Curse

Captain Robo · Oct 16, 2007, 09:02 PM // 21:02

After playing WoW long enough to level a priest to 70 and then quit (if you think Anet doesn't listen to its customers, go play a priest... Blizzard makes Anet look like an overprotective parent.), I realized the importance of heals over time with respect to healing.

However, this is something that has never caught on in Guildwars, likely due to the fast paced nature of the game: you simply don't have time for a heal-over-time to run its course when a frenzied warrior is pounding your ass like he's looking for water.

Guildwars is the type of game where protection spells and red-bars-go-up skills really shine, which begs the question of why exactly the "healing" line of monks has never been given a true reworking to be viable.

LoD is great partywide healing, Infuse can be a lifesaver against spikes, Gift of health is the gold standard of healing, but other than that, the only notable skills are Heal Other (when Cure Hex isn't worth taking (that was a moot point btw)), and Sig of Rejuvination (>=Signet of Devotion).

Heals over time, such as Healing Breeze, Restful breeze, should be what bonus healing is to protection line; in order to increase the overall mana efficiency of a monk through passive health regeneration.

Protection spells are effective because they usually come with a good heal (i.e. RoF) and mitigate damage (i.e. RoF (see what I did there?)). Granted, heals from the protection line aren't huge in comparison to healing, but their utility far surpasses mere direct healing by negating damage, in addition to healing at the same time.

The regeneration and degeneration effects in guildwars are much better than those of other games (read: WoW) in that the effects are always occurring: pips of regen or degen mean you are always losing or gaining 2 points of health, per pip, each second; as opposed to a lump sum of how much you would have earned in a time span occurring, say, every five seconds.

The problem is that these effects are simply not strong enough to compete with the amount of damage people can deal out in the same amount of time.

I think that regeneration effects should be buffed significantly to make them viable in the healing line, as monks should have a way to make the most out of an initial investment of energy in all situations.

At any rate, I have to get to class. More later.

Tab · Oct 16, 2007, 09:18 PM // 21:18

Because of the way Guild Wars works, spells that have a slow effect that takes place over 10 seconds aren't great, seeing as the damage comes in quick, concentrated bursts.

Teh [prefession]-zorz · Oct 16, 2007, 09:21 PM // 21:21

wait isn't the "rejuvenation" rit skill a heal over time? doesnt last really "over time" persay but it does do more then just 1 heal

so spirit light weapon

Bankai · Oct 16, 2007, 09:36 PM // 21:36

This is simply a matter of Power.

The more pressure-orientated the metagame is, the better healing is. Think of a metagame with pure hex-pressure. Prot is horrible, apart from Divert hexes.

The more damage-orientated the metagame is, the better prot is. Think of a metagame that consists of IWAY, Gale warriors, and Backbreakers. Heal is not good, because you can easily slap on a guardian and reducing the damage by half, than using leet reaction skills and a lot of energy to keep up with the damage.

Since the release of factions, the game has been shifting more and more to a damage-orientated metagame. In the beginning, it was mainly pressure- warriors didn't spike and such. However, back then, healing was horrible. In the current metagame, the damage is far too large to simply out-heal it, and for the damage that gets past the prot that you NEED to survive, you have LoD.

When looking directly at the problem of regen, it's very simple. The cost is too high for the amount of health you receive. Heal other heals for 151 at 12, while Healing breeze heals for 160. Both for 10e. Since regeneration is usually inconvenient, healing breeze is just a waste of energy on a monk-primary. Also, the 1s cast really hurts it.

Riotgear · Oct 16, 2007, 09:46 PM // 21:46

Playing a healer in WoW is sort of like taking a monk, deleting Protection Prayers, and making Healer's Boon on permanently. And Deep Wounds are non-removable and reduce healing by 50%. And you have one pip of energy regen.

But anyway, regen effects tend to be bad because if someone's health is low enough for a regen effect to really use its full potential, they're vulnerable to spiking and you want to either get their health up or prevent it from going down immediately. The maximum for regen is 20HP/sec, and that isn't going to safe someone on a spike. The only reason Shield of Regeneration and Feigned Neutrality work at doing so is because of their +armor components.

