AM the undisputed worst healer: A discussion

[Nekkma]

Alot of interesting and good suggestions. However, I don’t agree that survivability is a l2p issue. Rvr is chaotic and there will always be situations that you cannot predict or plan for. In such situations, having better survivability will always be an asset. If I roam in a duo or trio with my shaman and get jumped by 2 WHs i survive 9 times out of 10. On my (granted worse geared) AM, getting jumped by 2 WEs mean death 9 times out of 10. When I survive it is because I have evertything off cd. It is worth noting that AM deal alot better with a groupmember getting jumped tho. With better gear for sure these numbers will go up but I doubt it will be as good as other healers. The AM has excellent, or at least good, survivability in smaller fights when you don’t get surprised and can prekite and detaunt before kd.

This sum up pretty much everything about balance issue between SHam /AM and WE/WH

2WH Cant kill a sham :

A) WH sucks
B) Shaman is overpowered
C) A + B

2WE kill AM easily :

A) WE overpowered
B) AM sucks
C) A + B
D) its normal that a healer die against 2 dps which role is to kill healers.

IMO any healer, alone, should not be able to survive the Burst of 2 Dps which role is to kill Healers.. I think AM should die against 2WE but Shaman too. And its not L2P issue because the same player had this experience, is he survives 2 WH that mean he knows his stuff and is competent, so he should be able to survive with AM too.

Kiting is a thing, sham are king at kiting, but surviving a KD with 2 dps debuffing both outgoing and ingoing healing is in my opinion not logical.

Given answers below I would like to clarify that survive in this context means to live long enough to get help or stabilize the fight yourself (say 5-10 seconds). I do not mean surviving against 2 dps indefinitly while at the same time keeping my group up. As AM I basically only manage that when when stars align and I get m1 absorb off, have pots and aoe kb off cd. On shaman, having detaunt tactic, run away and toughness hot running will almost always let you survive those 5-10 seconds to get a peel from a teammate.

[BluIzLucky]

Another idea I was thinking of ages ago, would be turning Walking Between the Worlds into a 3-5second "blink vanish" + speed (similar to WH/WE disappear elixir), starting with base of 3s vanish, but with tactic Running Between the Worlds you get 3s of vanish and 5sec of +40% speed buff that does not break on ability use (it costs a tactic slot and still retains 15s cd).
AM is about the only class with no specific survival mechanism, WP/DoK have medium armor and are stupid tanky with fast healing and cannot be AP drained, Zealot/RP can be stupid tanky and have tools like stagger or Winds or racial armor tactic, Shaman can still kite away even with nerfed state of RunAway and double stacking detaunt, AM is the priority focus target because it is the most likely healer to die first when pressured by dps.

Glad to see someone else had the same thought
There's a lot of ways it could be implemented, even just 5 sec invisibility with no speed buff and breaking on skill use, or a straight copy of the WH/WE skill.

I think if the survivability issue can be solved, AM will be in a decent spot and will require little to no other changes to be on par with other healers.

The only other thing is the very high ceiling of entry, you pretty much need +2 Sov (for me this would be +6 months of game time from beginning) and 7x180 Armor (=1750g - assuming you only put it in Sov).
Compared to SM (sorry don't play other classes) once you hit Vanq, you can pretty much use any talis and getting +2 Sov, while great, does not change much.

Buffing WBtW fixes the survivability and gold cost entry issue, and terms on solo/roam it will bring AMs closer to Sham though still well below, so might help the Order ORvR supply situation a little.

And something as simple as switching position on EoV (13) and LoG (9), which will enable AMs to acquire our main Force "mechanic" ability EoV, without needing +2 skills in Sov, which will be a great buff to healing.

