[AM] M1 Isha's Ward

[Toldavf]

Where you not a clothy i might tend to agree, I would say that am being probably the squishiest of the healers so having a couple gcd's of ablative absorb is actually pretty decent for them but not game breakingly so. If you get trained at any point it might buy you enough time to walk between worlds but i cant se it lasting more than 2-3 gcds.

Lets not forget that you also give up divine favour for that absorb which is also a strong m1 in its own right.

[Aurandilaz]

As said above, AM is probably the squishiest healer in game. Not medium armoured like DOK/WP, doesnt grant armor buff like zealot/RP and doesnt have toughness HoT buff like shaman nor the RunAway survival kit.
And since gameplay balance is around 6man to warbandscale, I don't see 3600 strong absorb lasting longer than 2 sec facing a proper bombing warband and versus a proper meleetrain the same 3600 might just last 3-4 sec.
So it might still be potent in smallscale below 6man stuff where it might last longer, but then again it cannot be balanced around miniscale roaming where dps AM pewpew mercilessly at soloers.

Besides, aren't most grouped AMs going anyway for FM M2 as the usual tool to enable better survival and faster heals under pressure? That strong M1 looks more of a selfish survival tool panic button, which may rightly be used as a panic button since it helps AM live, but not that much longer when there is a meleetrain on them.

[Ugle]

Just make it unusuable while using divine fury and everyone but soloroam dps AMs (Rioz and Littles) are happy.

Edit; Oh wait. No balancing for 1vs1, no need to change it then

[dansari]

Just make it unusuable while using divine fury and everyone but soloroam dps AMs (Rioz and Littles) are happy.

That doesn't solve the issue of it being a morale you can get 100% uptime out of

[Toldavf]

Just make it unusuable while using divine fury and everyone but soloroam dps AMs (Rioz and Littles) are happy.

That doesn't solve the issue of it being a morale you can get 100% uptime out of

I mean is that an issue for the game balance at large? It's unique surely, but does that make it broken and in need of a rebalance? In this particular instance i would say no as it provides the squishiest healer a means to be less squishy.

[Aurandilaz]

Just make it unusuable while using divine fury and everyone but soloroam dps AMs (Rioz and Littles) are happy.

That doesn't solve the issue of it being a morale you can get 100% uptime out of

It would have to be a true Clash of Turtle Titans if 3600 is made to survive whole 1 min... you are looking at 60 dmg per second for 60 seconds... that amount of dmg would be believable if you had fully deftard BG and fully deftard IB throwing axes at each other from max distance. In organized groupplay, a 3600 moral absorb shield will not survive more than 3-5 seconds when you have a WE/Mara/Choppa meleetrain assisted by BO/BG/Chosen or if a well timed Sorc burst rotation lands and dishes out 4-6k dmg in 1-3 seconds when timed well. Sure, the shield takes some crits, but it's not gonna somehow miraculously make the AM survive more longer than a few seconds. In warband fights... yeah its gonna explode regardless of shields theoretical uptime duration.
It might shine in smallscale or 1v1, but you cannot balance around some moral being too stronk for 1v1 encounters.

A lot of morals in this game had, or still have long uptimes because of ancient core design reasons behind organized gameplay by groups that properly use morals to gain leverage against unorganized masses lacking moral synergies and rotations.

AM being weak as it is compared to the 2 other Order healers, I just don't see the need to nerf a moral that only really becomes good in smallscale where the enemy does not have enough numbers to field a meleetrain.

[dansari]

That's not my point. You can hit it at the beginning of a fight and not get hit until 56s later where 3600 damage gets absorbed. Does it make sense to have that?

[Kurama]

That's not my point. You can hit it at the beginning of a fight and not get hit until 56s later where 3600 damage gets absorbed. Does it make sense to have that?

Yes, and by then FM is up for use. Reducing the bubble to 20 secs seems like a good solution.

[Aurandilaz]

That's not my point. You can hit it at the beginning of a fight and not get hit until 56s later where 3600 damage gets absorbed. Does it make sense to have that?

Since we don't know what the original game devs designs were, we can only speculate;

-Shaman has GSS as their unique M1, aiding their dmg
-AM has IW, providing buffer against dmg and helping with survival
-Shaman has DSU, helping with survivability
-AM has FE, providing decent ST focus heal even if many prefer skipping this ability
-AM has Wild Healing, making them one of a kind healbot
-Shaman has PassitOn which is kinda meh, but they have something better which is RunAway, making them one of the hardest to catch healer in game, and thus certainly one of the hardest to take down

Shaman has some of the best survival kit a healer can have in this game. However their heal output is one of the weakest.
AM is one of the squishiest healers in game, but their healing output is one of the best ones in game with WildHealing ensuring that AP doesnt become an issue.

So how was this balanced; maybe with IW helping with AM surviving bit longer, with a strong moral that should help them take quite many hits, hopefully resulting in attacker witnessing no drop in healthbar due to absorb and maybe choosing some other target. Just like DSU gives 100% uptime toughness boost to shaman if needed and they can have detaunt up all the time with 2 of them stacking, AM can reach an absorb that gives them some edge although far weaker than what shaman has in their arsenal.
GSS is there as M1 to ensure that an attacker should stop chasing the Shaman. Ishas Ward is there to signal to the attacker that this AM's healthbar is not dropping as easily as expected and buffering against crit hits, maybe switch target?
On live server you had 36 moral gain per sec, here it is 9 per sec after some serious nerfing. Morals are part of class design and balance even if they have been kinda nerfed out of normal gameplay due to extremely reduced natural gain.

Despite this topic being about AM M1, when it comes to discussing balance you sometimes have to glance at the mirror and then try to figure out why what is what and why; AM has the better heals but weaker life expectancy - Shaman the weaker heals but better life expectancy - and their respective moral designs help them with their weaknesses.

AM and Shaman were somewhat of a messy concept even back on live, with their "dps healer" hybrid approach making them somewhat of subpar compared to pure healers. Both classes would require massive rework to make them work as true hybrids, but for now I don't see reason to touch their unique survival kit as the class is weak enough as it is apart from maybe winning 1v1 with rdps self heal pewpew. Current state of AM M1 IW makes hardly a difference in organized groupplay and doesn't even register in warband scale before the AM explodes.

[Ramasee]

The OP is suggesting a duration change not a potency change.

He is correct that a 60s duration with a 60s cooldown is too much for a morale 1. Dropping the duration to 20s doesn't effect the morale if used as a defensive option nor does it prevent you from using it before you need it. It simply keeps you from firing and forgetting it and would now require slightly more thought into when you use it.

Instead of shooting down the change because it is believed that AMs need this m1 in order to survive (and that somehow the duration change would hurt); perhaps make a proposal in order to increase the AM's survival on abilities/stats/morales that are underperforming/under utilized.

My thoughts are that this morale's duration should be reduced; but the change shouldn't happen until some other changes are made to the class.