HoTs in WoW mostly serve three roles, mostly revolving around playing a healer in WoW revolving around furiously throwing health at the person taking the most damage:
- Increasing the amount of health you can throw at them per second.
- Keeping other peoples' health up without wasting time you could be spending throwing lots of health at somebody else.
- Getting health back up when spending time casting is a liability. (i.e. the WoW 2v2 bracket)

The first doesn't happen in GW because if people are that content to train someone, you prot them and then training them is mostly pointless.

The second is more akin to party healing in role. Resto druids in WoW are most useful for throwing out Lifeblooms to top off health bars from shit like cave-ins and other AoE, whereas party healing in GW serves the role of cleaning up incidental damage. If a regen effect can't replace party healing, it's probably irrelevant.

The third is mostly handled by Reversal of Fortune and, on some teams, Patient Spirit. However, it's not really as critical as in WoW because GW doesn't have nearly as many mez effects and doesn't let you get away with mindlessly training one person, so the ability to cast on the run is much less significant. Cast times in GW tend have more to do with getting your cast off in time for the spell to achieve its intended effect than it has to do with vulnerability, with a good number of exceptions of course.

Ensign · Oct 16, 2007, 11:49 PM // 23:49

HoTs tend to be bad in Guild Wars because the skills themselves are steaming piles of shit. When you have one at a viable power level (Mystic Regeneration, Shield of Regeneration) it sees play all over the place. HoT is really valuable in small fights where it has time to work. As far as Healing HoTs go, though, they tend to be worse than the Healing line in general, a line that's one of the weakest in the game.

Riotgear · Oct 17, 2007, 12:51 AM // 00:51

I'd disagree that they're inherently weaker, Restful Breeze for example provides a LOT of health for the cost and consequently found use in places where its conditionality could be sidestepped (i.e. base ganking). Healing Breeze heals for more than Heal Other.... except it's slow as shit.

The problem is more in the fact that dumb heals at least offer spike protection for as long as that block of health lasts, regen effects don't even do that, they essentially have the least amount of utility of any heal effect. They're a reactive effect that takes too long to react.

Mystic Regeneration sees play because its effect lasts so long that you can actually use it pre-emptively and have the effect work in time. It works because it's not reactive. Shield of Regeneration sees play because the +40 armor covers for the inherent weakness of regen effects by keeping the target from dying while it's working, not because the regen effect is particularly good.

Captain Robo · Oct 17, 2007, 01:09 AM // 01:09

With respect to the healing prayers line of skills, you're right, its absolutely atrocious. Only a few viable skills of the entire lot...

Then again, how many different ways can you say "Heal target(s) for X Points"? Its kind of amazing in itself that there are so many skills in the line, even if the vast majority are useless.

Guildwars is the type of game that whenever an interesting mechanic gets introduced, the player base uses it to make a ridiculously powerful build, which usually ends with said mechanic getting annihilated with the nerf bat.

That's why you're probably never going to see anything truly innovative implemented into this game. Because of the inherent competitive nature of guildwars, people will play the most powerful build in order to win. As we've seen since the beginning (but not always), dominant builds and powerful skills get nerfed; often into complete obsoleteness.

In this way, innovation is discouraged within Guildwars, because if something is not scrutinized to be thoroughly balanced before being implemented, it will end up being broken, and the devs have shown their ineptitude in balancing skills while maintaining the viability of those skills. I guess we have nobody but ourselves to blame for playing what wins, and winning with it. We should be ashamed.

But I digress:

In the case of HoT effects, perhaps you're right, guildwars is not the type of game where they shine, but Ensign, you bring up a good point in the current (and pretty much since the beginning) terrible state of healing prayers.

Does it make sense for any skill line to be useless? Classes are meant to be balanced in the sense that one class should excel at doing certain things.

But one skill line attributed (prot) to one of those classes should never be better than another skill line (healing) at doing its job. Though just about every good monk build is a hybrid, the majority of skills on a monk's bar are prot, with a few healing staples such as LoD and Infuse, Gift of Health, Sig of Rejuvenation, and Cure Hex.

There it is, the entire healing prayers line in five skills.

