had room to load a single-target cure spell, I don't have room for it on my hotbar. Half of my main hotbar is already devoted to healing, with heal, mass heal, mass cure light, mass cure moderate scrolls, heal scrolls and renewal. Again I return to the argument that most divine casters are NOT healbots. My hotbars should not be junked up with 10 different cure spells and scrolls, else there will be no room for blade barrier, implode, soundburst, greater command, destruct, divine punishment, rebuke foe, etc, etc, etc. Divines fill many roles, and while healing is arguable one of the most important ones in a raid, it is not the only one. Forcing us to focus significnatly more time and resources just to be as effective at healing as we were before the update takes away from rest of our classes abilities, and pushes us more and more towards the healbot role.

I think this is extremely poor reasoning for the change to heal, and does not at all account for the variety and versatility of the divine classes. It results in only one thing, which is forcing these players to focus more on healing, and less on their other abilities.

[GermanicusMaximus]

While looking into the gameplay experience of healers


What is this Healer class to which you refer? I think you have been hanging out with too many melee players. A "healer" is nothing but a bot played by someone lacking the skill to play a real toon, who runs around facililtating the play of melee players, who also lack the skill to play a real toon.



It feels like, as a Cleric, we are being pushed into one roll or another, which I despise. I don't like weapon swapping, especially when it means a quarterstaff, to get the same result as I used to


I would recommend you pay some heed to the player you quoted, and address it in a constructive fashion. Referring to "healers" clearly indicates you have no concept of what you have done to people playing real divine casters in this game.

While I'll admit I have been enjoying reading The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in my newly found free time, I still harbor some faint hopes that the divine caster classes in this game will be unborked, although that hopes diminishes by the day.



we’ve determined that a number of tools available to you are not performing to a satisfactory degree in higher level play. To that end, we are increasing the amount of Spell Power that the following spells benefit from: Cure Light Wounds (115%), Cure Moderate Wounds (115%), Cure Serious Wounds (115%), Cure Critical Wounds (115%).


A 15% bump to spells that are mostly meaningless once a divine caster hits level 18 really does nothing constructive to address the real issues.



Positive Energy Burst: I'm hitting for significantly less. My cleric was 12 before the patch and is 12 now as he is apart of a static group. Nothing on him has changed, why the difference?

We would need more info to comment on this, namely level and equipment being used.


This ability has been significantly nerfed, even at level 20, using gear that was state of the art for Update 13 (LoB alchemical Superior Devotion 9/Superior Healing Lore) and the pertinent metas (Empower Healing, Empower Spell, Maximize Spell), and the full line of non-crit healing enhancements.

I would have expected this to be fully tested and calibrated as part of the spell power conversion done as part of Update 14.

Does the development team really lack the skills to benchmark the performance of key abilities on Update 13 and 14, and compute the necessary adjustments to spell power? If so, it would have been wise never to undertake the conversion to spell power, which has added nothing of value to this game.



I went to all the time and effort to make my Alchemical Dev IX shields because of the increasing level cap, hp, and damage I knew was coming in U14. So, what now? What do we do to compensate for the loss of healing?

How has it actually affected gameplay? How much of a healing loss have you experienced? Either healing is not difficult (in which little further change is needed) or some adjustments on our part is necessary.


Well, I have stopped playing the game, which I would characterize as a fairly substantial impact to gameplay.

Healing is not simply an ability used to restore HPs to player characters. It is an offensive capability against undead, and it should be calibrated as an offensive weapon against undead with a level of damage comparable to the 8k crits that sorcs are experiencing.



With the massive hp inflation from expansion, heal (not mass heal) is relatively less powerful (hp incrased by 20-50% while heal is the same as before). While you could before refill someone in one cast, it is no longer possible. To compensate people need to slot more healing amp... But we know that some people already don't carry some needed items (such as fortification), is it really wise to add a new must have?

Heal still increases as you get into the expansion pack and get better gear. Keep in mind that it’s not all about what tools the healer has but what tools the players taking damage have. With the AC changes we expect players in the highest level/difficulty content to take fewer hits than they did previously.


If you are having to bork divine casters because AC has become too effective, its probably time to make AC less effective.

As an alternative, I would gladly take healing capabilities that are applicable only to (Self, Foe), which would allow melee toons to keep their enhanced AC.

[countfitz]

Have you even considered what effect the changes would have on a heroic divine that chooses not to take the Empower Healing feat? Melee specced divines were hard enough to build before (and biased against in PuGs), so why force them to take an extra feat that drains their shallower sp-pool faster?

That is the major point of all this. The devs are actively trying to make "Divines" healers, nannybots, and stop us from doing anything else. At the very best we're supposed to carry some new thurmatuergy staff with devotion and radiance and blast stuff as a dps caster.

So have fun.

[Ebondevil]

We'd like to apologize for any accidental misinformation.
The 15% numbers Madfloyd posted regarding Cure spells are not final. We haven't yet internally decided on the exact extent (numbers) or scope (which spells affected) of any spell buffs in Update 15.

Simple answer, none of them, have Spellpower effect all spells at a 1 Spellpower = 1% increase ratio: Heal, Mass Heal, Reconstruct, Cures, Repairs etc.

If the spells need balancing, balance the spells themselves, not the way that Spellpower effects them.

Lower level Cure/Repair spells for Art/Clr/FvS/Sor/Wiz have the benefit that you can cast them even when out of SP due to the small SP recovery gained. The only time these spells should be used is when you want a small top up to health, or when you're out of SP.

Heal and Reconstruct should give the most benefit for single target Healing/Repairing bar none, unless you're going to start giving Casters Epic Spells.

[countfitz]

I'm really trying to like this game again after a 5 month hiatus but wow the nerf ninja hit hard this time. I like the new spell power system in concept only, in game functionality is lacking big time to the point that your experienced players are clueless. 1) We have no idea what are spell power is, how it stacks and how Meta's improve this total. I've read the posts over, and over explaining the formula's but I'm still at a complete loss at how it all functions together.

What we need is a spell power total in the character sheet to let us know what are total spell power is for each damage type along with the multipliers for crit. That was we can see how this new system, equipment and Meta's are impacting our spell damage.

Due to the devs overcomplicating everything by not giving all spells the same amount, not to mention the bugs that a lot of people are sure are still out there despite the devs saying they're not, they probably COULDN'T do this if they wanted to.

On top of that, the probably don't want to.

[gphysalis]

Can you just make all healing spells personal only, so that healers are not overpowered?
While you are at it, make all buff spells personal only (Blur too, not just displacement)
Finally, can you make offensive spells personal only (Kind of like negative energy burst)

[darksol23]

You know the range of boosts that are availible in the game for example

maximize, empower, empower healing, and spellpower from items and enhancements. With that knowledge and the additive system of spellpower it would be easier to balance the spells at the base. Currently the way spellpower works this is what could happen going forward.

Lets say that right now the average lvl 20 healer has 100 devotion spellpower from items. Currently you've worked to balance the heal spell against the cure spells (meaning a slight buff to the cures and a slight nerf to the heal spell). In some future update the level cap goes up to 30 and ML 30 spellpower items grant 200 devotion spellpower. Cure moderate wounds gets 115% but heal get 50% spellpower. Therefore as gear gets better and levels go up Heal becomes worse and worse compared to cures eventually requiring it to be rebalanced to remain effective.

If you were to balance the spells at the base they would stay relative to each other in power no matter what you add to the game in terms of spellpower, feats, enhancements etc...

In addition it would be easier for the players to figure out the effectiveness of each spell because even if you list the % of spellpower in the description (as you've said you want to do in some future update) they still have to take their overall spellpower subtract the spellpower they get from feats and then multiply by whatever % you give them to get the correct spellpower. Do this for 10-20 different spells with varying spellpower and you've essentially turned something very simple (spellpower) into one of the most complicated aspects of the game.

In otherwords easier for the devs to balance (short term) but much less intuitive and more difficult for the players than balancing at the base.

Amen. +1

[Siro]

That is the major point of all this. The devs are actively trying to make "Divines" healers, nannybots, and stop us from doing anything else. At the very best we're supposed to carry some new thurmatuergy staff with devotion and radiance and blast stuff as a dps caster.

So have fun.

This is the part that's bothered me the most. Why actively push divines away from Melee builds when there's not enough in the way of divine spells to focus on damage or insta-kills or crowd control or enhancements to boost them?

[joker965]

Please fix the bugs before you change anything. Without changing any equipment or buffs my healing aura is constantly changing. This is the perfect test as it is using all possible healing power+metamagics so all the cures or heals should be impacted in proportion.

This happens every time.

1. Use healing aura and it ticks for 29

2. Die in a quest

3. Rezzed

4. Wait for death penalty to expire

5. Use healing aura and it ticks for 24

6. remove all my equipment and put it back on

7. Use healing aura and it ticks for 27

8. leave and re-enter quest or logout and back in

9. Use healing aura and it ticks for 29

The stacking effects of healing spell power are not being calculated correctly when things change. I can only assume other spell power problems are also occurring in a similar fashion.

P.S. Changing the rules so that spell power works differently for heals and cures is insanity. Do you not like yourselves DEVS?

[Scraap]

This is the part that's bothered me the most. Why actively push divines away from Melee builds when there's not enough in the way of divine spells to focus on damage or insta-kills or crowd control or enhancements to boost them?

I will say this on that aspect, purely from my PoV as someone with a non-capped clonk:

I'm still not a very good Cleric due to the attention fragmentation required to command one, commetfall a second, mass the party, top off the sponge of the day, and pay attention to the mob right up on me (One of the reasons the one I've got has a 2-splash monk, for training wheels). Between the crafting changes (was using kamas, so I had some extra spell-pen/dc/dps in the offhand depending on situation till I get some real gear) and the spellpower reworks, I've got to put myself in even more of a good mood before I consider breaking him out.

Could I focus purely on one aspect of one aspect (the heal side of casting)? Sure. Would I want to? No, not really.

Personal philosophy has always been that some things should be a given for a given class, so you can focus on other things, and bring more than one dimension to the party.

Now that may be one of your design sub-goals, and we're simply misinterpreting, but if so, it doesn't really feel like you're there yet.

[Tirisha]

3. It feels like, as a Cleric, we are being pushed into one roll or another, which I despise. I don't like weapon swapping, especially when it means a quarterstaff, to get the same result as I used to

You may want to find another item slot where you can get Devotion in that case. You can easily find rings or helmets with Devotion, and named items that fill other body slots have Devotion as well.




Is there an item you can slot out there somewhere that gives greater than 78 devotion? 78 devotion=39% which is a direct nerf to melee heal spells.

If there's something I'm missing that I can slot that doesn't replace my Sirrocos, I'd be perfectly fine.

[Ertay]

When player HP, mob damage, player melee damage , sorc/wiz spell damage are all going UP...

why was keeping divine spell damage/healing constant even a goal?

Do you sell that many sp pots to the divine classes?


ps FIX healers friend or at least ACKNOWLEDGE the problem.

30% healing amp is now a given on gloves slot. This item alone should be carried by everyone who expects to get healed, in every raid or higher difficulty party. 20% and 10% are also available on random loot now, which makes it far easier to fit them in. 30 Positive energy spellpower is easily twisted or taken from tier 1 of the fvs tree. There also are are a lot more free healing abilities from that same tree along with others as well.

I agree there has been an hp inflation and this does not complete balance the changes out, but to say divine healing overall has been kept constant is not correct by a long shot. The heal spell has nearly been kept constant, while heal mass got buffed overall.

[MRMechMan]

30% healing amp is now a given on gloves slot. This item alone should be carried by everyone who expects to get healed, in every raid or higher difficulty party. 20% and 10% are also available on random loot now, which makes it far easier to fit them in. 30 Positive energy spellpower is easily twisted or taken from tier 1 of the fvs tree. There also are are a lot more free healing abilities from that same tree along with others as well.

I agree there has been an hp inflation and this does not complete balance the changes out, but to say divine healing overall has been kept constant is not correct by a long shot. The heal spell has nearly been kept constant, while heal mass got buffed overall.

So ONE, we need epic destinies to get back to where we were before? Even though every other class got MASSIVE buffs?

And TWO, they've nerfed healing spells, but it is OK, because if you have xpac you can get a 30% amp item easily?

Healing amp is now a given on the gloves slot? Sure, lock the glove slot on every character that is a fvs/clr/barb/fighter/ranger/paladin/rogue/bard/druid/monk because they decided to single out healing spells as the ones that get the axe?

And THREE, if you were actually GEARED and had a way to buff mass heal, mass heal DID get nerfed as bad as heal did.


Devs have traditionally shown very little love towards divines, enough so that I personally have gotten used to it. I don't expect new toys with updates like arcanes or melees get.

I just find this attitude towards divines a little strange as they are what makes the pugging system possible...no pugs, no DDO...sure guild channel runs will go on after the pug scene dies but variety is the spice of life, and pugging is the soul of DDO. No divines-->no pugging--->max exodus--->dead ddo.

The only reason I can see to nerf healing is to sell more sp pots in the store. I just don't think potentially sacrificing the pug system for a few dollars is reasonable, logical or fair in anyway.

It's just a stupid buisness decision.

[Fefnir_2011]

Skimmed the thread, gonna try and hit the major things that others didn't bring up.




2. So many have been noting that divine light spells are only getting .5 as well, is this a bug?

The only light damage spell that is getting half spell power is Summon Archon, which is on the list we provided in the forum post.


The Avenging Light SLA from Exalted Angel, as well as Divine Punishment, are in fact doing less damage than they were. Whether it's from half spell power or from a ninja nerf, we know it happened, and an explanation would be nice.



While looking into the gameplay experience of healers, we’ve determined that a number of tools available to you are not performing to a satisfactory degree in higher level play. To that end, we are increasing the amount of Spell Power that the following spells benefit from: Cure Light Wounds (115%), Cure Moderate Wounds (115%), Cure Serious Wounds (115%), Cure Critical Wounds (115%).


Al l of the spells you listed, and the Big Two that you didn't (Heal/Mass Heal) have a caster level cap. Until we have the ability to raise max divine caster level cap, and gain additional caster levels, raising the spell power on wimpy and inefficient spells is kind of pointless.



We would need more info to comment on this, namely level and equipment being used.


Before expansion:
level 20 Cleric, Superior Potency VI item (Torin's Choker) and Greater Arcane Lore (Green Blade). Radiant Servant II, Prayer of Life II, Prayer of Incredible Life II, Cleric Life Magic IV.

After Expansion:
Level 24 Cleric/5 Exalted Angel, Devotion +102 item (Holy Symbol of Lolth) and Superior Healing Lore (Signet of the Shining Sun. Same enhancements. My radiant bursts are healing for less now than they were pre-xpac.



We’d prefer to boost cure spells as mentioned in the response to question 5.

8. I went to all the time and effort to make my Alchemical Dev IX shields because of the increasing level cap, hp, and damage I knew was coming in U14. So, what now? What do we do to compensate for the loss of healing?

How has it actually affected gameplay? How much of a healing loss have you experienced? Either healing is not difficult (in which little further change is needed) or some adjustments on our part is necessary.


