Official - Combat Adjustments - Companions

@noworries#8859

I think healers are in a bad spot at the moment.
I've got three pain points to mention:


1. Forte and base Divinity/Soulweave regen.
2. Companions stealing healing which should go to players
3. Healing powers magnitudes not aligned with the rest of the changes


For topic 1:
I'm playing cleric and warlock healers and I noticed that with a 57% Forte (which should give 50% of that to Divinity/Soulweave regen), the Divinity/Soulweave regen is barely enough to match the one we have now in live.
In preview, with 57% Forte, Div/Soul regens by 37.5 units / 3s while in live it does by 40 units.

I believe this needs to be addressed because not all healers in the game are endgame to have these stats. Basically every healer with the combat changes will have their regen nerfed. So I think the base has to be increased to at least what's currently on live so that existing players will have no issues and that endgame players who worked hard on their stats to feel some satisfaction seeing their stats actually mean a change.

For topic 2:
There are two problems here:

• Combat companions count as targets for healing spells that split their magnitudes based on the number of targets (cleric's Bastion of Health, warlock's Revitalize or paladin's Divine Touch). Would be nice they wouldn't... Just make them inexistent to healers' spells.
• Too many entities (counting players + their comps) in trials seems to lead to big issues where some players being not healed at all because the companions are targeted instead. Healing spells capped on a certain number of targets needs be increased.
  

For this topic, I think I can summarize like this: the combat companions look like pain in the a$$ for healers. They steal healing magnitude, they sometimes cause players not to receive heals and they provide challenge by standing in the way of players making a healer have more trouble targeting with their TAB power or at will power (as if that's not difficult enough in live server now). As a healer, I would really like to be able to focus on the players, not their companions so the best way would be they'd act like non existent to healers (no target, and aiming go through them; something similar to an augment, really).

For topic 3:
All at-will, encounters and dailies of DPSes and tanks have been increased but for the healers nothing really improved. In my opinion these have to be increased a bit (a decent value I believe is +20%) because the strongest healing powers used on a single target (i.e. Bastion of Health / Revitalize, also excluding TAB mechanic) for my endgame healer heals around 1/3 of a player's 600k HP (versus 50-100% on live). Healing over time is poor too.
To put it shortly, my healer's setup is like this 73% power, 82% critical chance, 85% critical severity, 54% outgoing healing, 57% forte and 5900 damage stat. Let me know if I'm doing something wrong but tbh I think the average healer will have trouble with the current state of the game.

I have basically three issues with the companion system.

• The balance between augments and fighting companions is still not right. It will only be right when you start see endless arguing about which type is better and when.
  
• Too many companions are essentially useless and will never be used. There are many companions with interesting abilities, but becaue of the way numbers work out, a handful will generally be seen as "must-have", while the others get delegated to the trash heap.
  
• Now that players are forced into strict DPS/Healer/Tank roles (and the former flexibility is gone), one would think that the three roles should have similarly large sets of "suitable" companions. That's not the case. This is also the case with many equpment bonuses, artifacts and other items.... too much emphasis on stuff that appeals to DPSers, too little for healers...not commenting on tanks, as I really don't play those.
  

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