Healing and Spell Power

[MadFloyd]

Hey everyone,

We wanted provide clarifications on some of the confusion surrounding Spell Power, and to address the perception that healing has decreased in effectiveness.

The only two healing spells which have a non-standard interaction with Spell Power are Heal and Mass Heal. They each receive 50% of your spell power total. This number was chosen to ensure that, cast by a level 11-20 character with level appropriate equipment, the performance of Heal and Mass Heal remains approximately equal to its performance before the expansion pack, erring on the side of a small buff to effectiveness for characters whom are diligent in upgrading equipment as they level.

Before the expansion pack, items had Spell Damage Amplification. This was a percentage of a spell’s base damage that added together with your enhancements, and was then multiplied by the metamagics you were using with the spell. This meant that metamagics, such as Empower and Maximize, were a very significant portion of your spell damage and healing. Activating Maximize doubled the damage or healing of your spells, including the bonuses from your spell damage amplification.

This old Spell Damage Amplification system had difficulty scaling into higher level content. Because of the way it multiplied with metamagics, even a small increase to the available damage amplification could result in a large increase to your total spell damage/healing. While this doesn’t sound bad, it made for problems in balancing increased Spell Damage Amplification from multiple sources, such as items, enhancements, and the Epic Destinies which we released with Menace of the Underdark. Had we kept the old system, we would have had to provide extremely minimal or no increases in the available Spell Damage Amplification from those sources.

The way that portions of the old system worked were also not easily transparent to the player, and was subject to odd rules, such as items only working to boost spells below a certain level. We determined that it would improve gameplay for spellcasters if we simplified it so that all your bonuses to spell damage added together directly, and worked on spells of any level. This allows us to provide linear benefits to the power of your spells, from multiple sources, and have them stack in an easily identifiable way.

Now with Menace of the Underdark, we have replaced Spell Damage Amplification with Spell Power.
Every point of Spell Power adds 1% to the base damage or healing of a spell. Your enhancements and metamagics now function just like Spell Power, and it is all added together. One of our goals was to keep player spell damage and healing equal to, or better than, their current effectiveness. Because metamagics were no longer multiplying on top of the bonuses from spell amplification, we needed to make up for that somewhere else: we chose to increase the amount of power your items provide to your spells, and double the value of your spell damage enhancements.

For example, if you have 100 Healing Spell Power on a scepter, 100 Healing Spell Power from class enhancements, and Empower Healing active (+75 Healing Spell Power), you can expect your cure spells to provide 275% extra healing, for a total of 375% of their base effect.

To summarize, the results of these changes are:
1. Metamagics are a smaller portion of your spell power total than they used to be.
2. To make up for it, we dramatically increased the casting benefits from equipment and enhancements.

For most players, this is a buff, as it provides the option to turn off your metamagics and conserve Spell Points, while still dealing capable damage.

The spellcasting effectiveness of low to mid level characters was greatly increased as a result of these changes, while at mid to high levels, when many advanced players tended to use metamagics, their damage varies between being approximately the same to having been slightly increased.

However, we felt some spells and abilities would be unbalanced if they received the full amount of Spell Power, so we made some exceptions, in order to maintain the current balance of the below listed spells:

The following spells currently receive reduced benefit from Spell Power:
• The Heal spell: 50%
• The Mass Heal spell: 50%
• Necrotic Touch (Pale Master): 50%
• Necrotic Bolt (Pale Master): 50%
• Necrotic Blast (Pale Master): 50%
• Arcane Bolt (Archmage): 50%
• Arcane Blast (Archmage): 50%
• Summon Archon (Favored Soul): 50%
• All Runearm Shots: Between 50% and 80%

Why these spells?
These spells are not affected either by Empower Spell, Maximize Spell, or both, and never have been.

We set the percentages of your Spell Power for the above spells to ensure that a character, upon the release of the expansion pack, at the same level and with equipment appropriate to their level, would see similar results with those spells.

If they did not receive reduced benefit from Spell Power, those spells would have been too powerful, since Spell Power amounts on items and enhancements now eclipse the old Spell Damage Amplification bonuses.

In other words- Metamagics were not as big of a factor in making those spells good. These spells would have gained the benefits of buffing spellpower on equipment and enhancements, but would NOT have had to worry about the decreased importance of metamagics: resulting in a huge buff to these spells.
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.