Between losing spellpower on Heal (And yes, I can prove this) and the massive HP numbers being reached by melees, healing has become a PITA on my Favored Soul. When a Paladin has 1.5k HP, for example, and gets knocked down to 600-700 hp, I have to use a Heal Spell and a Heal Scroll to get him to 1.2k-1.3k, as both alone hit for about 300 HP. This is exacerbated by the anti-healing amp environmental effect in the new raid, but you can see what's happened.

I feel like I need to take Empower Healing to stay a good raid healer, but doing so makes me a worse offensive spellcaster. Sorcerers don't have to take Empower Buffing to be good buffers in a raid situation. And Wizards get bonus feats out the wazoo.

Long story short, you've made raid healing far more difficult if you don't have Empower Healing, and running with Empowered Healing on gets mana-intensive fast.



Heal still increases as you get into the expansion pack and get better gear. Keep in mind that it’s not all about what tools the healer has but what tools the players taking damage have. With the AC changes we expect players in the highest level/difficulty content to take fewer hits than they did previously.


You have to understand that this isn't true for everyone. Despite changes to AC, the new Epic Hard/Elite settings have melees taking more damage than ever before, and our healing power hasn't increased.

My Favored Soul pre-XPAC:
Rahkir's Set Bonus (+5% crits, +50% damage on crits)
Alchemical Superior Devotion IX (50% more healing)
Favored Soul Life Magic IV, crit lines to II

My Favored Soul just after XPAC:
Rahkir's Set Bonus
Devotion +90 (Which is really Devotion +45 for Heal spells)
same enhancements

As you can see, I lost 5% effectiveness on my Heal Spells. This means that my healing effectiveness got worse, while incoming damage and player HP almost doubled. Even now after some gear grinding, I have the Holy Symbol of Lolth for +51 Devotion to Heal spells and Superior Healing Lore from the cleric ring, and I'm 1% more effective at healing while melees have gained 50% more hp.


I know this will probably be ignored, but please. Listen to the gear people have now, and actually send out people to gather data on healing in raid situations. Even if all you do is ask people to tape their raid runs from a healer's perspective and send them in, I think you need a driver's seat view of what's happened in healing.

[Auralana7214]

Is there an item you can slot out there somewhere that gives greater than 78 devotion? 78 devotion=39% which is a direct nerf to melee heal spells.

If there's something I'm missing that I can slot that doesn't replace my Sirrocos, I'd be perfectly fine.

One can find random loot that fits the bill, but, in an effort to stack multiple effects in one slot, I am finding it hard to fit in a random loot piece.

Currently my Cleric is wearing the Gauntlets of Eternity which only carries a +60 to Spell Power, but it also has other attributes on it that I like. I could give up these Gauntlets for something else, but it would have to be something with better other attributes. For now I will be healing below my potential.

[Tirisha]

One can find random loot that fits the bill, but, in an effort to stack multiple effects in one slot, I am finding it hard to fit in a random loot piece.

Currently my Cleric is wearing the Gauntlets of Eternity which only carries a +60 to Spell Power, but it also has other attributes on it that I like. I could give up these Gauntlets for something else, but it would have to be something with better other attributes. For now I will be healing below my potential.

are they the ioun stone of the xpack? I haven't seen any, just checked AH too, no devotion items that can be worn cept a crafted one (with low stat ofc)

[Atree]

30% healing amp is now a given on gloves slot. This item alone should be carried by everyone who expects to get healed, in every raid or higher difficulty party. 20% and 10% are also available on random loot now, which makes it far easier to fit them in. 30 Positive energy spellpower is easily twisted or taken from tier 1 of the fvs tree. There also are are a lot more free healing abilities from that same tree along with others as well.

I agree there has been an hp inflation and this does not complete balance the changes out, but to say divine healing overall has been kept constant is not correct by a long shot. The heal spell has nearly been kept constant, while heal mass got buffed overall.

<sarcasm>
There are ml 12 gloves with 30% healing amp that I can wear when running an at-lvl VoN6 elite raid? Wow! I've must have missed the memo on that one. Can you please tell me in which quest I can find them?
</sarcasm>

You may be surprised by this, but not everyone bought the x-pack. In fact premium players that only usie Turbine points for their purchases can't purchase it at all yet.

Heal is a lvl 6 spell, that is acquired by clerics at lvl 11 and some FvS at lvl 12. Superior Ardor clickies were usable at that lvl, and would give a 75% boost to the spell for use in mid-lvl content. For people who enjoyed playing a melee oriented divine at mid-high lvl heroic quests the changes to divine healing are horrific.

[Chette]

So ONE, we need epic destinies to get back to where we were before? Even though every other class got MASSIVE buffs?

This is the key point to take away from this feedback.
Every other class in the game got a HUGE buff from epic destinies and new gear. Divines, at least as far as healing is concerned, need to get these items and destinies just to be as good as they were before at running level 20 content with heroic players, never mind running new content with epic players.

[Lord_Darquain]

Have you guys been looking into the problems with Heal spells not going off at all?

1) There's seems to be a possibility that cosmetic companions block the spell as healers are reporting blocked results on flat surfaces with no architecture in between.

2) There is a definite issue with targets of heal not being on the same plane as the caster. This is noticibly terrible in many new quests like all demonweb areas, the caves in several quests, and the tiered platform at the end of the Portal Opens. The cool designs of the new zones are getting people killed due to the way Heal now checks for targeting. :(

[Rizzia]

My suggestion on healing and spellpower is simple: Change Healing Amplification from a "Heals hit you for X% more" to "Heals hit you for an additional X points". That latter would make Cure potions worth something at high level, keep Heal in check, and would be easier to understand too. Plus you could then add higher Healing Amp items without breaking the game. You would need to have a lower healing amp coefficient on Radiant Servant Auras and Druid HoTs possibly (getting hit for 125 a tick by an Aura might be silly), but that could be worked out on Lamannia.

True the 30% and 10% are easier to get now, and with +2 insight on new set pieces more people can have 20% on a tod ring, but for max you have to build your character a certain way (taking h-elf instead of whichever race is better suited to the class/starting with min 13 wis etc). Not to mention those that grinded out 3 pally PLs.

On my Fvs (which is not a healbot^^) with the devotion 102 helm I slotted in, I find healing in raids to be easier than before the expansion, sure hps have gone up, but more people are aquiring heal amp, those that dont..well they die more. (sorry if your a 1200 hp barb with little to no PRR and no heal amp, you aint worth wasting sp on).

[Torin17]

If you were to balance the spells at the base they would stay relative to each other in power no matter what you add to the game in terms of spellpower, feats, enhancements etc...

In addition it would be easier for the players to figure out the effectiveness of each spell because even if you list the % of spellpower in the description (as you've said you want to do in some future update) they still have to take their overall spellpower subtract the spellpower they get from feats and then multiply by whatever % you give them to get the correct spellpower. Do this for 10-20 different spells with varying spellpower and you've essentially turned something very simple (spellpower) into one of the most complicated aspects of the game.

In otherwords easier for the devs to balance (short term) but much less intuitive and more difficult for the players than balancing at the base.

+1 for MorticianJohn!

In my opinion in order for spellpower or a spellpower number on a character sheet to have any useful meaning it must be applied to all spells in the same way, no this much percentage for this spell and that much percentage for that spell. As has already been mentioned, if a spell is over or under powered adjust it's base damage values, don't adjust how spellpower affects it.

I also agree with the posters that have pointed out that cure and healing are offensive spells. They are used to damage undead. As such not scaling them the same way that arcane caster damage spells scale is not fair to divine casters.

"Healers", what are "Healers"? I play a divine caster and healing is only one part of what I do.

Torin

[justagame]

30% healing amp is now a given on gloves slot. This item alone should be carried by everyone who expects to get healed, in every raid or higher difficulty party. 20% and 10% are also available on random loot now, which makes it far easier to fit them in. 30 Positive energy spellpower is easily twisted or taken from tier 1 of the fvs tree. There also are are a lot more free healing abilities from that same tree along with others as well.

I agree there has been an hp inflation and this does not complete balance the changes out, but to say divine healing overall has been kept constant is not correct by a long shot. The heal spell has nearly been kept constant, while heal mass got buffed overall.

Heal amp is great for helping how much you get healed for yourself, not others. While I agree it SHOULD be in every build, it isn't. Just like heavy fort isn't. Just like a lot of things aren't. And healing amp doesn't do squat unless you can guarantee that everyone you are healing has that uber healing amp. Your healing burden is determined by the hardest to heal party member, not the best equipped.

Everything got bigger this update. The damage that mobs deal has gone up. The hit points that players have has gone way up. The damage that our fellow party members do (melee and arcane spell damage) has gone up significantly. Everyone else's epic equipment and abilities are to do more than they are doing now. To get more potent. Except for divines. Now, the best devotion items are needed to make up for what heal lost, and EA healing boosts offer only a little bit more. Adding a meaningless boost to spells that remain poor second choices doesn't help. That's like nerfing khopeshes, but changing the base damage of daggers from 1d4 to 1d6 to compensate.

I am underwhelmed by the divine experience this update:

- The aforementioned heal issue, in which very few seem to understand that changing a $1.00 into $1.10 isn't a benefit when the price of bread just went up by half.

- The complete lack of superior lore items for light and untyped damage. Only healing. (Again, reinforcing the healbot impression many of us have)

- The focus of the epic destiny on complicated stacking to get unpredictable healing/light boosts, based on stack sizes that in many cases won't be approached in the course of normal questing.

- An offensive caster ED that only benefits light damage spells and healing, when the class has only one relevant light damage spell, mainly used on bosses. No level-appropriate ray spell. No AOE spell. No benefits whatsoever to other divine damage spells (untyped, fire, etc.).

- The one epic ray SLA for divines (Avenging Light) was cut in half during U14.1, with no comment. Meanwhile arcanes are getting elemental AOE damage options that do damage in the thousands.

- Bonuses that are good only against undead and evil outsiders. Great, these EPIC abilities should come in handy next time I'm levelling through Necro and the Vale.

- A raid with 12 unique weapons as potential loot, and not a single one of them a good fit for a divine caster.

At this point, I'm putting my evoker on the shelf, unless I decide to TR into a sorc. I have pretty good gear too, but in this new world, mobs don't move through BB, you need umpteen past lives to have acceptable spell pen (and sadly, implosion still requires a SR check despite the description), so I cast, cast, cast again, then finally beat down stuff with a longsword.

I am stil playing the helf melee FVS though. I did get some good healing amp, and that was good enough to heal ME. (Again, it takes ML 21-22 epic items just to heal myself as well as pre-update). But I've tried pugs, tried raiding, and I'm done doing that for now. I just run with guildies now, or solo. I've had it with having to actually drink pots in raids I long ago mastered, just because everyone's hit points and damage taken went way up, and my healing output didn't.

[PNellesen]

Lots of good stuff

My experiences, reactions, and opinions are largely the same as justagame's. I was SO freaking happy to get an SLA that actually did some almost-Sorc-like damage, only to have it apparently cut in half for no reason I can discern.

[Auralana7214]

are they the ioun stone of the xpack? I haven't seen any, just checked AH too, no devotion items that can be worn cept a crafted one (with low stat ofc)

For example, my FVS wears a helm, since she was not dependent on the Minos, that is +90 to Devotion. I found it on the Auction House. Maybe I was just lucky that day?

[Thrudh]

At this point, you realize that you're ruining the gameplay experience of DIVINES, and that you're making it impossible for groups that require healers to play have any success in getting a PUG together because we're refusing to PUG anymore (FYI, it is easier to solo than try to heal PUGs because of your changes, most players DO NOT, like you think, try to make it easier for us, they just expect us to work harder for them) so you fix it by MAKING IT MORE COMPLICATED.

I can heal PUGs just fine. Why are you unable to? My gameplay has not been ruined. Please don't say these changes ruin the gameplay experience of divines. Say it ruins YOUR gameplay and why.

I'm no healbot. I cast offensively, and even melee trash with a greataxe quite often. I have no problems healing my groups. My gameplay has not been ruined.

[Thrudh]

That is the major point of all this. The devs are actively trying to make "Divines" healers, nannybots, and stop us from doing anything else. At the very best we're supposed to carry some new thurmatuergy staff with devotion and radiance and blast stuff as a dps caster.

There's plenty of wearable radiance and impact and devotion gear.

There's new item called the Holy Symbol of Lolth... You should look into it. It takes care of your light spells and blade barriers. Slot devotion on your helm, and you'll never have to switch weapons again...

And yes, that means you're going to have to shuffle your inventory... Don't tell me that's not fair, because EVERYONE has to shuffle their inventory set-up when new levels and new gear comes out.

[Thrudh]

30% healing amp is now a given on gloves slot. This item alone should be carried by everyone who expects to get healed, in every raid or higher difficulty party. 20% and 10% are also available on random loot now, which makes it far easier to fit them in. 30 Positive energy spellpower is easily twisted or taken from tier 1 of the fvs tree. There also are are a lot more free healing abilities from that same tree along with others as well.

I agree there has been an hp inflation and this does not complete balance the changes out, but to say divine healing overall has been kept constant is not correct by a long shot. The heal spell has nearly been kept constant, while heal mass got buffed overall.

This. Good post.

[Thrudh]

Currently my Cleric is wearing the Gauntlets of Eternity which only carries a +60 to Spell Power, but it also has other attributes on it that I like. I could give up these Gauntlets for something else, but it would have to be something with better other attributes. For now I will be healing below my potential.

Serious question. Are you having any problems keeping your groups healed even healing below your max potential?

[Thrudh]

<sarcasm>
There are ml 12 gloves with 30% healing amp that I can wear when running an at-lvl VoN6 elite raid? Wow! I've must have missed the memo on that one. Can you please tell me in which quest I can find them?
</sarcasm>

You may be surprised by this, but not everyone bought the x-pack. In fact premium players that only usie Turbine points for their purchases can't purchase it at all yet.

Heal is a lvl 6 spell, that is acquired by clerics at lvl 11 and some FvS at lvl 12. Superior Ardor clickies were usable at that lvl, and would give a 75% boost to the spell for use in mid-lvl content. For people who enjoyed playing a melee oriented divine at mid-high lvl heroic quests the changes to divine healing are horrific.

Are you saying you are unable to effectively heal level 11 and level 12 fighters (how many hps do they have?) with your heal spells?

[Thrudh]

I also agree with the posters that have pointed out that cure and healing are offensive spells. They are used to damage undead. As such not scaling them the same way that arcane caster damage spells scale is not fair to divine casters.

This is a good point.

[Auralana7214]

Serious question. Are you having any problems keeping your groups healed even healing below your max potential?

On my cleric, no. I never implied I was. I am kind of a perfectionist, and would like for my toon to perform optimally, as I'm sure many others do.

My FVS is a different story. She has struggled a bit, so I got her the Devotion Helm I spoke about before. That didn't increase it much, so I am looking into other options for her. She is my current project and is soon to be level 23. It's difficult to keep up with healing guildies that are 900+ HP on her sometimes.

[danotmano1998]

4. Why isn't Reconstruct on this list?

This was missed and will be in Update 15.


Wait.. what?
:(

[Atree]

Are you saying you are unable to effectively heal level 11 and level 12 fighters (how many hps do they have?) with your heal spells?

