Priest Offers Too much vs Other 'healing class' Options

[Golliathe]

Maybe I'm missing something but it really seems like priest needs a giant dose of nerf. Actually let's not do that except via proxy: can we get some buffs for the other healing/support classes?

What makes priest too good?
1. You have more heals available than every other class with 4 heals to choose from.
2. You have more utility (can free rez, cure broken bones, give warmth, remove poison, and passive power regen). Note that priest is the only healing class with both a rez and an epic attack.
3. If not playing a healer you can build for silly damage especially if you go for the obvious fire synergy.

Druid gets 3 heals (no rez) [no status removal] *has nice mob debuff via rotskin*

Mentalism gets 2 heals (no rez) and passive heal waves [no status removal]

Battle Chemistry gets 2 heals (no rez), hour long buffs and limited/random passive golem healing [1 status removal]

Bard gets 1 heal (best rez in game), mez, passive song healing and short acting but powerful group effects [limited unfetter: 1/2 strength of priest in cooldown and duration]

Pig has 2 heals (no rez) , burst buffs, and fear [no status removal]

Note: Bard, Battle Chemistry and Pig lack epic attacks.

If you're still reading this the short version is that building a healer without using priest means you are gimped (in the same way that building a tank w/o unarmed means you are gimped). There's something fundamentally wrong with that because there should be multiple viable build options. I feel bad for anyone playing a support healer role who isn't playing priest.

[Golliathe]

Suggestions on how to fix:
1. Give Druid the option to rez directly at the cost of Dreva blessing points. Give druid the ability to remove at least one status oriented thing. I would love to see something unique like maybe an ability mod for pulse of life that stops damage for poison on the target for 10 seconds and reverses the damage to healing at a reduced rate (possibly something like 1 healing for every 4 damage).

2. Maybe each of the four mental waves could all prevent something? (by adding an effect to an existing mod... please don't add more mods here as some of the waves already have 13 mod effects to choose from!). As an example maybe the adrenaline wave would prevent root/stun/pin/etc while active (movement effects). Maybe power wave would prevent any negative power effects. Maybe Health wave would prevent indirect damge in combat?
And while yes I realize these would be crazy strong (and would need a mod to make them so) maybe the balance point for mentalism is that it gets no rez? Alternatively instead of thinking up convoluted ways to buff mentalsim.... maybe it should just have a rez?

3. Battle Chemistry would now have a sidebar ability to blow up the golem and revive a target player at half health (chemical rebirth). The limit here is that your golem cant be dead (which usualy happens real fast when there is trouble). Blowing up the golem triggers a healing mist effect and the dead player is resurrected 1 second later.

4. Give bard much shorter cooldowns on prety much everything but the rez OR make the durations much longer. As a balancing point consider unfetter is 30 second cooldown and 15 second duration. The bard version is 60 second cooldown with 8 second duration.

5. Give pig an animal only rez (half health). Considering pig is pretty close to top tier this change balances that out pretty well that it only gets a minor buff (unless you have many animal friends).

6. Change priest power regen mod to: if you weren't attacking in the last 15 seconds. Change all priest heals to 1 second minimum channel time. Implement priest limitation on the level of druid events.

Note: I would also suggest that 'regular' diamond rez get a slight nerf with all these new rez potentials being added : you can use a class rez in combat but you cannot use a diamond rez in combat.

Why give classes more rezzing power? Because it's too easy to just say screw having a dedicated healer, we all can rez via diamonds. In a game like this where dmg dealt has a direct effect on how much xp/loot you get per hour it does not 'pay' to be a healer (much less if you are not playing priest that quite frankly just offers way more than every other healing option).

[Niph]

I don't get it. Most classes have more of something than others. How is that a problem?

If you said Priests can heal so well that they solo bosses, or do something overpowered, then sure. But just listing what they can do?

You say they can "build for silly damage". Now that could be a problem, but I suspect you can play Fire Magic with something else and do even more (although I don' have any number to show).

[Golliathe]

I don't get it. Most classes have more of something than others. How is that a problem?

The problem is that there's no downside.

Priest gets the most utility powers and number of heals, very high damage via mods, a rez mechanic AND an epic attack. Priest in this case is a 10 and most of the other options are somewhere between a 6-8 by comparison. It's not good balance to have a one stop shopping class that does everything (and everything better or equal).

Imagine you could win a potion to give one of your characters +70 levels in a class, with a set of max enchanted gear. Your choices are necro and fire; Nobody is going to choose necro. It is totally not ok for one class to be super good at everything when there are much less well balanced classes that perform (in theory) the same role.

Most of the other classes don't even come close to this complete package. The damage on priest might make sense if it was limited by : only full damage vs undead/demon/construct or something like that (otherwise 1/2).

[poulter]

My personal experience is that priest is not a particularly effective healer (for my play style) due to the extended casting /channeling times. However, it is not bad either, rather it has its' own strengths and weaknesses like all the other skills.

I much prefer druid which does have 4 ('instant-cast') healing spells (2 AOE, 2 single target), several debuffs & one of the best nukes (Cosmic Strike) in the game and which is an epic attack also.
Plus, Brambleskin :)

I am not claiming druid is any better than priest, just that it has different pros and cons.
And that is 'good' as it adds variety and means I carry different load outs, gear and skills to suit the situation.

I can solo GK patrols with ice /druid, archery /druid, bard /druid and spider /druid. I haven't been able to do so with any priest build.
When in groups, druid AOE heals perform especially well.

I am maxed in all those skills and use max crafted with aug gear (56 to 60 mods) so that might be skewing my perception of how each skill performs.

To my mind: priest /mentalism is the 'best' flying build and fire /priest delivers great damage, but that for utility and healing priest is the 'poor relation' to druid.

[spider91301]

Priest is not op its all about utility and preference short and simple

[cr00cy]

I wont say a thing about Priest, since I didnt played with it too much. But Mentalism have good damge too (both burst, and sustained) and come cc (I dont kno if Priest have cc or not).

Also, if we talk about utility, how could you not mention Psychlogy, skill that have just about anything? 3 Heals, Armor and Power restoration, Taunt, De-taunt, Rage reduction, 2 longets cc in game, Poision and Fire Dot removal, and good damage. Sure, it don't have res on its own, but you can get one from First Aid, so it's not that big of a problem.

Again, I don't know enough about Priest to judge if it is, or isn't overpowered, but I don't think that other support skills are in bad position either. Maybe except BC - nerf to AOE hurt it rather badly, and since its one of hardest combat skills to obtain, I think it should be stronger.

[Mbaums]

The problem is that there's no downside.


I'm really starting to think OP is intentionally trolling.
Requiring a priest gem, requiring no necro-gem, an unlock in an annoying spot in Gazluk for 60+, and cast times that can be interrupted are downsides. Not to mention the multiple skill requirements and the first unlock is in kur.

More reason why I think he is trolling:
He says he wants to nerf priests by buffing other classes, then he slips in this doozy

6. Change priest power regen mod to: if you weren't attacking in the last 15 seconds. Change all priest heals to 1 second minimum channel time. Implement priest limitation on the level of druid events.


Even if he is serious-- the whole premise is flawed. Should all skills going to be equal? No. Is simply having an epic attack a bonus? No. Unless you believe mentalist is stronger fire or ice magic because of the epic attack. And the skill rez as a bonus is silly because the only other class with a rez, bard, has to get it on a drop. It's not an easy find.

[Loggy]

Priest are fine , this is obviously a troll...

[Coglin]

1. You have more heals available than every other class with 4 heals to choose from.


Druid has 4 heals

Regrowth
Healing Sanctuary
Pulse of Life
Energize (AoE and gives both health and power)

[Golliathe]

I'm really starting to think OP is intentionally trolling.
Requiring a priest gem, requiring no necro-gem, an unlock in an annoying spot in Gazluk for 60+, and cast times that can be interrupted are downsides. Not to mention the multiple skill requirements and the first unlock is in kur.


Even if he is serious-- the whole premise is flawed. Should all skills going to be equal? No. Is simply having an epic attack a bonus? No. Unless you believe mentalist is stronger fire or ice magic because of the epic attack. And the skill rez as a bonus is silly because the only other class with a rez, bard, has to get it on a drop. It's not an easy find.


So you are ok with the fact that priest has:
1. Tons of healing
2. The most utility buffs for a support class
3. An epic attack (that can be paired with 1-2 more skills for good damage with all that heal/utility power)
4. A res
5. Amazing support mods (including power regen in combat)


It isn't the idea that all skills should be equal. All skills should be reasonably balanced. Where's the next best thing to priest that has all these things? Show me what it is in game. You can't find it because it doesn't exist.


Mentalism has 2 heals and wave healing. Armor healing is a neat idea but armor is a joke at this point in time so let us not even mention it. It has an epic attack but it doesn't remove statuses or prevent them (like priest).

Imagine someone building a mental pig instead of a priest pig. It would be a way crappier healing build.
Imagine someone making a bard/something healer instead of a priest healier. it would be a way crappier healing build.

Note: Both of these classes are still in a 'down' slump after having been nerfed in the past. Bard definitely deserved it btw as that single mod made their damage completely insane.




Fire/Ice are damage specs. (ok you can build ice as a 'support' but not a 'healing class' so let's keep the discussion apples to apples and leave oranges aside - as they do not have heal other group member abilities).

[Celler]

Your comparing normal skills with what is going to become a choice like druid and wolf unless I'm mistaken. At this time priest has limited downside but you don't know whats coming.
Priest is the newest class and this is the first pass at it, have you played that long? Many skills have changed dramatically over time.
Priest has the potential to do all those things yes but you only have 6 slots.

I've enjoyed my time with priest though it has been limited.

If it's as great as you say enjoy it while you can.

[Yaffy]

I think Priest is an excellent support skill, but for none of the reasons you've stated aside from the rez. Basically every reason you've given to why the skill is good is wrong or too vague to comment on.

First off, Priest does not strictly have the best healing in the game. Burst healing and healing on reaction are important and Priest needing to channel several of its healing abilities makes it less reliable as a healer unless if the priest is casting preemptively. Also several of its heals are very minor and need to be spammed to be effective, and therefore are only useful if the Priest focuses heavily on healing. The priest is not a good party healer, but they are excellent at healing a specific player.