Why not just let them get buffed?
Answer: For the most part, they didn’t need it.

We are always watching the performance of groups in content, and will make further changes if needed.

For most players, Heal and Mass Heal are functioning approximately the same as they did before the expansion pack, and characters who use level appropriate gear have also seen small increases in the power of those spells. That small increase would have been a large one if we had done nothing, and we made the decision to maintain the current balance of the Heal and Mass Heal spells.

If we observe that Heal and Mass Heal are not performing sufficiently in Menace of the Underdark, we’ll address that.

Going forward, if we alter the Spell Power coefficient of a specific spell, we intend to update the tooltip to reflect either “This spell receives reduced benefit from Spell Power” or “This spell receives increased benefit from Spell Power”. This will allow us more control to boost “weaker” spells as needed without over-boosting already powerful ones.

As a long-term goal, we also hope to be able to improve the player’s Character Sheet to show Spell Power for each spell damage/healing type, as well as to show other statistics that currently do not appear on it, such as increased or decreased threat, healing amplification, and others.

What do I need to do to make sure my spells are as good as possible?
While “Potency” items which have Universal Spell Power (which boosts all spells) are useful to make sure your spells are strong, they generally provide two thirds the amount of bonus that an item of the same level which boosts one type of Spell Power does.
So, for example, if you want your Healing spells to be as strong as possible, use a “Devotion” item of as high of a level as you can.


TLDR Version: (Quick Summary)
• Some spells gain reduced benefit from Spell Power.
• This is because they are not affected by one or more metamagics.
• This keeps them approximately the same or a little better than they were before the expansion.
• This maintains the preexisting balance between those spells and other spells.
• If you want your spells to be as strong as possible, use an item that boosts that specific type of Spell Power.

[whereispowderedsilve]

Hey everyone,

We wanted provide clarifications on some of the confusion surrounding Spell Power, and to address the perception that healing has decreased in effectiveness.

The only two healing spells which have a non-standard interaction with Spell Power are Heal and Mass Heal. They each receive 50% of your spell power total. This number was chosen to ensure that, cast by a level 11-20 character with level appropriate equipment, the performance of Heal and Mass Heal remains approximately equal to its performance before the expansion pack, erring on the side of a small buff to effectiveness for characters whom are diligent in upgrading equipment as they level.

Before the expansion pack, items had Spell Damage Amplification. This was a percentage of a spell’s base damage that added together with your enhancements, and was then multiplied by the metamagics you were using with the spell. This meant that metamagics, such as Empower and Maximize, were a very significant portion of your spell damage and healing. Activating Maximize doubled the damage or healing of your spells, including the bonuses from your spell damage amplification.

This old Spell Damage Amplification system had difficulty scaling into higher level content. Because of the way it multiplied with metamagics, even a small increase to the available damage amplification could result in a large increase to your total spell damage/healing. While this doesn’t sound bad, it made for problems in balancing increased Spell Damage Amplification from multiple sources, such as items, enhancements, and the Epic Destinies which we released with Menace of the Underdark. Had we kept the old system, we would have had to provide extremely minimal or no increases in the available Spell Damage Amplification from those sources.

The way that portions of the old system worked were also not easily transparent to the player, and was subject to odd rules, such as items only working to boost spells below a certain level. We determined that it would improve gameplay for spellcasters if we simplified it so that all your bonuses to spell damage added together directly, and worked on spells of any level. This allows us to provide linear benefits to the power of your spells, from multiple sources, and have them stack in an easily identifiable way.

Now with Menace of the Underdark, we have replaced Spell Damage Amplification with Spell Power.
Every point of Spell Power adds 1% to the base damage or healing of a spell. Your enhancements and metamagics now function just like Spell Power, and it is all added together. One of our goals was to keep player spell damage and healing equal to, or better than, their current effectiveness. Because metamagics were no longer multiplying on top of the bonuses from spell amplification, we needed to make up for that somewhere else: we chose to increase the amount of power your items provide to your spells, and double the value of your spell damage enhancements.

For example, if you have 100 Healing Spell Power on a scepter, 100 Healing Spell Power from class enhancements, and Empower Healing active (+75 Healing Spell Power), you can expect your cure spells to provide 275% extra healing, for a total of 375% of their base effect.

To summarize, the results of these changes are:
1. Metamagics are a smaller portion of your spell power total than they used to be.
2. To make up for it, we dramatically increased the casting benefits from equipment and enhancements.

