Lowering the cost of being a healer?

[Wipey]

Hard+ VoD/ToDs, run with tanks you know ( or myddo supposed " tank ", but don't tell anyone ;-) unless you are looking for amusement / disappointment.

Get Torc / Bauble and I think 20 -50 ish scrolls per raid is standard ?

[serthcore]

Yesterday I did a VoD Hard and sure, it wasn't the best group in the world, but that's how it is when you join pugs.

Anyway, it ended up with a wipe at 1%, no worries, **** happens.. However, here's what I find frustrating, everyone except the healers just had some repair bills while we were out 50 heal scrolls and 2 pots each.

Sure, it's easy to say "don't join pugs", "don't use scrolls and pots", "recognize fail early and bail" or "don't play a healer" etc. But you wont be popular for long if you don't at least whip out those heal scrolls when things get tough.

I wanna join pugs, I wanna heal, I wanna support, I want the randomness in challenge that pugs can be, but so many of the harder dungeons can end up with me out 30+k and it's just not fun when it's so much cheaper being any other class.

If we are supposed to use scrolls to compliment our spell heals then consider lowering the cost? I see a lot of healers doing just that, right at the start of the fight they start throwing in scroll heals just to keep a good balance.

How bout limiting the amount of pots (1 per dungeon max?) and maybe do some re-balance on scrolls and then balance the game around that? It seems like some dungeons are balanced around the fact that you "can" have unlimited resources if you spend enough.

So, is anything being done in the expansion to lower the cost of being a healer?

/Frustrated healer

Nothing forces you to use your own resources to heal others and i dont think "healers" are expensive by nature, is just people thinks they(divines) have to babysit everyone and when that happens then yes, the healer is the one who is going to spend more resources. When i play my fvs i say: "i will heal you if you use haste pots". This means: if you are not doing your best to complete the dungeon, why do have I?

When i join a raid on my rogue i always make sure i don't depend on a healer: UMD everything (gh, blur, stoneskin, displacement, resists, heal scrolls) haste/curse/etc. pots and some silver flame pots, making my rogue more expensive to play than my fvs.

So like others say: be more selective with pugs, if you join a mediocre and not self sufficient group expect a high resource usage if you want to complete it.

[achitophel]

1) Elite VoD is hard to heal
2) Play a healer in eVoD, then come back and post about how the OP needs to optimise for healing.
3) How about you haters optimise for being healed for a change? While you are at it, why dont you make some boss beaters so you can actually contribute ?
4) If the 10 other people in VoD knew how much plat it cost to heal a VoD then they wouldnt post these "farm for blah" comments. Any kind of PUG VoD will usually cost at least 1 pot and a bunch of scrolls.
5) Guaranteed that when you do weapons shipment and a bauble drops, its always a paladin or ranger that gets it (and then loots it).
6) I support the OP 100%, healing is expensive and very unappreciated. Keep up the healing and don't let the haters get to you.

Just saw the thread and read the 1st 5 hate posts and thought i would comment.

[Mubjon]

I have one simple rule, never use a SP pot in a raid/quest, unless I happen to find one in a chest during that quest, on my cleric and I limit myself to 25 heal scrolls.

I used to do whatever it took to get a completion, but then I realized how little plat I had to upgrade equipment and how many times I would have to sell essences or things I might need later to get plat.

Granted now I am a wizard for my second life and I have managed to save up quite a bit of plat so far this life, as i never use mana pots on him either, but when I get back to being a cleric I will only use pots I find in the course of the quest/raid or what people give me.

I make it a habit to use up resources that are donated to me during the quest, be they scrolls, wands or pots. When I receive that kind of help it means that the other party members are looking for a completion and I will do what I can to make that happen.

[DarkForte]

Using a pot is your choice, and your choice only. Learn when it's worth it to use a pot, and when it's not. Make yourself a set of rules to go by on the ifs and whens of pot usage. I, for example, won't ever drink pots on a ToD to heal through shadows in case of shadow-tank failure. If the group wants me to pot up in a such case, they should make compensation. On the other hand, I am normally willing to take pots when healing a raid I've never done before to compensate for my inexperience (first times I've done eV6 for example). Know thyself.

The issue with VoD is that, when it fails, it's more often than not a matter of lack of CC on the devils / lack of melee DPS / sucky no heal-amp tank / lots of melees with bad heal amp / people without curse pots / squishy melees overall. Lots of stuff that can go wrong. Just because you can, through liberal usage of pots, make any fail group complete a raid, it does not mean you should do so. People who suggest that are most likely selfish and don't play a healer at cap.

Aside from that, stuff that helps:
- Know the competent guilds on your server who pug raids;
- Avoid joining pugs with people you've never seen, or with notoriously bad players or with players from notoriously bad guilds;
- Understand that sometimes pugs fail, and that you shouldn't need to compensate for 11 people's shortcomings with your plat/US$. If they're assuring to pony up their pots for you, that's another issue.

Also, heal scrolls are very cheap, and my healer can be a profitable character even by making a rule of walking around with 200 heal scrolls minimum at all times just by selling chest loot. Also, do not act as if it's a burden exclusive of clerics/fvs. My helf monk with cleric dilettante has a full stack at all times as well. My WF artificer carries a stack of reconstruct and one of heal scrolls.