I brought up the point of HoT effects because it's a natural extension of what "healing prayers" should entail; I mean, it doesn't get any more basic than "you get healed for X over Y seconds." and I found it rather weird that guildwars lacks good versions (aside from Shield of Regeneration or Troll Unguent), of this concept.

What I would have liked to see was a new mechanic for monks that allowed them to gain a sort of "caster momentum," if you will, in order to heal effectively and keep from draining their energy pool. I thought a pretty cool way to do this would be to add an effect to the healing prayers attribute which scaled with rank to add X seconds of Y pips of health regeneration. More target-efficient (i.e. More than one target) heals would be great too.

But at any rate, I'm just poking blindly in the dark here, as guildwars is effectively dead, aside from a few token dartboard nerfs until GW2.

I'ma go gvg now.

TheOneMephisto · Oct 17, 2007, 01:29 AM // 01:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Robo

Guildwars is the type of game that whenever an interesting mechanic gets introduced, the player base uses it to make a ridiculously powerful build, which usually ends with said mechanic getting annihilated with the nerf bat.

That's why you're probably never going to see anything truly innovative implemented into this game. Because of the inherent competitive nature of guildwars, people will play the most powerful build in order to win. As we've seen since the beginning (but not always), dominant builds and powerful skills get nerfed; often into complete obsoleteness.

In this way, innovation is discouraged within Guildwars, because if something is not scrutinized to be thoroughly balanced before being implemented, it will end up being broken, and the devs have shown their ineptitude in balancing skills while maintaining the viability of those skills. I guess we have nobody but ourselves to blame for playing what wins, and winning with it. We should be ashamed.

I think that's more that the devs tend to buff stuff until it's overpowered, and then nerf it into oblivion. That's mostly a result of their "big balances every month" strategy though, rather than a more sensible "small balances daily/weekly."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Robo

Does it make sense for any skill line to be useless? Classes are meant to be balanced in the sense that one class should excel at doing certain things.

But one skill line attributed (prot) to one of those classes should never be better than another skill line (healing) at doing its job. Though just about every good monk build is a hybrid, the majority of skills on a monk's bar are prot, with a few healing staples such as LoD and Infuse, Gift of Health, Sig of Rejuvenation, and Cure Hex.

There are always going to be attribute lines that are more useful than others. I mean, you're comparing healing and prot, but you aren't even looking at smiting (the most useless of the lot currently). There are plenty of useless attribute lines, and I don't necessarily think that's a problem.

Riotgear · Oct 17, 2007, 01:33 AM // 01:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Robo

Does it make sense for any skill line to be useless? Classes are meant to be balanced in the sense that one class should excel at doing certain things.

I don't think I really mind it being in its current state because it discourages the kind of shitfest that WoW Arena is right now: Run after someone, hit them with the healing debuff, then punch them in the face faster than they can heal the damage. If you can't heal faster than the damage, then it comes down to playing reflexes and net latency, or just shutting down the healer and then punching someone in the face.

It means you're playing tug of war with health bars and not making any real strategic decisions: Health bar is down, therefore, push it back up.

The only way to avoid this kind of thing, really, is to have effects that require strategic decisions to be made and reward those decisions with a stronger effect than you'd get by simply eating the damage and repairing it. This is prot. However, the presence of something like that kind of makes healing something you want to use just enough to fix whatever gets through prot, which means it's inherently weak.

Because of that, there are only going to be a few ways to push those health bars back up that are worth using, generally ones that are fast or are extremely efficient.

Captain Robo · Oct 17, 2007, 01:37 AM // 01:37

Monks don't do damage

Unless you're one of those people who looks at conjures and thinks "I liked it better when it was called smiting."

Call me hypocritical, but I really wasn't even considering smiting at any point of my rant. I'd give up the entire smiting line if Healing Prayers could get buffed. Really wouldn't bother me at all.

Might even nerf farming once and for all, wouldn't that be cool.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

I don't think I really mind it being in its current state because it discourages the kind of shitfest that WoW Arena is right now: Run after someone, hit them with the healing debuff, then punch them in the face faster than they can heal the damage. If you can't heal faster than the damage, then it comes down to playing reflexes and net latency, or just shutting down the healer and then punching someone in the face.

I am so glad I got out of that game in time to avoid the pvp. That sounds more boring than dueling someone in a Burning Arrow mirror.