[Cimba]

2. the weakness of casted lifetaps is that if they get disrupted you wasted crucial time and one teammember is in serious trouble or dead. The stregth of casted lifetaps is that they are basically instant healcasts (you heal the defensive target when the spell actually hit the enemy). If I knew that balance essence would not be disrupted, I would cast it all the time and just switch between the friendly targets that need the heal most (basically .ab ex mode). If balance essence would only hit say 60% of the time, I would probably never cast it, cause its not worth the risk.
They adressed this "issue" with EoV where the healpart of the spell goes always through. But at least for EoV you need somewhat coordination with a SM (especially considering range to get the WW buff) to make it really good and the shorter castrange give it a risk/reward balance. It makes the AM decent especially in WB play, but its not a super appealing gameplay mode. If you add this effect to balance essence - .ab ex mode - it wont make the gameplay more fun (.ab ex was quite strong, but also kind of boring) and probably too strong. I don´t think you find the sweetspot with added disrupt strikethrough where you almost always hit, but only on some targets.

Not only if it gets disrupted. You need LOS to an offensive target in the first place. A major complaints of the old .ab ex. On the plus side: You dont need LOS to your friendly target. There is a balance of some sort.

I dont really get the second part. You're basically saying you would stop hotting, cleansing, ap draining, debuffing etc? Just spam balanced essence and maybe alternate with another healing ability? I can see that this prospect looks a bit bleak. I think mechanic allows for abit deeper gameplay.

3. Or you skip funnel essence and get EoV instead. But yes, it makes some sense. But you give up on any rework of penetrating siphon and the general path of vaul tree as life tap tree?
About the path of vaul tree suggestions: Well you have to seriously improve the silence when it has to compete with a ap drain/feed. I would like to hear the ideas behind this.
The zumos idea was bad, imo. It removed somewhat the "offensive" aspect of ap drain (92 instead of 180 on target) for another ap gain for group. Your solution to connect it to a tactic is somewhat better.

I dont like the idea of having a separate life tap tree. I would much rather have life taping as an integral part of the class. The proposed changes start the process of integrating life taps into a healing focused AM. I believe you could do the same for DPS focused build. I just havent really thought about it. And since I dont even have DPS gear I mightnot the best source to come up if ideas.

4. Apthesis: The no cooldown reduction when both tactics slotted might make it balanced. I think AM has a lot of good balanced tactics that compete with eachother already (apthesis and ishas encouragement are 2 of these), so I don´t see the need in general to work on these tactics.
Desperation: Its the strongest tactic anyway, so buffing this is fine (tactic balance doesnt matter), because you will take it anyway. The "problem" with desperation is that some attacks can remove more than 25% health from target, so the tactic has no chance to be active at all (although with the bigger health pools with the now available better sets this problem is diminished). I would prefer a slightly increase of the percentage when it is active.
Your proposed change sounds quite strong. This alone is probably enough to bring the AM on a equal lvl with the other heals.
Golden Aura: So basically ripping the engi ability (which was never working and is now removed) and give it to AM. This poor dwarfs As it is tied to a tactic, why not? But I guess the devs can´t do this, the only reason I see why they didnt repair the old engi ability (its not that engis are OP...).
Prismatic Shield: Well yeah, I already proposed that AM should get Kobs lvl of resist aura (and kobs resist aura should be downgraded). So I naturally like this idea.

I dont think desperation is the strongest tactic at all. As you said: Below 25 % is Morale Dump/Finisher territory where you should seriously consider using Morales yourself. I probably wouldnt run it at all if it didnt have the additional interaction with magical infusion.

Golden Aura: I think it the engi version was a 65f spell with 1 sec cast time. Considering that KDs only last 3-5 sec thats pretty bad. Tied to an instant ability that is not that bad to throw on someone in KD might be nice. Dunno. I certainly like the dwarf tactic on my Slayer :p

5. Better burst healing could also be adressed with a buff to funnel essence (at least you have a cooldown on the ability). The core question is still what is the likelyhood of balance essence chance to get disrupted or should it work like EoV? Will it be a constant swapping between 1 heal point (healing energy or hot) and balance essence spam (so .ab ex like)? This will dumb down the AM gameplay. Or will it be depended on target selection? Then it will be really hard to find the sweetspot of exactly the right disrupt strikethrough. Like I already said, the core problem of casted lifetaps, especially when you want to use them with a willpower based set.
Do you actually need the +2 points from Sov than anymore? I mean you didnt really come up with an idea for the silence, so with your proposed changes you wont take it anyway. So instead of SoV +2 you will need RR50 to get all the stuff. And then you get 4 points to get some extra goodies.

