Healing and Spell Power

[Drwaz99]

Sooo..let's see if this is correct, with the spells listed, we add up all the SP bonuses in our head, then remember those spells and divide by 2 to get the actual SP bonus.


Math..when you just really want to **** someone off.

[DDOGoz]

Personally I wish healing could be buffed more, what w/ melee having ~1000hp now and mobs do alot more dmg in high lvl20+ content. my guildies ran LOB/MA all but 1 time, but a few have Lorrik's, and for the massive amount of grind and 3 item slots, I feel it should be more POWERful. get it? get it?

I mean, it's not like there are a lot of complaints about being a healer is too easy, or there is an overwhelming number of healers so that you can't find other classes to pug with?

But regardless of how we argue about what's the best/worst % buff/nerf, I want to say THANK YOU for this post. It's detailed explanation and examples really went a long way to make me understand, and soothed my rage. Thank you.

[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?

[varusso]

Thank you turbine for finally coming clean. I understand the method and the reasoning, and it is actually almost spot on what I expected. The only problem I ever had with it was the lack of disclosure from the start. This has been rectified, and I hope to see it being the standard rather than the exception going forward.

A few points I will touch on here:
* For the folks calling to nerf the damage dice on the spells instead of adjusting the sPOW effectiveness on them -- this is a no-go. While having sPOW work universally the same across the board is a nice goal, this method is actually better, Nerfing the spell itself would mean that low-geared/enhanced toons would be greatly impacted, whereas well geared/enhanced toons would see essentially no change. Reducing the sPOW effectiveness means essentially no change for the well-geared toons, but for the lesser-geared toons, they keep the better effectiveness of the spells. In other words, the gear-up toons get the same result either way, while the less geared toons get shafted if the spell itself is nerfed. The only cost to making it "nicer" to everyone is the fact you have to divide sPOW by two on a few spells. I call that a fair trade.
* Some folks dont seem to understand what Turbine actually did, even after the explanation. In a bare-bones explanation, it is simply this: They wanted the TOTAL effectiveness of a toons enhancements, metas, and gears to roughly equal what it did pre-u14 -- assuming that the toon has adjusted to the new system and re-geared, re-enhanced, and still has the same metas. In the old system, all of your enhancement and gear augments were added together, then they were MULTIPLIED by the meats instead of ADDED to them. This made metas incredibly powerful, not to mention you had to do some squirrelly math to find your actual total power.

So they changed it to make ALL sPOW additive. In order to do that, they reduced the effectiveness of metas but boosted the effectiveness of gear and enhancements in order to achieve roughly the same total power for a toon as pre-u14 -- again assuming the toon re-geared to accommodate the new system. IMO that was a good thing, but thats really beside the point, as it is just an opinion.

Now the problem that is being run into here -- Some spells and SLAs did not receive a boost from certain metas pre-u14 and they continue to not receive those boosts. HOWEVER, they DO receive the double enhancement boosts and higher gear boosts right along with all the other spells. This means they end up getting WAY more boosted than pre-u14, and certainly more than the devs wanted them to be. So that leaves 2 real choices: nerf the specific spells/SLAs or nerf the sPOW augmentation of them.

Now I hope my first point explains well enough why nerfing the spell itself is a bad idea. Hence the only real option left is to reduce the sPOW effectiveness for those handful of spells/SLAs that are getting a bigger than intended boost, due to the way metas, enhancements, and gear were rebalanced.

Now, I dont doubt that some things will need some tweaking here and there -- thats part of the conversion process. I will leave it to the Mathemagicians who like doing lal the test runs to help turbine determine what if any changes need to be made. But keep this in mind while you are doing your runs, folks: What was acceptable gear pre-u14 is no longer acceptable gear post-u14 -- in terms of getting the best spell boosting you can get. The days of popping a single clicky and having almost the best boost you can get are simply over. You WILL have to redo your gear to re-optimize, and turbine WILL have to update some of the gear (specifically sets like lorriks that require 3 slots, but provide less sPOW than random lootgen items). But once that is done, I think we will be roughly the same (slightly better) than before.

Now as to divine offensive spells -- time to speak up on that devs. Bug, WAI, or something else the players are missing?

[Ungood]

Good stuff, bookmarked it for future use. Thanks Mad Floyd.

[Engoril]

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.

You failed in your assumptions regarding "equipment appropriate to their level". I can only speak for Archmage's Arcane Bolt/Blast. Prior to update I got along fine with a Superior Potency item. After the update, my Wizard has suffered reduced Arcane Bolt damage because the item he has to boost damage, is now half effect. Yes you have added items that will fix this, but there is no longer one item that does it all so I need to regrind for new gear just to get back to where my Wizard was before the update, with Arcane Bolt.

ie you are assuming we already have the new gear you added in the update, in your assumption that we will be unaffected. In fact the reality is we are reduced until we get that new equipment and may in fact only be back to what we used to be at level 20, when we reach 25 (because it may take that long to find it)!

[Feather_of_Sun]

Now as to divine offensive spells -- time to speak up on that devs. Bug, WAI, or something else the players are missing?

I suspect the latter. I've seen no evidence that any divine offensive spells other than the one named in the original post of this thread (Summon Archon) gains reduced benefit from Spell Power. All my testing has shown they're all spot on for the 100% that we have them set to.

