Does healing rate low in Cosmic Fights, or am I doing it wrong?

alisonkaufmann · January 2018

I just got my healer to max level, scooped some gear, and started a few Cosmics. My usual score is around 250k, but I've finished near 100k sometimes. At lvl 40 on Clarence I was scoring half of what my lvl 35 DPS was getting, sometimes even as one of the few healers on the event. My character numbers are decent for a recent 40 I think (450 Pre, +64% healing). I went with a bubble theme, but I still use Iniquity and Vala's Light, I rez, I throw in light damage when I can. Is this likely a case a few too many healers, where the better healers heal up the damage first? Or do healers just not always score well on fights vs DPS?

Also, if anyone has any tips to increase my value as a healer in cosmics, I'll take it. After a few low scores, I've just thought about retconning as DPS, but that kind of hurts my soul because I wanted to be support from the start on this character.

biffsmackwell · January 2018

People who know better than me, please correct me if I'm wrong.

AoE healing tends to help healer score. Just stand where the most people are getting pummeled and fire away at all of them. Get that passive that heals everything around you (or the specialization or whatever, I don't know what I'm talking about). I don't think preventing damage gets you any score, so bubbles won't help you. You only gain points for actual health healed, so overheating doesn't count and putting bubbles on everyone works against your score because if you prevent damage, it prevents you from healing and thus, scoring. I'd save bubbles for tanks or big AoEs that are bound to kill a bunch of people who forget to block them.

alisonkaufmann · January 2018

biffsmackwell said:
I don't think preventing damage gets you any score, so bubbles won't help you. You only gain points for actual health healed, so overheating doesn't count and putting bubbles on everyone works against your score because if you prevent damage, it prevents you from healing and thus, scoring.

If that's true, that's awful. Even with my moderate gear and Compassion stacks, I can drop 11k worth of bubbles on people, and to find out it is worthless (score-wise... obviously it helps in the FIGHT) is disappointing.

I do have the passive that heals, and do use a lot of AOEs, but often damage is healed up so quickly that I am maybe responsible for 15-20% of it (depending on the amount of healers). I then mainly focused on the shields since they seemed to be effective, but that sucks they don't count. Coming from WoW where it took a few years for people to value absorbs, that's too bad Cryptic doesn't value it here.

markhawkman · January 2018

Well, first thing to ask yourself is "how much did I actually heal?" Score threshold for Kiga, Ape, and Dino is 100k, so if all you do is healing then you need to do 100K healing.

alisonkaufmann · January 2018

markhawkman said:
Well, first thing to ask yourself is "how much did I actually heal?" Score threshold for Kiga, Ape, and Dino is 100k, so if all you do is healing then you need to do 100K healing.

Sure, but I want to do more than just qualify, I want to maximize my contribution. The fact that shields don't contribute is kind of mind boggling.

biffsmackwell · January 2018

Shields do contribute to the actual fight. They keep people alive. They just don't contribute to your score. If you're already qualifying, then drop as many bubbles as you like. You're helping either way, but you wanna make sure you hit your 100k at least to get your rewards and not waste your time.

jaazaniah1 · January 2018

Eh, those scores are kind of pointless. Wait until you run an AoAC or AoED and are down near the bottom of the chart; yet, sometimes one of those is all that it takes to make dino go from a bust to a success. Debuffers are usually in the lower third as well, but can contribute in important ways.

alisonkaufmann · January 2018

Oh I get that they're actually helping us win the fight, it's just silly they don't contribute to score. My concern was that I was underperforming, but I guess that's just how healing rates.

jaazaniah1 · January 2018

Some of the top scoring dps use a draysha device to boost their scores tremendously. I don't know if those can be used for healers. Often, the longer a fight goes the higher the score a healer can get. I find that my Medical Nanite healer often does very well.

rtma · January 2018

If no-one gets softened up enough to receive a heal then support becomes redundant, just like it was before the revamps, I speak from personal experience and observation over the years, rather not go into detail since it changes nothing, but basically if you can't get those heals in when other healers do, might as well switch to a DPS build and contribute that way, since damage is most prevalent mechanic.

warcanch · January 2018

It's the amount of healing actually done that contributes to your score. Meaning, you saw a 5k heal hit target, but the target only needed 100 pts of heal, you only get credit for the 100 pts. Sucks, but there it is.

If you are one of the many healers that are tunnel healing "the tank", you may not be doing much actual healing and score poorly.

Having a passive AoE heal is marvelous at fights that generate damage to everyone. In general, the non-targetable AoE heals really help your score and contribution.

chaelk · January 2018

it's really simple, DPS powers have high numbers. Healing powers have low numbers.
It's easy to bump up DPS damage but a lot harder to bump up healing effects.

It's perfectly normal to have your healer in that range.
When the healers are in the top ten,the fight has been going REALLY badly.

A Kigatilik fight yesterday went so bad, the Crowd Controller was top scorer.

roughbearmattach · January 2018

As others said, AoE and aura heals are how healers score big. When my main healer uses Medical Nanites and all AoE heals at Kigatilik, he can score in the top ten.

Also, as others said, bubbles and resist bonus effects really do help the team win a fight. Against Clarence, it's no biggie, since that is a "cosmic lite" (at best). In a tough cosmic fight, spammed 11 K bubbles would be super useful for the main tank.

markhawkman · January 2018

Clarence may have truck loads of HP, but an unblocked melee attack from him might do less damage than a BLOCKED attack from Teliosaurus.

pantagruel01 · January 2018

roughbearmattach said:
In a tough cosmic fight, spammed 11 K bubbles would be super useful for the main tank.

