Keep in mind that the predominant contemporary use of +healing isn't to increase throughput, but to increase mana efficiency by "replacing" high-ranked spells with lower, cheaper ones. Basically the same effect as the old Spirit of Aquementas/Choker of Enlightenment, just less drastic of a change. If you need a 2000-point heal, you're going to cast a 2000-point heal; whether it costs 400 mana or 500 mana is determined by which rank spell your +healing gear allows you to use.
There hasn't been a fight that really tests your healing throughput that would require excessive +healing on top of max-rank heals. Distributed across the whole raid, that just becomes a fight to stack Priests for Prayer of Healing (is that Sapphiron?); focused on a single target that's enough DPS to gib a tank with the slightest missed heal. Patchwerk's about as close as they've come, but even that is much more about achieving efficient output than maximizing output.
There hasn't been a fight that really tests your healing throughput that would require excessive +healing on top of max-rank heals. Distributed across the whole raid, that just becomes a fight to stack Priests for Prayer of Healing (is that Sapphiron?); focused on a single target that's enough DPS to gib a tank with the slightest missed heal. Patchwerk's about as close as they've come, but even that is much more about achieving efficient output than maximizing output.
Actually, a single target version of this would be closer to Rajaxx or Razuvious, although Rajaxx is really more about control than it is about healer throughput (at least until the boss wave), and Razuvious gives you a Shield Wall for most of the time. You could imagine an encounter where they did this: either give the MT some sort of buff giving him X times the health and have the boss do X times the damage, or have an NPC like Andorov tanking the boss.
I think this is so people actually die in PvP as a result of damage, not as a result of your healers running out of damage.
That makes absolutely no sense. The point is about scaling, not base values. If damage and healing scale at different rates, it means that at varying rates of progression, one is overpowered compared to the other.
It's the same issue as priest survivability before the revamp (and to a lesser extent, after). Sure, priest survivability was insane at launch, but as damage outscaled relevant survivability measures (armor, hp, pw:s, renew, flash, defensive cooldowns), it became trash. One can argue forever about the actual point where opposing measures are balanced, but there should be little doubt that if they don't scale at the same rate, they will only balanced for a very short period of time.
I think this is so people actually die in PvP as a result of damage, not as a result of your healers running out of damage.
That makes absolutely no sense. The point is about scaling, not base values. If damage and healing scale at different rates, it means that at varying rates of progression, one is overpowered compared to the other.
It's the same issue as priest survivability before the revamp (and to a lesser extent, after). Sure, priest survivability was insane at launch, but as damage outscaled relevant survivability measures (armor, hp, pw:s, renew, flash, defensive cooldowns), it became trash. One can argue forever about the actual point where opposing measures are balanced, but there should be little doubt that if they don't scale at the same rate, they will only balanced for a very short period of time.
Well, the scaling from TBC release at level 70 to the last patch before the next expansion will most likely be much smaller in magnetude than WoW 1.0 to 1.12.
When WoW was released, there basically was no scaling. The difference between the Tier0 junkola at the time and now in terms of dps and healing for all classes is radically different. Blue gear alone due to itemization changes increased caster dps by 50% between 1.0 and now, and raid gear went way beyond that. DPS classes do about 2 to 3 times what was possible at launch, and healers heal for about 1.6x the throughput but 4x the sustainability. I don't expec to see changes like that in the expansion -- there won't be an explosion of gear with new dps enhancing stats, and there won't be 4 tiers of raid gear added after release.
I would imagine, that in the level 70 gear available at launch of TBC, there will be no more than a +50% scaling before the next expansion in dps. That is to say, if 1000dps is possible by most dps classes in the gear available in Feb 07, I don't expect to see any more than 1500 dps before the next expansion (my guess, May 08). My personal expectation is about 30% dps scaling before the next expansion -- if blizzard lives up to its promise to try and get it out in about a year.
... will most likely be... I don't expec to see... I would imagine... my guess... My personal expectation is...
Yeah, let's not do that.