I ran an elite Lord of eyes on my lvl 16/2 FvS/Rog the other day. The WF barb had about 800 hp. My Heals, with a devotion 60 wand in hand, were hitting him for about 120-140 a pop. Incoming damage in that quest was far greater per-hit. There was absolutely no way I could keep him alive. I was relegated to a pure healbot in that run, which was definitely NOT fun for me, and after Pugging a few more elite at-lvl quests I realised that playing my melee-divine is not fun anymore.

I'm currently leveling my fighter/bard, but due to the crazy trap/spell damage on even low-level elite quests I find that PuGs are much harder to come by, and more often than not just give up for the night and go watch television instead.

[Thrudh]

I ran an elite Lord of eyes on my lvl 16/2 FvS/Rog the other day. The WF barb had about 800 hp. My Heals, with a devotion 60 wand in hand, were hitting him for about 120-140 a pop. Incoming damage in that quest was far greater per-hit. There was absolutely no way I could keep him alive. I was relegated to a pure healbot in that run, which was definitely NOT fun for me, and after Pugging a few more elite at-lvl quests I realised that playing my melee-divine is not fun anymore.

I'm currently leveling my fighter/bard, but due to the crazy trap/spell damage on even low-level elite quests I find that PuGs are much harder to come by, and more often than not just give up for the night and go watch television instead.

WF Healer's Friend is bugged.

That's why you couldn't keep him up. Not because of the healing changes. They really need to fix that.

[ShadowFlash]

There's plenty of wearable radiance and impact and devotion gear.

There's new item called the Holy Symbol of Lolth... You should look into it. It takes care of your light spells and blade barriers. Slot devotion on your helm, and you'll never have to switch weapons again...

And yes, that means you're going to have to shuffle your inventory... Don't tell me that's not fair, because EVERYONE has to shuffle their inventory set-up when new levels and new gear comes out.

While I disagree with your point of view, as my personal gameplay has been dramatically reduced, I am not one of those resistant to re-gearing....in fact, I like it.

Holy Symbol of Loth is nice...very nice...good suggestion.

My problem is 100+ spell power is needed to reach status quo under the new rules. This, coupled with the ML restrictions on said gear, means a general nerf until epic levels and everything evens back out. Pre-21+, heal takes an impossible to out-gear nerf. There's just way to many things that hit melee-divines all at once for me to continue enjoying my preferred playstyle.

6 posts all in a row is annoying...someone interrupted your spamming, or else it would have been 7....consolidate man...consolidate...


I ran an elite Lord of eyes on my lvl 16/2 FvS/Rog the other day. The WF barb had about 800 hp. My Heals, with a devotion 60 wand in hand, were hitting him for about 120-140 a pop. Incoming damage in that quest was far greater per-hit. There was absolutely no way I could keep him alive. I was relegated to a pure healbot in that run, which was definitely NOT fun for me, and after Pugging a few more elite at-lvl quests I realised that playing my melee-divine is not fun anymore.

I'm currently leveling my fighter/bard, but due to the crazy trap/spell damage on even low-level elite quests I find that PuGs are much harder to come by, and more often than not just give up for the night and go watch television instead.

Similar experiences for me...and I too am working on my 12/8 Kensai II/ Virtuoso I. Fards FTW :D I'm very happy with U14 changes on that build, and choosing fatesinger or dreadnought is a delightfully tough descision. Just showing I'm not completely disgruntled with all of U14, in fact, on a whole, I'm quite pleased with most things non-divine related.

ShadowFlash

[varusso]

If your reconstruct is not working as well as before the update (again, taking current bugs into consideration), that would be a valid point to post in this thread.
You see, here is the fatal flaw. Its NOT working as well as pre-u14 because of one simple thing:

Pre-u14, WF were IMMUNE to Pois and Dis, which also effectively made them immune to the stat damage and other ill effects that result from them. Since that was the case, Recon did not NEED those removal benefits like its divine counterpart (Heal) did for fleshies.

Now that they are no longer immune (even WITH items), the Recon spell should be given some of the same effects, since it is obviously the "WF Heal". It SHOULD be balanced against the fleshie Heal. If it is not supposed to have the extra benefit from spell power (just like Heal) then it should also act like Heal in other respects.

Before u14, Recon's role was simple -- just provide some undiminished healing power, because WF's natural immunities already took care of most of the negative effects that Heal removes.

In short, Recon is no longer functioning as it should, because what it "should do" has changed with u14, due to a fundamental change to the race it is designed for. Because of the changes to WF WITH u14, the Recon spell no longer fills its entire role. At a minimum, it should remove pois/dis and stat damage just like Heal.

Beyond that I would personally like to see it address some of the WF-specific conditions like the Rusty stun.

Short version: Recon and Heal are counterparts. They should have similar effects, based on the toons they are designed to be used on. Since WF lost their immunities, the "WF Heal" should be made to pick up the slack.

[justagame]

There's plenty of wearable radiance and impact and devotion gear.

There's new item called the Holy Symbol of Lolth... You should look into it. It takes care of your light spells and blade barriers. Slot devotion on your helm, and you'll never have to switch weapons again...

And yes, that means you're going to have to shuffle your inventory... Don't tell me that's not fair, because EVERYONE has to shuffle their inventory set-up when new levels and new gear comes out.

I agree that it's perfectly understandable that people shuffle gear to take advantage of all the stuff that's BETTER. But we're talking about shuffling simply to reduce the degree to which output is falling behind. Everything is increasing in magnitude this update -- hit points, incoming damage, damage of arcanes is up, damage of melees is up...

And we keep talking about how divines should expect to have to grind out new stuff to tread water.

I have the holy symbol of Lolth -- great item, and with it my blade barrier that, on those occasions where mobs in the new content actually run through it and don't evade, does 8% more damage on average, than pre-update. I have a devotion 96 weapon, that to wield eliminates any melee ability, and heal hits for 2% more damage than pre-update. I could grind out some epic items to slot toughness and heavy fort elsewhere, and put a devotion 90 item on my head, but heal would be flat versus pre-update. Actually less, if you count the clickies I used pre-update.

[dubyprime]

I did not make it through the entire thread, but here are some answers for now:

8. I went to all the time and effort to make my Alchemical Dev IX shields because of the increasing level cap, hp, and damage I knew was coming in U14. So, what now? What do we do to compensate for the loss of healing?

How has it actually affected gameplay? How much of a healing loss have you experienced? Either healing is not difficult (in which little further change is needed) or some adjustments on our part is necessary.



I spend more time healing than I should. Healing isn't hard on Epic Normal, but it can be a pain on EE.
I built a specific way so that I could spend less time healing and more time doing other things with my healer. (Mostly piking, I'm a heal piker.. what can I say)
That advantage was taken away.
Yes there are plenty of increases from EDs and levels that allow me to make up for the loss.
I built a Dev9 item so I always had it in my off hand and could scroll/swap/etc without needing to worry. Now to maximize efficiency I have to put the shield down and pick up a stick in my off hand. So I sacrifice AC/PRR.
I haven't seen 100+ devotion items in slots other than weapons.
All I want is to break even with my pre u14 numbers. Given the current state Alch Dev9 shields are weak.
Yes there are clear ways to gear around it, swap items, etc, but that makes healing harder(more micromanagement).

So, in EE everything is harder... can't tell that apart from the awesomeness of the challenge or the nerf to heal.

Other difficulties though the challenge isn't in the numbers it is in the micromanagement.
I used to eat Chinese takeout with chopsticks while healing a raid. Now I have to put my chopsticks down and click more **** more often. This is compounded with gear swap lag. And Don't tell me to use a Fork.. forks are for newbs!.
The micromanagement is annoying and starting to make my healer less fun. I'm sure you will say, I choose to micromanage and be more efficient, but when playing a healer and trying to be included the expectations are sometimes high.


I don't know if you've looked into it MF, but gear swapping causes lag/can lag out mid raid. This has screwed me plenty of times when trying to swap scrolls, or stone to flesh someone.

[justagame]

Serious question. Are you having any problems keeping your groups healed even healing below your max potential?

Two-part answer:

1. I outlined in my first post some experiences. While not an elite player, I consider myself an experienced healer, have solo-healed raids, raids on elite, and the like. Reasonably well equipped, and have experimented with lots of healing strategies and builds. Currently have an evoker FVS and melee FVS, both with maxed life magic lines and decent devotion weapons. I now go into raids on a FVS with melees in the 800 to 900 and above range, and yes, there's almost always a few stragglers not getting to full. I see low individual health bars, hit heal, and still need to hit them with a scroll afterwards. Some of this is the WF healing amp bug, some is that the masses with new huge hp totals haven't discovered the need for healing amp, but it just feels less potent.

What it meant in practice was this: Even more attention to cooldowns than ever before. Less margin for error, because often a second follow-up heal (spell or scroll) was needed. Less time and SP for offensive casting. An overall less enjoyable experience.

2. Is your question even the right one? We can do whatever we want to divines, but as long as they can heal, we're all good? Overall potency of the class doesn't matter? Ability to enhance your own primary abilities like every other class seems to be doing? We could cut sorceror damage tomorrow by 20%, cut out some of the draconic epic destiny abilities, and I guarantee you, they will still be nuking, killing machines. That doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

[Vormaerin]

The healing changes are complicated because they are not all entirely under the caster's control.

This isn't entirely a matter of healer outputs being the same/better/worse. (btw, the reason MadFloyd keeps saying "healer" is because the changes affect more than just divines. It affects anyone who is trying to heal... bards, artificers, and even those melees with healing capability). Heal at lvl 12 is definitely down. But the ability of people in the party to stop melee damage ought to be up quite a bit in that range.

For me, the damage hitting my party members was way up initially because they were also geared totally wrong for the changes to defense. Once they made changes to get some PRR/Dodge/AC, realized Blur and Incorporeal stack now, and so on, that side of the problem has significantly diminished.

Right now, my cleric seems about the same for healing, my bard is better, and my paladin much worse. The bard is the only one in epic content at the moment, for what that's worth. This is relative to how well I healed content before the patch, not points per spell maths analysis.

[MRMechMan]

WF Healer's Friend is bugged.

That's why you couldn't keep him up. Not because of the healing changes. They really need to fix that.

Even if WF HF was not bugged, that is still ~200 pts per heal on an 800hp character.

Even if that WF had 30%/20%/10% amp that is still ~350-400pts on an 800hp character.

Mass heal still works fine. Self heals work fine if you are not warforged and have amp gear and empower heal.

You've clearly made up your mind on the situation. I'm a bit less fanboish than I used to be given their recent track record.

Personally, I feel it is a huge shot to the groin getting healing spells and light spells and blade barrier nerfed...while mobs hit harder, players have 30-50% more hp and arcanes/melees both got massive buffs.

Add to that the fact that this 50% spell power BS was done undercover, unannounced and they IGNORED the dozens of threads asking about it...well they handled this whole thing pretty poorly.

I don't like getting punched in the groin. Maybe you do, but I don't like it.

[taurean430]

Heal amp is great for helping how much you get healed for yourself, not others. While I agree it SHOULD be in every build, it isn't. Just like heavy fort isn't. Just like a lot of things aren't. And healing amp doesn't do squat unless you can guarantee that everyone you are healing has that uber healing amp. Your healing burden is determined by the hardest to heal party member, not the best equipped.

Everything got bigger this update. The damage that mobs deal has gone up. The hit points that players have has gone way up. The damage that our fellow party members do (melee and arcane spell damage) has gone up significantly. Everyone else's epic equipment and abilities are to do more than they are doing now. To get more potent. Except for divines. Now, the best devotion items are needed to make up for what heal lost, and EA healing boosts offer only a little bit more. Adding a meaningless boost to spells that remain poor second choices doesn't help. That's like nerfing khopeshes, but changing the base damage of daggers from 1d4 to 1d6 to compensate.

I am underwhelmed by the divine experience this update:

- The aforementioned heal issue, in which very few seem to understand that changing a $1.00 into $1.10 isn't a benefit when the price of bread just went up by half.

- The complete lack of superior lore items for light and untyped damage. Only healing. (Again, reinforcing the healbot impression many of us have)

- The focus of the epic destiny on complicated stacking to get unpredictable healing/light boosts, based on stack sizes that in many cases won't be approached in the course of normal questing.

- An offensive caster ED that only benefits light damage spells and healing, when the class has only one relevant light damage spell, mainly used on bosses. No level-appropriate ray spell. No AOE spell. No benefits whatsoever to other divine damage spells (untyped, fire, etc.).

- The one epic ray SLA for divines (Avenging Light) was cut in half during U14.1, with no comment. Meanwhile arcanes are getting elemental AOE damage options that do damage in the thousands.

- Bonuses that are good only against undead and evil outsiders. Great, these EPIC abilities should come in handy next time I'm levelling through Necro and the Vale.

- A raid with 12 unique weapons as potential loot, and not a single one of them a good fit for a divine caster.

At this point, I'm putting my evoker on the shelf, unless I decide to TR into a sorc. I have pretty good gear too, but in this new world, mobs don't move through BB, you need umpteen past lives to have acceptable spell pen (and sadly, implosion still requires a SR check despite the description), so I cast, cast, cast again, then finally beat down stuff with a longsword.

I am stil playing the helf melee FVS though. I did get some good healing amp, and that was good enough to heal ME. (Again, it takes ML 21-22 epic items just to heal myself as well as pre-update). But I've tried pugs, tried raiding, and I'm done doing that for now. I just run with guildies now, or solo. I've had it with having to actually drink pots in raids I long ago mastered, just because everyone's hit points and damage taken went way up, and my healing output didn't.

Agreed.

I've also moved to soloing or helping select friends/guildies only with my Clr/Fvs.

Seriously...

Going from 850ish high crit on blade barrier to 300ish is insulting.
An SlA that does little to no damage compared to sla's from any other class that gets them.
Specials that only affect undead/evil outsiders, which are nice but of extremely limited use.
Overall damage down compared to pre-xpac... way down.


The expectations placed upon running any type of divine caster added to all this makes it completely unenjoyable to run one in a group setting. It's clear that just as pre xpac the majority of melee builds did not invest in ac/healing amp/fortification/hp sometimes we see that now just as often. Doesn't matter how many things one makes easily available to the masses. They simply won't use them, and you can't make them. So the overall impression I'm left with is that someone on the dev team thinks the sole purpose of a divine caster is to spam cures and heal spells from quest begging to end without exception. And that's not how I play my divine casters. Makes more sense to avoid grouping entirely rather than be pigeonholed.

I'll still get them leveled just fine, with known entities.

[Bronko]

You know the range of boosts that are availible in the game for example

maximize, empower, empower healing, and spellpower from items and enhancements. With that knowledge and the additive system of spellpower it would be easier to balance the spells at the base. Currently the way spellpower works this is what could happen going forward.

Lets say that right now the average lvl 20 healer has 100 devotion spellpower from items. Currently you've worked to balance the heal spell against the cure spells (meaning a slight buff to the cures and a slight nerf to the heal spell). In some future update the level cap goes up to 30 and ML 30 spellpower items grant 200 devotion spellpower. Cure moderate wounds gets 115% but heal get 50% spellpower. Therefore as gear gets better and levels go up Heal becomes worse and worse compared to cures eventually requiring it to be rebalanced to remain effective.

