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Conduit's fix and the niche of High-Energy Healer
bluhman
Posts: 2,410 Arc User
With the Sorcery update, we lost an obscure, questionably legal, but powerful ability: Celestial Conduit. By using a tap-based bug, Conduit was able to trigger its normally once-per-second pulse much faster than normal. This erroneously lead to builds that could put out honestly disgusting amouts of DPS for a healer-archtype (DPS from this technique was about on par with maintaining Devouring Essence.) The opposite of this also applied, veritably creating the most powerful healing ability that could not only chain to multiple allies, but could also crit, while also not draining the player's health.
But with its fix being applied, this technique was eliminated, and Conduit is now a fairly average maintain heal with AoE capabilities (and yet still somehow one of the strongest maintain heals despite that). Yet, I find this has removed an important archetype of healer build. Let me cover one big Con of using this exploit: in addition to triggering the damage/heal tick way more often than normal, it also processed the energy tick more often. Which meant that, while the output of doing this was high, the energy cost was also very high. That's what this game now critically lacks - a powerful, high-energy healing ability.
It's a lot more key than you'd think, when you consider just how the Healer role changes your stats. Currently the only super-powerful single-target healing options we have at the moment are Psionic Healing, and Iniquity. Immediately it should be noted that, from what I've observed, Iniquity is a lot more popular than Psionic Healing is, and I'll get to that.
First off, Iniquity has probably the best healing output of a power in the game, but it can't crit, and it makes use of HP instead of energy. The latter issue is really weird, because the typical healing role tweaks your stats so that you have a glut of energy - and then you don't use it??? What if we do have great crit stats, and we want to make use of that? Well, the alternative is a charged heal you have to precisely measure out. Don't release too late, because your target might be dead by then! And don't release too early, because then you just recover energy(??) and have even worse HPS than maintaining a weaker heal.
Honestly on some level, Iniquity is even more broken than Conduit was. By using the Selfless Ally perk and having enough healing power, it is (was?) well possible enough to have the healing from the perk outdo the damage dealt by Iniquity, which then just meant "Hey! Free healing!" Excluding that, you usually could just stack a ton of Constitution on your Iniquity healer and then the ability's damage would be negligible to your total HP, just spend a second using Conviction to patch up the little bit of damage you took. Check that off to another pro to using the Con stat, certainly not enough advantages to using Constitution these days!
That aside, the maintain heals we have for single targets would be pretty good if they scaled their healing and energy numbers up better somehow, but the current iteration of these heals are on-par with the AoE maintains, such as Arcane Vitality. That's ridiculous! Why's every option for a maintained single-target heal only as powerful as a big cone heal for raids? Even in some way, Conduit seems to have been balanced around its ability to use Illumination to chain (in which case it's an extremely good heal considering!) Where'd the good old option of just 'hold button, spend a ton of energy, keep ONE target alive' go?! Especially if we want to have some sort of build that can contribute on both damage and healing, it shouldn't be rocket science or weird exploitative magic of one very specific playstyle to keep a single ally healed up.
So what do I suggest the solution to this be? Well, I don't know. There's a ton of directions that could be taken in terms of a powerful, basic, high-energy single-target heal. Maybe buff Empathic Healing so that it fits the archetype? Maybe introduce a healing gun in Gadgeteering with those stats? All I know is that it's a niche heal type that needs to be satisfied, especially if we want to make the most of the healer role in anything outside of big multi-tank raids.
But with its fix being applied, this technique was eliminated, and Conduit is now a fairly average maintain heal with AoE capabilities (and yet still somehow one of the strongest maintain heals despite that). Yet, I find this has removed an important archetype of healer build. Let me cover one big Con of using this exploit: in addition to triggering the damage/heal tick way more often than normal, it also processed the energy tick more often. Which meant that, while the output of doing this was high, the energy cost was also very high. That's what this game now critically lacks - a powerful, high-energy healing ability.
It's a lot more key than you'd think, when you consider just how the Healer role changes your stats. Currently the only super-powerful single-target healing options we have at the moment are Psionic Healing, and Iniquity. Immediately it should be noted that, from what I've observed, Iniquity is a lot more popular than Psionic Healing is, and I'll get to that.