Riotgear · Oct 17, 2007, 01:58 AM // 01:58

Smiting has more use than a dumb damage line, it's just that most of the conceptually-useful spells in smiting essentially take some good skill from another line, replace their beneficial side-effects (i.e. heal-ups) with a lackluster damage packet, and increase the recharge.

Smiting is the kind of thing that would conceptually belong in the niche that B-surge currently occupies, the problem is that you don't really want to bitchslap the enemy's frontline as much as you want to ensure that they aren't succeeding in their task of beating up your team. Small damage packets are not going to discourage them from doing so.

Melody Cross · Oct 17, 2007, 02:02 AM // 02:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Robo

With respect to the healing prayers line of skills, you're right, its absolutely atrocious. Only a few viable skills of the entire lot...

Then again, how many different ways can you say "Heal target(s) for X Points"? Its kind of amazing in itself that there are so many skills in the line, even if the vast majority are useless.

Guildwars is the type of game that whenever an interesting mechanic gets introduced, the player base uses it to make a ridiculously powerful build, which usually ends with said mechanic getting annihilated with the nerf bat.

That's why you're probably never going to see anything truly innovative implemented into this game. Because of the inherent competitive nature of guildwars, people will play the most powerful build in order to win. As we've seen since the beginning (but not always), dominant builds and powerful skills get nerfed; often into complete obsoleteness.

In this way, innovation is discouraged within Guildwars, because if something is not scrutinized to be thoroughly balanced before being implemented, it will end up being broken, and the devs have shown their ineptitude in balancing skills while maintaining the viability of those skills. I guess we have nobody but ourselves to blame for playing what wins, and winning with it. We should be ashamed.

Which is why the nerf cycle needs to end. Instead of skill kills, we need other skills--unused skills--buffed to compensate for overpowered builds. We have more than enough--some say way too much--diversity in this game to see a shift like this. What we don't have is development resources...

The problem comes from skill viability, as you say. Anything too good gets abused, gets killed. Anything mediocre is ignored. And anything solid tends to get bitched about...until it too gets nerfed. Its not just monks. Its everything.

Quote:

But I digress:

In the case of HoT effects, perhaps you're right, guildwars is not the type of game where they shine, but Ensign, you bring up a good point in the current (and pretty much since the beginning) terrible state of healing prayers.

The skills are actually there. HBreeze, Vigorous Spirit, healing hands and seed. Seed sees a lot of play, even in a fairly gimped form. But breese is mostly run on NPC bars or monks that don't know better yet. So too is VS; uptime turns it into crap and excessive downtime for HH makes it useless unless you're tanking (W/Mos).

If in a different way, HoTs can be used and are used in the game to a very small--niche--degree of success. They work very differently from WoW, but they are here...just pathetic.

Quote:

Does it make sense for any skill line to be useless? Classes are meant to be balanced in the sense that one class should excel at doing certain things.

But one skill line attributed (prot) to one of those classes should never be better than another skill line (healing) at doing its job. Though just about every good monk build is a hybrid, the majority of skills on a monk's bar are prot, with a few healing staples such as LoD and Infuse, Gift of Health, Sig of Rejuvenation, and Cure Hex.

Some people don't like that. At all. Go into Sardilac here on Guru. At least once a month you will find a troll whining that monks are overpowered because they can heal teams more than a warrior can.

It makes no sense for a skill line to be useless. But HPrayers are not entirely useless. Those staples you mention re actually quite powerful. But with 38 skills for the entire line, its a hollow statment to say "Healing Pryers get used". Most of the skills I've capped in HP were only capped for the skill hunter title. Thats it.

Once again, because of the way "balancing" works in this game, its doubtful we'll see improvements. Not because these skills might become overpowered, but because these skills aren't causing problems right now. Its easier to nerf what you see than tinker with what never sees play.

Quote:

There it is, the entire healing prayers line in five skills.

I brought up the point of HoT effects because it's a natural extension of what "healing prayers" should entail; I mean, it doesn't get any more basic than "you get healed for X over Y seconds." and I found it rather weird that guildwars lacks good versions (aside from Shield of Regeneration or Troll Unguent), of this concept.