If you were to balance the spells at the base they would stay relative to each other in power no matter what you add to the game in terms of spellpower, feats, enhancements etc...

In addition it would be easier for the players to figure out the effectiveness of each spell because even if you list the % of spellpower in the description (as you've said you want to do in some future update) they still have to take their overall spellpower subtract the spellpower they get from feats and then multiply by whatever % you give them to get the correct spellpower. Do this for 10-20 different spells with varying spellpower and you've essentially turned something very simple (spellpower) into one of the most complicated aspects of the game.

In otherwords easier for the devs to balance (short term) but much less intuitive and more difficult for the players than balancing at the base.

Well put. +1.

[Tirisha]

For example, my FVS wears a helm, since she was not dependent on the Minos, that is +90 to Devotion. I found it on the Auction House. Maybe I was just lucky that day?

Neat, wonder if those comin in not gimped versions though. like the 114 you can fairly easily get on a stick.

Also wondering why the H I haven't seen one.

[Carkolda]

This is not correct. I have THE best gear possible and my numbers are substantially smaller post update. Please check again.

/signed

I have to say that I completely agree with this. My avenging light (epic ability, mind you) was hitting on average 240, 400 on a stun hit. Now, post update, I'm lucky to hit 250 on a crit normal, and 400 is unreachable in all but the most extreme circumstances. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. The damage on light spells have been downgraded.

In regards to heal/mass heal, as a cleric who has the full alchemist set, the new superior lore ring, devotion 4, prayer of life, etc. etc... I'm still not hitting for enough to fill someone up. What baffles me is the absolute and blatant disregard you folks are exhibiting for your playerbase, specifically the clerics in the mix. I want to make this perfectly clear:

Single-target Cure spells are useless at higher levels. Period. But instead of making them CHEAPER to cast and more effective, bringing them more in line with the original Heal spell (pre-update), you are bringing Heal DOWN. How does this make any sense? Not only with you nerfing poison immunity (so your precious drow can actually poison us now), you are tinkering with the mechanic that keeps people alive. If you are fighting Harry, you need to throw heal, not cures to get rid of the now-non-resistable poison.

If it sounds like I'm going off on a rant, it's because I am. I'm angry as heck. I am one of those clerics that's getting nerfed because you feel it's "fair" to upgrade people to have 12-1500 hp, but downgrade Heal. You should be UPGRADING Heal to enable those of us keeping people alive to do our jobs. I want you to name one PLAYER who has complained about getting too much healing.

Don't throw it back in our faces saying, "Get better gear." I have pretty much the best gear I can get, with the augmentations maxed out. I used to be able to heal a person to full with one throw of the Heal spell. Now it's 2. That effectively halves my effectiveness. So, if you are serious about actually listening to the playerbase, how about, "Stop messing with the healing system?" Or perhaps, "Put healing back the way it was?" We never asked you to tinker with it, and we certainly don't appreciate you toying with it now. You messed with something that wasn't broken. Put it back!

[Carkolda]

Agreed.

I've also moved to soloing or helping select friends/guildies only with my Clr/Fvs.

Seriously...

Going from 850ish high crit on blade barrier to 300ish is insulting.
An SlA that does little to no damage compared to sla's from any other class that gets them.
Specials that only affect undead/evil outsiders, which are nice but of extremely limited use.
Overall damage down compared to pre-xpac... way down.


The expectations placed upon running any type of divine caster added to all this makes it completely unenjoyable to run one in a group setting. It's clear that just as pre xpac the majority of melee builds did not invest in ac/healing amp/fortification/hp sometimes we see that now just as often. Doesn't matter how many things one makes easily available to the masses. They simply won't use them, and you can't make them. So the overall impression I'm left with is that someone on the dev team thinks the sole purpose of a divine caster is to spam cures and heal spells from quest begging to end without exception. And that's not how I play my divine casters. Makes more sense to avoid grouping entirely rather than be pigeonholed.

I'll still get them leveled just fine, with known entities.

Double post, but +1. I have to wonder how many devs were thinking about ways to force us to buy spell pots out of the DDO store. Conspiracy theorists unite! :rolleyes:

[EatSmart]

Mad/Feather, is there any chance of divines (all of them) being able to get the spellcasting impliment bonus from items that have the faith based traits (eternal faith, sacred, hallowed, etc)? Possibly with a tweak to having "Required: Religious Lore, UMD:0" added to those items to keep them out of arcane hands. With the exception of Goldmoon in Dragonlance, there really arent a lot of examples of divines channeling their spells through staves. (And that's debatably just a dressed up staff of healing rather than a spell focus, as the kender was able to use it successfully) I think this would both help with the practicalities of how divines are played [They either swing a weapon, or have a scroll in their main hand, depending on the player/raid] and is more in keeping with the lore of DnD.

Is there any news on when (if ever) someone is going to look at old named items and check for silliness? The example that springs to the forefront of my mind is the Epic Chainmail Coif, which was formerly the granddaddy of battle-hjealer gear with its very rare bonus to Heal Mass. It's really quite a poor item now.

[danzig138]

This. Good post.

No, it wasn't. It offers at best a poor solution that can only be implemented for a few folks.

I hope the devs read this thread carefully. There have been some really good suggestions on how to address these issues.

[susiedupfer]

I did not keep records of how much I healed for pre-U14, you are going to have to accept that my ranges are the best I can give you. On my clerics, I used Alchemical Shield with Dev IX and Sup Healing Lore. I was mass healing for 650-850ish on non-monk, non-heal amped to the max toons. Crits were huge and hit often. :) My mass heals now hit for 450-650ish on the same people with dev +102.

What I lost: the ability to shield block, the ability to use a scroll in main hand while retaining my devotion item in off hand, the AC(which just finally became pertinent to me), the ability to use my downtime between heals to DoT or to heal outliers, SP efficiency to do something other than hjeal.

This is JUST my answer to your question. But, if I may add other concerns I have?

1)New cleric gear requires change of armor. I lose hp and AC. On top of loss of AC from losing shield, this requires more self-healing. Which leads to less time/sp to heal others or do any offensive casting.

2)Increasing efficacy of cures does not help the sp/spell ratio whatsoever. Cures are still inefficient compared to heal. They also require multiple casts to achieve the same effect. This as a solution is not workable.

3)When I logged on yesterday afternoon at the airship portal in the harbor(Orien server), before I could walk to the AH(in the harbor)yesterday, I got 4 tells asking me to heal 4 different quests/raids. It may have been more had I not gone anonymous. This was before I could actually talk to the auctioneer.

These things are also affecting my gameplay.

Thank you all Devs! For taking the time and making an effort to understand what is going on with us. I am well aware that you are not paid to read and respond to the forums, nor are we entitled to explanations or changes, so I really do appreciate your doing this.

[varusso]

Mad/Feather, is there any chance of divines (all of them) being able to get the spellcasting impliment bonus from items that have the faith based traits (eternal faith, sacred, hallowed, etc)? Possibly with a tweak to having "Required: Religious Lore, UMD:0" added to those items to keep them out of arcane hands. .

This is actually a good point and a good idea, although limiting it to those specific items causes some problems for FVS (and healer bards), as those items are otherwise completely useless to them. They would be giving up a much more valuable slot just for an implement bonus. And bards dont get the Religious Lore, afaik.

Instead, do this: shields with Enhancement bonuses that also have a casting booster on them should get the implement bonus. Highest applies, just like with 2 scepters. Since the divine is going to have a scroll in main hand, they are going to have either a one-handed casting wpn or a shield in the other -- this way they could get their bonus either way. And no need to try and keep that out of the arcanes' choices.

[susiedupfer]

The issue would be that everyone can access Unyielding Sentinel ED, so they can get Turn Undead. I am not so sure that your idea would integrate well into this. Maybe I am misunderstanding.

[Carkolda]

This is actually a good point and a good idea, although limiting it to those specific items causes some problems for FVS (and healer bards), as those items are otherwise completely useless to them. They would be giving up a much more valuable slot just for an implement bonus. And bards dont get the Religious Lore, afaik.

Instead, do this: shields with Enhancement bonuses that also have a casting booster on them should get the implement bonus. Highest applies, just like with 2 scepters. Since the divine is going to have a scroll in main hand, they are going to have either a one-handed casting wpn or a shield in the other -- this way they could get their bonus either way. And no need to try and keep that out of the arcanes' choices.

Shields should not be the only answer, nor should scepters. Keep in mind, you have clonks out there, including yours truly.

[varusso]

Shields should not be the only answer, nor should scepters. Keep in mind, you have clonks out there, including yours truly.
Agreed -- anything that can fit in either hand (or both) that has a casting boost on it should count as a casting implement and have enhancements applied accordingly. Period.

[Chette]

I am underwhelmed by the divine experience this update:

- The aforementioned heal issue, in which very few seem to understand that changing a $1.00 into $1.10 isn't a benefit when the price of bread just went up by half.

- The complete lack of superior lore items for light and untyped damage. Only healing. (Again, reinforcing the healbot impression many of us have)

- The focus of the epic destiny on complicated stacking to get unpredictable healing/light boosts, based on stack sizes that in many cases won't be approached in the course of normal questing.

- An offensive caster ED that only benefits light damage spells and healing, when the class has only one relevant light damage spell, mainly used on bosses. No level-appropriate ray spell. No AOE spell. No benefits whatsoever to other divine damage spells (untyped, fire, etc.).

- The one epic ray SLA for divines (Avenging Light) was cut in half during U14.1, with no comment. Meanwhile arcanes are getting elemental AOE damage options that do damage in the thousands.

- Bonuses that are good only against undead and evil outsiders. Great, these EPIC abilities should come in handy next time I'm levelling through Necro and the Vale.

- A raid with 12 unique weapons as potential loot, and not a single one of them a good fit for a divine caster.

These are all excellent posts, for which I would love to see some dev comment.

My main is a high DC offensive casting FvS. I play her as part of a duo with my husband, who plays a warforged sorcerer. We used to be fairly balanced, I had far superior insta-kills and good crowd control, he focused mainly on AOE mass damage. We still play in this manner, but his damage on his sorc just about doubled with the epic destinies, and much of it he can do with little spell point cost. My power may not have gone down as a FvS, since I can equip new items to make up for changes, but my effectiveness has been significantly reduced, with the increase in power of all the other classes.

[barryman5000]

You see, here is the fatal flaw. Its NOT working as well as pre-u14 because of one simple thing:

Pre-u14, WF were IMMUNE to Pois and Dis, which also effectively made them immune to the stat damage and other ill effects that result from them. Since that was the case, Recon did not NEED those removal benefits like its divine counterpart (Heal) did for fleshies.

Now that they are no longer immune (even WITH items), the Recon spell should be given some of the same effects, since it is obviously the "WF Heal". It SHOULD be balanced against the fleshie Heal. If it is not supposed to have the extra benefit from spell power (just like Heal) then it should also act like Heal in other respects.

Before u14, Recon's role was simple -- just provide some undiminished healing power, because WF's natural immunities already took care of most of the negative effects that Heal removes.

In short, Recon is no longer functioning as it should, because what it "should do" has changed with u14, due to a fundamental change to the race it is designed for. Because of the changes to WF WITH u14, the Recon spell no longer fills its entire role. At a minimum, it should remove pois/dis and stat damage just like Heal.

Beyond that I would personally like to see it address some of the WF-specific conditions like the Rusty stun.

Short version: Recon and Heal are counterparts. They should have similar effects, based on the toons they are designed to be used on. Since WF lost their immunities, the "WF Heal" should be made to pick up the slack.

Pure posion and disease immunity are gone. Oh well.

Warforged are still immune to Sleep, Hold Person, Energy Drained, Nauseated, Exhausted, Paralyzed effects and get a built in proof against disease and poison +10. They also are immune to stat damage from diseases except those that affect wood or metal.

The above is not taking into account current game bugs.

So put on a deathblock item and cast your greater heroism and you are good to go. Get poison'd or disease'd and have a horrible fortitude save? Drink a pot. You are now awesome.

Reconstruct is only for wf arcanes. Any melee wf is going to invest in healing amp to hit 100% heal amp.

Reconstruct is not heal. Reconstruct is still overpowered. Any arcane that can fly through a quest with an uninterruptable spell that brings him from 1hp to 400hp with a little investment is op.

[danotmano1998]

Any arcane that can fly through a quest with an uninterruptable spell that brings him from 1hp to 400hp with a little investment is op.

So any divine that can fly through a quest with an uninterruptable spell that does the same is op as well?
Because my cleric and fvs still hit that mark pretty easily.

[barryman5000]

So any divine that can fly through a quest with an uninterruptable spell that does the same is op as well?
Because my cleric and fvs still hit that mark pretty easily.

You could but then all my gimps would die b/c you would have to stop healing me :)

Thing I guess I didn't emphasize was that arcanes don't usually have the responsibility of worrying about others red bars. You could play a fvs or cleric that way too.

If you look at spell selection for a divine half of the spells are for status effects, protection, and healing. That was my line of thought.

[Ebondevil]

Reconstruct is not heal. Reconstruct is still overpowered. Any arcane that can fly through a quest with an uninterruptable spell that brings him from 1hp to 400hp with a little investment is op.

It takes the same investment for a Divine caster to do the same, Heal also removes a lot of negative effects which effect Warforged, which Reconstruct does not.

How is Reconstruct overpowered then when it effects a significantly smaller proportion of the playerbase, there's no Healing Amplification for it, and it can't be empowered, and when those it does effect do not gain as much benefit from Heal as other races (Warforged Healers friend brings Warforged up from 50% effect to 75% effect, while all other races start with a minimum of 100%)

By your logic if Reconstruct is Overpowered then Heal is Ridiculously Overpowered.

I do not agree with you in any way shape or form that Reconstruct is Overpowered.

My Reconstruct has gone from 290 Pre-U14 (+80%) to 345 Post-U14 (+130%), a small but welcome increase.

If Spellpower is halved for Reconstruct in U15 then it will drop down to 247 (+65%), that is without a doubt a Nerf! An unwarranted Nerf as well.

Spellpower was not doubled on everything ,so halving the effect of Spellpoower on Heal, Reconstruct is a nerf!

I had a +60% Potency 6 scepter with ML 14 and I had Superior Reconstruction 9 (+50% increase to all repair spells) & Epic Reconstruction 6 (+60% to Level 6 and below repair spells) on a Ring with ML 20 Pre-U14
Post-U14 the Potency item was reduced to +48 Universal +9 Implament
and the ring was improved to +90 Spellpower
An overall +30 increase to my Reconstruct Spell, From my level Epic 20 item, not a +60 increase.

That's a 50% increase, not 100%, so Nerfing Reconstruct to gain 50% of Current Spellpower is going to reduce the benefit compared to what it was, with the same Epic equipment, not to mention what happened to lower level equipment.

[danotmano1998]

You could but then all my gimps would die b/c you would have to stop healing me :)

Thing I guess I didn't emphasize was that arcanes don't usually have the responsibility of worrying about others red bars. You could play a fvs or cleric that way too.

If you look at spell selection for a divine half of the spells are for status effects, protection, and healing. That was my line of thought.