If you want to math out an adequate disrupt strike through rate: Be my guest. While you do that, please remember that you cant mirror that solution to shaman due to high elf racial (or remove the racial as well). In the meanwhile I proposed to make it work like eov and would start balancing the healing and damage values. Healing should probably be around healing energy + damage portion and damage should at least compensate for wp procs.
You try to make it sound bad that your class is functional without having to invest a couple of hundred hours. You know, like every other healer.

All in all I find the proposed changes in total too strong (if balance essence works like EoV), while most likely not improving the fun of the class, but actually degrading it. Not like.

I think some smaller changes are enough for AM (and shaman)
1. buff resistance buff ( ), nerf chosen/kobs resistance buff.
2. give tranquility points added strikethrough (not for lifetaps, but for debuffs and CC). Wouldn´t affect dps shaman/AM that much and if you think it does, you could exclude some abilities from this strikethrough buff.

A few months ago I would have agreed with you. I mainly played in a 6 man group stacked with insane players that would compensate for the deficiencies of the AM (and me). Since then I have played a lot of solo ranked with all sorts of people/setups and realized how big the difference between RP/WP and AM is when it comes to utility and raw healing power. You are of course entitled to your opinion.

Nothing in the proposal inhibits you from playing it as you do now. If you find it beneficial to interact more with the class mechanic you have at least one way to do it now without WW.

As always further thinking is necessary (for example what to do with silence, debuffs etc). But I already feel silly for proposing stuff that nobody that matters gives a **** about.

[Arbich]

Not only if it gets disrupted. You need LOS to an offensive target in the first place. A major complaints of the old .ab ex. On the plus side: You dont need LOS to your friendly target. There is a balance of some sort.

I dont really get the second part. You're basically saying you would stop hotting, cleansing, ap draining, debuffing etc? Just spam balanced essence and maybe alternate with another healing ability? I can see that this prospect looks a bit bleak. I think mechanic allows for abit deeper gameplay.

Was the requirement of LoS to offensive target really a major complaint of old .ab ex? I did played with .ab ex and didnt found this an issue at all. Usually your defensive target is in a fight with the enemy and with cast heals you must have LoS with your defensive target, so you will automatically have LoS with an offensive target. The actually benefit of balance essence and EoV is that you dont need LoS with your defensive targets. Which opens up the possibility of some shenanigans like healing the whole map of talabec dam when standing on the island in the middle with an enemy around.
Would target selection actually matter (so no EoV-style balance essence), LoS would matter and there would be a deeper gameplay.

The second part entirely depends how strong the heal of balance essence is. Cast time is basically one gcd. It always depends what you get for time investment. I might be a bit biased due to experience with old .ab ex (which also had the little group heal attached to balanced essence). As you proposed healing energy values (the base heal?), I probably wouldnt cast it all the time. But still whats the deeper gameplay, if you don´t really need to decide which target you hit (for the low extra dmg increase with willpower build). I think balance essence works better with a int based heal build, where the actual dmg to the target matters (so target selection more important). With int base lifetap build you would also have a kind of solution for the disrupt strikethough, as you are far more likely to hit specific targets and less likely to hit others (so target selection matters again). But with your proposal you would nerf the int base lifetap (which already didnt work atm) with your reshuffling of the abilities.

I dont like the idea of having a separate life tap tree. I would much rather have life taping as an integral part of the class. The proposed changes start the process of integrating life taps into a healing focused AM. I believe you could do the same for DPS focused build. I just havent really thought about it. And since I dont even have DPS gear I mightnot the best source to come up if ideas.

For dps gear: change the tactic arcing power to decrease dmg by 30% and increase heal from dmg to 75%. I pulled the numbers out of my arse, but they seemed somewhat balanced.