@Robble: good point about Razuvious. Aside from a gimmick like a permanent 80% Mortal Strike on the tank, NPC tanks are the only way to have a tank durable enough to take a raid-HPS-output-testing walloping without giving Warriors enough stamina to throw PvP out the window. I'm actually imagining some kind of reversal of a Vael-type encounter; the raid comes across a friendly battling a boss where the friendly has been beaten down to 20-30% hp; the raid has to fight off endless escalating waves of trash (think Gothik) while the healers push the ally back to 100%. Once he gets there, the fight is won, loots are dispensed, etc. It'd be a neat reversal in the traditional roles of healers as "sustain until the victory" and DPS as "maximize output towards victory condition."
Or maybe too gimmicky, I dunno. Certainly not much more to be said on the original topic.
Well, to be honest: it wouldn't work if healing scaled the same as +dmg(percentage wise), because then healers could cast really low rank heals that healed the tank from almost dead to practically full. All you need for the system to accomplish is that the amount healed is still ahead of the damage output with equal amounts of +healing or +damage from an item budget stand point which I think the system accomplishes just fine. The only reason the numbers seem so big (93% scaling vs 40% scaling) is because healing spells have so much bigger base values. I don't see this balance being offset by the increase in itemlevels/spellranks.
For the stamina point of view lvl 70 tanks in t3 with prot specc will be looking at 11k HP self-buffed. And if you add all those other class buffs along with consumables It's going to be around 17k. And then you can imagine t4 values.
With those kinds of HP numbers it's going to be easier to heal using your big ranks. Also considering hots will stack I can see people throwing up hots and then using their big heals in chains to allow for some spirit reg. But this obviously depends on how the encounters look. And also how many "pure" healers will actually be required in 25-man raid settings.
In PvP:
On one hand we get higher stamina & downranking nerf. That means that healers need to use higher level spells, but on the other hand can land those more effectively without overhealing. Damage scaling better than healing sort of balances this.
In PvE:
Healing vs. Damage comparison is irrelevant as long as all classes get noticeable improvements through gear.
I think it’s funny that there’s so much noise about +Healing scaling worse than +Damage. Even if you can double the damage one spell does with lower item budget of +Damage than it takes to double the healing one spell does with +Healing, the healing still scales way faster (almost twice as fast).
Well, to be honest: it wouldn't work if healing scaled the same as +dmg(percentage wise), because then healers could cast really low rank heals that healed the tank from almost dead to practically full.
Did you miss the 100 posts on various boards that explain downranking loses it's absurd +heal/damage returns in TBC?
In PvP:
On one hand we get higher stamina & downranking nerf. That means that healers need to use higher level spells, but on the other hand can land those more effectively without overhealing. Damage scaling better than healing sort of balances this.
What? No. People don't cast rank 3 flash heals in PvP to avoid overhealing. People certainly don't use 2.5 seconds greater heals in PvP. Overhealing is a PvE concept, because it's wasted mana. Wasted mana is rarely an issue for healers in PvP. (Disclaimer: This assumes PvP at a competetive level)
Late edit: On further thought, there's some truth to this. It's not about using higher level spells (you use mostly max level spells in pvp anyway, since mana is pretty irrelevant and damage is unpredictable), but it is relevant that the chance of your +healing turning into effective HP is larger when there's less of a need to keep people topped off constantly.
In PvE:
Healing vs. Damage comparison is irrelevant as long as all classes get noticeable improvements through gear.
True. I don't think anyone complained about this in PvE terms. The only relative scaling that really matters in PvE is tank threat versus damage threat.
I think it’s funny that there’s so much noise about +Healing scaling worse than +Damage. Even if you can double the damage one spell does with lower item budget of +Damage than it takes to double the healing one spell does with +Healing, the healing still scales way faster (almost twice as fast).
Again, what? It's the percentage based increase that matters. I don't care if my flash heal has grown with 1000 more than the frost bolt, if the frost bolt does 9500 while my flash heal heals for 11000. If 1 flash heal equaled 2 frost bolts as naked 60s, then that is the core of the relation. Flash heals being 500 points larger than frostbolts is not.
You can certainly field an argument about whether flash heals being twice as large as frost bolts is a good thing, but then the base relation should be fixed. If they don't scale appropriately, things will only be balanced at a very narrow gear level, and unbalanced for either part on each side of that gear level.