First off, Iniquity has probably the best healing output of a power in the game, but it can't crit, and it makes use of HP instead of energy. The latter issue is really weird, because the typical healing role tweaks your stats so that you have a glut of energy - and then you don't use it??? What if we do have great crit stats, and we want to make use of that? Well, the alternative is a charged heal you have to precisely measure out. Don't release too late, because your target might be dead by then! And don't release too early, because then you just recover energy(??) and have even worse HPS than maintaining a weaker heal.
Honestly on some level, Iniquity is even more broken than Conduit was. By using the Selfless Ally perk and having enough healing power, it is (was?) well possible enough to have the healing from the perk outdo the damage dealt by Iniquity, which then just meant "Hey! Free healing!" Excluding that, you usually could just stack a ton of Constitution on your Iniquity healer and then the ability's damage would be negligible to your total HP, just spend a second using Conviction to patch up the little bit of damage you took. Check that off to another pro to using the Con stat, certainly not enough advantages to using Constitution these days!
That aside, the maintain heals we have for single targets would be pretty good if they scaled their healing and energy numbers up better somehow, but the current iteration of these heals are on-par with the AoE maintains, such as Arcane Vitality. That's ridiculous! Why's every option for a maintained single-target heal only as powerful as a big cone heal for raids? Even in some way, Conduit seems to have been balanced around its ability to use Illumination to chain (in which case it's an extremely good heal considering!) Where'd the good old option of just 'hold button, spend a ton of energy, keep ONE target alive' go?! Especially if we want to have some sort of build that can contribute on both damage and healing, it shouldn't be rocket science or weird exploitative magic of one very specific playstyle to keep a single ally healed up.
So what do I suggest the solution to this be? Well, I don't know. There's a ton of directions that could be taken in terms of a powerful, basic, high-energy single-target heal. Maybe buff Empathic Healing so that it fits the archetype? Maybe introduce a healing gun in Gadgeteering with those stats? All I know is that it's a niche heal type that needs to be satisfied, especially if we want to make the most of the healer role in anything outside of big multi-tank raids.
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l also remember Nurse Minerva, shooted Pulse Beam Rifle, because there's no any other tech maintains, being a healer at Dino, when players roared at her "whatcha doin'?!! Ur pretendin' TOP deeps?!!!11..." l beileve if healgun presented that wouldn't happen.
In case if it's not ultimate, it maybe high energy heal though, that you seek, but then it looks like PBAoE (or something else of that kind is upcoming).
Like, no matter how you cut it, when using both optimally, they fit the exact same role. Both are AoE heals at best. Arcane Vit. is just easier to set up, and Conduit's optimally used to heal a ton of allies with a strong chaining effect. Both are only reasonably powerful on single-targets. I don't want to just fire a stupid cone or sphere/maintain combo at a huge mob of people and just get all my points that way, I want micromanagement, dammit! And I want the sheer heal power to accomplish that tactic effectively! Without killing myself at the same time!
Also speaking about niches: l think there should be healing AoE's with all possible shapes (cone, sphere, cylinder, PBAoE). Currently AV is Cone, but Cones may catch needless targets at Cosmics, so require healer to step away from DPS, whichsn't always optimal. Celest. conduit is pseudo-sphere because of chaining. l think it wouldn't be excess to revamp Emp Healing for it to be Cylinder or even PBAoE like Elder Worm EH. Tech heal, that hopefully will be in future - Sphere or Cylinder AoE.
Should there really be strange AoE heal shapes? I mean, this is another reason why I'd prefer if we just had real solid single-target heals, because then you'd just point and shoot the heal at the guy who actually needs it and restore full-health. You're gonna use an AoE heal to catch as many hurt people as possible, that's the nature of it. A legit sphere heal, I could see working for the purposes of a cosmic or such, but a cylinder would probably behave even more haphazardly, especially if the DPS has to move a lot to avoid attacks.
/bind 2 "powertrayexec 1 4 $$ powertrayexec 1 1"It'll activate BCR only before starting maintaining Iniq tho. Self damage will stop at 5620 health per tick at all, provided you've SA 2/2 spec. Iniquity is really well peforming power, l'm surprized it hasn't oblivionned yet. Perhaps that will happen next to Holy Torrent, mb there'll be Celestial fix/rework, after what hopefully sentence "Celestial DPS" won't produce homeric laughter.
I request my strong, basic, single-target, high-energy heal!