I dont think desperation is the strongest tactic at all. As you said: Below 25 % is Morale Dump/Finisher territory where you should seriously consider using Morales yourself. I probably wouldnt run it at all if it didnt have the additional interaction with magical infusion.

Golden Aura: I think it the engi version was a 65f spell with 1 sec cast time. Considering that KDs only last 3-5 sec thats pretty bad. Tied to an instant ability that is not that bad to throw on someone in KD might be nice. Dunno. I certainly like the dwarf tactic on my Slayer :p

Yeah, we will disagree about the desperation tactic. A change to balance essence will further buff the tactic.

mhm... cant remember about casttime (they already changed the tooltip on career builder), I think it didnt had a casttime. But it worked (or should worked, as it didnt worked at all) against stagger with a 20sec or 30sec cooldown. That was the strong point about the ability (in theory^^). My point was: I doubt this is possible to implement.

If you want to math out an adequate disrupt strike through rate: Be my guest. While you do that, please remember that you cant mirror that solution to shaman due to high elf racial (or remove the racial as well). In the meanwhile I proposed to make it work like eov and would start balancing the healing and damage values. Healing should probably be around healing energy + damage portion and damage should at least compensate for wp procs.
You try to make it sound bad that your class is functional without having to invest a couple of hundred hours. You know, like every other healer.

With willpower build there is no adequate disrupt strike through rate. Thats the issue.

As always further thinking is necessary (for example what to do with silence, debuffs etc). But I already feel silly for proposing stuff that nobody that matters gives a **** about.

Thats the AMs life... I mean funnel essence didn´t work for a year(?) when not flagged for rvr.

[wachlarz]

I play shaman. For me prb with mechanic is that more work for dps then heal spec. If u play a dps u can prehot yourself or some1 from party and u got benefit, more dmg. But if u play a heal spec, first if u see fight u wanna pre-hot ppl from party. So u hot tanks and dps. So in start of the fight u are - 4 on mechanic. Futher u need spam dps skills to back too "normal" state. U waste gcd/ap to increase speed on cast. So my idea is > make some hot dont put u to -1 on mechanic like "Do Sumfin Useful" or make some heal tac add adional effect that hots dont proc -1 to mechanic. Dont know Am have this same prob.

[Cimba]

Was the requirement of LoS to offensive target really a major complaint of old .ab ex? I did played with .ab ex and didnt found this an issue at all. Usually your defensive target is in a fight with the enemy and with cast heals you must have LoS with your defensive target, so you will automatically have LoS with an offensive target. The actually benefit of balance essence and EoV is that you dont need LoS with your defensive targets. Which opens up the possibility of some shenanigans like healing the whole map of talabec dam when standing on the island in the middle with an enemy around.
Would target selection actually matter (so no EoV-style balance essence), LoS would matter and there would be a deeper gameplay.

The second part entirely depends how strong the heal of balance essence is. Cast time is basically one gcd. It always depends what you get for time investment. I might be a bit biased due to experience with old .ab ex (which also had the little group heal attached to balanced essence). As you proposed healing energy values (the base heal?), I probably wouldnt cast it all the time. But still whats the deeper gameplay, if you don´t really need to decide which target you hit (for the low extra dmg increase with willpower build). I think balance essence works better with a int based heal build, where the actual dmg to the target matters (so target selection more important). With int base lifetap build you would also have a kind of solution for the disrupt strikethough, as you are far more likely to hit specific targets and less likely to hit others (so target selection matters again). But with your proposal you would nerf the int base lifetap (which already didnt work atm) with your reshuffling of the abilities.

It was a major complaint from the warband players. Their point was that in keep sieges/fort you cant really use EOV. Back than lagging was a lot worse so even if you got someone he probably lagged out of LOS by the time you fnished. Maybe its different now. But I typically dont use EOV in pushes into lord room. The risk is way to high that the spell doesnt finish imo.
I dont know about the whole map. I cant target people through enemy beyond about 200-250f. Its still not bad and saved quite a few lifes in the past.