For a PvP game with gear upgrades, relative scaling is one of the most fundamental concepts to maintain balance.
Again, what? It's the percentage based increase that matters. I don't care if my flash heal has grown with 1000 more than the frost bolt, if the frost bolt does 9500 while my flash heal heals for 11000. If 1 flash heal equaled 2 frost bolts as naked 60s, then that is the core of the relation. Flash heals being 500 points larger than frostbolts is not.
You can certainly field an argument about whether flash heals being twice as large as frost bolts is a good thing, but then the base relation should be fixed. If they don't scale appropriately, things will only be balanced at a very narrow gear level, and unbalanced for either part on each side of that gear level.
For a PvP game with gear upgrades, relative scaling is one of the most fundamental concepts to maintain balance.
It is not the percentage scaling that matters.
It is how the ratio of HPS scales to DPS, and you can prove that at Infinite +DMG and +heal the ration is 2.2 HPS to 1 DPS. You also prove that at realistic numbers the ratio is between 2.5:1 and 3:1
So as long as health scales so it takes longer than 3s for one person to kill someone (aka reactive healing can actually occur) there is no issue with the way that +heal and +dmg scale relative to each other.
Once again:
+dmg scales twice as fast as +heal, but costs almost twice as much on gear.
Do you want two quarters or a half dollar? Either way you've got 50 cents. Same principle.
Uhm, you realize this is the exact same thing? If the damage of a frostbolt doubles and the heal of a flash heal doubles, both HPS and DPS doubles. This means the HPS:DPS ratio remains constant.
The move to 70 and the new itemization formula creates a new base relation. Relatively larger HP pools probably means the base relation between HPS and DPS should be less biased towards HPS, since there's a gain in reaction time. From that point on however, the scaling needs to be constant.
Damage versus health/mitigation needs to be constant throughout scaling, so that at any point where two equally geared characters face eachother (say mage vs warrior), the time to burst the other player from full to dead takes x seconds. The base relation here can be any number of seconds depending on how you want the game to play out.
In the same fashion, DPS versus HPS needs to scale at the same level. If DPS increases at a sharper rate than HPS, things will only be truly balanced at a particular gear level. (This is of course assuming that developers don't want the relative power levels of the classes/roles to be different at different gear levels, which is generally considered a bad idea because it complicates balance).
Once again:
+dmg scales twice as fast as +heal, but costs almost twice as much on gear.
Do you want two quarters or a half dollar? Either way you've got 50 cents. Same principle.
If your calculations show that +damage only scales twice as fast as +heal, I'd like to see them. Without taking talents and percentage based increases into consideration (which, by the way, will further tilt the numbers in damage's favor), and assuming one spell is being spammed, 1 point of +damage and 2 points of +healing will increase HPS by double the amount of increase in DPS. Since HPS is more than twice as large as DPS from the getgo however, this will cause HPS to scale by a smaller percentage than DPS. At infinite +damage and infinite*2 +healing, this will cause the HPS:DPS ratio to approach 2.
In other words, with those assumptions, the HPS:DPS ratio will approach the relative return of a certain amount of item points. If +20 damage and +40 healing are equivalent in itemvalue, the HPS:DPS ratio will approach 2. If you want that ratio to remain constant, you need to make sure the relative return of a certain amount of item points is equal to the HPS:DPS ratio. If level 70 base relations are considered balanced at a HPS:DPS of 3, then you need to get 3 +healing for every 1 +damage, if the ratio is to be maintained.
Of course, with the use of multiple spells and the inclusion of talents and other effects, the whole equation gets a lot more complicated. This is a simplification, but I assume what you have done is a simplification as well.
I basically agree with you. The problem I have is those don't understand that the limit of the ratio is around 2, and that the point where you get close to that limit is at (currently) absurd iLvl.
Every time a new rank comes out you can reset the ratio with new base spell values.
If at the start of TBC I heal at a 3:1 HPS to DPS and at the end I heal at 2.5:1 HPS to DPS - does that break PvP?
Does it break PvE?
I say no to both.
I believe you're saying the same thing. Further I believe we also agree that so long as the ratio of +healing to +dmg on gear remains at or above where it is things scale okay.
Am I reading you right?