Curing broken bones, give warmth, removing poison and passive power regen are not impressive support abilities, nor are they unique. You should not be playing this class for any of these reasons. Only the auto-life is worth noting out of the examples you gave.

Having an epic attack is not necessarily an advantage, as "Epic attack" is just a title. Just having an epic attack does not make the class better because epic attacks are not always worth using. For example, if you are playing in a group with a tank and you are using Mentalism's Agonize haphazardly, the tank will want to strangle you. Flamestrike is not a bad ability, but it requires heavy investment to do good damage, and it is not worth running in groups if you plan on playing heavy support. At best Flamestrike can be useful for soloing/leveling.

Priest used to have good damage and trash clearing ability, but this is no longer the case due to the nerfs to elemental buffs last patch. Additionally the fire magic mod for more indirect fire damage cannot be used with Priest/BC. Priest's damage is average at best at this point.

Priest DOES have some very excellent things to offer, but you haven't stated any of them aside from the rez. If you have a tank, the priest is the best support class to support them by far because they are amazing at supporting a single player. However, if you don't have a specific target to focus on, the priest isn't nearly as helpful because channeling time, the inability to even aim one of your heals, and lacking AoE support makes priest weak at playing healer whack-a-mole.

In an organized and well geared party, Priest would definitely be the support class of choice but not for the reasons you've given. If you're playing in an average/random party, then Priest should not be your first choice. BC offers much better support for most players and Druid is much better at being a healer/DPS hybrid. Pig is better at improving the survivability of your whole party and Mentalism's support is useful with little investment and therefore easy to splash into a build. In fact, I would argue Priest is the worst support class in a party that isn't well geared because it heavily relies on the strength of your party as well as heavily relying on mods itself to be useful.

[ErDrick]

Have you actually tried gearing it and playing it yourself? It's not nearly as great as you're making it out to be.

With a dedicated tank it's pretty nice, otherwise it's a very frustrating spec to play. Dedicated tank means both someone that can actually hold aggro and survive a few hits. The auto-resurrect is pretty good but since you can't cast it on yourself or even see when the buff is still active that's not as good as you think it is, either.

I'd actually say Unfetter is it's best ability. ( too bad you can't cast it on yourself while you are stunned, even though the description says it removes stun .. which it does, just can't use it on yourself for that purpose).

For solo play ( aka healing myself) I'd never ever pick priest. Every other support skill is better for healing your own self. It is decently good under the right set of circumstances, but falls behind other things if those circumstances aren't present, I'd actually call that pretty balanced.

[Daimes]

Hello, I've played Bard/Ment and Bard/Priest both to 70/70 in solo and dungeons, so I feel like I should offer my input.

Is Priest in itself overpowered? Probably not, no. As mentioned, the healing is largely preemptively done due to the short channeling times the player has to experience for many of the healing powers. The support skills Priest offers are lackluster as well:

1) Poison damage is minuscule in the endgame and even for monsters that deal respectable poison damage (such as Manticores), most healing abilities can outheal the damage.

2) Fixing broken bones isn't the most important thing to do in the middle of combat since the debuff from a broken bone isn't the end of the world. Anyone with moss can set a bone during and after combat.

3) Give Warmth is only helpful if you're in two zones and usually only helpful when travelling through those zones or surveying in those zones.

4) Unfetter is nice, but is only single target. Dungeons like Gazluk Keep have enemies that do group stuns, so the benefit of having one person immune to CC effects for 15 seconds doesn't really offer much benefit when the rest of the team is incapacitated.

As well, the damage is lackluster, from my understanding. I've never really used the damage dealing skills apart from Corrupt Hate, but I might try out Fire Magic/Priest. Even the free revive Priest offers is just alright; one free rez to the first person that dies in a party is always nice, but it's usually not a gamechanger for a dungeon run. THAT role belongs to the 5-man rez Bard offers.

However, Bard/Priest is by far the most disgusting combination for pure support. With the right treasure effects, I can ensure a dungeon team never has to worry about power, health, or armor. The constant passive power and health regen Song of Resurgence offers offsets the downtime Priest casts take since casting does not cancel songs. With evasion and mitigation treasure effects, I can instantly heal the tank and offer them 70-80% evasion, handfuls of mitigation, and around 15-25% extra healing received from all sources. If somebody in the party dies, the Priest proactive rez will save them, and if the dungeon party is close to wiping, I can use the Bard rez to pretty much reverse the battle's outcome.

Priest excels in single-target heals, with the weakness being burst damage to the group. The only AoE healing Priest offers is Relentless Hope and Triage; RH offers decent instant group heals, and Triage only helps out one of the weakest allies in range after a short delay, so it's neither an instant heal or a true group heal. With Bard, a support skill dedicated to group protection, buffing, and healing, those weaknesses Priest suffers from goes away.

But I agree with you somewhat, I wouldn't be posting about how much Bard/Priest is godlike if I didn't want it to change. Perhaps changing Priest to become a fully proactive healing spec would be a good change? The rez is already a proactive ability, perhaps changing the entire skill list to be similar would offer something more balanced? Maybe a heal that offers a modest HoT after somebody is attacked, or maybe a heal that bounces between all party members after a few seconds? Perhaps an absorption shield that absorbs X amount of damage in an effort to prevent damage in the first place? I don't know if this would kill Priest or make it incredibly overpowered, but it's been a thought that's crossed my mind.

The same treatment could be applied to Mentalism, perhaps: Mentalism is the only skill that offers constant health, armor, and power regeneration to party members regardless of distance to the mentalist, so maybe the regeneration should be extended for an "overheal" effect? Mentalism definitely needs a little love no matter what; for parties that stick together, Bard is objectively better for regen over time, as the armor regen Mentalism offers is laughable and the health and power restored is worse than certain treasure effects Bard has.

tl;dr Priest is strong where it's meant to be played and lackluster where it isn't, but I feel the Bard/Priest combo is pretty damn strong and should be looked at. Other support classes should be looked at to see if they can be brought up to a respectable place (looking at you, Mentalism).

Side note, the Priest rez is quite weird and should be looked at. The effectiveness of the ability falls off dramatically if there's another Priest in your party, and you can store your rez once it's off cooldown ONLY if no one has died and used the buff they receive from the cast.

Double side note, I would assume Priest is great because it's one of the "curse"-type classes, the others being Lycan and Druid; while not exactly all curses per se, these 3 classes are not able to be reversed with any in-game means at this point. If you drink Lycan spit, you're forever cursed to be a Lycan. If you take the Druid vow, you're forever known as a Druid (I think). If you take the Priest oath, you're forever a Priest. These "curse" classes are usually meant to be a step above others because you have to dedicate to the permanence of them and have to deal with any consequences. Lycan players are forced to be in wolf form during the full moon, Druids need to respond to druid emergencies, and Priests are (supposed) to be dedicated to priest emergencies (that have not been implemented iirc).

[Golliathe]

I stand firmly behind my belief that priest+ another support class is better than 2x other support classes as you just end up with more.


t to be.

With a dedicated tank it's pretty nice, otherwise it's a very frustrating spec to play.

Who would ever play a double support role without a tank? Double support is the kind of thing you take out of storage when you see the unarmed cow forming a group for GK.

As soon as you finish with that content you put that gear set away for next time.



4) Unfetter is nice, but is only single target. Dungeons like Gazluk Keep have enemies that do group stuns, so the benefit of having one person immune to CC effects for 15 seconds doesn't really offer much benefit when the rest of the team is incapacitated.

By saying this you're really missing the point of how a skill like this gets used. It allows the puller to ignore status effects and risk of death while bringing mobs back to the group.

You're right that nobody cares about poison but fixing broken bones (for free) is a huge added plus. Priest even took over the one thing BC had going for it in a support role. oops.

Warmth might not seem like a big deal but being able to just completely ignore the cold mechanic IS a big deal.



The same treatment could be applied to Mentalism, perhaps: Mentalism is the only skill that offers constant health, armor, and power regeneration to party members regardless of distance to the mentalist, so maybe the regeneration should be extended for an "overheal" effect? Mentalism definitely needs a little love no matter what; for parties that stick together, Bard is objectively better for regen over time, as the armor regen Mentalism offers is laughable and the health and power restored is worse than certain treasure effects Bard has.

Other support classes should be looked at to see if they can be brought up to a respectable place (looking at you, Mentalism).

That's kinda the point I was trying to make with this thread. Priest imho is a power creep as it does so many things. Where's the negative?

Anyone who ever played a bard in everquest might want to play mentalism as you can have 2 waves fully active all the time. But the trouble of doing that is immense as you would have to give so much attention to that task.

As you pointed out the wave healing overall with mentalism is pretty crap. I think mentalism would be 10x better if the waves were just "on" all the time for up to 2 skills and every x seconds you paid the cost for them (it would still use a slot but you wouldnt waste time activating it - why not have it be a 15 minute buff but you can only have 2 of the waves active at once).

Battle chemistry is not very good for healing support either as the golem is a pet - so that means overall it sucks. It casts spells based on the owners needs and there is no program condition for - if someone in the party is under 80% health. It's a shame for example fire balm isn't an aoe group wide (and pet wide) buff. Wow that would be so cool for Dark Chapel! But it isnt and the golem dies so fast there it is hardly even worth using.



These "curse" classes are usually meant to be a step above others because you have to dedicate to the permanence of them and have to deal with any consequences. Lycan players are forced to be in wolf form during the full moon, Druids need to respond to druid emergencies, and Priests are (supposed) to be dedicated to priest emergencies (that have not been implemented iirc).

Where does it ever say permanent choice classes get to be better than regular classes? Please show me. Each is basically an advanced class with a big benefit and a drawback (except for priest which has no negative... yet). In one sense they are just an advanced version of an advanced class.

I think it is a mistake to say class X is a permanent decision and therefore should be better. I think it's pretty clear with the lycan nerf that this is the wrong attitude to apply to permanent decision classes.

The druid emergency is pretty much a joke. You could have a quick afk (or log out to save buffs) and it will usually be over in 15-20 minutes. For that very small price (which stops mattering when you have nothing left to grind) you get extra storage, garden potions, self resurrect tokens, flight, cold resist bird form, and swim bird form.

If this is the model for some bonuses and some negatives you have to hope the class is on equal footing in terms of balance. Why? Because the drawback also ends up being a source of bonuses for the character. Wolf form follows this same pattern.