For most players, this is a buff, as it provides the option to turn off your metamagics and conserve Spell Points, while still dealing capable damage.

The spellcasting effectiveness of low to mid level characters was greatly increased as a result of these changes, while at mid to high levels, when many advanced players tended to use metamagics, their damage varies between being approximately the same to having been slightly increased.

However, we felt some spells and abilities would be unbalanced if they received the full amount of Spell Power, so we made some exceptions, in order to maintain the current balance of the below listed spells:

The following spells currently receive reduced benefit from Spell Power:
• The Heal spell: 50%
• The Mass Heal spell: 50%
• Necrotic Touch (Pale Master): 50%
• Necrotic Bolt (Pale Master): 50%
• Necrotic Blast (Pale Master): 50%
• Arcane Bolt (Archmage): 50%
• Arcane Blast (Archmage): 50%
• Summon Archon (Favored Soul): 50%
• All Runearm Shots: Between 50% and 80%

Why these spells?
These spells are not affected either by Empower Spell, Maximize Spell, or both, and never have been.

We set the percentages of your Spell Power for the above spells to ensure that a character, upon the release of the expansion pack, at the same level and with equipment appropriate to their level, would see similar results with those spells.

If they did not receive reduced benefit from Spell Power, those spells would have been too powerful, since Spell Power amounts on items and enhancements now eclipse the old Spell Damage Amplification bonuses.

In other words- Metamagics were not as big of a factor in making those spells good. These spells would have gained the benefits of buffing spellpower on equipment and enhancements, but would NOT have had to worry about the decreased importance of metamagics: resulting in a huge buff to these spells.
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.

Why not just let them get buffed?
Answer: For the most part, they didn’t need it.

We are always watching the performance of groups in content, and will make further changes if needed.

For most players, Heal and Mass Heal are functioning approximately the same as they did before the expansion pack, and characters who use level appropriate gear have also seen small increases in the power of those spells. That small increase would have been a large one if we had done nothing, and we made the decision to maintain the current balance of the Heal and Mass Heal spells.

If we observe that Heal and Mass Heal are not performing sufficiently in Menace of the Underdark, we’ll address that.

Going forward, if we alter the Spell Power coefficient of a specific spell, we intend to update the tooltip to reflect either “This spell receives reduced benefit from Spell Power” or “This spell receives increased benefit from Spell Power”. This will allow us more control to boost “weaker” spells as needed without over-boosting already powerful ones.

As a long-term goal, we also hope to be able to improve the player’s Character Sheet to show Spell Power for each spell damage/healing type, as well as to show other statistics that currently do not appear on it, such as increased or decreased threat, healing amplification, and others.

What do I need to do to make sure my spells are as good as possible?
While “Potency” items which have Universal Spell Power (which boosts all spells) are useful to make sure your spells are strong, they generally provide two thirds the amount of bonus that an item of the same level which boosts one type of Spell Power does.
So, for example, if you want your Healing spells to be as strong as possible, use a “Devotion” item of as high of a level as you can.


TLDR Version: (Quick Summary)
• Some spells gain reduced benefit from Spell Power.
• This is because they are not affected by one or more metamagics.
• This keeps them approximately the same or a little better than they were before the expansion.
• This maintains the preexisting balance between those spells and other spells.
• If you want your spells to be as strong as possible, use an item that boosts that specific type of Spell Power.

Awesome sauce! Thanks for the detailed explanation Mad! Timbits are on the way! :P! ! Lolz!

[Kits]

Thank you very, very much.

[Missing_Minds]

and was then multiplied by the metamagics you were using with the spell. This meant that metamagics, such as Empower and Maximize, were a very significant portion of your spell damage and healing. Activating Maximize doubled the damage or healing of your spells, including the bonuses from your spell damage amplification.

......

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do not remember Maximize nor Empower ever having any effect on Heal or Mass Heal, only Empower Healing would effect those two.
Which could mean the changes were based on an incorrect premise.

However, Maximize and Empower would work upon Reconstruct and still does.

But what you say confuses me.

The only two healing spells which have a non-standard interaction with Spell Power are Heal and Mass Heal. They each receive 50% of your spell power total.

.....

For example, if you have 100 Healing Spell Power on a scepter, 100 Healing Spell Power from class enhancements, and Empower Healing active (+75 Healing Spell Power), you can expect your cure spells to provide 275% extra healing, for a total of 375% of their base effect.