---------------
Okay so to get this all in one place because there are two threads on the same issue at the moment:
"As you apply equivalent amounts of +dmg/healing gear to each spell, their percentage gain in relevant parameters is very different. Ideally, each point of +dmg/healing would benefit each of the affected spells equally in terms of percentage gain in relevant parameters."
Priest:
*Completely untalented and ungeared, the Priest Greater Heal rank 7 will heal for 2490 HP, on a 3 second cast, with 825 mana cost.
*When figuring in talents but not gear, Greater Heal rank 7 will heal for 2490*1.1 = 2739 HP, on a 2.5 second cast and costing 825*0.85= 701 mana. This is 1096 HP/s and 3.90 HP/mana
*Now let's put on the Priest's +1200 healing gear. His Greater Heal rank 7 will now do (2490+(1200*3/3.5)+(1200*0.2))*1.1 = 4134 HP healed, again in 2.5 seconds and for 701 mana. This means 1654 HP/s and 5.90 HP/mana. An increase of the important parameters by 51%.
Mage:
I'm assuming a fairly deep Frost build with the mage having Improved Frostbolt (-0.5 second cast time), Piercing Ice (+6% damage), Frost Channeling (-15% mana cost) and Empowered Frostbolt (+10% from +dmg effects to Frostbolt, +5% crits). As mentioned before, the Mage is assumed to have +650 dmg/healing.
*Untalented and ungeared, Frostbolt Rank 13 will do 620 damage for 330 mana with a 2.5 second cast time.
*Figuring in the talents, but not gear, this will mean a Frostbolt Rank 13 will do 620*1.06 = 657 damage for 330*0.85=281 mana and a 2.5 seconds cast. This is 263 DpS and 2.34 damage/mana.
*Now let's add the +650 damage. Frostbolt Rank 13 now does (620+(650*0.81)+(650*0.1))*1.06 = 1284 damage, again for 281 mana and 2.5 second cast time. This is 514 DpS and 4.58 damage/mana. An increase in important parameters of 95%.
Post I put up to put his scaling #'s in perspective with actual data points:
Originally Posted by Lagomorph
Lagomorph wrote:
The issue is when does the crossover occur. When does Fireball overtake Gheal with regard to DPS vs HPS.
Yes frostbolt scales about twice as fast as Gheal - you also get about twice as much +heal as you get +dmg.
So when the mage is hitting +1000 dmg, the healer is hitting +2000 healing.
Using his numbers - the ratio of HPS to DPS with talents and no gear is 1096:263 ~ 4:1
Factoring in gear: 1654:514 ~ 3:1
As you scale to infinity - with +heal in the item budget scaling at 1.83 times available damge - you realize that the ratio of HPS to DPS comparing frostbolt to Gheal will never get worse than 2.2:1 and hangs between 3:1 and 2.5:1 at anything approaching realistic values.
So yes - mages scale "faster" than priests (and presumably paladins and druids etc...) But then you figure out that never gets to a point where it truly matters as long as +healing is cheaper in the item budget.
The fact that +healing doesn't help our DPS is entirely seperate from the fact that we can outheal a DPS'r on a 2:1 ratio or better.
In real terms: Two or more equivalently geared DPS classes are required to overwhlem the HPS ourput of a healer, regardless of the level of gear available
So his entire post is baseless with regard to +dmg scaling faster than +heal. Blizzard knows that - that's why +heal is cheaper than +dmg.
That should give you a baseline on where my #'s are coming from.
Well, first off, his numbers are wrong. +% healing talents don't take +healing gear into effect, like damage talents do. Second, he uses GHeal, which is largely an irrelevant base of comparison as long as we're talking PvP (FHeal gets less of a hps boost from +healing due to no cast time reduction talents). I won't go over his mage numbers too thoroughly since I'm not quite as familiar with them.
With talents granting a larger bonus from +damage gear, the infinite HPS:DPS limit is in current wow somewhere between 1.5:1 and 1.8:1.
If it moved from 3:1 to 2.5:1 on an infinite ilvl budget, it wouldn't be a huge deal. In actuality it currently moves from something like 3.5:1 to 1.5:1. That's quite a bit more relevant.