[Daimes]

snip

I think you are overestimating Give Warmth and Remedy's treasure effect for mending bones. The location you can access the Priest trainer is directly across from Kur Mountain's inn, which conveniently sells winter protection gear that does the exact same thing Give Warmth does, without needing to learn Priest and train the skill to the point you use Give Warmth. It is an extremely niche skill that has very little impact on any rotation or environment. As I said, there are two environments that are freezing temperatures and the flat cold mitigation is virtually non-existent for actually trying to lower incoming damage with. It's why most players have a loadout slot featuring warm clothing instead of a loadout slot featuring Priest w/ Give Warmth.

Remedy's broken bone treatment takes up between 1 and 2 treasure slots on equipment, and even stacked together, will only total just over 50% chance to trigger successfully on a 15 second cooldown. If your argument is that using the ability is technically free, I'll concede that point, but as mentioned, dedicating time to Remedy is a waste of a skillslot and treasure effects. As well, Kur Mountains allows you to gather tundra lichen, which also allows you to mend broken bones for free and a 100% success rate without needing to meet the Priest criteria.

Even if you contend that Unfetter is good for pullers, it is entirely situational for that use. Most mobs only use CC for their rage attack, which players can see on the rage meter for any mob they target. Freshly spawned mobs have no rage, so Unfetter would normally be used right before the mob uses their rage attack, which would still only save one person in a group fight. The only reason it would help the puller is if another group (or your group) had died to mobs in a prior pull and the mob you were pulling had a full rage bar during the initial new pull. I would say a better use for Unfetter is preventing the healer from being stunned so they can heal the group while they're CC'd.

Battle Chemistry is rumored to be under a complete rework, and I have not had a lot of experience with the skill, so I won't comment on that.

Mentalism has always been weak compared to other support skills and will be until armor is changed to be more useful and the Armor Wave is, in turn, buffed heavily. In a world where my tanking spec can reach over 1,100 armor without buffs, 20 armor per 4 seconds means nothing to trying to tank damage. The other waves are outclassed not by Priest, but by Bard. With select treasure effects, Song of Resurgence can recover almost triple what the Health Wave can recover per second while also recovering 14 power per 4 seconds to everyone around the Bard. It's why I suggested either Priest or Mentalism get fundamentally changed from reactive healing to proactive healing. Even if one ends up doing less healing over time, the fundamental change of reacting to damage to preventing damage is viable enough to keep one of them handy.

To my knowledge, the devs have said that they intend the "curse" skills to be more powerful at the tradeoff of downsides. I agree that the downsides aren't exactly the worst, but it is also rumored that they will be worse as more content is released. A good example is that Druids might not be able to use Weather Witching when it comes out, and Lycans might not be able to become Vampires. I don't think there's any documentation on the forums of the devs saying "curse" skills will be better than other skills, and I might be incorrect. My apologies for making that claim.

[Citan]

I'm interested to hear peoples' thoughts on this -- I have my opinions but I'm not super-well versed in how the skills interact with each other, so figuring out how to balance the different support skills is tricky and something I intend to move kinda slowly on, tweaking iteratively. So I'm in a "gathering feedback" phase here.

I want to say though that Priest is not a "cursed" class and there are no realistic down sides to taking the priest oath besides some possible one-off events -- events which could happen to anyone in any class. ("Oh no, so and so is rounding up anyone with Unarmed skill over 100 for being a dangerous vigilante... you login in a prison!" Could happen to anyone any time with any skill. Maybe it happens to Priests a bit more often, but it doesn't affect your daily or even monthly play, so it's absolutely not something I'm going to balance around).

Druid IS a curse class, so to speak, but that doesn't mean it should be better at healing -- it should offer more diversity of builds to make it useful in more roles and combinations. It is also, on paper, supposed to have "the best debuff in the game", so I actually expect that in return it should be a tiny bit less potent at healing overall. Not saying that's where anything is, just telling you the eventual goal. The various goals are QUITE complicated and getting it all perfectly right is probably impossible. But we'll see what we can do.

---

Please feel free to continue the discussion, BUT keep it civil and try to avoid hyperbole. I'm interested in your opinion about what's over/under-powered, but when there's people saying contradictory things, I have to take those opinions with a grain of salt anyway. The most important thing I want to know in cases like this is: what's the most fun thing? What aspect of each skill is inherently crazy fun? Maybe it's way over-the-top right now and needs a little toning down, but it needs to STAY somewhat over-the-top in order to stay fun. Are there things that are overpowered but not especially fun? Things that could be toned down to make room for other things?

Keep in mind that I have to offer 60+ different treasure mods and 12+ abilities for every skill, so no skill can be too focused on any one thing. I'm not talking about turning a skill into a one-trick pony, I'm talking about more subtle distinctions. Each skill is allowed a handful of intentionally-somewhat-overpowered abilities and treasure mods. So part of what I'm trying to figure out is: what parts of the skill need to be a bit OP to really shine, and what parts of the skill would still be serviceable and useful even if they aren't as powerful as they are now.

I'm not expecting people to give exact breakdowns by mods or abilities. The first thing to identify is: what is the really fun thing you can do with this skill? I want to avoid cutting the fun bits out of the game!

Of course, sometimes an ability is really only fun because it's crazily overpowered. In those cases, the fun may not be saveable, if the skill has a lot of other things going on. But let me make that decision.

So let me know what bits you think are fun, so I can do my best to keep those bits if possible. (This applies to individual skills and also to skill combinations!)

[Niph]

To me, the fun factor with Priest was in extreme healing situation, i.e. overpull, or respawn, in Gazluk Keep. For this, I don't think anything was OP except the fact you can have almost constantly a heal not on refresh (if you play it with another healing-oriented class, Psychology in my case). But I would hardly call that overpowered...

I did not have the opportunity to test single-tank healing, due to the rarity of pure tank builds when I played it. I suspect it would be pretty strong then, but I can't confirm.

Comparing healing in EQ1 and PG, my raid cleric in EQ was much more powerful, in my opinion. I'm comparing two toons with endgame gear and all the tricks available in their respective games.

What could be done to improve Priest:

Add a buff on the priest that goes off when Tether Soul triggers. It's easy to miss the chat message in a middle of a fight.
Allow players to see their own bars in the group window, so they can watch their own health and status, and not die because they are focusing on everyone except themselves.
Free Triage from the requirement of being close to the target. This is true for many other abilities (ex: Animal Handling).
Ability to heal without line-of-sight would change the game. I've never seen any comment related to this particular aspect of the game from devs, I have absolutely no idea if it's set in stone or an oversight...

[poulter]

Some context on my feedback below:
They are based on my experiences within the game & yours will be different, but just as valid, so please feel free to comment and challenge.
Where I do not mention a skill (e.g. staff, shield) it is because I have not used them recently in GK.

I have levelled 15 combat skills to maximum and have max. crafted & augmented c. 30 gold gear sets for them so my playing experience revolves around 56 to 60 mods.

My intention in the game is to solo as much group content as possible (just because I can :) ) by stretching the specification and gearing of each build (e.g. by using cheese, alcohol buffs, flower appreciation, etc,). This currently means soloing patrols in Gazluk Keep as reliably as possible.

I am not wanting to create the highest damage output build, but the most reliable and robust. My starting point is to use leather gear & work to control mob rage attacks and finish a fight in under 10 seconds.

A common theme to the above is that I always revert to using a damage skill supported by druid. Druid is so versatile & covers the whole requirement of damage, healing and crowd control. It is a jack of all trades, but is fairly awful as a primary skill (compared to many others).

'Best' GK soloing combos:
Spider /Druid (poison build) - Most effective combo found to date. Poison does high damage, fear and stun incapacitate the mob, druid AOE heals are cast & forget.

Ice Magic /(Druid or Psychology) - All work well as they have healing and crowd control abilities. Damage output is lower than other combos.

'Best' Grinding combos:
Fire /Battle Chemistry - Great for AOE grinding. Molten Veins has made it even easier. Set golem to cast only mana and heal spells and go 2-shot kill 3 or 4 mobs at a time (3 or 4 shots required for 5+ packs)

Archery /(Druid or Mentalism or Bard) - Extremely versatile as can be created as single target, AOE or DOT (depending on mods used). High damage output, great crowd control and ranged rather than melee. When combined with druid, Archery is the 'only' damage skill you need bother about :). Gets boring to use after a while as mobs tend to die before they can hit you. Can 2 or 3 shot-kill most mobs (excluding GK, Pask, manticores, etc.)

Most enjoyable combos:
Cow /(Druid or Unarmed) - 'Best' animations in the game. Makes a great tank. High survivability, healing and speed. Recent AOE gas attack has made it even more effective.

Spider /Necromancy - Five companions build makes this combo very effective, especially with the recent Shambling zombie changes. For solo use only. Pet AI is still poor and it can be a nightmare to use in some zones (E.g. evil side of Rahu town) due to pathing issues.

Lazy player combos:
Bard /Druid - Nearest thing to an 'immortal' build I have found. AOE damage song (with stuns and rage reduction) supported by druid heals. All you have to do is survive the incoming damage by out-healing it and play the songs.

Fire /Druid -Mod Molten Veins and Brambleskin, go to Wolf cave in Gazluk, cast these 2 spells (no others required), wait for the mobs to 3-shot kill themselves from them.

Most disappointing combos:
Ice Magic /Fire - Looks very good in theory, but takes too many spells to be cast before damage modifiers are applied. E.g. during GK group runs, you often get 3 or 4 spell casts off each before the mob is dead. This combo is often ready for the nuke cast at the moment the mob dies.

Highest nuke combo:
Priest /(Fire or Mentalism) - Can 1-shot kill the training dummies in Serbule, but then you have to wait for a long time whilst the cool downs expire. Very good damage combo, but lacking in crowd control abilities.

'Best' travel combos:
Deer /Psychology - Land - Sustainable /base out of combat movement rate of 28.5 (Without travel jewellery)
Priest /Mentalism - Air - Much slower than by land, but you can ignore any mobs coupled with the ability to ignore Gazluk cold debuff & unlimited flying time.