.............

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.

So really the equation is not what was in red but should be %ratio of "spell"( item spell power + enhancement spell power) + if(meta ratioed, %ratio of "spell"(meta spell power), spell power)

Or in the case of a heal spell, it should be 0.50*(100 Healing Spell Power on a scepter, 100 Healing Spell Power from class enhancements) + 75 spell power from Empower Healing = 275% Is this the value we are seeing on live? (I'm at work so can't test)

[Thrudh]

......

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do not remember Maximize nor Empower ever having any effect on Heal or Mass Heal, only Empower Healing would effect those two.
Which could mean the changes were based on an incorrect premise.

However, Maximize and Empower would work upon Reconstruct and still does.

Read it again.

BECAUSE Maximize and Empower never worked on Heal and Mass Heal, they needed to be treated differently.

Enhancement and item power went up, Maximize and Empower went down... Most spells are balanced by this. BECAUSE Heal never used Maximize and Empower before, they would have been buffed without any downside.

Thanks MadFloyd for the very detailed post.

99% of us got a buff to Mass Heal because we never even had an Potency IX or Devotion IX item before U14.

Keep watching to make sure Heal and Mass Heal are appropriately powered, but I will say they are working just fine so far for me in epic content (although I haven't done a lot of epic elite yet).

[Missing_Minds]

Read it again.

I read it a few times. Now I'm not saying I don't have one way of looking at it stuck in my head because I agree that I think that was his intention, but I just can't see it that way.

However, do have a look again at what I posted as I added more. I'm curious if I got screwed up in the head (again?) with what the equation should be.

[Alaunra2010]

99% of us got a buff to Mass Heal because we never even had an Potency IX or Devotion IX item before U14.

*reads that*

...

*reads it again*

Thank you for this reduction. The change always felt okay but I could never adequately state why it was.

[MrCow]

Going forward, if we alter the Spell Power coefficient of a specific spell, we intend to update the tooltip to reflect either “This spell receives reduced benefit from Spell Power” or “This spell receives increased benefit from Spell Power”.

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.

[jakeelala]

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.

This!

Anything else is just dumb to not tell us how much damage to expect if the effect varies.

[FooWonk]

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.

Here is data I've recorded on my limited testing.

Artificer: 18 Artificer / 2 Monk / 5 Shadowdancer
Target: vulnerable training dummy
Data collected: 10-50 samples per tier per rune arm; no critical hits; no saves

---

Lucid Dreams (148 spell power - enhancements + base on item)
1 charge - 69 per force ball
5 charges - 267 per force ball

With Impulse bandana (184 spell power)
1 charge - 73 per force ball (+5% over 148Spow)
5 charges - 322 per force ball (+20% over 148Spow)

---

Animus & Hand of the Tombs (0 spell power)
1 charge - 58 per blast
3 charges - 119 per blast (hand of the tombs)
5 charges - 173 per blast

With Combustion scepter (129 spell power)
1 charge - 126 per blast (+117% over 0Spow)
3 charges - 265 per blast (+121% - hand of the tombs)
5 charges - 377 per blast (+117% over 0Spow)

---

Chimera's Breath (0 spell power)
1 charge - 69 per blast
3 charges - 164 per blast

With Magnetism scepter (123 spell power)
1 charge - 104 per blast (+50% over 0Spow)
3 charges - 248 per blast (+50% over 0Spow)

---

Tira's Splendor (0 spell power)
1 charge - 36 per light spiral
5 charges - 162 per light spiral

With Radiance helm (102 spell power)
1 charge - 53 per light spiral (+47% over 0Spow)
5 charges - 232 per light spiral (+43% over 0Spow)

---

Summary:

• Exploding Fire Shot was flat >90% spell power (probably not WAI)
• Force Shot gave more spell power higher the charge tier
• Electrical Blast was flat 50% (not sure if Electrical Storm is same)
• Tira's Splendor gave less spell power higher the charge tier

I didn't test:

• Toven's (dont have)
• Glorious Obscenity (have but no cheap corrosion items on AH)
• Damage types without 5 charge tier rune-arm

[Charononus]

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

[TreknaQudane]

I noticed that my Artificers Rune Arm was doing way too little damage. So much for spell power increasing effectiveness.