What I would have liked to see was a new mechanic for monks that allowed them to gain a sort of "caster momentum," if you will, in order to heal effectively and keep from draining their energy pool. I thought a pretty cool way to do this would be to add an effect to the healing prayers attribute which scaled with rank to add X seconds of Y pips of health regeneration. More target-efficient (i.e. More than one target) heals would be great too.

But at any rate, I'm just poking blindly in the dark here, as guildwars is effectively dead, aside from a few token dartboard nerfs until GW2.

I'ma go gvg now.

We get DF instead, which is why people use monks in the first place. It promotes the spam mentality that many players have: if I cast more, I heal for more, because my DF hits the target. If you're proposing a change to DF, HoT per cast is not going to go over well. If you're proposing an additional condition to HPrayers...dual secondary effects on a single class is imba.

Ultimately, HoTs would never be endorsed by the GW community. They would see it as overpowered because you can throw this one someone, and get heals over time for virtually nothing.

GGs

Master Ketsu · Oct 17, 2007, 05:40 AM // 05:40

Quote:

I'd disagree that they're inherently weaker, Restful Breeze for example provides a LOT of health for the cost and consequently found use in places where its conditionality could be sidestepped (i.e. base ganking). Healing Breeze heals for more than Heal Other.... except it's slow as shit.

Restfull breeze is a good heal, but only on a Secondary who only puts a few points into it. an A/mo can get away with it as a faster recharging/lower spec (only need 3 HP for it to be viable ) alternative to feigned nuetrality...but any monk who tries to use restfull breeze as a team heal is insane.

Captain Robo · Oct 17, 2007, 06:02 AM // 06:02

The conditions for Restful Breeze are way too stringent. The skill is only good when you're not doing anything at all.

And that's just plain stupid.

If the gold standard for HoTs in this game is Healing Breeze, and Restful Breeze is the price you pay for -5e, I guess its really not even a worthwhile mechanic to even consider implementing.

Seef II · Oct 17, 2007, 07:11 AM // 07:11

There aren't many options for HoTs compared to DoTs. The only "tick" healer is Healing Spring, which would only see use on a very limited trapper - and even then, it is limited by recharge and range. Spirit Light Weapon's not much better than Breeze. Something like "For 3 seconds, target ally is healed 10..40 Health each second" priced competitively would be interesting. Tiny packets like from Vig Spirit just don't warrant the skill slot, and big packets from junk like Orison are too slow. There's too large a gap between true heals over time like Breeze and straight red bars go up.

glountz · Oct 17, 2007, 04:05 PM // 16:05

Healing lacks utility.
Worst, actually conditionnal healing from prot is as powerful as healing one.
Example at 12 attribute:
5 1 4 Words of comfort : heal for 90, don't remove conditions.
5 3/4 3 Dismiss condition : heal for 63 (conditionnal), remove conditions.
When you feature in the DF, then you see that Prot heals like Healing.
Actually the only worth-it skills on Healing are Signets and Party wide healing.
Would be me, I would stay prot effect (damage prevention that is) in prot, then move all conditions/hexes utility that actually heal (like mend conditions/ailment etc...) in Healing, while keeping those who protect (like Convert hexes, Reverse hex) in prot.

I think A-Net always had trouble to know where to put their spells (Ritualists suffer the same synfrom imho).

Lord Natural · Oct 17, 2007, 05:12 PM // 17:12

Anet have had the luxury of ignoring HoT skills with regards to balance because party heals have always been vastly superior. Whether it be the old prod/hp combo, or now LoD, party heals mop up falling bars, and direct heal/prots do the rest. A skill like Vigorous Spirit, for example, while having a fairly high potential of healing to energy cost, is basically redundant because party heals accomplish the same thing and are more reliable.

wuzzman · Oct 17, 2007, 07:08 PM // 19:08

Riotgear pretty much said it...healing is for whatever gets past the prot. Thus prot>>healing prayers. And considering this game has a thing called midline mitigation, yes wow pvp is that primitive, midline mitigation>backline.

Riotgear · Oct 17, 2007, 09:51 PM // 21:51

Yes, midline factors in to the equation as well. There are a lot of ways to prevent damage, almost all are less expensive and more tactically-interesting than trying to repair it after it's done.