AM mechanic changes, results and a few thoughts.
Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2018 3:54 pm
Alriiiight, so I've done a lot of testing with a friend of mine around the new 0.7 total stats from gear thing. I'll share with you my experience, the results and a few thoughts.
So to start off, I'd like to say that the "hybrid" component of the class has really been nailed this time. DPS can heal. Healers can dps. Etc. etc.
My first reaction as a pure DPS AM was absolute astonishment, that I can pretty much fill a healer slot in our usual guild rvr roam groups and do alright. It's not pure healer tier healing, but on the upside I had a heal-debuff, an ap drain and some pretty good damage. I was honestly amazed and thought that this was perhaps OP, but of course I soon realized that by going this route the only benefits you gain to your own pure survivability is an increase to Lambent Aura healing and Shield of Saphery, as well as lifetaps being slightly more potent. It was pretty good all in all, but having a dps AM fill the healer role had some clear disadvantages associated with it, namely being very squishy, so all it did was make DPS AM useful for 6v6 and capable of making an actual contribution with its healing in a WB. Didn't seem that OP at the end of the day.
Next I decided to test the healer side of things. So, the idea was to boost the 0.7 coefficient as high as possible, so that the healer could not only heal better by making use of lifetaps, but also deal out respectable damage with divine fury slotted. I did some calculations and arrived at the conclusion that a BIS healer AM using 2 gear sets and 2 accessory sets and full wound talismans will have around 1136 total stat contribution, if you push it as far out as possible, which translated to 795 intellect when casting with a tranquility empowered damage ability. With a 100 intellect pot, that becomes 895. They would retain about 650-700 willpower baseline, so their passive healing with no way to juggle their mechanic is still quite potent, and then grows slightly with force stacks.
This isn't exactly a whine for equal outcome, but rather I'm telling this story to illustrate something. The result turned out to be slightly disconcerting. My healer friend (rr 78, I'm 71) was running around with about 8050 hp, 45% disrupt, 21% dodge, 13% parry, 0% chance to be crit and they used two armor talismans instead of wounds, simply because they didn't have any, so in fact their stats fell a little short of the maximum. More like 875ish. They didn't lack in self-healing compared to a DPS AM build because of their high base willpower, especially with around 35% healing critical chance. It was actually an insanely strong build with damage, healing (mobile because of lifetaps too), tankiness, everything you'd ever want. Great stuff, lots of fun for my guildie.
Essentially it came down to a playstyle difference, where a pure healer will heal first and then do damage, while I would damage first and then heal. It felt very even at first because a pure DPS AM will obviously have much higher critical hit chance for his spells and so the overall dps is higher, along with having a more reliable ap drain.
However at closer inspection, what happens is that basically in order for me to be 100% optimal in my build, I have to use the exact same gear my guildie is using. I have to go with a mixture of two healing sets for stats, beastlord etc. etc. I won't be able to damage upfront as soon as the fight begins, but I'll be able to fill a healer slot properly and do almost the same amount of damage that I could do while running dominator and full intellect talismans, while having far more self-healing, far more tankiness, so on and so forth. It seems to me the recent AM patch has made a drastic change that isn't immediately obvious to the class. While the DPS playstyle is still a thing, it seems to just be weaker than the healer playstyle now, while basically being able to do the exact same things, while also being more flexible as an upside, because you can remove Divine Fury from your tactics and simply slot something more focused purely on healing.
The optimal setup for a vaul spec also seems to actually be a willpower base that uses the total stat thing to deal out damage to enemies. I'm still testing to find the optimal minmaxed sweetspot, but as it stands, it's pushing AM into a very very weird state. I do hope DPS AM recieves some form of buff before it's pushed out of existence, though. So far, that's all I have. Other than that this was a great change for theorycrafting, had a great deal of fun.
So to start off, I'd like to say that the "hybrid" component of the class has really been nailed this time. DPS can heal. Healers can dps. Etc. etc.
My first reaction as a pure DPS AM was absolute astonishment, that I can pretty much fill a healer slot in our usual guild rvr roam groups and do alright. It's not pure healer tier healing, but on the upside I had a heal-debuff, an ap drain and some pretty good damage. I was honestly amazed and thought that this was perhaps OP, but of course I soon realized that by going this route the only benefits you gain to your own pure survivability is an increase to Lambent Aura healing and Shield of Saphery, as well as lifetaps being slightly more potent. It was pretty good all in all, but having a dps AM fill the healer role had some clear disadvantages associated with it, namely being very squishy, so all it did was make DPS AM useful for 6v6 and capable of making an actual contribution with its healing in a WB. Didn't seem that OP at the end of the day.
Next I decided to test the healer side of things. So, the idea was to boost the 0.7 coefficient as high as possible, so that the healer could not only heal better by making use of lifetaps, but also deal out respectable damage with divine fury slotted. I did some calculations and arrived at the conclusion that a BIS healer AM using 2 gear sets and 2 accessory sets and full wound talismans will have around 1136 total stat contribution, if you push it as far out as possible, which translated to 795 intellect when casting with a tranquility empowered damage ability. With a 100 intellect pot, that becomes 895. They would retain about 650-700 willpower baseline, so their passive healing with no way to juggle their mechanic is still quite potent, and then grows slightly with force stacks.
This isn't exactly a whine for equal outcome, but rather I'm telling this story to illustrate something. The result turned out to be slightly disconcerting. My healer friend (rr 78, I'm 71) was running around with about 8050 hp, 45% disrupt, 21% dodge, 13% parry, 0% chance to be crit and they used two armor talismans instead of wounds, simply because they didn't have any, so in fact their stats fell a little short of the maximum. More like 875ish. They didn't lack in self-healing compared to a DPS AM build because of their high base willpower, especially with around 35% healing critical chance. It was actually an insanely strong build with damage, healing (mobile because of lifetaps too), tankiness, everything you'd ever want. Great stuff, lots of fun for my guildie.
Essentially it came down to a playstyle difference, where a pure healer will heal first and then do damage, while I would damage first and then heal. It felt very even at first because a pure DPS AM will obviously have much higher critical hit chance for his spells and so the overall dps is higher, along with having a more reliable ap drain.
However at closer inspection, what happens is that basically in order for me to be 100% optimal in my build, I have to use the exact same gear my guildie is using. I have to go with a mixture of two healing sets for stats, beastlord etc. etc. I won't be able to damage upfront as soon as the fight begins, but I'll be able to fill a healer slot properly and do almost the same amount of damage that I could do while running dominator and full intellect talismans, while having far more self-healing, far more tankiness, so on and so forth. It seems to me the recent AM patch has made a drastic change that isn't immediately obvious to the class. While the DPS playstyle is still a thing, it seems to just be weaker than the healer playstyle now, while basically being able to do the exact same things, while also being more flexible as an upside, because you can remove Divine Fury from your tactics and simply slot something more focused purely on healing.
The optimal setup for a vaul spec also seems to actually be a willpower base that uses the total stat thing to deal out damage to enemies. I'm still testing to find the optimal minmaxed sweetspot, but as it stands, it's pushing AM into a very very weird state. I do hope DPS AM recieves some form of buff before it's pushed out of existence, though. So far, that's all I have. Other than that this was a great change for theorycrafting, had a great deal of fun.