Not really. On a Defiance main tank, an 11k bubble is about as useful as a 3k heal against an unblocked hit, and against blocked hits (norm for everything but Kigatilik) its as useful as a 600 point heal. Bubbles are more useful on dps, as they tend to have less resistance and also block less.

morigosa · January 2018

pantagruel01 said:

roughbearmattach said:
In a tough cosmic fight, spammed 11 K bubbles would be super useful for the main tank.
Not really. On a Defiance main tank, an 11k bubble is about as useful as a 3k heal against an unblocked hit, and against blocked hits (norm for everything but Kigatilik) its as useful as a 600 point heal. Bubbles are more useful on dps, as they tend to have less resistance and also block less.

While that math sounds about right, I disagree with your conclusions. Yes, an 11k bubble on a tank that's playing perfectly and blocking all hits is not very useful. However, having (effectively) an extra 3k hit points can easily make the difference between dying and not-dying if the tank misses a block - especially if there are any lesser-geared (or less-con-focused) soak tanks involved. True, a good tank that's properly on their game -won't- miss any blocks - but even the best players will occasionally make a mistake or just plain get a lag spike at the wrong moment.

pantagruel01 · January 2018

morigosa said:
While that math sounds about right, I disagree with your conclusions. Yes, an 11k bubble on a tank that's playing perfectly and blocking all hits is not very useful. However, having (effectively) an extra 3k hit points can easily make the difference between dying and not-dying if the tank misses a block.

Primary cosmic splittable hits are all in the 120k range vs a single target; unblocked, a wardicator tank will take about 30k after defenses. Reducing that to 27k won't mean the tank isn't dead. It might matter on a two way split, but then you're only protecting one of two tanks.

Bubbles are not completely useless, but their utility is narrow enough that they tend to get left off of current healing builds.

spinnytop · January 2018

alisonkaufmann said:
Is this likely a case a few too many healers, where the better healers heal up the damage first?

This is often the case nowadays at cosmics. If there aren't enough healers you'll hear about it in zone or in one of the end game channels. If you want to score higher you have to heal fast - Vala's has a charge time, so by the time it hits anyone, someone else has probably healed up everyone it was about to hit. Sometimes I'll just cycle through the entire teamup at a cosmic spamming Bionic Shielding on people, so by the time damage comes they're already effectively been pre-healed. Some healers have the teamup UI open and spot heal people with Iniquity really fast. It's common for people to be spamming Arcane Vitality which instantly starts healing a bunch of people at once. Chances are there's usually someone doing one of these things at a cosmic nowadays, and if you want a higher score you'll have to do them too.

Of course, as a healer you don't have to feel like you're competing with anyone. You're filling a vital role, which already puts you at the top of the real score list.

alisonkaufmann said:
Also, if anyone has any tips to increase my value as a healer in cosmics, I'll take it. After a few low scores, I've just thought about retconning as DPS, but that kind of hurts my soul because I wanted to be support from the start on this character.

Be more than just a healer. Add some spec-debuffs and a way to spam them, and/or an Ultimate with Overpower. Add some damage output to your build. Have an aura. Add the ability to CC. Become a healer/soak tank combination. If you want to just be a healer that's fine too, add Bionic Shielding to your build since it's one of the top two best healing powers in the game, and consider Arcane Vitality. For healers there's still a very narrow range of best powers to take, and high-scoring healers nearly always have them.

As an example of how I made my support toon valuable even when there are other supports keeping people healed, I made an AoED toon that summons some pets, and has a primary damage attack, while also being able to do quick aoe healing. If everyone's healed the toon just focuses on doing damage, and when I see health bars unattended I do more healing. It tends to score well in either scenario.

nepht · January 2018

alisonkaufmann said:
I just got my healer to max level, scooped some gear, and started a few Cosmics. My usual score is around 250k, but I've finished near 100k sometimes. At lvl 40 on Clarence I was scoring half of what my lvl 35 DPS was getting, sometimes even as one of the few healers on the event. My character numbers are decent for a recent 40 I think (450 Pre, +64% healing). I went with a bubble theme, but I still use Iniquity and Vala's Light, I rez, I throw in light damage when I can. Is this likely a case a few too many healers, where the better healers heal up the damage first? Or do healers just not always score well on fights vs DPS?

Also, if anyone has any tips to increase my value as a healer in cosmics, I'll take it. After a few low scores, I've just thought about retconning as DPS, but that kind of hurts my soul because I wanted to be support from the start on this character.

Ignore the score it means nothing and is biased towards DPS.

roughbearmattach · January 2018

pantagruel01 said:

Bubbles are not completely useless, but their utility is narrow enough that they tend to get left off of current healing builds.

Of course, the tank could receive both effects. Since the main poster was partially concerned about what to do when there were already other healers around, there are situations where the tank could have full healing and full bubbles. Unfortunately, the bubbler toon would need to find a way to score enough points to qualify for credit.

I would say that Cosmics scoring is another reason that bubbling strategies aren't used anymore.

jaazaniah1 · January 2018

Hmm, so Bionic Shield = Gadgeteering, Protection Field = Force (as is Redirected Force), and Mindful Reinforcement = Telepathy. These are all power sets which seem to be in line for revamping. Maybe we'll see some adjustments to how Bubbles function asthe revamps role in?

roughbearmattach · January 2018

Bionic Shielding, though it kinda acts as a bubble, provides healing, and thus increases scoring at open missions.

screwthisprocess · March 2018

Didn't want to create another cosmic thread, but speaking of comics, did my 1st one today. Did not get any GCR nor SCR, maybe I did not contribute enough? Or was there some other requirement or side quest one must do to earn GCR or SCR?

pantagruel01 · March 2018

Requirement is a score of 100,000 (and you have to be in zone when the encounter ends).

screwthisprocess · March 2018

Gotcha thanks.

Does healing rate low in Cosmic Fights, or am I doing it wrong?

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