Currently used combos:
Spider /Druid - for soloing GK & mob pulling in GK (when grouped)
Priest /Mentalism - for gathering
Bard /Druid - for grouping
Archery /Druid - for general grinding

[Mbaums]

Priest is partly a curse class, with it’s incompatibility with necro items. It just happens that GK drops favor priest items. If there were three level 70 dungeons we might be singing a very different tune.
The priest rez takes communication to keep up and if the tank goes down, you might not have the time to wait for the ability to be consumed, the party should probably rez him ASAP. The player has a lot less control over it compared the other resurrection abilities. The priest should get a buff to show who has his/her tether buff. I’m still in the camp that tether and the side bar single target rez are not an apple to apple comparison due to the lack of control.
The strongest part of the priest heals come from the mods that replenish the players armor. It’s such a game changer and if you actually want to help other classes heals, I’d say add more armor replenish mods. Maybe retune some ‘replenish owners armor’ into groups armor. This would actually neuter UA/psychs ability to solo strong things.
I don’t really play a priest beyond leveling it but I think the most fun ability is triage. Target free-healing options are good in my book.

To mentalism:
I have done suggestions asking for mentalism’s waves to all not share the same cool down. I have found that to be a little limiting, and this change would absolutely make mentalism more fun. It is not directly a healing boost but it is a sweet support buff. The middle ground option would be make the wave that the caster used have the regular 20 second cool down, but the other waves have a 5 second cool down. The pure-wave mentalist would be forfeiting so much damage /slots that I think it would be balanced without tweaking the mods. Another wild option would be make a basic attack reduce the wave re-use timer by 5 seconds. This would then put the min/maxer in the position of eating 5 slots to be the king of the waves (surfs up).

edited to add: the best healer combo imo is pig +priest. It just feels a lot safer than the other combinations. Before my friends started that combo, the go-to healer was mental/priest, but the pig really brings a lot more to the table. I dont play pig enough to really spell out why but it's a very nice healer.

[Speczero]

What could be done to improve Priest:

Ability to heal without line-of-sight would change the game. I've never seen any comment related to this particular aspect of the game from devs, I have absolutely no idea if it's set in stone or an oversight...



I see from your post you played EQ1 and i just want to point out that Healing without line of site was used to cheese or break encounters all the way up to certain raids in everquest, as i'm sure your aware. I would not add this to the game as it would end up giving Citan a major headache.

[Niph]

I see from your post you played EQ1 and i just want to point out that Healing without line of site was used to cheese or break encounters all the way up to certain raids in everquest, as i'm sure your aware. I would not add this to the game as it would end up giving Citan a major headache.

I'm positive it was an approved mechanic. They broke it once with a patch, and hot-patched again just to restore it. With an apology.

[Jarlaxle]

God next class you gonna ask to get nerfed is cows. Because they can give generate milk while no other classes can lol. Sometimes you have to face it. Classes are different, and will sometimes do stuff other classes can't do or aren't as good as certain classes in certain areas. Doesn't make them overpowered.

90% of your argument on why priests are overpowered is flawed. Wow so they can cure poison? Does that make me want to be a priest now? Nope. But they have an epic attack! ok........ But can cure your broken bones and make you warm in Kur. Ok man just stop now.

[Golliathe]

Druid IS a curse class, so to speak, but that doesn't mean it should be better at healing -- it should offer more diversity of builds to make it useful in more roles and combinations. It is also, on paper, supposed to have "the best debuff in the game", so I actually expect that in return it should be a tiny bit less potent at healing overall. Not saying that's where anything is, just telling you the eventual goal.

Hypothesis: Priest has tons of heal power and a 'swiss army knife' suite of abilities that will undo any and every debuff the enemy throws at you. Therefore kits without a swiss army knife of abilities should heal more raw or at the very least have something they do better.

As an exmaple.... of these healing kits I have mentioned mentalism and battlechemistry suck as primary healers. There is almost nothing BC or mental do better than priest for healing a group. I think that feels wrong from a balance standpoint- If priest had the lowest damage potential in the entire game (it totally doesnt: see priest/fire builds) I could understand priest being the 'supreme' healer. Playing healing mentalism as it stands right now effort-wise might be like trying to run up a hill pushing a 40 pound weight. The priest meanwhile is having a leisurely stroll through a meadow sipping on a glass of cold punch.

You can compare bard to BC here in that both can be built to do aoe damage and both can do some healing. Bard has the best rez in the game and BC has no rez. BC has super cool hour long buffs but bard has the most powerful short term buffs in the game (example -moment of resolve : For 5 seconds, all nearby allies take 60% less damage from Crushing/Slashing/Piercing attacks). BC has a pet that may or may not cast a useful healing spell in combat; bard can have passive heal song active while casting all his other abilities. Overall bard ends up better than BC other than the fact that BC has a very strong group heal and bard only has 1 heal while BC has two. I would say they are roughly tied in terms of short term buffs vs long term buffs but bard ends up doing the healing role better because it has the passive heal. [ I want to mention in a brief aside this is under a future tense condition when flat mitigation is roughtly on par with % mitigation. Currently a flat mitigation offers most people in a group pretty much nothing to take -20 or so damage when they get hit for 300-550 damage by level 70 monsters]

On the other hand priest (with no secondary active) has enough raw heal abilities to be pretty close to the healing of BC+Bard. On top of that add in all the unique things priest can 'undo' (like crippled movement, stuns, poison, etc) and you will realize why nobody is playing Bard/BC when they could play priest/whatever instead. That in my opinion is the pat that needs adjustment.

I imagine a game where each class makes you say, 'Ooooo I want that'! The reality is that someone wanting to play BC/Mental,BC/Bard, Mental/bard, mental/psych, psych/bc, etc., as a full support healer is in for a rude awakening because they messed up because they didn't pick priest.

Conclusion: Pick any 2 healing abilities that does not include priest and compare it to priest +any other support healing class. The priest version is always better. That doesn't seem right to me - but the complete picture has not been painted yet.



I'm not expecting people to give exact breakdowns by mods or abilities. The first thing to identify is: what is the really fun thing you can do with this skill? I want to avoid cutting the fun bits out of the game!

Of course, sometimes an ability is really only fun because it's crazily overpowered. In those cases, the fun may not be saveable, if the skill has a lot of other things going on. But let me make that decision.

So let me know what bits you think are fun, so I can do my best to keep those bits if possible. (This applies to individual skills and also to skill combinations!)

Can I tell you what isn't fun when trying to play a healer?

In Gazluk Keep player health swings from massively high to 99% dead in the blink of an eye for non tanks.


What if : you give some of these 'weaker' healing classes a new ability?

Say for example you gave mentalism a damage shield ability called mind shield. Project a mental forcefield on the target that protects against the first 200 damage (modded by +200 more). For 1 minute the target takes -15% damage from all sources. Maybe this power is a sidebar ability with a 5 minute cooldown.

What if you gave battlechemistry :

Potion of invinciblity (also sidebar ability). For one minute target takes -25% damage from all sources. Ninety seconds after that effect ends the target dies (meaning 1 minute of buffs, 1.5 minutes of waiting). Thirty seconds later your golem explodes and revives the target (10-15 minute cooldown).


Note: Obviously these abilities would not stack - and as such you could literally treat them as an alchemy potion for simplicity sake.


I don't expect you to actually use either of these but maybe it can give you some ideas.

[Golliathe]

Some context on my feedback below:
I have levelled 15 combat skills to maximum and have max. crafted & augmented c. 30 gold gear sets for them so my playing experience revolves around 56 to 60 mods.

...

Most disappointing combos:
Ice Magic /Fire - Looks very good in theory, but takes too many spells to be cast before damage modifiers are applied. E.g. during GK group runs, you often get 3 or 4 spell casts off each before the mob is dead. This combo is often ready for the nuke cast at the moment the mob dies.


While it is impressive that you have completed so many classes I have to say that building only for lvl 60 gear mods could massively skew your results.


I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to guess the highest combo for every skill combination in the game. You may want to revisit the case of ice/fire. Some time ago a friend of mine was grouping with Ranperre in GK and noted his incredible dps for that combination. My friend was using a 99% perfect BC/Fire build and noted that boss after boss Ranperre was schooling him in damage. I have no idea on the details; maybe Ranperre's build is only single target and does not have much AoE or control (which is normally something you specialize for with Ice).

I believe you mentioned that you did not build for max dps? It is very likely that building ice/fire in this way makes for a glass cannon type that is not well suited for other content without support. The point remains that ice/fire can build for rather incredible single target damage.


Classes are different, and will sometimes do stuff other classes can't do or aren't as good as certain classes in certain areas. Doesn't make them overpowered.

At least something you said (when cropped) contributes to the discussion. Priest heals and does all this other fancy stuff. Meanwhile mentalism on its own fails to heal well and has no fancy stuff. They both have epic attacks and can do some burst damage on longish cooldowns. Meanwhile priest also has a rez. Don't you think there is an issue with that?

Priest has all this stuf AND more than mentalism; that does not seem right from a balance standpoint. As I said before I could understand this if priest had practically zero damage... but priest has really good damage too.

Right now why would anyone pick mentalism over priest? It takes more effort to do less.

*on a more personal note* - Is your intent to lock this thread and derail the discussion?

[Ranperre]

I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to guess the highest combo for every skill combination in the game. You may want to revisit the case of ice/fire. Some time ago a friend of mine was grouping with Ranperre in GK and noted his incredible dps for that combination. My friend was using a 99% perfect BC/Fire build and noted that boss after boss Ranperre was schooling him in damage. I have no idea on the details; maybe Ranperre's build is only single target and does not have much AoE or control (which is normally something you specialize for with Ice).

As far as I'm concerned, an aoe root on a 20s timer plus a mez is all the control a group should really need. Seriously, a 20s recast on tundra spikes is insane.

That said, poulter isn't entirely wrong. If you're in a suboptimal GK group (as in one without a tank) you can probably only get in 3 hits before the mob is dead. Maybe four. Fire/ice depends on you getting off calefaction into flesh to fuel + ice lightning before being able to let loose with your core attacks. And this order is important, as the core bonus damage buffs from the latter two only last seven seconds. That's about a thousand damage in three attacks before being able to do real damage (2-3k on each super fireball and ice spear). So instead, in these groups, you need to adjust, preload flesh to fuel then go calefaction into your two core attacks. Not being able to get off a freeze solid (which resets ice spear) into a second ice spear. There are better combos for these kinds of suboptimal groups, such as fire/priest or archery with anything that has a good nice attack, both of which can get off more damage in 3-4 attacks than fire/ice. In optimal groups, fire/ice can just find the mob missed by the aoe pit and solo it.

