Healer's Covenant and Healer's Boon together

I was wondering if anybody runs HC and HB together. They are both elites so you have to use Arcane Mimicry to copy one of them (preferably HC since it does not expire) from another character. Many (hero) builds can still do well without elite (PvE prot monk, MM, etc) so taking his elite is not necessarily a big waste. I tried this combo only recently and I was surprised how good it is.
So lets see the numbers:

Healing : +12.5% (x0.75x1.5)
Cast time: -50%
Energy bonus (above 12 healing prayers): 3energy
Divine Favor bonus (at 13DF): 42HP

Energy efficiancy of a 100HP heal without HB/HC : 28HP/energy (142/5)
Energy efficiency of a 100HP heal with HB/HC : (154/2= ) 77 HP/energy

Maintainable healing without HB/HC (4pips) : 20HP/energy * 1.333energy/s= 37HP/s
Maintainable healing with HB/HC (2pips) : 62.5HP/energy * 0.6666energy/s=51HP/s

This should already be convincing, but it is not over yet:
Total heal from full energy pool (50energy)
without HC/HB: 28HP/energy*50energy = 1420HP
with HC/HB: 77HP/energy*50energy = 3860HP !

And the cream on the cake: energy management skills are essentially three times more effective because of the difference in the energy efficiency. If you set power drain/leech sig or blessed sig, that increases your energy by one pip (lets not go into the details here):
without HB/HC: 5pips
with HB/HC: 3pips

Maintainable healing without HB/HC (5pips) : 20HP/energy * 1.66energy/s= 47HP/s
Maintainable healing with HB/HC (3pips) : 62.5HP/energy * 1energy/s=77HP/s


So the HC/HB monk has three times the healing capacity, twice the maintainable healing and half the casting time of a "standard" monk.

Edit (27/01/2007): corrected calculation, see table for two examples, orison and ethereal at HP16 amd DF13: table.JPG

Healer's Covenant and Healer's Boon? 2 Elites by using Arcane Mimicry? Let's investigate it;

[skill=big]Healer's Covenant[/skill]

An elite enchantment that allows your spells to cost 3 points less at 12 HPs.

[skill=big]Healer's Boon[/skill]

Ok, this is not the greatest skill since no one uses slow heals and spamming them isn't always exactly what you want to do.Even though you may heal for 50% more, that brings into the scenario the point of overhealing or the opposite scenario of being idle while the healing isn't needed and AM will eventually revert and the elite that has been mimed ends. The thought of the enchantment is well placed, but it's applcation may not work at a level of higher play as you may assume-but that is my assumption.

As for the use of Arcane Mimicry on another to get the use of both elites, you must take into account that range of spellcasting as well as downtime of AM will come into play for anyone seriously thinking of using your combination, as well as the above mentioned possible situations. This may work in PvE, since enchantment stripping isn't heavy, but this can't be really used in PvP and be taken more than experimentally.

@OP: I think you forgot to mention half the normal energy regeneration of a "standard" monk. I may not have exact numbers, but whatever benefits they may have while used together simply do NOT outweigh the hassle needed to maintain both.

Quote: Originally Posted by Darkpower Alchemist

I was just thinking of trying this with Healer's Boon and Light of Deliverance actually. (Not putting in as much thought as OP, obiously. )

At 14 Healing HB will make LoD heal for 150 for only 5 energy and at a 1/2sec cast, with a 5 second recharge. Also, only 1 maintained enchantment.

Gimmicky, but fun to try in PVE.

If you want to make an effective PvE monk, and have all three chapters.. give this a go.

11+1+1 Divine Favor or 11+3+1
8+1 Healing Prayers
8+1 Protection Prayers
9 Deadly Arts

Assassin's Promise {E}
Aegis
Protective Spirit
Reversal of Fortune
Guardian
Dismiss Condition
Gift of Health
Spirit Bond/Shield of Absorption

Keeping your party alive with your own never ending Aegis chain is too easy.. especially with Guardian on casters being attacked by physicals. Against casters, Aegis is obviously a waste of 15 energy. So don't use it.
PS and SB in the same build makes PvE boring. I think those attributes are right, but it may 10 Deadly Arts. Don't forget that hex removal you can handle almost solely in most areas of the game, if you chose to. That would probably go in your last slot, or in place of Guardian.
The energy you get from this elite is a bit ridiculous in PvE. With only 4 deaths per *minute*, that's [(14*4)-(5*4)]/60=.6 energy per second, almost 2 pips. If you're killing more like 16 enemies a minute, which you should be AT LEAST... [(14*16)-(5*16)]/60=2.4 energy per second, which is equal to 7.2 pips of regen, plus you recharge all your skills.