One final note: if you have to pot up, LET THE GROUP KNOW. There will most likely be some good souls there that will help you foot the bill. If you don't say you are using pots, people will not know it, since they're too worried with other stuff to watch the movement of your mana bar.

[Sgt_Hart]

I'd say that, 90% of the time, if you're healing the tank from SP, either you're doing something wrong or the tank is (or perhaps shouldn't be tanking)...

QTF. Especially in raid tanks. Not for nothing but the purpose of such a character is to get missed a lot, or Mitigate as much damage as possible. Heal amp is also (I would imagine) a #2,3,or 4 priority. That said, the reduction lines still let you do more with less.

The proper positioning with Aura in VoD is a huge variable for healing efficiency.

[WruntJunior]

QTF. Especially in raid tanks. Not for nothing but the purpose of such a character is to get missed a lot, or Mitigate as much damage as possible. Heal amp is also (I would imagine) a #2,3,or 4 priority. That said, the reduction lines still let you do more with less.

The proper positioning with Aura in VoD is a huge variable for healing efficiency.

Most of my experience with healing aura comes from experience as a tank...but on Suulo on hard a bit ago couple months (still happened after all the raid changes) I've seen that a single aura is possible to keep up a good raid tank (for the record, at least as much AC as it takes + good hp + enough reflex for suulo with evasion + good healing amp = was good raid tank for VoD...quite interested in seeing how much of the AC is different now). In the past, if you've had a tank that SHOULD be tanking (outside of epic raids and potentially LoB even on normal), aura and bursts should definitely be a possible major player in healing.

Some day I may actually manage to level a healer and say even more on this subject. :P

1) Elite VoD is hard to heal
2) Play a healer in eVoD, then come back and post about how the OP needs to optimise for healing.
3) How about you haters optimise for being healed for a change? While you are at it, why dont you make some boss beaters so you can actually contribute ?
4) If the 10 other people in VoD knew how much plat it cost to heal a VoD then they wouldnt post these "farm for blah" comments. Any kind of PUG VoD will usually cost at least 1 pot and a bunch of scrolls.
5) Guaranteed that when you do weapons shipment and a bauble drops, its always a paladin or ranger that gets it (and then loots it).
6) I support the OP 100%, healing is expensive and very unappreciated. Keep up the healing and don't let the haters get to you.

Just saw the thread and read the 1st 5 hate posts and thought i would comment.

I've healed elite VoD with 0 pots multiple times. The thing is, you don't run some raids without knowing that people are capable of doing their job within the raid. Hard VoD, as in the OP, is almost never a pot run...and even when it is, it's 1-2. The only requirement here is that, in healing, you have to know what you're doing.

As a note, my healer only had acquired a torc before I TRed her, and that was within the month or so before I TRed. Other than a con opp (which is basic healer gear), there was no bauble or anything. Healing doesn't require much gear...just have to know what you're doing.

The problem I see most in VoD are that healers will waste SP like nothing. Learning how to not do that is the best way to help the quest succeed. In a quest like elite VoD...I'd actually be willing to say the CCer is more important than the healer...a good bard could heal through that raid solo with a good party (although orthons and bats might be painful). Two divines in a good party should have little trouble healing...though if you're not in a good party, you shouldn't be doing elite.

[Phidius]

I apologize in advance if this sounds a bit abrasive, but why should Turbine change anything about the game because of how you choose to play your class? Sure, healing raids can get expensive if they go south, but it is a choice that you, as the healer, have to make. Similarly, after a particularly expensive run, if you feel that you have used up and abnormal amount of resources, why not ask the party to contribute to your costs? I have personally sent some SP pots to healers after bad raids when they chimed in and asked for it. If you say nothing at the end, everyone will just assume that you either didn't use any extreme amount of resources or that you are fine covering the costs yourself. I don't feel turbine should ever make changes to the game just because some people can't make a decision to just let a bad run fail, and instead continue to throw resources at the raid until it either completes or wipes.

I hope with that attitude you never, ever, join any LFM that isn't BYOH.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why you would say this to shadereaper33... are you by any chance claiming that the only time a divine should let a bad run fail is in a BYOH group? That doesn't make any sense to me at all.

... Go play a healer and be perpetually broke then come back to us.

Alternatively, you could go play a divine and rake in the cash. Seriously, my divines raise money for my melee to spend... well, they did before I stopped playing vanilla-melee.

To the Op:

Divines in this game have the ability to choose which scenarios they want to brute-strength to victory, and which ones they don't. Yes, it can be expensive to overwhelm the opposition with scrolls and pots, but that's the price you have to pay for that kind of power.

I recommend saving your resources for the extraordinary events, and let the badly-played groups crash and burn. They may not learn the first, second, or third time it happens, but they won't learn any other way.

[heavenandhell]

If you heal pugs, the instant you join check the sp and hp of the party if they are below par, drop. In a raid like VON if the party cant get to the quest efficiently, drop. If someone who is not a tank dies more than once or you suspect doesnt have heavy fort dont raise them. Use scrolls early and often to avoid using a pot and be honest that you will only use 1 pot per raid unless you get donations first.

Be tough - its your job to heal not carry the party.