Alright lets think this int based life tap through. I see two ways. You can go low damage and high conversion. Lets say 350 % like Divine Assault. That means minor flucations in the damage you deal have major impact on your heal output. How do you calibrate such a spell if the targets range between low levels without resistance debuff and guarded deftards. Technically you could probably use unmitigated damage values (similar to where absorb comes into the equation) for the conversion heal and calibrate it that way? But than you would have virtually identical heal values everytime and very little means of countering it.
If you take the mitigated damage values than you're left with a bi-polar game mode where the available target define if you suck as a healer or not. Not a fan. Target selection matters on the plus side. Your damage doesn't, though, since its too low.

The other option is a ton of damage with low conversion factor. Thats of course a problem since you're still supposed to be a decent healer and not just a bad copy of a dps AM. But if you can pick two life tap AM and melt everything through guard, thats an issue. A solution on shield dok/wp to that was, as far as i can tell, to make the anytimer heal an aoe ability and disperse the pressure on more shoulders. I believe you could apply this concept to AM. Take the Radiant Brust tactic; change it to affect Balance Essence. Maybe swap it to vaul. Now your target selection doesnt matter since its an aoe spell. Basically like EOV.
Also countering that **** on a range class is a lot harder than on a melee class. You're left with chasing the best kiting classes in the game.
How would that game play look like? For the aoe pressure to matter you would need to spam life taps. No alternating to with heals. Meaning the class mechanic doesnt do anything. So you also need to redesign that into something appropiate. And kind of boring?

Anyway that are just some rambling thoughts. I think there are quite a few problems left to solve if you want to make int based life taping a thing. But maybe someone already has all the answer.

Yeah, we will disagree about the desperation tactic. A change to balance essence will further buff the tactic.

Cant see how it would buff the tactic. If you mean because now you can suddenly swap to someone that is below 25 %. Well. You should have been healing that guy already. If you didnt, you kinda **** up?

mhm... cant remember about casttime (they already changed the tooltip on career builder), I think it didnt had a casttime. But it worked (or should worked, as it didnt worked at all) against stagger with a 20sec or 30sec cooldown. That was the strong point about the ability (in theory^^). My point was: I doubt this is possible to implement.

Could be that it wasnt possible. Or it just wasnt worth the effort to figure out at the time because it doesnt really fit the class anyway. Who knows. There are plenty of other good suggestions in the dozens of AM threads that you could implement instead.

With willpower build there is no adequate disrupt strike through rate. Thats the issue.

I sincerly doubt that. If it were true, people would bitch so much about the AP drain. I dont have numbers. At a guess I would put my all time success rate at around 80% to 90% with the AP drain.

[Arbich]

It was a major complaint from the warband players. Their point was that in keep sieges/fort you cant really use EOV. Back than lagging was a lot worse so even if you got someone he probably lagged out of LOS by the time you fnished. Maybe its different now. But I typically dont use EOV in pushes into lord room. The risk is way to high that the spell doesnt finish imo.
I dont know about the whole map. I cant target people through enemy beyond about 200-250f. Its still not bad and saved quite a few lifes in the past.

Alright lets think this int based life tap through. I see two ways. You can go low damage and high conversion. Lets say 350 % like Divine Assault. That means minor flucations in the damage you deal have major impact on your heal output. How do you calibrate such a spell if the targets range between low levels without resistance debuff and guarded deftards. Technically you could probably use unmitigated damage values (similar to where absorb comes into the equation) for the conversion heal and calibrate it that way? But than you would have virtually identical heal values everytime and very little means of countering it.
If you take the mitigated damage values than you're left with a bi-polar game mode where the available target define if you suck as a healer or not. Not a fan. Target selection matters on the plus side. Your damage doesn't, though, since its too low.