Agreed. There is a flip side to this as well though.
I sometimes find myself in a situation where i need to play my arcane as a backup healer. It can be EXTREMELY handy if you have a WF tank in the party, especially if the healer goes down or is out of SP. (Or forgets to put on their boots! :rolleyes: )

Personally, I wouldn't mind if reconstruct's potential goes down SLIGHTLY, so long as they add the ability to remove status effects on a WF, like heal does on fleshies. Now that they're susceptible, that is. ;)

[PNellesen]

Thing I guess I didn't emphasize was that arcanes don't usually have the responsibility of worrying about others red bars. You could play a fvs or cleric that way too.

What other way would you play a Cleric???? I don't worry about others' health bars either - if you want to be healed by me, stand in Burst or Aura range. So easy even a Barbarian can do it!

(And since my HP is likely lower than most melees', they're going to get healed more than they would if I was actually paying attention to THEIR red bars :p )

[EatSmart]

This is actually a good point and a good idea, although limiting it to those specific items causes some problems for FVS (and healer bards), as those items are otherwise completely useless to them. They would be giving up a much more valuable slot just for an implement bonus. And bards dont get the Religious Lore, afaik.


Well, the faith traits are relatively prolific on sets already intended for divine use. For example: Lorikk's set gets it on the shield, sacred set gets it on the helm and a weaker one on the ring (lol), chainmail coif gets it. Assuming that philosophy is accepted, its a relatively easy task to put "make sure future divine raid itemisation includes access to this trait" on the raid loot design checklist.

If the concept is attractive, bards could get something similar from anthem that required having inspire courage to unlock.

[barryman5000]

My Reconstruct has gone from 290 Pre-U14 (+80%) to 345 Post-U14 (+130%), a small but welcome increase.



My math may be bad but did you only put one ap into the repair line to reach 290 with a 60% item?

=150*1.6*1.2 ?

Put a few more ap into and tell me what your reconstruct is getting post update.


Agreed. There is a flip side to this as well though.
I sometimes find myself in a situation where i need to play my arcane as a backup healer. It can be EXTREMELY handy if you have a WF tank in the party, especially if the healer goes down or is out of SP. (Or forgets to put on their boots! :rolleyes: )

Personally, I wouldn't mind if reconstruct's potential goes down SLIGHTLY, so long as they add the ability to remove status effects on a WF, like heal does on fleshies. Now that they're susceptible, that is. ;)

I'd be cool with the rust monster stun thing Varusso said or some other benefit. I'm even for a higher spell power ratio myself since you can't use a metamagic or get heal amp on it.

[varusso]

Pure posion and disease immunity are gone. Oh well.

Warforged are still immune to Sleep, Hold Person, Energy Drained, Nauseated, Exhausted, Paralyzed effects and get a built in proof against disease and poison +10. They also are immune to stat damage from diseases except those that affect wood or metal.

The above is not taking into account current game bugs.

So put on a deathblock item and cast your greater heroism and you are good to go. Get poison'd or disease'd and have a horrible fortitude save? Drink a pot. You are now awesome.

Reconstruct is only for wf arcanes. Any melee wf is going to invest in healing amp to hit 100% heal amp.

Reconstruct is not heal. Reconstruct is still overpowered. Any arcane that can fly through a quest with an uninterruptable spell that brings him from 1hp to 400hp with a little investment is op.


Funny I dont recall anywhere in the spell description that Recon only works on WF Arcanes. I routinely cast it on other WF, and I see plenty of others doit as well. Originally Recon did no need to do any of the things Heal does, because -- as I already said -- WF are immune to most of them. Since those immunities were taken away by a change to game mechanics -- and again as I said giving save bonuses and "sort of" immunities is NOT the same thing -- those effects should now be covered by the WF version of Heal: Recon. If you make it obey the same penalties as Heal (1/2 sPOW), then it should also obey the same benefits as Heal. It is already restricted to WF-only, so giving it this benefit wont have the effect of turning Arcanes into healers (being able to use it on fleshies to wipe status effects).

[barryman5000]

Funny I dont recall anywhere in the spell description that Recon only works on WF Arcanes. I routinely cast it on other WF, and I see plenty of others doit as well. Originally Recon did no need to do any of the things Heal does, because -- as I already said -- WF are immune to most of them. Since those immunities were taken away by a change to game mechanics -- and again as I said giving save bonuses and "sort of" immunities is NOT the same thing -- those effects should now be covered by the WF version of Heal: Recon. If you make it obey the same penalties as Heal (1/2 sPOW), then it should also obey the same benefits as Heal. It is already restricted to WF-only, so giving it this benefit wont have the effect of turning Arcanes into healers (being able to use it on fleshies to wipe status effects).

Dude let me know when they come out with mass reconstruct then we can talk about how reconstruct is the wf heal.

WF can use normal heal. Arcanes don't need to be able to do everything.

[varusso]

Dude let me know when they come out with mass reconstruct then we can talk about how reconstruct is the wf heal.

WF can use normal heal. Arcanes don't need to be able to do everything.

There doesnt have to be a mass-recon for recon to be the equivalent of divine heals. It already IS. It just no longer fills the entire role, due to changes to WF with the recent update -- which should have also contained changes to recon to make up for them.

A M.Recon would be pointless anyway. There are seldom enough WF in a party to bother with it, especially since Arcanes are not typically set up as "healers" (except bards of course). Whats more, there are MUCH more valuable spells on an arcane in the equivalent slot than M.Recon. Sorry but this is just a silly argument to use as justification for why Recon should not get some of the Heal benefits.

Having Recon work properly under the new system is not "letting Arcanes do everything". Its letting one specific spell pick up its own slack due to a change in game mechanics. Aside form that, anyone with sufficient UMD -- not just wiz/sorc -- can pick up a recon scroll and use it on the WF (they could also use a heal scroll, but that requires the WF to have H.Amp sufficient to make it worth using).

Speaking of which...MadFloyd...IS sPOW working on scrolls/wands WAI? I assume it isnt, but have yet to see an actual dev response to this question, despite having seen it asked multiple times.

[Ebondevil]

My math may be bad but did you only put one ap into the repair line to reach 290 with a 60% item?

=150*1.6*1.2 ?
Pretty much, yes, my AP are rather tight and I need to reshuffle them around, just waiting to hear the the free LR has been fixed and I won't loose my tomes before I do so.


Put a few more ap into and tell me what your reconstruct is getting post update.

Don't need to do it, can do the math for you
Each AP spent Pre-U14 would give +15 Repair, each post would give +30 Repair, AP is one of the places where the spellpower was doubled.

However

If you take the fiull enhancement Pre-U14 with Gear, Post-U14 with Gear and the Suggested U15 with Gear, Pre-U14 is still better than Post-U15.

Pre-U14 +50% +60% = +110% = 315

Current +40% +90% = +130%= 345

Post-U14 (ML 14 Item) +100% +48% +9% = +157% = 385
Post-U14 (ML 20 Item) +100% +90% = +190% = 435

Post-U15 (ML 14 Item) (+100% +48% +9%)/2 = +78.5%= 267
Post-U15 (ML 20 Item) (+100% +90%)/2 = +95% = 292

Basically if the suggested U15 change (Nerf!) goes ahead, just to draw even with Pre-U14 I'll need to spend another 5AP on Reconstructive Spellcasting, that's with ML 20 gear. No hope of drawing even on the previous ML 14 gear.

I am pretty certain it is worse with Heal because Empower Heal was +50% and changed to 75 Spellpower which is being halved.


WF can use normal heal. Arcanes don't need to be able to do everything.

Divines can use Blasting Spells have Better BaB and Saves, More HP and Buffs, they don't need to be able to do everything, oh wait...

[scoobmx]

Umm madfloyd, you say melees can also reduce need for healing via damage mitigation, so my question is what if you're WF? Lower heal amp, AC, dodge, and prr than fleshies. Where's your damage mitigation now?

AC: compare AC value of red dragon docent vs red dragon hide and plate
Dodge: compare MDB of high level leathers vs mithral body
PRR: you seem to not receive the 6 prr from heavy armor

[varusso]

I am pretty certain it is worse with Heal because Empower Heal was +50% and changed to 75 Spellpower which is being halved..

I am seeing this misinformation being posted alot. Empower Healing is NOT being halved. It is being applied fully.

My RS2 L20 Cleric (who is stting naked at the bank, so only has her Life IV Enhancements to draw upon):
Heal Base = 150
Life IV = 80 sPOW (effective 40)
Empower Heal = 100 sPOW (bonus for being RS)

Thats 150*(40+100)/100 or 150*1.4 = 210
She Heals self (with no H. Amp at all, not even from enhancements) for 210 just as expected.

M.Heal = 220 Base (includes bonuses for being RS2).

Thats 220*(40+100)/100 or 220*1.4 = 308
She M.Meals self for 308.

EDIT: And as I thought, found the quote from dev directly on it:



Note that those spells still get full benefit from the metamagics that can be applied to them- Empower Healing when used with the Heal spell still provides the equivalent of 75 Spell Power, for example.

[Kaledor]

9. With the massive hp inflation from expansion, heal (not mass heal) is relatively less powerful (hp incrased by 20-50% while heal is the same as before). While you could before refill someone in one cast, it is no longer possible. To compensate people need to slot more healing amp... But we know that some people already don't carry some needed items (such as fortification), is it really wise to add a new must have?

Heal still increases as you get into the expansion pack and get better gear. Keep in mind that it’s not all about what tools the healer has but what tools the players taking damage have. With the AC changes we expect players in the highest level/difficulty content to take fewer hits than they did previously.


Better gear still hasn't pushed the numbers to anywhere near what they used to be. Taking fewer hits than previously is laughable, The higher difficulties we are taking more damage than prepatch because with the addition of the armor changes you included armor rend on mobs which is stackable up to 5 times on players and will take a good chunk of their defenses away also you have included poison immunity debuffs along with a zone or two where poison is more potent, as well as incurable poisons that can only be waited out. You have buffed poisons to levels of insanity where Arry's can cause over 1000 con damage per tick.

[Ebondevil]

I am seeing this misinformation being posted alot. Empower Healing is NOT being halved. It is being applied fully.

My apologies, I must have missed that, and quite frankly it just goes to show how stupid the system is where spellpower is only half as effective on the Heal spell but wait it's not but yes it is, oh no it isn't....

Keeping it straight is annoying enough, trying to explain it to new players? Let the headaches abound. THAC0 is as easy as π (3.14159) in comparison.

Despite Empower Healing having the full effect on Heal, the spell is still most likely being hit by the same Penalties that are slated to hit Reconstruct though. Only just drawing even with 5 more AP spent and Equipment 6 levels higher is still a nerf.

[barryman5000]

My apologies, I must have missed that, and quite frankly it just goes to show how stupid the system is where spellpower is only half as effective on the Heal spell but wait it's not but yes it is, oh no it isn't....

Keeping it straight is annoying enough, trying to explain it to new players? Let the headaches abound. THAC0 is as easy as π (3.14159) in comparison.

Despite Empower Healing having the full effect on Heal, the spell is still most likely being hit by the same Penalties that are slated to hit Reconstruct though. Only just drawing even with 5 more AP spent and Equipment 6 levels higher is still a nerf.

I'm not really for the 50% hit that they have going on right now and if your math supports that a 50% hit to recon makes it that much worst then I wouldn't be for that either. Both heal and reconstruct could actually scale very well with spell power kept at 50% if they removed the caps on the spells though. Doesn't make sense to be capped at 15 for a spell you get at 12.

I've been a bit advocate of changing base spells instead of doing mysterious spell power changes. Looks like its too late though.

[varusso]

My apologies, I must have missed that, and quite frankly it just goes to show how stupid the system is where spellpower is only half as effective on the Heal spell but wait it's not but yes it is, oh no it isn't....

Keeping it straight is annoying enough, trying to explain it to new players? Let the headaches abound. THAC0 is as easy as π (3.14159) in comparison.

Despite Empower Healing having the full effect on Heal, the spell is still most likely being hit by the same Penalties that are slated to hit Reconstruct though. Only just drawing even with 5 more AP spent and Equipment 6 levels higher is still a nerf.

Yup confusing, but the reasoning is simple. Empower Healing already affected Heal pre-u14, where as maximize and Empower did not. When they made the change to put more focus on Enhancements and less on Metas, Heal was not affected by the meta change, but it got a huge boost form the enhancement increases (doubled) so they reduced all sPOW EXCEPT Empower Heal, as it is designed to work with that.

Now here is the part I think Turbine are really just not clueing in on: The only real issue as far as sPOW is the enhancements -- which got doubled. If they just reduced the sPOW from enhancements for those specific spells/SLAs and left item sPOW alone -- i think they would get the right balance they are looking for, and players would not see such a drop in power (approx 11-12% when "properly" re-geared) from pre-u14 as compared to post-u14. In theory, the items are already rebalanced for the new system, so they should not be factored into the reduction -- what caused the problem (by their own admission) was doubling enhancement sPOW. So reduce JUST that and see where it stands -- leave everything else alone.

And yes, Recon is exactly like Heal in this regard: that is, what did and did not affect it pre-u14, causing the same overhealing issues as it would have for Heal. It is also subject to the same solution -- reducing only enhancement sPOW.

I daresay the same solution could be applied across the board to SLAs and other spells that suffer from the same meta-borking effects as these 2 spells.

It may end up that the new system would give a slight boost to spells vs the old system, but thats ok as long as it isnt insane. Certainly a better solution than tweaking individual spells so much that there are more spells that are EXCEPTIONS to the sPOW rule than those that obey it -- thats just silly.

The current approach feels like applying a jackhammer to a problem that really just needs a hammer and chisel.

[sirgog]

There doesnt have to be a mass-recon for recon to be the equivalent of divine heals. It already IS. It just no longer fills the entire role, due to changes to WF with the recent update -- which should have also contained changes to recon to make up for them.

A M.Recon would be pointless anyway. There are seldom enough WF in a party to bother with it, especially since Arcanes are not typically set up as "healers" (except bards of course). Whats more, there are MUCH more valuable spells on an arcane in the equivalent slot than M.Recon. Sorry but this is just a silly argument to use as justification for why Recon should not get some of the Heal benefits.

Having Recon work properly under the new system is not "letting Arcanes do everything". Its letting one specific spell pick up its own slack due to a change in game mechanics. Aside form that, anyone with sufficient UMD -- not just wiz/sorc -- can pick up a recon scroll and use it on the WF (they could also use a heal scroll, but that requires the WF to have H.Amp sufficient to make it worth using).

Speaking of which...MadFloyd...IS sPOW working on scrolls/wands WAI? I assume it isnt, but have yet to see an actual dev response to this question, despite having seen it asked multiple times.

Reconstruct is a pathetic spell because of the lack of any Repair Amplification and any feat like Empower Healing.

A sorc spamming Recon on cooldown and weaving in scrolls heals a WF for a lot less than my Bard can heal a fleshy and the bard uses less mana.

[varusso]

Reconstruct is a pathetic spell because of the lack of any Repair Amplification and any feat like Empower Healing.

A sorc spamming Recon on cooldown and weaving in scrolls heals a WF for a lot less than my Bard can heal a fleshy and the bard uses less mana.