Regardless of how much the scaling is off currently however, the main point remains - scaling shouldn't change the power balance. With mechanics being the way they are now, it most definitely does, unless Blizzard actually intends for HPS:DPS to be less than 2 in TBC (and models base spells accordingly).
If it moved from 3:1 to 2.5:1 on an infinite ilvl budget, it wouldn't be a huge deal. In actuality it currently moves from something like 3.5:1 to 1.5:1. That's quite a bit more relevant.
Going to 1.5:1 is more relevant. The question is - when does it do it? Is the scaling acceptable through expected expansion gearing? (What's the ratio through 5K +healing lets say)
Regardless of how much the scaling is off currently however, the main point remains - scaling shouldn't change the power balance. With mechanics being the way they are now, it most definitely does, unless Blizzard actually intends for HPS:DPS to be less than 2 in TBC (and models base spells accordingly).
Here we differ - I don't see it as inherently wrong for scaling to shift power balances - though you have to be very careful not to design yourself into a corner.
Even scaling that doesn't shift the ratio seems more future proof, but so long as you accept that your system has that gotcha in it - you can balance around it.
I feel that pvp might be more interesting if healing was a bigger factor than it is now, and this seems to be a pvp issue to me. In pve the need for healing and damage are manually adjusted around the expected ability of players to damage and heal.
Now considering the case of pvp.. You have a 50% healing reduction on the prime target from mortal strike. Needless to say damage and CC play a much bigger role than healing. As the 'healing' classes also bring cc, counter-cc, and utility they retain their value but more for their other aspects than for their ability to heal.
The overall balance of TBC pvp remains speculation until its end game itemization starts to take shape. I am hoping that blizzard will include a few interesting twists to tip the scales away from dps rather than repeat their mistakes.
Uhm, you realize this is the exact same thing? If the damage of a frostbolt doubles and the heal of a flash heal doubles, both HPS and DPS doubles. This means the HPS:DPS ratio remains constant.
I guess the question is whether it's (HpS-DpS) or (HpS/DpS) that matters.
Obvious answer is that both matter. First one scales up faster with +Healing, second one scales up faster with +Damage. As it is, the game seems balanced to me. And infinite scaling is irrelevant, only whether the amount of stats that is reasonable to get scales well matters. No matter how the game is balanced now, there will have to be some balancing again in the next expansion.
And the only way to make both (HpS-DpS) and (HpS/DpS) scale similarly is to keep base damage of damage spells the same as the base healing of healing spells. That would obviously be silly.
Originally Posted by Elerion
Well, first off, his numbers are wrong. +% healing talents don't take +healing gear into effect, like damage talents do.
This affects PvE pretty significantly, as well as some implications for PvP (where healers have generally been reduced in effectiveness).
That's just not true. Let's imagine a 5v5 where everybody has double their current hitpoints, but all other numbers (DPS, HPS) stay the same. Suddenly, you can't burst someone down like you could previously, you have to either run their healers OOM or prevent them from healing. If anything, a massive increase in hitpoints is gonna boost the value of healing in PvP. From what I've tried of BC PvP so far, this seems to be true.
From what I've seen, it doesn't look like they're intending to significantly increase the availability of +healing.
I've seen some BoEs "of Healing" with insane amounts of healing. Like 92 healing on a plate helm at level 62. I'm not sure if this is relevant at all, but I figured I'd share what I've seen out of TBC.
Also, you may want to look at the new ranks of spells. e.g.
Flash Heal (Rank 7)
380 Mana 40 yd range
1.5 sec cast
Heals a friendly target for 812 to 958.
Flash Heal (Rank 8)
400 Mana 40 yd range
1.5 sec cast
Requires Spirit of Redemption
Heals a friendly target for 913 to 1059.
Flash Heal (Rank 9)
470 Mana 40 yd range
1.5 sec cast
Requires Spirit of Redemption
Heals a friendly target for 1101 to 1279.
This affects PvE pretty significantly, as well as some implications for PvP (where healers have generally been reduced in effectiveness).
That's just not true. Let's imagine a 5v5 where everybody has double their current hitpoints, but all other numbers (DPS, HPS) stay the same. Suddenly, you can't burst someone down like you could previously, you have to either run their healers OOM or prevent them from healing. If anything, a massive increase in hitpoints is gonna boost the value of healing in PvP. From what I've tried of BC PvP so far, this seems to be true.