The other option is a ton of damage with low conversion factor. Thats of course a problem since you're still supposed to be a decent healer and not just a bad copy of a dps AM. But if you can pick two life tap AM and melt everything through guard, thats an issue. A solution on shield dok/wp to that was, as far as i can tell, to make the anytimer heal an aoe ability and disperse the pressure on more shoulders. I believe you could apply this concept to AM. Take the Radiant Brust tactic; change it to affect Balance Essence. Maybe swap it to vaul. Now your target selection doesnt matter since its an aoe spell. Basically like EOV.
Also countering that **** on a range class is a lot harder than on a melee class. You're left with chasing the best kiting classes in the game.
How would that game play look like? For the aoe pressure to matter you would need to spam life taps. No alternating to with heals. Meaning the class mechanic doesnt do anything. So you also need to redesign that into something appropiate. And kind of boring?

Anyway that are just some rambling thoughts. I think there are quite a few problems left to solve if you want to make int based life taping a thing. But maybe someone already has all the answer.

I did test the range of lifetaps on AM a few years ago when .ab ex was active. The range was around 800ft for group members. Measured it with boon of hysh, so you might add or subtract 50ft.
I did test divine assault range a few days ago, cause of rumors the range was only 300ft. I didnt measured the exact range, but around 800ft still seems right. I use enemy, too. But addons shouldn´t matter (maybe some prevent you from getting the range, dont know). With or without any addons, the range of every lifetap that base on "your defensive target" should have the same range of around 800ft (including tactics like arcing power). Buff that work this way probably too.
The point of Lifetaps in forts I get. Its a disadvantage in stage 3.

And I select way one (at least the direction). Thats why I think you could tinker with arcing power tactic. So the available target should matter for your healing.

Cant see how it would buff the tactic. If you mean because now you can suddenly swap to someone that is below 25 %. Well. You should have been healing that guy already. If you didnt, you kinda **** up?

mhm... yes I mean that. we already discussed the issues with with desperation (the low health percentage when it kicks in, still think its mandatory though). Still you can try to benefit from the 40% healbuff when more than one person gets low on health. Kind of like you can already use funnel essence and magical infusion this way.

I sincerly doubt that. If it were true, people would bitch so much about the AP drain. I dont have numbers. At a guess I would put my all time success rate at around 80% to 90% with the AP drain.

Against specific targets? Or no matter the target selection?
Either way, then why let balance essence work like EoV when there is no serious disrupt chance?

[anarchypark]

btw, before we talk about healer side,
dps side need to change first. cuz that's more broken area.
without adjusting dps, buffing healer side is absurd.

mechanic gives channeling too much dmg bonus.
first things first.

[Sever1n]

Im kinda new in this game but choosed am as main, got my invader set and came farm city's. It just pain, wb always prefer rp or priest over u. They just heal more and live x2 more than am. U cursed to go pug cityes and have low contrib in them, and thats just frustrating. I have only 1 city where i shined as healer, when i nonstop healed melleblob with EoV. But with normal oponents u just 1st target to every enemy coz instarez and squishyness. And saw top destro preamades...... 6DoCs and 1sham. No coment really, u give to heavy armored healers more healing power than squishy ones, so its logical that no one dont want to take squshies. 1spot for instarez thats all, and not greatly needed even. Half of my time in city im just running from 3-4 enemies try to survive, and heal myself, if not deleted in 1cc. U need give AM something that give them atleast 2-3 spots in city wb and dont feel like halfhealer in overall. If risking my ass as squishy robe i want reward for that, not hate from allyes and a place of worst healer. Even make EoV radius more than 80m will help a lot.

[emiliorv]

2WH Cant kill a sham :

A) WH sucks
B) Shaman is overpowered
C) A + B


IMO any healer, alone, should not be able to survive the Burst of 2 Dps which role is to kill Healers.. I think AM should die against 2WE but Shaman too. And its not L2P issue because the same player had this experience, is he survives 2 WH that mean he knows his stuff and is competent, so he should be able to survive with AM too.

Kiting is a thing, sham are king at kiting, but surviving a KD with 2 dps debuffing both outgoing and ingoing healing is in my opinion not logical.

looks like some WHs can kill shamans in 1 vs 1 and even can win VS 2 shamans...so if 2 WHs cant kill 1 shaman they really suck hard or very hard

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zHUgSwvaNg


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