As for Healer's Boon... I still think it's hard to beat on a necro primary with 14 in SR. No gimmicks, and more energy management than is possible with a monk profession, period.



:Edit: Corrected typo on math.
Corrected attributes.

Ever thought of Healer's Covenant combined with enchantment spells? Ure pure healing skills will heal for 25% lesser but skills like HP and LoD is still the same same as Healing Seed and Vigorous Spirit and supportive spirit... but still the normal healing...

Same as HB don't affect Heal Party (yeah the casting time) so I assume it doesn't affect LoD too(except the casting time)

Quote: Originally Posted by jesh If you want to make an effective PvE monk, and have all three chapters.. give this a go.

12+1+1 Divine Favor
8+1 Healing Prayers
8+1 Protection Prayers
9 Deadly Arts

Assassin's Promise {E}
Aegis
Protective Spirit
Reversal of Fortune
Guardian
Dismiss Condition
Gift of Health
Spirit Bond/Shield of Absorption

Keeping your party alive with your own never ending Aegis chain is too easy.. especially with Guardian on casters being attacked by physicals. Against casters, Aegis is obviously a waste of 15 energy. So don't use it.
PS and SB in the same build makes PvE boring. I think those attributes are right, but it may 10 Deadly Arts. Don't forget that hex removal you can handle almost solely in most areas of the game, if you chose to. That would probably go in your last slot, or in place of Guardian.
The energy you get from this elite is a bit ridiculous in PvE. With only 4 deaths per *minute*, that's [(14*4)-(5*4)]/60=.6 energy per second, almost 2 pips. If you're killing more like 16 enemies a minute, which you should be AT LEAST... [(14*16)-(5*16)]/60=2.4 energy per minute, which is equal to 7.2 pips of regen, plus you recharge all your skills. Ok. Lets calculate it for a one minute period and for one battle with one group.
Standard case:
Healing from energy pool: 1420 HP
Healing from standard energy regen (4pips): 2220 HP (=37HP/s x 60s)
Healing from extra energy (e-mngmnt) (1pip): 560 (28 HP/ene *20 ene)
That is a total of 4200 HP.

HC/HB case:
Healing from energy pool: 3860 HP
Healing from standard energy regen (4pips): 3060 HP (=51HP/s x 60s)
Healing from extra energy (e-mngmnt) (1pip): 1540 (77 HP/ene *20 ene)
That is a total of 8460 HP.

Assassin's Promise 4 times/min:
Healing from energy pool: 1420HP
Healing from standard energy regen (4pips): 2220 HP (=37HP/s x 60s)
Healing from extra energy (e-mngmnt) (2pips): 1120 (28 HP/ene *40 ene)
That is a total of 4760 HP.

Assassin's Promise 6 times/min:
Healing from energy pool: 1420HP
Healing from standard energy regen (4pips): 2220 HP (=37HP/s x 60s)
Healing from extra energy (e-mngmnt) (3pips): 1680 (28 HP/ene *60 ene)
That is a total of 5320 HP.

I did not do the calculation for 16 death/minite, because it is unrealistic: monsters will die before you have a chance to cast AP on them and sometimes they will not die before it expires. Even 6 AP cast/minute is tough because you have to time an AP cast every 10s (while you are healing your party of course).
The total heals show that using the elite AP as energy management increases the total heal by 14-26% (compared to a 5pips monk who uses non-elite e-management). However it is not even close to the HB/HC case which has 100% more heal for the same 1 minute period (compared to the same 5pips pure healer who uses non-elite e-management).
The advantege of using AP is that you can use prot and high energy spells, but you pay the price by casting a spell in agro range every 10s (which I found not only distracting but also dangerous). In addition, if things don't start to drop you are in trouble quite soon. However, AP is a nice e-management elite, I have never thought using it on my monk before.

Let me rephrase the "maintainable heal" and "total ene pool heal": having both HC and HB (and blessedd sig) is
equivalent to a monk with an energy pool of ~140ene and an energy regeneration rate of 9 pips.

Well when I was in Purr I had HB on me and I used HP and I only seen 80hp instead of 120hp :/

but it can be changed...

Vazze, all those calculations, (no idea where you came up with healing numbers), are completely irrelevant. Why? The build I posted is a protector monk. It's impossible to calculate the amount of damage that a PS or Aegis can mitigate during any given battle.
Pure Healing Prayers are pretty dang useless in PvE for one reason - The damage your groups is receiving is magnitudes higher than in PvP. True, it is less coordinated, but the value of Protection Prayers far, far outweighs an efficient elite for Healing Prayers.
You can use an Infuse on a team member for over 600, sure. But guess what? You'll need to do the same thing again in less than 1 second. This is why most monks today are hybrids between healing and protection.