I think this is just a case of the one person who tried to test it actually used Summon Archon to do so, then the "light spells are getting half also" word just spread around, despite being inaccurate.

[orakio]

Thanks MadFloyd for the explanation, pretty much exactly what I thought it would be.

I would like to echo some other people though on the request to make spellpower modifier for the runearms, due to the variable nature of spellpower received, visible on the runearm themselves. So confused as to how much damage I should expect on my arti right now.

Overall I am fine with the changes.

[Chai]

Excellent explanation.

Its as if millions of forumites suddenly cried out "nerf!!!"...and were suddenly silenced.

[DeafeningWhisper]

Excellent explanation.

Its as if millions of forumites suddenly cried out "nerf!!!"...and were suddenly silenced.

Or rather proven right, but with a decent enough explanation.

[Chai]

You failed in your assumptions regarding "equipment appropriate to their level". I can only speak for Archmage's Arcane Bolt/Blast. Prior to update I got along fine with a Superior Potency item. After the update, my Wizard has suffered reduced Arcane Bolt damage because the item he has to boost damage, is now half effect. Yes you have added items that will fix this, but there is no longer one item that does it all so I need to regrind for new gear just to get back to where my Wizard was before the update, with Arcane Bolt.

ie you are assuming we already have the new gear you added in the update, in your assumption that we will be unaffected. In fact the reality is we are reduced until we get that new equipment and may in fact only be back to what we used to be at level 20, when we reach 25 (because it may take that long to find it)!

New equipment that beats the pants off old equipment drops like rain, and can be purchased off the AH, the house D vendor, or off the weapon vendor in eveningstar. The market is already quite saturated with the stuff.

[eden2760]

Yah... after reading these posts, I do have to ask.

Madfloyd, is the 50% going to stay the way it is, or is there any consideration that it might be uptweaked a bit to account for the (perceived?) over-nerf of the listed spells, such as up to 65% as one poster suggested, or some arbitrary number in there?

Or has Turbine dead set that 50% it is, and 50% it shall stay?

[Chai]

Or rather proven right, but with a decent enough explanation.

Some of the objective ones were proven right. The "my class is now unplayable and Im retiring all my divines" crowd are not among them.

[GermanicusMaximus]

Now, light spells only getting 50% I hope is just a bug. They should be getting 100% spell power just like other attack spells.

I have yet to see any developer post regarding this, although it has been discussed extensively on the forums, and all that would be required would be a one sentence reply from a dev.

Edit: Thanks to all the people who pointed out that my question was answered while I was in the process of originally crafting this post

Of course, that just confirms that light based damage is nerfed compared to Update 13, and that the devs think that is OK.

[DarkForte]

I have yet to see any developer post regarding this, although it has been discussed extensively on the forums, and all that would be required would be a one sentence reply from a dev.

What do you mean? FoS has already given us the answer: we're all liars that don't test stuff right.

[DeafeningWhisper]

I have yet to see any developer post regarding this, although it has been discussed extensively on the forums, and all that would be required would be a one sentence reply from a dev.

Look up, Feather just said we are wrong and it's not true as far as he knows.

[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.

[Feather_of_Sun]

Yah... after reading these posts, I do have to ask.

Madfloyd, is the 50% going to stay the way it is, or is there any consideration that it might be uptweaked a bit to account for the (perceived?) over-nerf of the listed spells, such as up to 65% as one poster suggested, or some arbitrary number in there?

Or has Turbine dead set that 50% it is, and 50% it shall stay?

I'm no Madfloyd, but I can field this one.
Part of the reason why it is nice for us to have this ability to set these coefficients for what percentage of Spell Power a spell benefits from is that it is very easy to modify.
This means that we can and are willing to make adjustments to spells which are underperforming.

The current 50% values for the spells listed in the original post are initial pegs to make sure they were remaining pretty close to their pre-expansion values, they were not intended as a rebalancing pass.

If we see certain spells under-preforming or that are in need of help, we now have the ability to tweak them upwards as needed, in whatever incremental amounts work best to nudge them into place.

[Dandonk]

"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."

Hmm, really?

Before, we had: Base*(1+meta)*(clicky/item+enhancement+1).
That is, for a heal with empower healing, amrath clickies and Life IV: 150*1.5*(.75+.4+1)= 483.75

Now, we have: 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:
150 + 150*.75 + ½(1.02+0.2+0.8+0.18)*150 = 427.5

I don't see how that is a buff, or even close to before? And this assumes I now slot devotion somewhere, as well as use an implement - which was not needed before. I even need to get a 102 devotion item, which is above what I had before.

So, worse performance for more gearing. That's not close to what it was before, not at all.

[varusso]

Yah... after reading these posts, I do have to ask.

Madfloyd, is the 50% going to stay the way it is, or is there any consideration that it might be uptweaked a bit to account for the (perceived?) over-nerf of the listed spells, such as up to 65% as one poster suggested, or some arbitrary number in there?

Or has Turbine dead set that 50% it is, and 50% it shall stay?

I think these excerpts best answer your question:

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

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.

EDIT: Meh, ninja-ed by a dev. Time to go do some housework now