As if healers weren't already the first target in group pvp? :/
I'm looking forward to it though, should mean that people protect their healers more, in theory...
The comparison between Frostbolt and Greater Heal is a valid one in PvP, they have an identical cast time. The increase in HP hopefully has the intended result of removing the 2-shot, thus it will become possible to use the more efficient GHeal in situations where your life isn't directly threatened.
The reason Flash is of significant use right now is 1. Burst Damage > 50% Targets Health, by the time you are able to react to an ally droping to <50%, the fatal blow is less than 2 seconds away; 2. Opponents > 3, there's usually going to be someone around in WSG that can silence your heals, so speed is more necessary than efficiency. 3. Death dosen't mean game over, rebirth is almost always no more than 30 seconds away, with CC's being as prevalent as they are and teams consisting of multiple healers, there's a damn good chance you can make it back in time, so once again your mana doesn't matter. All 3 of these things change in Arena.
It's far more difficult to heal yourself when you need healing (are getting hit) than to heal someone else. If you're targeted by two people that have half a brain, you won't get more than 1 spell off. That is one of the major problems with healing vs damage, every class has at least 2 sources of equally viable damage regardless of spec (ok, maybe not paladins), but healers only have one source of healing (except shield?) so a silence is almost as good as any other CC of the same duration. This is why most PvP teams consist of more than one healer, and also why the majority of DPS classes are going to favor the 2v2 or 3v3 where only 1 healers is of far less use.
That is one of the major problems with healing vs damage, every class has at least 2 sources of equally viable damage regardless of spec (ok, maybe not paladins), but healers only have one source of healing (except shield?) so a silence is almost as good as any other CC of the same duration.
PW:S is in the same spell school as all the rest of our heals, with the exception of VE and Devouring Plague (neither of which are really heals in this sense). Paladins and priests have exclusively holy school heals, druids and shamans have exclusively nature school heals.
Flash is being used because against a competent team, odds of you getting off a 3 second heal are pretty abysmal. This will still be the case in TBC. Against worse teams I can hide in some bushes and spam greater heal to my heart's extent, but it just doesn't happen against strong players. That's why the GHeal/Bolt comparison is pointless. Damage casters will be able to use longer cast time spells to a much greater degree, since stopping heals is the primary concern of the opposing team.
I guess I'm just used to watching enemy mages/rogues, and having an addon that tracks their cooldowns. If I notice them cancel a spell when I'm mid-heal, I can usually (lag dependant) cancel my own spell before they hit their interrupt. I'm also assuming (this being a PvP discussion) that you have your own interrupt spell. The only time I have problems using HT (3 second cast) is when I'm the target of the damage (thus spell delay), or when outnumbered.
You also shouldn't directly compare FH to Frostbolt since you'll get a cast and a half before he finishes his cast. When discussing Healing vs Spell Damage, Over Time is a primary consideration. If at 10e50 spell damage, FH is 1.5:1 versus Frostbolt per cast, then it is 2.5:1 with time taken into account.
Healing and damage spells will never retain their same ratio, unless scaling is suddenly based off their base heal/damage components.
Im not sure why they should either.
If at level 60 a frostbolt hits for 1500, and a heal hits for 2k, then your heal covers 1 frostbolt + 500hp.
So at comparable +heal/+damage if the frostbolt hits for 3k, why should the heal land for more than 3.5k ? That would still give you your rfostbolt +500hp
"Because it should be the same ratio!! Ive lost out, Ive gone from 3:4 to 6:7 !!!"
Yes and why does that matter ? You still cast one of those heals to outheal a frostbolt.
He casts 1 spell, you cast 1 spell, therefore the balance remains.
The basis of balance should be simply this IMO.
If at level 70 with no gear 1 heal of rank X heals for enough to cover one frostbolt/shadowbolt/fireball of rank N, then at equivalent levels of +heal/+damage 1 cating of that same spell should still negate the damage done by one one frostbolt/shadowbolt/fireball.
10/26/06, 7:31 PM
Similar Threads