The very lack of Repair Amp is the reason I think Recon SHOULD be the way it is post-u14 (in terms of raw healing). And no, I dont want to see RepAmp added to the game -- WF already have enough to do just trying to work in Healing Amp along with whatever other class gear they need; they should not have to add yet another factor into the equation so that they can get decent heals from arcanes who carry the spell designed for them as well as making life easier for the divine healers.

Now, if HealAMp *also* affected repairs -- well that would be another story entirely :D

Also, I agree that it sucks there is no Empower Healing feat for Repairs -- the simple solution here would be to let Empower affect Recon as well. It and Max both affect the lower repairs, no reason not to let one of them affect recon.

[scoobmx]

The very lack of Repair Amp is the reason I think Recon SHOULD be the way it is post-u14 (in terms of raw healing). And no, I dont want to see RepAmp added to the game -- WF already have enough to do just trying to work in Healing Amp along with whatever other class gear they need; they should not have to add yet another factor into the equation so that they can get decent heals from arcanes who carry the spell designed for them as well as making life easier for the divine healers.

Now, if HealAMp *also* affected repairs -- well that would be another story entirely :D

Also, I agree that it sucks there is no Empower Healing feat for Repairs -- the simple solution here would be to let Empower affect Recon as well. It and Max both affect the lower repairs, no reason not to let one of them affect recon.

No, I bet the devs add a new feat called Empower Repairing that works only on repair spells. ;D That way all the repairers will take it. Wait did I say repairers? I meant arcanes. Wait.....

[Aashrym]

This is actually a good point and a good idea, although limiting it to those specific items causes some problems for FVS (and healer bards), as those items are otherwise completely useless to them. They would be giving up a much more valuable slot just for an implement bonus. And bards dont get the Religious Lore, afaik.

Bards do get all 3 lores now; arcane, religious, and nature. However, religious and nature are not as full as arcane and acquiring them is buggy.

For example, one of my bards who I have not played much, who did not use the free LR, only shows some arcane lore feats since leveling up a few levels. If a person makes a new bard at level 7 (just tested again) that bard will show 7 arcane lore feats, 4 religious lore feats, and 4 nature lore feats.

[Aashrym]

A general reply to "my heal doesn't fill up the life bar" type posts....

The description doesn't say it does that. It provides a set amount of healing just like other spells. If it was supposed to heal the red bar up to full the description would state such and the spell would do so. The fact that the spell became less potent in higher level content is something that happens to other spells too.

Having the spell fill the red bar is something the players with that spell might like to make things easier for them but that is not what the spell was intended to do. It can be compensated for by casting it sooner. :D

[varusso]

A general reply to "my heal doesn't fill up the life bar" type posts....

The description doesn't say it does that. It provides a set amount of healing just like other spells. If it was supposed to heal the red bar up to full the description would state such and the spell would do so. The fact that the spell became less potent in higher level content is something that happens to other spells too.

Having the spell fill the red bar is something the players with that spell might like to make things easier for them but that is not what the spell was intended to do. It can be compensated for by casting it sooner. :D

Heal now hits for LESS with BETTER gear. Putting aside proportional healing, the actual raw amount is less. Its nice that the lower cures got a boost (and are getting more), but the specific issue is that Heal is now hitting for less than it used to while at the same time HP bars are going up, making Heal seem even more gimped by proxy.

[taurean430]

Reconstruct is a pathetic spell because of the lack of any Repair Amplification and any feat like Empower Healing.

A sorc spamming Recon on cooldown and weaving in scrolls heals a WF for a lot less than my Bard can heal a fleshy and the bard uses less mana.

I would have thought that we'd see some repair amplification come into play with the WF Juggernaut. At least, this is my hope...

[nibel]

Reconstruct is a pathetic spell because of the lack of any Repair Amplification and any feat like Empower Healing.

And because it do not cure the target of any negative effect like Heal does (blindness, stun, poison, disease, confusion, etc, etc).

I'm still in the team that want heal amp to affect repair in the same ammount (including Healer's friend). This way, while a well-equipped forged will be finely healed by cure spells, a repair spell is ALWAYS more effective on them.

Indirectly, this may even add power to Construct Essence. You know, that feat that almost everyone agree is a trap in fleshie artificers.

[justagame]

A general reply to "my heal doesn't fill up the life bar" type posts....

The description doesn't say it does that. It provides a set amount of healing just like other spells. If it was supposed to heal the red bar up to full the description would state such and the spell would do so. The fact that the spell became less potent in higher level content is something that happens to other spells too.

Having the spell fill the red bar is something the players with that spell might like to make things easier for them but that is not what the spell was intended to do. It can be compensated for by casting it sooner. :D

When people are chain casting healing and cure spells because multiple players aren't getting filled up, there is no "casting it sooner." People are compensating to the fullest extent possible, to the point where they aren't stopping in between heals to cast DP or other offensive spells. Glad you feel this is a good thing. Glad to know there are folks out there who think it's perfectly fine that, while other classes are diving in to their new abilities and power in these higher levels, that divines are (a) grinding out gear just to get back to the same level, and (b) having to chain cast healing spells at the expense of other things.

And forget higher level content, heal is less potent in the SAME content.

[Aashrym]

When people are chain casting healing and cure spells because multiple players aren't getting filled up, there is no "casting it sooner." People are compensating to the fullest extent possible, to the point where they aren't stopping in between heals to cast DP or other offensive spells. Glad you feel this is a good thing. Glad to know there are folks out there who think it's perfectly fine that, while other classes are diving in to their new abilities and power in these higher levels, that divines are (a) grinding out gear just to get back to the same level, and (b) having to chain cast healing spells at the expense of other things.

And forget higher level content, heal is less potent in the SAME content.

Your definition of "the fullest extent possible" looks pretty open to interpretation and you don't have the first hand knowledge to back up a general statement like "people are compensating". I'm not having trouble with healing and I'm a people too. ;)

I regeared and use more mass cures, and I'll use a cure to top of a heal better on single targets too. Cure serious is hitting for 90ish and it does help.

As far as heal being less potent in the same content and divine characters are changing gear every other caster is also dealing with this. Do you really think a maximized empowered fireball has the same impact at level 10 after we look at the new meta stacking and minimum level requirements for combustion bonuses, or that a sorc/wiz doesn't need different gear to make that spell more effective? How about chain lightning at level 15? Superior whatever doesn't just click for 75% bonus anymore either. ;)

I see all these posts going on and on about the heal spell when the reality is the heal spell heals a specific amount per level with a level cap of 15 so the effectiveness is eventually going to become less prominent in higher levels. The fact that most bonuses were doubled before the 50% spell power coefficient does put heal close to where it was with some differences based on level requirements for devotion and empower healing stacking changes, and potency reductions. There is nothing in those lower levels that heal can't cover because of the huge base per level compared to everything else in this game.

There's just too much doom threading going on for something that still works and is better aligned with other spells but still a significantly better spell.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are some bugs floating around, but if new higher level content is harder at first during the adjustment period for many that's something I would consider normal. :)

[Dandonk]

1. Is it difficult to put the actual percentage that an effect is reduced/increased by Spell Power?

No this isn’t that difficult and we will pursue it.


Fantastic, me likes!


2. So many have been noting that divine light spells are only getting .5 as well, is this a bug?

The only light damage spell that is getting half spell power is Summon Archon, which is on the list we provided in the forum post.

Thanks for the info.



3. It feels like, as a Cleric, we are being pushed into one role or another, which I despise. I don't like weapon swapping, especially when it means a quarterstaff, to get the same result as I used to

You may want to find another item slot where you can get Devotion in that case. You can easily find rings or helmets with Devotion, and named items that fill other body slots have Devotion as well.


Kk then.


4. Why isn't Reconstruct on this list?

This was missed and will be in Update 15.

So, Reconstruct was too OP and needed to be nerfed, too? Or how should I understand this?



5. Is it true that we need 100 devotion item to break even? Here’s some math:
Take the Heal spell.

For a character with the max life magic line (life magic IV), and no metas. I also exclude healing amp since it applies equally to both cases.

In fact, in order to get back to your old level for heal, you would need a 100 devotion item just to break even, and get back to the old level (since half of 100 is 50, the old bonus you got in the old system, and the enhancement bonus of 40 remains the same).

100 devotion is very high level in this new system, certainly > level 20. And that's just to get back to the old, pre-expansion level.

While looking into the gameplay experience of healers, we’ve determined that a number of tools available to you are not performing to a satisfactory degree in higher level play. To that end, we are increasing the amount of Spell Power that the following spells benefit from: Cure Light Wounds (115%), Cure Moderate Wounds (115%), Cure Serious Wounds (115%), Cure Critical Wounds (115%).

Umm. OK? So, Heal is nerfed... but you're further buffing cures?

So, the previous post about spells being balanced to their former levels in the new system was, well, misinformed? (or a lie, depending on how you want to say it)

The object of this exercise is to nerf heal, then? Yes? Just so we know where we stand.


6. Wasn’t on the list, but:
1) Positive Energy Burst: I'm hitting for significantly less. My cleric was 12 before the patch and is 12 now as he is apart of a static group. Nothing on him has changed, why the difference?

2) Positive Energy Aura: Same as above, I've lost 5-9 points of heal per tick. Nothing has changed.

We would need more info to comment on this, namely level and equipment being used.

Good thing my cleric is semiretired, then.


My belief is that the current heal multiplier is too low, and that it is reducing the power of a lot of people's Heal spell, especially those that relied on empower healing. I do not believe this was your intention, and would suggest some tweaking.

We’d prefer to boost cure spells as mentioned in the response to question 5.

Ah, so the object of the exercise WAS to nerf Heal. Check. For the future, as we've said time and time again, coming out and saying it instead of stealthnerfing stuff is a better approach. Can we say you've learnd this lesson... this time?




8. I went to all the time and effort to make my Alchemical Dev IX shields because of the increasing level cap, hp, and damage I knew was coming in U14. So, what now? What do we do to compensate for the loss of healing?

How has it actually affected gameplay? How much of a healing loss have you experienced? Either healing is not difficult (in which little further change is needed) or some adjustments on our part is necessary.

Good thing I didn't bother grinding for one of those.



9. With the massive hp inflation from expansion, heal (not mass heal) is relatively less powerful (hp increased by 20-50% while heal is the same as before). While you could before refill someone in one cast, it is no longer possible. To compensate people need to slot more healing amp... But we know that some people already don't carry some needed items (such as fortification), is it really wise to add a new must have?

Heal still increases as you get into the expansion pack and get better gear. Keep in mind that it’s not all about what tools the healer has but what tools the players taking damage have. With the AC changes we expect players in the highest level/difficulty content to take fewer hits than they did previously.

Oh.

Point 1: The increase from better gear is fairly small, nothing like the increase in HP at all.

Point 2: Really? So, nerfing mid level healers is a good thing?

Point 3: Really? So healers now should depend on playing only with geared players and definitely only with people with EDs? Is this really a good development?


10. Does the Light Monk Healing Finisher get full Spell Power from Devotion items?

Yes.

Cool.



11. Please check Silver Fire spell 200% sure it's broken. Description says about 100-160 dmg base - we are getting 50% less. I would also like to ask why only Druids have new divine spells and why Avenging light was nerfed by 50% in u14.1?

Silver Fire is not a player spell. It’s ‘Searing Light’. The description was accidentally overwritten by the NPC ability “Silver Fire”. Searing Light is dealing the proper amount of damage and the description will be back to normal as of patch 2.

Fairy nuff.


12. Will heal and mass heal always be last if our hp goes past 2k and stuff like that? i would hope that you will boost the % so we can heal our toons hitting those insane hp ranges because before motu a heal or mass heal would nearly heal them.

Now it barely touches 25% of their life meaning you need to spend more sp to heal someone back to full. So im just saying will we see a % increase if hp keeps going up because honestly 400hp wont cut it if their hp at 2k.

See answer to #9.

Point 4: Not all damage is physical, and not all classes/builds will get better defense against physical than before. With the Displacement nerf, a fair amount of (especially newer) players will actually get hit more.



13. Why you decided to make wizard PrE slas reduced spell power, instead of using 1d3 damage per level and full spell power? Could you just half the damage/heal of the original spell/SLA and leave spell power alone?

Spell damage dice are not very granular, so any adjustment is a large change, while spell power coefficients can be set to any percentage we need. It’s a much simpler and more effective tool for balancing spell effects.

But at the cost of making the new system even less obvious and simple than the old one? Seems silly to me, but what do I know.

[Dingleburr]

You're getting a lot of flack for this, but these changes seem pretty reasonable. Regardless of the 'nerf', favored souls are still top of the heap and my cleric feels more powerful than ever. It was my bard that was getting left behind, particularly in the healing department.


While looking into the gameplay experience of healers, we’ve determined that a number of tools available to you are not performing to a satisfactory degree in higher level play. To that end, we are increasing the amount of Spell Power that the following spells benefit from: Cure Light Wounds (115%), Cure Moderate Wounds (115%), Cure Serious Wounds (115%), Cure Critical Wounds (115%).

Woot! Bard buff!

[ciep]

4. Why isn't Reconstruct on this list?
This was missed and will be in Update 15.


MadFloyd, Feather, and other devs,

Adjusting the Reconstruct mechanic in this way doesn't make sense in the same way that you have adjusted Heal and Mass Heal (both of which I understand).

As others have mentioned, Reconstruct has the following disadvantages to the Heal spells:

1) There is no Empower Reconstruction feat (not that I'm recommending it, as it would not be taken by most), eliminating a key way to get power on your reconstruction feat.

2) There is no repair amplification.

3) While there are various ways in Epic Destinies to help your healing power, there is nothing available to help with repair power (unless I'm forgetting something).

Adjusting the amount reconstruct hits for based on spell power would be an unnecessary adjustment to the spell; please reconsider adding it to the list of spells that get reduced effects from spell power.

[Missing_Minds]

While looking into the gameplay experience of healers, we’ve determined that a number of tools available to you are not performing to a satisfactory degree in higher level play. To that end, we are increasing the amount of Spell Power that the following spells benefit from: Cure Light Wounds (115%), Cure Moderate Wounds (115%), Cure Serious Wounds (115%), Cure Critical Wounds (115%).

If this is true, not only should single target Cure spells be done, but also Inflict, Repair, and Damage(whatever that is now.) As these all follow the same suit of healing/hurting.


4. Why isn't Reconstruct on this list?
This was missed and will be in Update 15.

You know that is REALLY going to hurt Arti's that took Construct Essence.

They already only get half "healing" due to the feat, but now are going to cut it again by half. They don't even get the benefit of haste from Reconstruct.

So what now? It has been shown that issues from before are starting to follow again because you are trying to make special cases. The question you designers must now do is ask yourselves just how special like the English language rules of grammar do you really intend to make spell casting in the game??? Quite honestly it was easier to follow before, now we have a basic with rules and exceptions to those rules.

[Scraap]

So what now? It has been shown that issues from before are starting to follow again because you are trying to make special cases. The question you designers must now do is ask yourselves just how special like the English language rules of grammar do you really intend to make spell casting in the game??? Quite honestly it was easier to follow before, now we have a basic with rules and exceptions to those rules.

Pretty much. When you've got to houserule your houseruling on your houserule, time to revisit the original departure point, and see just why it is the math is falling apart.