[RavenStormclaw]

I noticed that my Artificers Rune Arm was doing way too little damage. So much for spell power increasing effectiveness.

Did you happen to change equipment.. I only ask becauxse my greater acid rune arm (ddo store i've been terribly unlucky with drops) was hitting for 90-120 per shot x 4 of course before the update and is still doing the same damage after the update.

[Siftrant]

Well done on a solid, well written, thorough explanation/discussion and communication from the Game owners to the game players. Whether we individually agree with the change or not is irrelevant; this kind of communication helps us players understand that the change made was thought through rather than arbitrary.

More explanations of changes like this would be terrific.

[taurean430]

The problem I see and am experiencing with these changes:

1. Light spells/Light sla are not scaling with level increases. So, at level 25, you are still doing the damage at a set value of a much lower level. Typically, the archon on my FvS is hitting for 36 damage per tic with the full smiting line. The light SLA is using charisma for dc and does not scale with level increase. It's hitting harder than my blade barrier with 400 or so on a lucky crit - but typically around 120-200 per cast.

2. Blade barrier caps at level 15 with a static value for increase. With the changes to maximize/empower, it's now typical for me to see 260-290 on crit results. Before xpac, my crit result was typically 700-850.

3. Gear consolidation does not appear to be there. It's required now to have potency/radiance/devotion/greater necro focus/greater evocation/benevolence. There are not enough gear slots available on a character to slot these items. So constant gear swapping is a requirement. The lowered values on casts coupled with higher mob hp/saves/damage output/resistances is problematic.

Suffice to say, my grievance is such that an epic level FvS/Cleric does significantly less spell damage. This is a big part of what I've been trying to get addressed since these changes were listed in closed beta.

Compare the damage please to the Sorc/Wizard/Druid. The differences are disparaging. And they appear to support the notion that a divine caster has no place in a party save healing others....

[rdasca]

Thank you very much, for the explanation MadFloyd:

However this I agree with 100%:

The problem I see and am experiencing with these changes:

1. Light spells/Light sla are not scaling with level increases. So, at level 25, you are still doing the damage at a set value of a much lower level. Typically, the archon on my FvS is hitting for 36 damage per tic with the full smiting line. The light SLA is using charisma for dc and does not scale with level increase. It's hitting harder than my blade barrier with 400 or so on a lucky crit - but typically around 120-200 per cast.

2. Blade barrier caps at level 15 with a static value for increase. With the changes to maximize/empower, it's now typical for me to see 260-290 on crit results. Before xpac, my crit result was typically 700-850.

3. Gear consolidation does not appear to be there. It's required now to have potency/radiance/devotion/greater necro focus/greater evocation/benevolence. There are not enough gear slots available on a character to slot these items. So constant gear swapping is a requirement. The lowered values on casts coupled with higher mob hp/saves/damage output/resistances is problematic.

Suffice to say, my grievance is such that an epic level FvS/Cleric does significantly less spell damage. This is a big part of what I've been trying to get addressed since these changes were listed in closed beta.

Compare the damage please to the Sorc/Wizard/Druid. The differences are disparaging. And they appear to support the notion that a divine caster has no place in a party save healing others....

A nerf is a nerf no matter how you sugar coat it, either I become a sub-par healer, or I gimp myself by giving up something like toughness or heavy fort or some other stat item that if not required is at least highly desirable, or I become a healbot, or I get to gear swap for every spell I want to cast. Sorry no thank you, I am very uninterested in any of those options even with your explanation, so my FvS stays solo and out of pugs.

[susiedupfer]

Thank you so very much for taking the time and making the effort to communicate with us. It does not change the facts whatsoever, but it does go a LONG way towards making us feel less alienated.

I do have a question, however. I do not want this to be interpreted as a rant in any manner whatsoever. 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?

[eris2323]

Why are wizards getting this?

Sorcs get full power on their SLA's...

All pale masters are not as important; All archmages, not as important?

Why do you want everyone to be a sorc?

[ZeebaNeighba]

Why are wizards getting this?

Sorcs get full power on their SLA's...

All pale masters are not as important; All archmages, not as important?

Why do you want everyone to be a sorc?

Because you can use metamagics on their SLAs. They will be about as strong as they always have been.

[eris2323]

Because you can use metamagics on their SLAs. They will be about as strong as they always have been.

Asking the devs.

Please devs, I'd really like to know. Why do you want everyone to be sorcs?