Where you really shine is on bosses, namely zuke. The issue with tank + aoe groups is usually these fights can last a little too long, since all your damage is aoe. Don't get me wrong, these fights are easy with a good tank, but if your tank screws up (or clutch decides to be an asshole) it can go tits up. Fire/ice provides tons of consistent single target dps, more than anything else I've done since hammer got nerfed (haven't touched spider).

[Niph]

...
...


Just speaking for my myself, I'd appreciate if you stopped posting pages and pages of negativity, however well-documented, and instead answered Citan's question, as what's fun in playing Priest for you. Since he said that's the input he's looking for.

[Golliathe]

Truncated version of original post (which was lost):



The priest rez takes communication to keep up and if the tank goes down, you might not have the time to wait for the ability to be consumed, the party should probably rez him ASAP. The player has a lot less control over it compared the other resurrection abilities.

The strongest part of the priest heals come from the mods that replenish the players armor. It’s such a game changer and if you actually want to help other classes heals, I’d say add more armor replenish mods.

If you have ever tried playing a healer witout a rez you realize how much you suck along side one that has a rez. That's not right.

Priest definitely has armor restoration and so does bard. I would love to see mentalism get some love here on that front. Having armor on the tank definitely matters and being able to give them armor back helps a ton.



To mentalism:
I have done suggestions asking for mentalism’s waves to all not share the same cool down. I have found that to be a little limiting, and this change would absolutely make mentalism more fun. It is not directly a healing boost but it is a sweet support buff. The middle ground option would be make the wave that the caster used have the regular 20 second cool down, but the other waves have a 5 second cool down. The pure-wave mentalist would be forfeiting so much damage /slots that I think it would be balanced without tweaking the mods. Another wild option would be make a basic attack reduce the wave re-use timer by 5 seconds. This would then put the min/maxer in the position of eating 5 slots to be the king of the waves (surfs up).


I would love to see some adjustment to make mentalism less tedious in regards to wave cycling (read as take less effort and get more effort to be on par with other healers). And now a list of mutually exclusive options on how to make mentalism better:

1. Add side bar passive ability so that activating a wave actives all mentalism waves on your bar (and puts them all on cooldown).

This would give mental a "wow" factor that it is currently lacking. You could scale this ability as a level 20/40/60 unlock or whatever so you keep getting an extra wave with each unlock. This would allow for 4 waves + 2 heals. There is a natural limitation in that you cannot build for all the waves at the same time anyway (go an count all the mod options!)

2. Add an active sidebar ability so that activing a wave makes the next wave have infinite duration (pay for it once with power/animation and it runs continually as long as there is power to sustain it and refreshes the effect effect with no animation or button press required).

In short you have one wave auto casting so you can cycle one for free and be lazy. Or you could cycle two waves with one of them being automatic. This would probably be a difficult one to program but another possible solution to fix things.

3. Make mental waves not have a linked cooldown.

This would be super simple and make a lot more sense imho. The mentalism build for support would just cast each wave when it is off cooldown. And you have 2 heals to cast when you need them.

Having the mentalism waves be linked for cooldown makes sense if they were amazing - but they aren't.


Just speaking for my myself, I'd appreciate if you stopped posting pages and pages of negativity, however well-documented, and instead answered Citan's question, as what's fun in playing Priest for you. Since he said that's the input he's looking for.

I wouldn't necessarily say my posts are negative. I am trying to achieve positive changes for the game as a whole. I want to see every class be cool in its own way and that most definitely isn't the case right now; I feel Citan needs to see that. I think it is one thing to say X is beter than Y; so Nerf X. Did I do that? I have tried to offer some realistic solutions to make healing more interesting overall. Some of those suggestions might be terrible in relation to the master plan Citan has for this game.

I don't consider priest to be fun when you look at the other options. Priest is either a "complete" picture to which all the other support classes should be adjusted so they can compete with it OR priest is too damn good because it can do everything (damage, heal and has massive utility). Go play any 2 non support priests and then go play support+priest. Why would you ever play a non priest support healer once you have tried priest? In a real world comparison most people don't want to bother with jury duty because that pays less than their job. What is fun about playing a sub optimal combination?

If all of the classes in this thread are meant to be full healing support options (maybe they aren't) they should be relatively equal in terms of being able to complete the task with some variations between to keep them interesting. Say you assign each class a # value for healing/prevention, damage and utility. It is not ok in my opinion to have one class have a total score of 18 when one of the other classes has a total score of 11. Maybe you disagree?

I really don't want to see priest get nerfed into something not fun but I think it might do too much right now. I would love to see playing each of the heal oriented classes be fun and rewarding because each one has something cool and unique. The bottom line is that some of the heal classes feel like they are 3/5ths of a complete picture when compared to priest. If everything but priest gets positively massively adjusted then priest as it stands right now would totally make sense.

[Jarlaxle]

Truncated version of original post (which was lost):



If you have ever tried playing a healer witout a rez you realize how much you suck along side one that has a rez. That's not right.

Priest definitely has armor restoration and so does bard. I would love to see mentalism get some love here on that front. Having armor on the tank definitely matters and being able to give them armor back helps a ton.



I would love to see some adjustment to make mentalism less tedious in regards to wave cycling (read as take less effort and get more effort to be on par with other healers). And now a list of mutually exclusive options on how to make mentalism better:

1. Add side bar passive ability so that activating a wave actives all mentalism waves on your bar (and puts them all on cooldown).

This would give mental a "wow" factor that it is currently lacking. You could scale this ability as a level 20/40/60 unlock or whatever so you keep getting an extra wave with each unlock. This would allow for 4 waves + 2 heals. There is a natural limitation in that you cannot build for all the waves at the same time anyway (go an count all the mod options!)

2. Add an active sidebar ability so that activing a wave makes the next wave have infinite duration (pay for it once with power/animation and it runs continually as long as there is power to sustain it and refreshes the effect effect with no animation or button press required).

In short you have one wave auto casting so you can cycle one for free and be lazy. Or you could cycle two waves with one of them being automatic. This would probably be a difficult one to program but another possible solution to fix things.

3. Make mental waves not have a linked cooldown.

This would be super simple and make a lot more sense imho. The mentalism build for support would just cast each wave when it is off cooldown. And you have 2 heals to cast when you need them.

Having the mentalism waves be linked for cooldown makes sense if they were amazing - but they aren't.



I wouldn't necessarily say my posts are negative. I am trying to achieve positive changes for the game as a whole. I want to see every class be cool in its own way and that most definitely isn't the case right now; I feel Citan needs to see that. I think it is one thing to say X is beter than Y; so Nerf X. Did I do that? I have tried to offer some realistic solutions to make healing more interesting overall. Some of those suggestions might be terrible in relation to the master plan Citan has for this game.

I don't consider priest to be fun when you look at the other options. Priest is either a "complete" picture to which all the other support classes should be adjusted so they can compete with it OR priest is too damn good because it can do everything (damage, heal and has massive utility). Go play any 2 non support priests and then go play support+priest. Why would you ever play a non priest support healer once you have tried priest? In a real world comparison most people don't want to bother with jury duty because that pays less than their job. What is fun about playing a sub optimal combination?

If all of the classes in this thread are meant to be full healing support options (maybe they aren't) they should be relatively equal in terms of being able to complete the task with some variations between to keep them interesting. Say you assign each class a # value for healing/prevention, damage and utility. It is not ok in my opinion to have one class have a total score of 18 when one of the other classes has a total score of 11. Maybe you disagree?

I really don't want to see priest get nerfed into something not fun but I think it might do too much right now. I would love to see playing each of the heal oriented classes be fun and rewarding because each one has something cool and unique. The bottom line is that some of the heal classes feel like they are 3/5ths of a complete picture when compared to priest. If everything but priest gets positively massively adjusted then priest as it stands right now would totally make sense.

I believe your biggest flaw is comparing classes like bard, mentalism and battle chemist to that of priest because you think they are equally healers. Just because they have a few healing abilities does not mean they are healers. When you think bard or battle chemist do you really imagine they should have healing power equal to a priest class? They do other things Priest can't do. Buffs for one. I'm sure players of those classes without the bias you have can chime in more.

Compare it to druid if you want to compare healers. I would rather have a druid healer in my group any day than a priest considering equal player skill. But they are close enough in power doing different things that neither of them needs to be nerfed. In pure group aoe healing power druid will run laps around priest.

[Jarlaxle]

At least something you said (when cropped) contributes to the discussion. Priest heals and does all this other fancy stuff. Meanwhile mentalism on its own fails to heal well and has no fancy stuff. They both have epic attacks and can do some burst damage on longish cooldowns. Meanwhile priest also has a rez. Don't you think there is an issue with that?

Priest has all this stuf AND more than mentalism; that does not seem right from a balance standpoint. As I said before I could understand this if priest had practically zero damage... but priest has really good damage too.

Right now why would anyone pick mentalism over priest? It takes more effort to do less.

*on a more personal note* - Is your intent to lock this thread and derail the discussion?

No, I'm not. And on a personal note, are you trolling? or have you actually played priest to 70? It seems the grass is always greener on the other side for you.

[Mbaums]

I think it's a mistake to think its the priest primary job to rez. With rez being tied to first aid, its everyones job. And I still think priest is not OP because it can't do everything at once.

The strengths of BC is also in the buffs (and wide damage types), which really have been ignored in this thread. Skin make a huge difference. Before priest, the common healer setup was psych/mentalism. But the content was actually tuned easier. Group size shrank from like... 9? and elite mobs did not lock. People would zerg druid events, manticores and labs.

Priest being added was to be greeted with tweaking content that requires a tank. The idea was, there were to few tanks to make things hard, and once priest happens a switch will be flipped and stuff will be harder. I don't feel like finding the post but it was said by Citan, and i don't know if that 'switch' was crits or not. Around the time priest dropped AoE damage no longer scaled and probably 2 months after crits were added.

I do understand your argument that priest makes the other options seem lame. The skillset that I think should get attention to become more support-y should be bard/horn. I think it's the easiest to balance because it requires hands, and honestly I want the bard class to move away from the 'get hit do more' play style it currently has, which is a bit solo friendly for a group class.