[Carkolda]

Your definition of "the fullest extent possible" looks pretty open to interpretation and you don't have the first hand knowledge to back up a general statement like "people are compensating". I'm not having trouble with healing and I'm a people too. ;)

I regeared and use more mass cures, and I'll use a cure to top of a heal better on single targets too. Cure serious is hitting for 90ish and it does help.

As far as heal being less potent in the same content and divine characters are changing gear every other caster is also dealing with this. Do you really think a maximized empowered fireball has the same impact at level 10 after we look at the new meta stacking and minimum level requirements for combustion bonuses, or that a sorc/wiz doesn't need different gear to make that spell more effective? How about chain lightning at level 15? Superior whatever doesn't just click for 75% bonus anymore either. ;)

I see all these posts going on and on about the heal spell when the reality is the heal spell heals a specific amount per level with a level cap of 15 so the effectiveness is eventually going to become less prominent in higher levels. The fact that most bonuses were doubled before the 50% spell power coefficient does put heal close to where it was with some differences based on level requirements for devotion and empower healing stacking changes, and potency reductions. There is nothing in those lower levels that heal can't cover because of the huge base per level compared to everything else in this game.

There's just too much doom threading going on for something that still works and is better aligned with other spells but still a significantly better spell.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are some bugs floating around, but if new higher level content is harder at first during the adjustment period for many that's something I would consider normal. :)

First, I want to make sure you recognize that I AM a primary healer, and I do not like these changes in the least. Throwing a maxed/empowered/emp healed/quickened CCW out to get the moderately same effect as a quickened/emp healed Heal spell out is not practical, but it seems that's the thrust the Devs are going to. What's being lost is that Heal is supposed to be the end-all healing spell, just as mass heal is. In 3.0 D&D, it healed all but 1d4 hp. It removed all the negative conditions it does now. It was THAT spell. And it's supposed to be that spell.

To those who think that clerics can just plow their way through quests and just self heal, show me the last time any divine did 3-4k damage with ANY epic ability like arcanes can (I've had a guildmate say he capped at 9k damage with his arcane blast). And that's with the gear they had on pre-u14. We are having to turn ourselves into walking band-aid boxes just to keep up, and it's getting harder to do so. I know you seem to think that it's okay that we throw more spells at the red bars, but when you have to throw 2-3 spells to have the same relative effect as you used to be able to do with one spell prior to U14, there's a significant problem.

So let's recap what was done "for" divines in this update:
- We've had our relative healing diminished, meaning we have to cast more
- We've had our DPS diminish on two fronts: Our BB does less (one of our primary spells), and we have to spend more time throwing healing spells, meaning less time for other offensive spells
- We've gotten the glorious task of having to retrofit our entire gear arrangement just to try to keep up with the changes, while every other class gets to keep what they have and bash away.
- And we get told that we just have to take all these changes and like them, because clearly Divines are so OP in their ability to heal people that they needed to be reigned in.

[Aashrym]

First, I want to make sure you recognize that I AM a primary healer, and I do not like these changes in the least. Throwing a maxed/empowered/emp healed/quickened CCW out to get the moderately same effect as a quickened/emp healed Heal spell out is not practical, but it seems that's the thrust the Devs are going to. What's being lost is that Heal is supposed to be the end-all healing spell, just as mass heal is. In 3.0 D&D, it healed all but 1d4 hp. It removed all the negative conditions it does now. It was THAT spell. And it's supposed to be that spell.

To those who think that clerics can just plow their way through quests and just self heal, show me the last time any divine did 3-4k damage with ANY epic ability like arcanes can (I've had a guildmate say he capped at 9k damage with his arcane blast). And that's with the gear they had on pre-u14. We are having to turn ourselves into walking band-aid boxes just to keep up, and it's getting harder to do so. I know you seem to think that it's okay that we throw more spells at the red bars, but when you have to throw 2-3 spells to have the same relative effect as you used to be able to do with one spell prior to U14, there's a significant problem.

So let's recap what was done "for" divines in this update:
- We've had our relative healing diminished, meaning we have to cast more
- We've had our DPS diminish on two fronts: Our BB does less (one of our primary spells), and we have to spend more time throwing healing spells, meaning less time for other offensive spells
- We've gotten the glorious task of having to retrofit our entire gear arrangement just to try to keep up with the changes, while every other class gets to keep what they have and bash away.
- And we get told that we just have to take all these changes and like them, because clearly Divines are so OP in their ability to heal people that they needed to be reigned in.

I don't recall 3.0 heal spell spell specifically, but 3.5 (which I thought was the same as 3.0 as far as that spell) is definitely 10 hp / level capped and level 15. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/heal.htm

The way meta's changed still impacted every other class so if you bring up arcanes in epics doing a lot you need to put that in perspective. Swapping conversation between non-epic heal changes to compare to epic arcane damage doesn't make sense. Non-epic arcane damage suffers issues too, for the same reason divine spells suffer less damage. Epic divine classes do have some epic healing ability just like arcane classes have epic abilities that follow their class counterparts.

Astral vibrance, ascendance, renewal, reborn in light are in the exalted angel destiny. Mass Heal still scales up to caster level 25. A person should not list epic arcane benefits and ignore epic divine benefits.

I know a lot of divine players might not like this next comment, but it stands: If a person wants to do the damage of an arcane caster that person should be making an arcane caster. If a person doesn't want to do the damage of an arcane caster then pointing out how much damage an arcane caster does is pretty much irrelevant.

Do you think it's okay for other classes to need to regear but healing classes should be treated differently?

I would also like to point out players are still healing on their bards. They are doing this without the heal spell, which indicates the more powerful heal spell should still be able to get the job done better. Not using empower or maximize on those cures is useful; they provide a smaller benefit than before so hitting a second healing spell is more cost effective than maximizing a single healing spell.

Even if a lot of the comments are that cures can't compare to heals even with the changes that doesn't mean heals would need to be improved; that would mean cures need to be improved to be more effective yet. :)

[Carkolda]

I don't recall 3.0 heal spell spell specifically, but 3.5 (which I thought was the same as 3.0 as far as that spell) is definitely 10 hp / level capped and level 15. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/heal.htm

The way meta's changed still impacted every other class so if you bring up arcanes in epics doing a lot you need to put that in perspective. Swapping conversation between non-epic heal changes to compare to epic arcane damage doesn't make sense. Non-epic arcane damage suffers issues too, for the same reason divine spells suffer less damage. Epic divine classes do have some epic healing ability just like arcane classes have epic abilities that follow their class counterparts.

Astral vibrance, ascendance, renewal, reborn in light are in the exalted angel destiny. Mass Heal still scales up to caster level 25. A person should not list epic arcane benefits and ignore epic divine benefits.

I know a lot of divine players might not like this next comment, but it stands: If a person wants to do the damage of an arcane caster that person should be making an arcane caster. If a person doesn't want to do the damage of an arcane caster then pointing out how much damage an arcane caster does is pretty much irrelevant.

Do you think it's okay for other classes to need to regear but healing classes should be treated differently?

I would also like to point out players are still healing on their bards. They are doing this without the heal spell, which indicates the more powerful heal spell should still be able to get the job done better. Not using empower or maximize on those cures is useful; they provide a smaller benefit than before so hitting a second healing spell is more cost effective than maximizing a single healing spell.

Even if a lot of the comments are that cures can't compare to heals even with the changes that doesn't mean heals would need to be improved; that would mean cures need to be improved to be more effective yet. :)

Did you even read my post? I was specifically responding to the comment that indicated divines can waltz through a quest because they can heal themselves to full. The problem is Divines frequently lack DPS on orders of magnitude when compared to arcane.

As it specifically pertains to epic abilities, there isn't a divine ability that heals for anywhere near the same potency as arcanes do DPS. On top of that, our one ability that could be uber... sucks. Reborn in light will never go off, because every time you shrine it resets your charges. Our divine wrath requires us to charge up using light spells, and that's also bugged, and heals for... a mass heal amount, and the aim and speed are slower than mass heal. But, in a raid, we will be too busy firing off heal and mass heal to really have divine wrath charged.

The point I was trying to make with the epics is that arcanes got a LOT of love for epic destinies, but divines got significantly less, especially when you consider the +30 healing power you get is really +15 for all intents and purposes. But yet Divines are the ones getting nerfed because they are somehow mysteriously OP, but Arcanes are just hunky dory. I take exception to that.

Gear... No one LOST power in this update except Divines. A barbarian's axe-swing still bashed people's heads in for 200 points of damage. Arcane spells still doled out a lot of power. Backstab was still +xd6. Paralyzers still ... paralyzed. The list goes on. But Divines saw their ability to heal diminished, all because the devs believed their heal and mass heal to be OP. So they nerfed it. So now we have to re-gear, per the dev's specific comments about finding better gear, just to stay where we were.

For me, it's an issue of principle. I don't want to bring the other classes down. I want them to re-institute divines where they were prior to u14. I want divines to be able to heal as powerfully as arcanes dole out damage. Otherwise, we do nothing but heal, and that makes it less fun for us (I would love to dot Harry with DP, hit him with a few avenging lights and searing lights, and then divine wrath to pop a heal).

[slimkj]

4. Why isn't Reconstruct on this list?

This was missed and will be in Update 15.
Is there any chance you can change this decision, given there is no repair amp like there is heal amp?

[Chai]

All this talk still being perpetuated about healing being tougher than it was in the past is a myth. One spell (heal) is SLIGHTLY less effective than it was from levels 11 to ~21 or so. Another spell (mass heal) got a slight buff, and cures got a decent buff.

I am not seeing healers who re-geared (like the rest of us had to) having an issue keeping people alive -AS WELL AS- being able to DOT kite, blade barrier, and melee DPS if built for it. I also do not see this mass shelving of divine classes the forumites speak of, nor do I see this "we can only play babysitter roles" being held to in game either.

Divines are still soloing and short manning E and EE content, and are still near the top/on the top of the power ladder as far as what can be accomplished with them -vs- other classes on a quest by quest basis. Peoples knee jerk negative reactions were proven incorrect on this issue over time, and now instead of admitting it was an incorrect knee jerk negative reaction, they are claiming they are not in support of the changes "in principle" after they were proven wrong in practice. Actions speak louder than words here. And peoples words regarding the situation of playing divines are not being upheld by the actions of people who play divines in game.

[taurean430]

All this talk still being perpetuated about healing being tougher than it was in the past is a myth. One spell (heal) is SLIGHTLY less effective than it was from levels 11 to ~21 or so. Another spell (mass heal) got a slight buff, and cures got a decent buff.

I am not seeing healers who re-geared (like the rest of us had to) having an issue keeping people alive -AS WELL AS- being able to DOT kite, blade barrier, and melee DPS if built for it. I also do not see this mass shelving of divine classes the forumites speak of, nor do I see this "we can only play babysitter roles" being held to in game either.

Divines are still soloing and short manning E and EE content, and are still near the top/on the top of the power ladder as far as what can be accomplished with them -vs- other classes on a quest by quest basis. Peoples knee jerk negative reactions were proven incorrect on this issue over time, and now instead of admitting it was an incorrect knee jerk negative reaction, they are claiming they are not in support of the changes "in principle" after they were proven wrong in practice. Actions speak louder than words here. And peoples words regarding the situation of playing divines are not being upheld by the actions of people who play divines in game.

That might be because divine casters are no longer healing pugs/raids. Whereas healing only builds are okay with double healing duty and no time or opportunity to use spells that are 40% as effective as their casting peers.

ETA: After a cursory glance at sla damage compared between my FvS and my level 16 heroic level sorc - much much less than the previous 40% mark... yay.

[Aashrym]

Did you even read my post? I was specifically responding to the comment that indicated divines can waltz through a quest because they can heal themselves to full. The problem is Divines frequently lack DPS on orders of magnitude when compared to arcane.

As it specifically pertains to epic abilities, there isn't a divine ability that heals for anywhere near the same potency as arcanes do DPS. On top of that, our one ability that could be uber... sucks. Reborn in light will never go off, because every time you shrine it resets your charges. Our divine wrath requires us to charge up using light spells, and that's also bugged, and heals for... a mass heal amount, and the aim and speed are slower than mass heal. But, in a raid, we will be too busy firing off heal and mass heal to really have divine wrath charged.

The point I was trying to make with the epics is that arcanes got a LOT of love for epic destinies, but divines got significantly less, especially when you consider the +30 healing power you get is really +15 for all intents and purposes. But yet Divines are the ones getting nerfed because they are somehow mysteriously OP, but Arcanes are just hunky dory. I take exception to that.

Gear... No one LOST power in this update except Divines. A barbarian's axe-swing still bashed people's heads in for 200 points of damage. Arcane spells still doled out a lot of power. Backstab was still +xd6. Paralyzers still ... paralyzed. The list goes on. But Divines saw their ability to heal diminished, all because the devs believed their heal and mass heal to be OP. So they nerfed it. So now we have to re-gear, per the dev's specific comments about finding better gear, just to stay where we were.

For me, it's an issue of principle. I don't want to bring the other classes down. I want them to re-institute divines where they were prior to u14. I want divines to be able to heal as powerfully as arcanes dole out damage. Otherwise, we do nothing but heal, and that makes it less fun for us (I would love to dot Harry with DP, hit him with a few avenging lights and searing lights, and then divine wrath to pop a heal).

Arcane casters need to do a lot more damage than healing heals because the enemies have a heckuva lot more hit points than the players do. It does not make one bit of sense to expect healing to do as much healing as arcane damage does to enemies.

Everyone who was using maximize and empower took a hit in offense that needed to be covered with gear changes. Everyone who was using potency and clickies needed target specific gear. This includes the arcane casters you keep mentioning. Everyone should be looking at AC gear. Melee need to consider their attack bonuses better and should be hitting less often based on the new attack formula. These changes definitely went to other classes; no multiplicative metas for arcane casters, no 95% miss rate on high AC tanks, no autohit on a 2 vs ACs previously capable of it, changes to get dodge, rounding on attack bonuses, etc... Claiming other classes do not need to regear or lost things is not correct.

[MRMechMan]

Arcane casters need to do a lot more damage than healing heals because the enemies have a heckuva lot more hit points than the players do. It does not make one bit of sense to expect healing to do as much healing as arcane damage does to enemies.



So enemy hp went up...player arcane damage does up....ok...

Enemy hp goes up...player melee damage goes up...ok...

Player hp goes up...divine healing goes...down?

And that makes sense to you?

[Aashrym]

That might be because divine casters are no longer healing pugs/raids. Whereas healing only builds are okay with double healing duty and no time or opportunity to use spells that are 40% as effective as their casting peers.

Arcane casters are not their casting peers; divine casters are their casting peers. Otherwise they should be looking at less hit points, less personal melee buffs, restrictions on armor (which was buffed for most), and restrictions on healing beyond self healing.

Divine offensive spells were not very effective to begin with. Implosion, blade barrier, divine punishment were pretty much it; couple of instant death spells.

Implosion has more opportunity for higher DCs and the potential is there for a buff in that sense.

Other spells look like they were impacted in the exact same way arcane spells were; the changes to meta stacking additively.

[Aashrym]

So enemy hp went up...player arcane damage does up....ok...

Enemy hp goes up...player melee damage goes up...ok...

Player hp goes up...divine healing goes...down?