As for getting 16 activations of AP in a minute, it's not unrealistic. I've done quite a lot more than that in my few hours of tinkering with the build. The only other energy management that even compares in PvE is Soul Reaping.
That's why Healer's Boon and SR go so well together.
Take along a Jagged Bones necro to really see some broken emgmt.
EVEN in the case of a Healer's Boon necro, your energy gains do not make it possible to heal a full group by yourself. Why? Because you can only fill the red bar, not keep it from going down. Aftercast also limits you to 1 spell per second.
As most any PvP monk will tell you, you only need 1 (or 2 in ZB's case) skill to keep the little red bars up, and that's Gift of Health. Basing a whole build around doing it with different icons is plain inefficient. Wasting an elite slot on another hero or team member only makes it worse.

P.S.: Healer's Boon does work on Heal Party, it's the main spell I use on my *necro*.

I agree, protection spells and healing spells work better together than alone. I had no problem with your build at all. It is a standard prot (ok hybrid, you have GoH too) build, exept that it uses AP as e-management. (I definitely don't want to go into comparing healing line with the protection line.) So I did some calculation to compare the energy efficiency of the builds on heals. Due to the different mechanics of the two(three) elites, AP and HC/HB, it had to be a bit complicated but I tried to make it easy to follow. What exactly is that you did not understand in the calculations?

As for the 16 death/min. Lets see, so you are casting an AP every 3.75s! Cast time 0.25s, aftercast 0.75s. You are casting AP 27% of the time. I am not sure how fast you are but when you tab through enemies, you must check if they are already hexed or not with AP, and you also have to think about whether or not they are targeted by your team (he has to die in 10s otherwise AP won't trigger). I am guessing you need ~1.75s to make these decisions: that is 47% of your time. Since you are constantly in agro range, I think you probably have to kite/self heal for 1s between every AP cast, which is 26% of your time. Now let me ask you, when are you healing your team ? (27%+47%+26%=100%).

Yeah, the necro HB build (if with MM!) probably does not have much energy problems, and it is cool for any area where there are at least some bodies, and mobs dont blow away minions with one attack (I haven't tried it yet ... it is on the list though).

Your calculations refer to HP healed per energy, which is different depending on what skills you use. Since I run a mostly protection monk, the actual healing numbers will be far, far lower than any healing monk. However, the damage received by the party will be much lower also. You can't just assume that a monk's efficiency can be calculated from hp/per energy, when you don't even specify what skills that monk will be using.

Most missions I never have to self heal. Kiting is something I do all the time.
Multiple AP hexes on a target stack, it doesn't matter if Zenmai or another assassin has already hexed a target. It really isn't that hard to pick targets if you're used to using PD on a monk.
I actually am healing very little, thanks to Aegis being up all the time. Most of the time I'm pre-protting targets that look to be in a dangerous situation, recasting Aegis, and then picking a new AP target. It's actually a pretty boring build to play.
It pays off though, the farther your group goes with you. I get constant compliments on never letting the party go below 50%hp, let alone die.

SR activates even if there aren't minions or bodies. Unlike AP, it involved no casting. If you fight a mob of 4, you get 56 energy. Your group has to be incredibly slow at killing in order for you to get close to low energy. Even then, a quick weapon swap to a negative energy set timed with a death can boost you past half energy.
A MM or bomber just makes it unlimited energy. It doesn't matter if all the minions die at once. Watch the life bars on the minions and blow your energy away in anticipation of the wipe out.
If the MM has Jagged Bones, though.. you can't really suffer from a full minion wipe out.

Quote: Originally Posted by jesh Your calculations refer to HP healed per energy, which is different depending on what skills you use. Since I run a mostly protection monk.... Having prot build is not e-management. Until you are able to compare two energy management skills, I have nothing more to say to you in this issue.

Quote: Originally Posted by jesh Most missions I never have to self heal. Kiting is something I do all the time.... I have already answered this. You did not tell me anyhting new. Except that you are bored, which is one more reason to forget AP.

Quote: Originally Posted by jesh SR activates even if there aren't minions or bodies. Unlike AP, it involved no casting. As I said earlier, in my opinion the HB necro is not a zomg healer without an MM, hence the need for bodies. (He CAN be a decent monk even without an MM, but that's it.) Not that it matters, but HB has to be recasted pretty frequently, so there is some casting to do.

Quote: Originally Posted by jesh