[Golliathe]

I think it's a mistake to think its the priest primary job to rez. With rez being tied to first aid, its everyones job. And I still think priest is not OP because it can't do everything at once.
If I didn't make the argument clear: you won't make a priest that is a great healer with great utility and do lots of damage at the same time. But you can pretty easily do 2/3 at the same time if you want.

All things being equal imagine two classes. One of them can fly and the other can't? Which one is better?



I do understand your argument that priest makes the other options seem lame.

Priest has so many options while most of the other healing classes don't. Having a no component battle rez is better than not. Having the ability to remove all statuses is better than being able to remove or prevent few (or none - such as the case of mentalism).



The strengths of BC is also in the buffs (and wide damage types), which really have been ignored in this thread. Skin make a huge difference. Before priest, the common healer setup was psych/mentalism. But the content was actually tuned easier. Group size shrank from like... 9? and elite mobs did not lock. People would zerg druid events, manticores and labs.

That is an excellent point with BC that you have some cool and unusual damage types but I will remind you bard is very much in the same boat (nature/poison/ice vs sonic/trauma). Funny enough both classes can do a meh support healer and build for aoe damage (the meh part being compared to a full dedicated healer).

Golem healing sucks compared to bard song healing (both of which are on the automatic side of things). Skin is super great vs low tier content to cast on noobs as you can make a lvl 10-30 character immune to most mobs in certain zones; you can also use skin as a tanky character to be damage immune to mobs under level 55 or so. Likewise skin is super great if you are already crazy tanky as an unarmed cow or medium tanky with shield and something else vs equal level content.

Skin is however crap if you are not already stacking flat mitigation out the ying yang. A well geared dps character in GK is probably sitting on close to 600 armor (shield allowance depending). The correct buff for dps types is extra heart as you get ~90 health, a ridiculously small heal, and extra power (theres even a mod for more extra power).




Priest being added was to be greeted with tweaking content that requires a tank. The idea was, there were to few tanks to make things hard, and once priest happens a switch will be flipped and stuff will be harder. I don't feel like finding the post but it was said by Citan, and i don't know if that 'switch' was crits or not. Around the time priest dropped AoE damage no longer scaled and probably 2 months after crits were added.
Crits have been talked to death but they make the game less fun instead of more. I feel like he dropped the ball on this one as rage attacks were already kinda like a critical and could have been built as a critical (not that they necessarily one shot you because /sigh) mechanic that the players could actively prevent with good skill management.




The skillset that I think should get attention to become more support-y should be bard/horn. I think it's the easiest to balance because it requires hands, and honestly I want the bard class to move away from the 'get hit do more' play style it currently has, which is a bit solo friendly for a group class.

BC also requires hands to cast heals/attacks (it's funny how they are so very closely related). Bard may be suffering from the 'recently nerfed' syndrome. But oh man was it broken before the aoe nerf!

I would agree that bard support as a whole is lacking (if priest is the measuring stick of 100% working).

Suggestion:

What if we changed the hand mod for bard (again)? What if while playing your healing song you get +healing for people in your group being attacked but only got +damage when you get attacked? If necessary you could shift the damage song mod on hands over to the chest so they do the same thing (thematically).

This would massively compensate for bard having very limited directed healing.

[Daguin]

I just started playing dedicated FM/Priest build and have not found it to be nearly as useful as Battle Chemistry. I hope this ranting thread doesn't go muck it up before I even have a chance to mod it out for a full test.


Skin is however crap if you are not already stacking flat mitigation out the ying yang. A well geared dps character in GK is probably sitting on close to 600 armor (shield allowance depending). The correct buff for dps types is extra heart as you get ~90 health, a ridiculously small heal, and extra power (theres even a mod for more extra power).

This seems completely wrong. Anyone that spends lots of time in GK (or with any top end mobs) knows that full modded skins stack to provide TONS of mitigation and I have never met a single player that requests Extra Heart. It isn't useful for elemental attacks though, so my only suggestion would be to incorporate a new mod that adds fire/poison/etc. mitigation to the existing buff, or an entirely new buff for elemental resistance be added to BC skill set.

[Mbaums]

Suggestion...

I think its the number of heals more than the size. The horn thematically looks like it was only imagined for single target damage. Probably a 3rd of the bard mods are really about restoring the bards HP/armor, which would be nice if a bard tank could hold aggro. The bard changes were necessary but I think it overshadowed the horn, and I really don't think enough feedback was given to that. A bard build that requires 2 slots should have something extra besides whatever they have.
If horn support becomes a thing, it should somehow be different than a simple heal.

[Golliathe]

This seems completely wrong. Anyone that spends lots of time in GK (or with any top end mobs) knows that full modded skins stack to provide TONS of mitigation and I have never met a single player that requests Extra Heart. It isn't useful for elemental attacks though, so my only suggestion would be to incorporate a new mod that adds fire/poison/etc. mitigation to the existing buff, or an entirely new buff for elemental resistance be added to BC skill set.


I am guessing you have not bothered to take the time to read a few of Yaffy's posts. This post is from his recent thread on flat vs % mitigation:


It's not uncommon for monsters to be hitting you for 300+ damage with rage attacks, or close to 1000 damage with crit rage attacks.

The only thing flat mitigation is better at is reducing DoT damage since the tick damage is low in comparison.

- - -


Skin is fantastic vs low level content but go an make a video as a dps character and watch your footage. See how much less damage you take with skin on vs not. The advantage to a fully modded extra heart can be far more valuable to a dps character for obvious reasons:

1. More power available to deal more damage
2. More health (stack an officer ring, + health on neck/ring from SI and you're talking about a ton of health)
3. What terrible nasty dots are the dps characters needing to use skin for in GK?


Be aware this conversation is talking about maximum flat damage reduction with shield mods as well as unarmed mods (which you wont have). It is very common to see a dps character take a 600+ damage hit if they are in the middle of an AoE frenzy.

What's that skin going to do for you?

Let's say you have 600 armor so that's 24 mitigation?

Skin will always give you 21 mitigation.

Full buffs on skin vs piercing or slashing will give you an extra 32 mitigation.

24+21+32=77 vs pierce/slash
24+21= 45 vs not p/s

Meanwhile fully buffed extra heart gives you 98 health.

But remember we are talking about fully geared characters so they will be wearing nimble shirt right? So the first attack is a miss. With cheese and bis hp mods you can hit ~800 hp health as a dps character if you want (without any sacrifices).

And while the pierce/slash sounds great remember that just the 4 main orc types do fire and poison. You get almost nothing vs most of the biggest nastiest hits (trooper/infiltrator/mages).

But really why are you getting hit so often that you would even think about needing skin buffs anyway? The tank should be taunting everything. Now maybe you are talking about a small group or not well geared group and the dps knows he will take lots of primary hits. Sure use skin instead; otherwise you should get more out of extra heart.

[Yaffy]

I am guessing you have not bothered to take the time to read a few of Yaffy's posts. This post is from his recent thread on flat vs % mitigation:


It's not uncommon for monsters to be hitting you for 300+ damage with rage attacks, or close to 1000 damage with crit rage attacks.

The only thing flat mitigation is better at is reducing DoT damage since the tick damage is low in comparison.

Yes, and that's why the thick skin buff is useful, because it reduces indirect damage. It's also why Priest being able to remove poison isn't very helpful, because thick skin reduces all DoT damage including poison, usually to near zero or zero so you don't need to cure it in the first place. Out of all instances of flat damage mitigation, thick skin is probably one of the few rare cases where I don't think it needs to be buffed.

While I do think the power regeneration from extra heart could be useful in some situations, most groups have too much downtime between pulls to take advantage of the minimal power regeneration heart gives, and most DPS builds should not be power starved assuming the players have good food and are playing properly. If you have a very fast group which has little downtime between pulls, then it could potentially be more helpful than skin. That's why I disagree with your statement of "More power available to deal more damage", end game DPS builds are not limited by power because fights are too short, the players themselves need to extend combat by constantly pulling more mobs in order for power regeneration to be valuable.

Also, you argue that the DPS should not be getting hit by enemies if you have a tank, but you forgot to mention Tacticians, which are the one enemy type that uses AoE attacks that also happen to be physical. Also this AoE from tacticians is one of the weakest attacks in GK potentially due to the fact that enemies suffer a penalty to damage if they hit more than 3 targets, which means the flat reduction from thick skin can be noticeable (Although it still might as well not exist if they crit). Thick skin not only reduces the damage dealt to the group from tactician AoEs, but it also gives a health regeneration effect which can help the BC user keep the party healthy. It's not a big effect, but the chance the extra mitigation/healing will come into play is larger than the power regeneration from extra heart.

Additionally, I would also like to state that while you are correct that the effect of thick skin on most attacks is very small, extra heart's power regeneration effect is also very small. It's about 3 power per second, assuming the 20 second regen effect is used perfectly efficiently. With end game skills, that might mean an extra attack's worth of power every 10-30 seconds, depending on what you're using. Thick Skin's regen effect heals 98 health every 20 seconds, which is a bit more noticeable since it's essentially a minor heal on the whole party every 20 seconds. This makes Thick Skin essentially double as another healing skill which isn't that big, but requires no investment or GCD usage in combat which is useful for someone trying to splash healing with damage or support.

I do believe extra heart is potentially better than thick skin assuming the group's run is going incredibly well and the group is also very powerful, but by then I would argue you should be replacing the Battle Chemist with a different skill if you're really trying to be a perfectionist. One of battle chemistry's best traits is that it is incredibly powerful for under-prepared or disorganized groups, and thick skin is part of that.

[Jarlaxle]

I am guessing you have not bothered to take the time to read a few of Yaffy's posts. This post is from his recent thread on flat vs % mitigation:


It's not uncommon for monsters to be hitting you for 300+ damage with rage attacks, or close to 1000 damage with crit rage attacks.

The only thing flat mitigation is better at is reducing DoT damage since the tick damage is low in comparison.

- - -


Skin is fantastic vs low level content but go an make a video as a dps character and watch your footage. See how much less damage you take with skin on vs not. The advantage to a fully modded extra heart can be far more valuable to a dps character for obvious reasons:

1. More power available to deal more damage
2. More health (stack an officer ring, + health on neck/ring from SI and you're talking about a ton of health)
3. What terrible nasty dots are the dps characters needing to use skin for in GK?


