The healing-range penalty from Epic Defensive fighting sucks - remove it

[Kaboom2112]

Title says it all.

[Enoach]

I think I have an idea of what they were trying to do, but the fact that it does not stack with certain abilities, and it makes all spells "touch" range seems to relegate this ability to... Melee that only Self heal.


So for those that don't fall in that "box" it is a feat that may only get used by those where it does add HP as something to activate just before you run through a trap, deactivating when you are on the other side.

[blerkington]

/Signed

The disconnect between the stated reasons for the EDF stance and its implementation is just ridiculous.

I'm still yet to hear anything resembling a plausible explanation from a developer (rather than a forum apologist) about why melees who supposedly needed help also needed to have their other abilities curtailed. So if you use EDF (because you 'need' it as a melee bard, ranger, etc) you can't use other inherent class features properly anymore.

The fact that the developers pretty much went straight to ground after notifying us of the change says it all. Another fine moment in being straight with the community and responding to feedback after asking for it.

Thanks.

[Kaboom2112]

/Signed

The disconnect between the stated reasons for the EDF stance and its implementation is just ridiculous.

I'm still yet to hear anything resembling a plausible explanation from a developer (rather than a forum apologist) about why melees who supposedly needed help also needed to have their other abilities curtailed. So if you use EDF (because you 'need' it as a melee bard, ranger, etc) you can't use other inherent class features properly anymore.

The fact that the developers pretty much went straight to ground after notifying us of the change says it all. Another fine moment in being straight with the community and responding to feedback after asking for it.

Thanks.

We've noticed since melee's now have a much harder time tossing each other a heal that end-game reaper groups have all but dried up.

I'm not sure it's a causation, just pointing out the correlation.

Granted, I totally get them not wanting casters to take advantage of this stance. Give it a -50 to all DCs and a -500 to all Spell Powers that aren't healing or Repair.

It's just idiotic to change something that makes curing each other in reaper more difficult.

[blerkington]

There are very few situations where I use the stance because most of the time the extra HP just aren't useful and the loss of utility is far too great.

This stance has clearly caused problems for melees who are running content that is challenging for them when they don't also have a babysitter. That was especially noticeable at first in the low skull PUG scene on my server. I don't think it's making more healers appear out thin air either, it just made grouping that much more of a pain.

Of course the big winners are people from strong, well organised guilds/channels who can always field groups with optimal or near optimal compositions. Which seems like exactly the opposite of who you'd want to help with a survivability adjustment, so I guess bravo SSG?

Thanks.

[Kaboom2112]

This penalty still sucks

[Domince]

Nah, it really isnt a big deal at all.

[Ralmeth]

I think having the ability to heal, rez, etc other party members is worth a lot more than the extra hit points this feat provides. I do think having those extra hit points is helpful and this is why my melee builds always include the Paladin or Fighter defensive stance for the bonus 20% hit points. I’m much happier with my builds with the feat turned off.

[Valerianus]

Epic Defensive Fighting was a bad and convoluted idea since the beginning.


and now it's spreading, it infected the EK tree. who will be the next victim?

[Emerge2012]

I don't have a problem with it other than the hp bonus making paladin/fighter stances less useful. I mean hand heals aren't affected by it and I'm not sure any other heals that a melee can get are going to make much difference in high reaper. CSW from a ranger isn't going to save the day and any melee cleric/fvs/bard is already doing the party a disservice by being melee in the first place.

It's always better to have a cc/instakill cleric or favored soul in those groups and at least 2 of the melees should have some sort of mass heal. Consecration is great for this as is mass regen from druid. Running high reaper, especially R10, is more about preventive maintenance anyways and the aoe heals should be running nearly full time.

[PsychoBlonde]

I never noticed any melees throwing me heals BEFORE the feat, and they STILL don't, so it's a wash apart from the fact that they're mostly a bit easier to keep alive. Heck, even actual healers are usually too lazy to throw heals so I wind up self-healing up until about 5 skull reaper when it's simply impossible.

If you're playing a non-melee class, don't expect the melee to heal you. Stay back and avoid damage. And, hey, if you want to play a hybrid class, guess what, you have to decide what you want to do. You don't get to have everything. It's a stance. You can turn it on and off depending on what's most effective right now.

[DRoark]

They should have added passive HPs to DEF/weapon feats, and skipped adding another useless toggle, and skipping the shield line entirely makes the stance doubly worthless.
If a caster "really" wanted to take it, he could always just sword/board with a Rod or something, and taken a couple shield feats for extra DEF/HP. It was a very poorly
designed addition that wasn't needed. I cross-heal with other people in Reaper, and now I can't even do that, standing on opposite sides of a larger foe, I'm "too far away".

[JOTMON]

While I understand what they were trying to do...
Its a dumb mechanic that should never have impacted wands scrolls or clickies.

The touch range is overkill, would rather have seen a negative enlarge effect .. cut range to half on cast spells
This way taking the enlarge feat would allow the range to go back to normal on enlargeable spells with the associated cost.

The current implementation is just..[expletive]

[lppmor]

Epic Defensive Fighting was a bad and convoluted idea since the beginning.
and now it's spreading, it infected the EK tree. who will be the next victim?

I'm pretty sure someone at SSG is obsessed with melee restriction at this point.

Maybe someone has found out the tech to do so and they somehow HAD to implement it.

Too bad it'll only actually work when they decide to "give a bonus at" melee range instead of "restrict everything to" melee range.

[Alcides]

If you want to use EDF and be at ranged well sorry but it was defined as being for melees not casters or ranged builds...If you want to use it then adapt to being in melee range. Aoe heals are needed in melee often enough.Its Working As Designed

[Kaboom2112]

Its Working As Designed

It's designed stupidly.

[Thrudh]

If you want to use EDF and be at ranged well sorry but it was defined as being for melees not casters or ranged builds...If you want to use it then adapt to being in melee range. Aoe heals are needed in melee often enough.Its Working As Designed

Ranged healing only is what we're talking about.

I agree with Kaboom, and that's scary... EDF hurts grouping.

[blerkington]

Perhaps one way to deal with this would be add a flag so the game can tell the difference between offensive spells (causing a reduction in range while the stance is active) and other spell types like heals, buffs, etc so their range isn't affected.

If this change or something like it were made, the stance would be a lot better than it was, ie, a somewhat decent addition to the game matching its stated purpose rather than the corrupt-a-wish bit of nonsense it is now.

Thanks.

[FuryFlash]

I never noticed any melees throwing me heals BEFORE the feat, and they STILL don't

You may not have noticed, but they did before, and they still do.

I play with EDF off on my Ranger in 95% of content because this penalty is too punitive to group play. I would rather see the feat removed entirely, but otherwise removing touch range for healing would be the next best thing.

[Ralmeth]

You may not have noticed, but they did before, and they still do.

I play with EDF off on my Ranger in 95% of content because this penalty is too punitive to group play. I would rather see the feat removed entirely, but otherwise removing touch range for healing would be the next best thing.

In my experience, it's pretty rare that someone else heals me. Throw me a rez, yes, but not a heal. In contrast, I'm always healing everyone else in the party, which I don't mind, but it's a bit exasperating if we're playing a quest on Reaper, I'm healing everyone else, but no one can bother to heal me. The last quest where this happened, I had to constantly fall behind the group because I needed to heal myself up. I suppose I'm not supposed to play a melee in reaper...Stupid game mechanics. This stuff is not that difficult to come up with a properly balanced design.