And that makes sense to you?

That is not what I was saying. I was saying arcane damage should be expected to be a lot higher than divine healing. For me healing has also gone up, however.

Also, you would be jumping to a conclusion stating that arcane damage went up because enemy hp went up, which I doubt is the reason.

[MRMechMan]

That is not what I was saying. I was saying arcane damage should be expected to be a lot higher than divine healing. For me healing has also gone up, however.

Also, you would be jumping to a conclusion stating that arcane damage went up because enemy hp went up, which I doubt is the reason.

Nevertheless, the fact stands:

Arcanes got massive buffs, melees got even more massive buffs, divines healing got nerfed.

I'm not having any particular trouble healing groups, and any trouble healing myself is mostly due to bugged WF healers friend, but I just want to understand the logic of:

It is OK to let melee damage go through the roof. It is OK to let arcanes damage go through the roof.

Divines healing MUST stay the same as it was before xpac.

Clearly they didn't concern themselves with the first 2, why do divines get special treatment?

[taurean430]

Arcane casters are not their casting peers; divine casters are their casting peers. Otherwise they should be looking at less hit points, less personal melee buffs, restrictions on armor (which was buffed for most), and restrictions on healing beyond self healing.

Divine offensive spells were not very effective to begin with. Implosion, blade barrier, divine punishment were pretty much it; couple of instant death spells.

Implosion has more opportunity for higher DCs and the potential is there for a buff in that sense.

Other spells look like they were impacted in the exact same way arcane spells were; the changes to meta stacking additively.


I sincerely hope that with what you have stated as PnP experience you are not suggesting that casters within the divine sphere are not casters. Count up the missing spells for divine casters in this game, and consider that one would need likely 3wiz/3fvs past lives for adequate spell pen for implosion/destruction/slay living etc. This does not even address the missing spells issue that has persisted for so long. And you can't possibly be suggesting that there wasn't a net loss of great proportion when considering the changes to metas. That was the only method to get numbers that were competitive, though hardly sp efficient.

The problem with your statement also lies in the fact that arcanes get enhancement lines, whereas other classes impacted do not. So, you see cases where it can be said that my arcane didn't lose much considering the changes.

Also, I'd disagree with your assertion that the spells you listed were, "... pretty much it..." I've used and will continue to use many more of them when they are situationally better.

The damage and effectiveness of divine spells were scaled back with caster level increase. Where divine casters were roughly 40% behind they are significantly moreso due to the core changes. Lack of available options that bring positive outcomes in casting reinforces the idea that the only thing divine casters should be doing is healing. Which, as I've mentioned before, is fine if that's all one built their character for. For those that have built to be able to do more, there are significant hurdles placed by the xpac.

So my Wizard, who is in a Sorc life atm, at level 16 does on average 700-900 damage with his Nilac's Ray sla. My epic leveled FvS, 4 heroic levels/3 epic levels ahead does 113-202 with his sla on average. That's one hell of a difference. Certainly more than 40% behind from what I've seen.

Now I can choose whether or not I wish to bring that kind of suboptimal performance into a party. Because I don't play my FvS to merely provide healing.

[ShadowFlash]

restrictions on armor (which was buffed for most

Hah! obviously not familiar with the 2 monk splash common for clerics, either caster or melee...

robes only for casters to remain centered

light armor for non-handwrap melee

No armor "buff" here :p

ShadowFlash

[Aashrym]

Nevertheless, the fact stands:

Arcanes got massive buffs, melees got even more massive buffs, divines healing got nerfed.

I'm not having any particular trouble healing groups, and any trouble healing myself is mostly due to bugged WF healers friend, but I just want to understand the logic of:

It is OK to let melee damage go through the roof. It is OK to let arcanes damage go through the roof.

Divines healing MUST stay the same as it was before xpac.

Clearly they didn't concern themselves with the first 2, why do divines get special treatment?

We might have different ideas of massive buffs. Melee needed buffs but divine casters have access to those destinies. +30 spells power and a chance for an additional effect in draconic isn't a massive buff in my opinion.

In the meantime, mass heal, mass cures, and single target cure definitely saw improvements. 1 divine healing spell is roughly the same.

I think WF could use some specific attention beyond the healers friend issue and have hopes for the new enhancement system for them. Hopefully. :D


I sincerely hope that with what you have stated as PnP experience you are not suggesting that casters within the divine sphere are not casters. Count up the missing spells for divine casters in this game, and consider that one would need likely 3wiz/3fvs past lives for adequate spell pen for implosion/destruction/slay living etc. This does not even address the missing spells issue that has persisted for so long. And you can't possibly be suggesting that there wasn't a net loss of great proportion when considering the changes to metas. That was the only method to get numbers that were competitive, though hardly sp efficient.

The problem with your statement also lies in the fact that arcanes get enhancement lines, whereas other classes impacted do not. So, you see cases where it can be said that my arcane didn't lose much considering the changes.

Also, I'd disagree with your assertion that the spells you listed were, "... pretty much it..." I've used and will continue to use many more of them when they are situationally better.

The damage and effectiveness of divine spells were scaled back with caster level increase. Where divine casters were roughly 40% behind they are significantly moreso due to the core changes. Lack of available options that bring positive outcomes in casting reinforces the idea that the only thing divine casters should be doing is healing. Which, as I've mentioned before, is fine if that's all one built their character for. For those that have built to be able to do more, there are significant hurdles placed by the xpac.

So my Wizard, who is in a Sorc life atm, at level 16 does on average 700-900 damage with his Nilac's Ray sla. My epic leveled FvS, 4 heroic levels/3 epic levels ahead does 113-202 with his sla on average. That's one hell of a difference. Certainly more than 40% behind from what I've seen.

Now I can choose whether or not I wish to bring that kind of suboptimal performance into a party. Because I don't play my FvS to merely provide healing.

I am not suggesting they are not casters. I am stating they have a lot of their strength in versatility with more melee, dealing with status effects, and healing on top of some offensive spells while the existing spells in DDO are not exactly great spells for the most part.

Divine casters should be seeing more of their martial side developed, increased spell lists, and improvements to divine might; this does not mean they need to have similar offensive potential to arcane casters, imo.

As far as spell damage comparisons go this is what I see. Some is not tested due to my own TR'ing but the spell power items are specified for consistency using a +90 item, +15 implement, empower spell, maximize spell; for 330 spell power before enhancements.

Sorc using niac's with frost V (+100 spell power) at caster level 8 with 3 bonuses to maximum level places the average of 64 up to 339.2 on average. If you are seeing much higher numbers either the gear is off or something else is bugged and you are getting too much damage.

Fvs using capstone searing light with smiting IV (+80 spell power) is at caster level 5 so 410 instead of 430 spell power takes the average damage of 32.5 (50 vs undead) up to 167.75 (255 vs undead), which does look like it fits into what you are seeing.

Now that looks higher but I would also take into consideration that:

1) Sorc paid more for the ability in the first place in his enhancements and feat requirements

2) Sorc pays a small amount of SP to active the SLA vs the free FvS capstone SLA

3) Sorc can add 15% vulnerability for another SP cost that has a longer cooldown than duration and has the added opportunity cost of taking the action as opposed to the light vulnerability that stacks up to 50% just by getting hit, since we've added PrE for the sorc we'll add the PrE for the FvS.

4) A lot more creatures resist or are immune to cold than light

5) And finally, niac's has a save for no damage while searing light has no save.

Those put the number a bit more comparable in my mind.

I would like to point out that you are comparing the highest damage savant to the favored soul instead of other arcane choices.

Change that SLA from niac's to shocking grasp and we're at a base average of 40 damage out to 212 average but give up range for the no save while bringing he numbers close. Searing does more damage vs undead.

Change that SLA from sorc to wizard and we're looking at magic missile, arcane bolt, or arcane blast.

Base damage on magic missile is 17.5 * 430 spell power for 92.75 average damage. We have range, single target, no save like searing light; but less damage.

Arcane bolt and arcane blast are also hit by 50% spell power and are not affected by maximize or empower (last I checked) so drop to 102 spell power. Base average 70 damage at 20th level gets us to 141.4 average damage with a reflex save for half.

I'm half asleep so might have missed something but the FvS capstone seems to be competitive enough with with arcane SLA's if that is important to you.


Hah! obviously not familiar with the 2 monk splash common for clerics, either caster or melee...

robes only for casters to remain centered

light armor for non-handwrap melee

No armor "buff" here :p

ShadowFlash

These still received a buff for the most part. The added dodge check is still available with gear in a small amount without needing to add feats, and with inspire heroics. They were also still getting hit 95% of the time in epics which has changed, high WIS or not.

Moving to the new armor types gives a pretty big bonus to AC without the need for monk WIS bonus.

For the most part AC was a buff in my opinion.

[ShadowFlash]

These still received a buff for the most part. The added dodge check is still available with gear in a small amount without needing to add feats, and with inspire heroics. They were also still getting hit 95% of the time in epics which has changed, high WIS or not.

Moving to the new armor types gives a pretty big bonus to AC without the need for monk WIS bonus.

For the most part AC was a buff in my opinion.

ummm...you can't count inspire heroics as a clonk "buff" to AC...sure it's nice, but that applys to everyone also. Dodge bonus without the feats or the monk buffs (only 2-3 levels) and slot contention for caster stuff is really not an option at all. Melee monk splashes don't even have the high WIS to put to AC either. I didn't have a problem with the AC changes affecting clonks, because as you said, they got hit 95% of the time anyhow UNTIL dev comments on damage mitigation of toons under the new system is being used as a reference for balancing healing. In this regard, clonks got the ole' double-whammy.

ShadowFlash

[bibliomane]

I am not a big forum poster, but I felt the need to bemoan these changes. Before the update, I was running mammadrow with empower, quicken, and no other metas as the return for the sp wasn't worth it. I was fully heal spec'd with a 42 wis, around 500hp, 12 turns, and appropriate gear. I was greatly overhealing everyone, but healing was easy and I had time to cast offensively, buff the party, read/listen to the quest dialog, etc. I used all heals/cures and call using any of my heal/cure spells healing for the purposes of this post. After the update, I dumped my epic mask of comedy, my armor, my necklace, my ToD ring with +3(2,1) exceptional wisdom, and most of my other gear. I picked up the cleric set, a +3 wis planar focus, a 12% healing lore/108 devotion item (also a 108 radiance, etc...,) angel ED that took me to 54 wis, and you get the picture. I am now underhealing other players and have to cast 3-4x as often to keep heals up enough to keep the party from dying after armor rend, poison, holds, and major enemy damage. I no longer have time to cast and I no longer have time to read the funny bits of quest dialog.

The report bug screen is broken so I can't say how frustrated I am that my healing actually heals (helps) undead in several epic elite quests and I can't scream to the heavens that I heal/cure (damage) undead for around 250 on a non-crit on non-elite. And my DP, one of the few things I maximize, is now hitting so low that it is worthless on most content.

I swapped over to my low level cleric, mammabear, and found the same problems. Keeping pugs alive prevents me from doing anything beyond keeping the pug alive--including laughing at the npcs.
This makes mamma sad and I don't want to quest anymore. So...I'm avoiding pugs entirely and sticking with known people only or else working on Southrn's 7th life as a barb where my playing experience is still fun. Since I used to lead newbie friendly runs (yes I'd take your 198 hp sorc) where I taught people how to run things like shroud and gave out advice on how to up hp or increase arcane DCs without rerolling this makes me a very sad mamma indeed.

[Ranncore]

I thought my heals on my cleric got nerfed hard, even harder than my fvs, but post patch today i think i found my answer.

Epic Sacred Helm/Band set just plain doesnt work! It doesnt add the claimed +90 to healing spell power at all! My spell power in my character sheet remains unmoved when i equip it/unequip it and my heals dont change values.

[Missing_Minds]

I thought my heals on my cleric got nerfed hard, even harder than my fvs, but post patch today i think i found my answer.

Epic Sacred Helm/Band set just plain doesnt work! It doesnt add the claimed +90 to healing spell power at all! My spell power in my character sheet remains unmoved when i equip it/unequip it and my heals dont change values.

Yeap. You'll have to wait till U15.
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?&postid=4609728#post4609728

(for anyone else who missed it.)

[Chilldude]

9. With the massive hp inflation from expansion, heal (not mass heal) is relatively less powerful (hp incrased by 20-50% while heal is the same as before). While you could before refill someone in one cast, it is no longer possible. To compensate people need to slot more healing amp... But we know that some people already don't carry some needed items (such as fortification), is it really wise to add a new must have?

Heal still increases as you get into the expansion pack and get better gear. Keep in mind that it’s not all about what tools the healer has but what tools the players taking damage have. With the AC changes we expect players in the highest level/difficulty content to take fewer hits than they did previously.

Heal still increases as you get into the expansion pack and get better gear.

A level 15 cleric can cast a Heal for 425. ((((80+72+15)/2 + 100)/100) + 1) * 150 = 425.25 (staff of fleshshaping with 72 devotion and 15 implement bonus)
A level 25 cleric can cast a heal for 450. ((((80+102+18)/2 + 100)/100) + 1) * 150 = 450 (Epic staff with 102 devotion and 18 implement bonus)

That's an increase of 25 HP of healing power from level 15 to level 25.

Tell us again how Heal still increases as you get into the expansion pack and get better gear.

[tasebro]

...We’d prefer to ......
It is Turbines' game, so you devs can break it if thats what you prefer to do;

but know this: developer "preference" to stealth nerf divine caster output by 50% was a *bad* idea, and it is *not* what the *PLAYERS* wanted, and since you devs cannot (or will not) recognize that, then clearly there is nothing more to discuss, so "we" are done here.

So much for player input/feedback.

[rcal13]

It is Turbines' game, so you devs can break it if thats what you prefer to do;

but know this: developer "preference" to stealth nerf divine caster output by 50% was a *bad* idea, and it is *not* what the *PLAYERS* wanted, and since you devs cannot (or will not) recognize that, then clearly there is nothing more to discuss, so "we" are done here.

So much for player input/feedback.


+1 to this I may not be the best healer but I never had major and constint complaints to my healing till after the expation. All so If you devolpers could look at how much people are spend see that I have not bought 1 tp snice the beta. I have 3 main that I was working on a clonk a atry and a pally. the clonk has has ac nerfed healing nerfed he cant mele and heal as I just get sick of al the swaping. the arty is a wf and now he is getting another nerf on top of what you did to wf already, please it is a game stop making it un fun to play. Also why is a cleric/ monk allways pulling random sh!t that bost everything but what he uses. I have it set to be classed based but ice and acid boost seem to be the most common pull this makes to that the theroy of good loat pointless anf thurd stop saying everything is fine as not every one is a power gamer if this push keeps going why would any causl gamers stay and I came for a D&D exprince not WOW.

[HatsuharuZ]

Would it be too difficult to add an enhancement line that gives universal spellpower to all rune arms? Or possibly adding rune arm-only spellpower bonuses to the enhancement lines that augment rune arms already? That way rune arm power could be controlled to your liking, Madfloyd. Furthermore, a rune arm-only spellpower enhancement line would make it practical to switch rune arms in the midst of combat, which is not feasible right now, as rune arm spellpower is currently amplified by generic spellpower enhancements.