Be aware this conversation is talking about maximum flat damage reduction with shield mods as well as unarmed mods (which you wont have). It is very common to see a dps character take a 600+ damage hit if they are in the middle of an AoE frenzy.

What's that skin going to do for you?

Let's say you have 600 armor so that's 24 mitigation?

Skin will always give you 21 mitigation.

Full buffs on skin vs piercing or slashing will give you an extra 32 mitigation.

24+21+32=77 vs pierce/slash
24+21= 45 vs not p/s

Meanwhile fully buffed extra heart gives you 98 health.

But remember we are talking about fully geared characters so they will be wearing nimble shirt right? So the first attack is a miss. With cheese and bis hp mods you can hit ~800 hp health as a dps character if you want (without any sacrifices).

And while the pierce/slash sounds great remember that just the 4 main orc types do fire and poison. You get almost nothing vs most of the biggest nastiest hits (trooper/infiltrator/mages).

But really why are you getting hit so often that you would even think about needing skin buffs anyway? The tank should be taunting everything. Now maybe you are talking about a small group or not well geared group and the dps knows he will take lots of primary hits. Sure use skin instead; otherwise you should get more out of extra heart.

Not gonna bother responding to every point there since most of it is illogical. Like if flat mitigation doesn't matter, then just wear full cloth from head to toe since armor obviously doesn't matter (it provides flat mit) so now at least you get more combat refresh right? Except nobody does that. You know why? Because not every hit is going to be a 1.5k dmg 1 shot crit. The average hit is for much less where flat mitigation is very useful. At least way more useful than heart. Because that extra 32 mitigation from buff that you believe is worthless is equivalent to an additional 800 armor (assuming 1 point of mitigation per 25 armor). So unless really think armor doesn't matter at all and full cloth set is the way to go, then your argument that skin sucks just does not make any sense at all.

And there is absolutely no one that does GK that prefers heart over skin, besides you. Not saying going against the consensus is always wrong, but in this case and many cases you are. That or you're making a terrible argument for why skin sucks (other than saying Yaffy said so in thread x post y)

[ErDrick]

Like if flat mitigation doesn't matter, then just wear full cloth from head to toe since armor obviously doesn't matter (it provides flat mit) so now at least you get more combat refresh right? Except nobody does that. You know why? Because not every hit is going to be a 1.5k dmg 1 shot crit. The average hit is for much less where flat mitigation is very useful. At least way more useful than heart. Because that extra 32 mitigation from buff that you believe is worthless is equivalent to an additional 800 armor (assuming 1 point of mitigation per 25 armor). So unless really think armor doesn't matter at all and full cloth set is the way to go, then your argument that skin sucks just does not make any sense at all.



You are both right and wrong.

You are right in your reasoning that thick skin is still decent because it provides as much mitigation as several hundred armor, But wrong in assuming that people don't wear full cloth sets. The reason for this is you don't lose thick skin mitigation in the first 5 seconds of a fight as you take damage. Armor is basically just extra health that's harder to heal, The mitigation you get from armor might as well not even exist, because it's gone in 3-5 seconds( 7 seconds or so if you have a few heals for it, and can last longer in groups when other people are spam healing your armor.. but that is rare). Of course it goes a lot farther if you aren't in max level content( but still wearing max armor value armor), that's where armor actually does matter. There are a few extremely focused builds that can restore their own armor effectively but, in all other cases it's just extra health, and even in that case really it's still just extra health, the mitigation is completely unreliable because it constantly fluctuates way too fast for you to really count on it for anything.

TLDR metal vs cloth you are really just losing 150-200ish health.

Back on topic though:

Priest has the same amount of instant heals as every other healing class. It has one instant single target and one instant AE that's minimally effective but good for topping people off when you know they will be taking more damage soon ( like vs GK bosses that spam ae's). This is inline with all other healing skillsets. The other heals are channeled which sort of makes them suck ( but the auto target on triage is nice, providing they are still alive in 2 seconds). When you see a player at half health and no armor ( which can happen from them taking a single hit) and then target them and then start channeling a heal, odds are fairly 50/50 that they are going to die anyways before it lands, plus if anything so much as touches you it interrupts your channel (including ae attacks).

Cure poison I only use when I'm healing someone through a manticore, and really only for the luls, it isn't necessary. I have sat there and healed someone while they killed a manticore ( by tanking it) both with and without using the cure poison ability and there is almost no difference, but it does give me something extra to do.

Unfetter is nice (bard can do it too though with moment of resolve mods) but only because they gave trash mobs ridiculous amounts of crowd control in the form of chain stunning and snaring, would be better if it wasn't needed for every trash pull. If anyone ever wondered why I stopped playing sword after several years of using it, that is why, I got sick of the constant knockback/ knockdown / snared / rooted / stunned ( sometimes chain stunned for 15+ seconds) / and that moving back into position after some of these eats your power because... reasons? There are many parts of certain dungeons where this stuff just happens constantly. Some wrenches in the machinery are great but I feel like they went totally overboard with it around the time DC came out and then with everything that came afterwards ( although wolfpack chain stun was out of control before that, still is). So unfetter ( and moment of resolve) is sort of artificially good atm, because there is so much cc being flung around by mobs, it doesn't help that they have skills that don't follow the normal rules ours follow ( temporary immunity after being hit by one) or that they come in ludicrous sized packs, where each one stuns you for 1 second perfectly as soon as the previous one wears off as only a computer can do.

Tether soul is neat and almost awesome, it's the kind of thing that really needs to add an icon to the party window or something ( your own buff window at the least) showing it's active and if the person that just died is triggering it or not. 1 free resurrect per 10 mins though ( or was it 15minutes? I can't be bothered to log in just to note that atm) really is just saving you 2 diamonds... I wouldn't mind if casting it actually cost you a diamond to balance it out, as long as the UI issues with it were taken care of as well. (I say only one diamond because sometimes it expires without actually even resurrecting anyone). Even better allow tether soul to just effect the caster as well and solve all that in one swoop.

Citan you asked what's fun about priest, the answer is nothing really, it's just a different way to heal ( which is fine in it's own right). But I would definitely like to see a buff for the caster that lets you know the status of your tether soul. I'd also like it if getting hit didn't interrupt a channel so you can take your lumps and channel anyways knowing it's going to fire at least, there is really no reason for it not to function this way. Alternately, more range would be acceptable.. being both forced and prohibited to stand in AE's is an issue. But personally, I really wanted to be a "paladin" ( melee + priest) even though I have reasons to not want to play melee anymore, but with heals being interrupted by a single hit that's pretty impossible.

[Golliathe]

While I do think the power regeneration from extra heart could be useful in some situations, most groups have too much downtime between pulls to take advantage of the minimal power regeneration heart gives, and most DPS builds should not be power starved assuming the players have good food and are playing properly. If you have a very fast group which has little downtime between pulls, then it could potentially be more helpful than skin. That's why I disagree with your statement of "More power available to deal more damage", end game DPS builds are not limited by power because fights are too short, the players themselves need to extend combat by constantly pulling more mobs in order for power regeneration to be valuable.

It's an issue of your mileage may vary. Some people try to finish GK really fast with 6-8 mob pulls. Killing one or two mobs at a time is very different.



Also, you argue that the DPS should not be getting hit by enemies if you have a tank, but you forgot to mention Tacticians
Once you get THE boots a single tactician does not matter. When the tank aoe taunts the mobs and they are feared/rooted the tacticians do not use their power after he runs away. This is stupid and needs to get fixed.... but we already told Citan about that problem in another thread.



I do believe extra heart is potentially better than thick skin assuming the group's run is going incredibly well and the group is also very powerful, but by then I would argue you should be replacing the Battle Chemist with a different skill if you're really trying to be a perfectionist. One of battle chemistry's best traits is that it is incredibly powerful for under-prepared or disorganized groups, and thick skin is part of that.

I think if you were really building a perfect group with 100% designer skills and what not you want a BC in there. Skin buffs, aoe heal... and even a golem who can cast a big heal when your health goes below a certain value (like when you get red texted from the 2nd tactician). The other thing to consider is that skin is +8 regen in combat... which you can stack with +9 more on chest, +5 more on legs, +8 on offhand/mainhand. So you can take a build that runs too much power and make the power drain not really be an issue.


You are both right and wrong.

The mitigation you get from armor might as well not even exist, because it's gone in 3-5 seconds

Bingo! And that's the issue with skin... your health can yo-yo up and down very easily with various heals but group armor restoration is a completely different thing. Having more health cap imho can be more valuable than mitigation when you don't have much mitigation in the first place - depending.

Also I didn't build with extra heart in mind but I understand when someone asks for it.

[Golliathe]

Let me try a more direct question. Is there anybody feels that mentalism healing is on par with priest? (we can rotate through all the options one by one).

Consider 3 categories:

1. Number of heals and power of heals
2. Utility abilities (including rez)
3. prevention/removal abilities

[Yaffy]

It's an issue of your mileage may vary. Some people try to finish GK really fast with 6-8 mob pulls.




Once you get THE boots a single tactician does not matter.


Don't argue against one specific situation by bringing up another situation, especially when I have addressed both. You'll only run a discussion around in circles if you jump back and forth and ignore what doesn't fit your narrative.

[Jarlaxle]

It's an issue of your mileage may vary. Some people try to finish GK really fast with 6-8 mob pulls. Killing one or two mobs at a time is very different.


Once you get THE boots a single tactician does not matter. When the tank aoe taunts the mobs and they are feared/rooted the tacticians do not use their power after he runs away. This is stupid and needs to get fixed.... but we already told Citan about that problem in another thread.



I think if you were really building a perfect group with 100% designer skills and what not you want a BC in there. Skin buffs, aoe heal... and even a golem who can cast a big heal when your health goes below a certain value (like when you get red texted from the 2nd tactician). The other thing to consider is that skin is +8 regen in combat... which you can stack with +9 more on chest, +5 more on legs, +8 on offhand/mainhand. So you can take a build that runs too much power and make the power drain not really be an issue.



Bingo! And that's the issue with skin... your health can yo-yo up and down very easily with various heals but group armor restoration is a completely different thing. Having more health cap imho can be more valuable than mitigation when you don't have much mitigation in the first place - depending.

Also I didn't build with extra heart in mind but I understand when someone asks for it.

See? This is the problem with your arguments. Cutting out everything and choosing only the part that you think is supporting your argument even when it really doesn't. First off, he said "You are right in your reasoning that thick skin is still decent because it provides as much mitigation as several hundred armor." So how is that bingo when your argument was that skin is worthless? And second of all, armor disappearing in a single hit or two means skin is even that much BETTER than armor since skin won't disappear after getting hit. So you're saying the issue with skin is because armor can disappear really fast? That makes skin even more important right? What you quoted as "bingo" does not support what you have been saying at all. Anyway, I give up trying to make sense of this. Rant away. Peace out.

[Niph]

Let me try a more direct question. Is there anybody feels that mentalism healing is on par with priest?

If I want to heal, I'll choose Priest over any other skill (Note: I'm not druid). Then I'll pair it with another skill that can heal. I use Pyschology, but Mentalism would work, I just prefer the former. Someone mentioned Pig, it would probably be the best second skill (again, I can't comment on Druid).

I don't think that makes Priest particularly OP. One of the skills has to be the best choice for the majority.

[poulter]

For strong healing I use Mentalism /Druid as it provides great AOE Healing (+ armor and power regeneration) with 3 large instant heals.
I consider Pig to be 'better' for group work, but as we can't have Pig /Druid, I use Mentalism.

With Mentalism /Druid, I am also consistently third highest damage on GK group runs.

Regarding grouping skills, I have found that they all add value and have their place and a group with priest, Bard, druid, BC and Mentalism skills in it is exceedingly strong.

As mentioned earlier, priest is the only healing skill that I don't use for healing - mainly due to the extended casting times and the near certainty in GK that you are going to be interrupted whilst casting.

[spider91301]

For strong healing I use Mentalism /Druid as it provides great AOE Healing (+ armor and power regeneration) with 3 large instant heals.
I consider Pig to be 'better' for group work, but as we can't have Pig /Druid, I use Mentalism.

With Mentalism /Druid, I am also consistently third highest damage on GK group runs.

Regarding grouping skills, I have found that they all add value and have their place and a group with priest, Bard, druid, BC and Mentalism skills in it is exceedingly strong.

As mentioned earlier, priest is the only healing skill that I don't use for healing - mainly due to the extended casting times and the near certainty in GK that you are going to be interrupted whilst casting.

To be honest I prefer druids over priests when it comes to healing for versatility becuase when you go down deep into gazkeep sometime those eyeball things can rek your entire day up and cut the raid short I would prefer aoe heals to anyone nearby will get healed no targeting required

[Golliathe]

If I want to heal, I'll choose Priest over any other skill (Note: I'm not druid).
That is what almost everyone does; thank you for making that point. When one skill is better than every other skill at doing something ... it just might be better?

Necro:Fire::Mental:Priest

Most people agree rather universally Necro sucks. This largely has to do with pets universally being in a bad spot and there is a very recent discussion about it in the necro feedback thread.

Fire is godly when compared to necro. I think fire got overtuned with the molten veins damage (probably needs base damage reduced by 60% and mods just give a flat bonus after effect to be about half of what it is now) but is otherwise a good example of a well tuned class. It has high damage but most mobs are resistant to that damage. Additionally the skill makes lots of rage and that can make some fights way more difficult. Fire can't heal itself and it even has a completely worthless pet! Ok that's not 100% true the firewall is fantastic for warming you up in cold areas. Fire even has an out of combat sprint and necro doesn't.

I am suggesting priest is even more overtuned relative to mentalism (and the other healing options) when compared to fire and necro.

If I were dead wrong you would see lots of non-priest healers with another secondary. The fact remains that most people leveling to be a main healer pick priest. Why? Because it is hands down the best choice.



Then I'll pair it with another skill that can heal. I use Pyschology, but Mentalism would work, I just prefer the former. Someone mentioned Pig, it would probably be the best second skill (again, I can't comment on Druid).

I don't think that makes Priest particularly OP. One of the skills has to be the best choice for the majority.

There is a big difference if you compare two skills and say one is 8/10/8 vs 6/6/9 (healing,utility,damage) comparatively to saying this class over here is a 9 for dps and this class over here is a solid 8.5 for damage. But in this case comparing priest to mental it is more of the first comparison than the second.

My argument is that for healing group purposes priest makes mentalism look like a poor choice by comparison. Here are some undeniable facts comparing the two classes:

1. Both skills have an epic attack and can be setup to be a good damage dealer.
2. One skill has a rez the other doesn't.
3. One skill has the ability to remove any nasty debuff you encounter and the other has nothing.
4. One skill has 4 heals while the other has 2 (and some other skills that lock each other out - which can sometimes heal).


5. The only thing mentalism does better are group buffs like adrenaline wave and power wave. But using those waves messes up your healing potential so be careful using them! (note: priest does not have this inferior design problem)

Didn't someone just finish explaining that power isn't an issue most of the time? Let us remember that priest can have built in power regen when not getting hit (aka self power wave).

Considering that % boosts also just got nerfed hardcore I think we can see why Adrenaline wave is an inferior design.Adrenaline wave is completely flawed because unless you literally designed the perfect team in mind you would never have the right mod on your adrenaline wave (unless you were playing mental/hammer : Psi Adrenaline Wave increases all targets' Electricity damage +8% for 20 seconds, Psi Adrenaline Wave increases all targets' Crushing damage +8% for 20 seconds. Note people ALSO forget to think about those mods when they look at the old hammer setup - it was very easy to stack way too much % damage increase).


In another thread I compared two city of heroes power sets that did the same thing and one was just better. I will repeat the idea that it is poor design to have one skill be a 9 (darkness) when there is another option available that is no better than a 4 (poison). It is 100% not ok to have two game career skills to be so inherently imbalanced. You end up with everyone picking option A over option B.


Where is the inherent downside of priest? It is a relatively new power that currently really doesn't seem have an Achilles heel relative to the other options.

Bard has position issues and limited direct healing.
Bc has position issues, no rez/epic attack, and limited direct healing (depending on golems mood)
Mentalism effectively does everything you *want* to do as a healer worse than priest.

Druid and Pig get paried with priest very often - much more so than the above three options. Why is that? What is that saying again about the path of least resistance?

[Yaffy]

I don't want to be rude, but you keep saying "Priest is overtuned" over and over again, even though many people have refuted your points many times. It doesn't matter how many times you say it, it doesn't suddenly become true just because you repeat yourself. The only thing you might do is mislead some people who don't know better.

The fact that you keep stating the exact same reasons why you believe priest is the best even though people have stated why your reasoning isn't a valid reason just shows you don't want to listen to other people. It's fine to have your own opinion, but it is hard to believe you want a real discussion when you are clearly ignore factual statements about why you're incorrect.

For example, you are still stating that epic attacks are inherently useful and powerful when it has been brought up several times that epic attacks are not always useful. I even used Agonize as an example of a poor epic attack in group play and you brought it up again stating that it's good just because it's labeled as an epic attack. Not only that, but now you have gone from saying Priest's ability to cure poison and broken bones is too good to straight up "Priest has the ability to remove any nasty debuff you encounter" when people have told you how pointless those two abilities are. This clearly tells everyone who has been trying to argue with you that you aren't listening and are just doubling down.

I don't even completely disagree with you, I think priest is a great skill and very useful. But I disagree with basically everything you've commented about the skill. The majority of your argument comes from already believing you are correct. For example you give arbitrary ratings to different skills, and then argue based on the assumption that your ratings are correct even though you have not given any sort of metric on what these ratings are based off of. For example:


Priest gets the most utility powers and number of heals, very high damage via mods, a rez mechanic AND an epic attack. Priest in this case is a 10 and most of the other options are somewhere between a 6-8 by comparison.

You claim this rating is because of things like more healing and damage, but you clearly have not measured it. If you could provide some sort of metric to which you based these ratings on (Ex. Priest can do 1000 DPS while other support skills do 600-800 DPS) then your rating system would make more sense. Currently you are just assuming you are correct that priest is better and therefore it deserves a higher rating, and then using this arbitrary rating to argue that priest is too strong. It is fine to have your own personal ranking for the skill's strength based on what you believe, but you are using yourself as a reference for your own argument.

Additionally, you claim some very strict facts which I do not believe you actually know are facts. For example:

The fact remains that most people leveling to be a main healer pick priest. Why? Because it is hands down the best choice.
How can you state this as a fact? Do you know this for sure? Unless if you are polling players I don't believe you would know this. Not only are you claiming priest is the most popular skill for healers, but you are also claiming you know exactly why they picked it. If you are just "Guessing" based on what you know, then it is no more valid than my belief that BC is more popular than Priest.

It is hard to make a post like this because many people will assume I am trying to personally attack you when in reality I just want to ask you to listen to other people's comments and make better arguments if you want them to continue discussing in your threads. You've even had claims that you are outright trolling and there seem to be several people who seem upset at you (Or at least as upset as I am right now) in this very thread. If you want to continue what you're doing then fine, but if so please do not use statements I have made in the past in arguments with other people. Otherwise you are dragging me into your arguments like you did earlier.

[poulter]

One aspect to consider is that the game is designed to use two skills, not just one.
An individual skill might be a bit 'meh', but when combined with another (& the 'right' mods) might shine / be the 'best' at a specific activity.

e.g. Spider /Necro using 5 pets. Very frustrating to use due to pet AI and pathing issues, but surprisingly effective.

What do we mean by 'overpowered'?
If it relates to no downside, then try Fire /Staff
e.g. against most melee mobs (e.g. panthers) & if you can kill them (even if in a pack) in under 10 seconds, then an AOE Fire /Staff build is supreme.
One Staff spell makes you immune to their damage and you can farm them with impunity.

or
Priest /Mentalism - high damage, able to ignore cold debuffs plus unlimited flying

Are these performing as designed?

To my mind these are overpowered, but within the currently accepted game framework. Personally, I don't find it entertaining to be able to farm with no /negligible danger.

If Citan thinks something is not performing as designed, then it will be changed. We've seen this a few times (Archery, Fire, Bard, Werewolf). Priest will not be exempt, but personally I think that current Priest healing is a bit 'meh' and needs a review.

[Zarmengar]

As I follow this thread, I would say; I am glad that the various skills are in fact different and not cookie cutter of other skills with different names. I get the impression the OP would like that. but I may be reading that into his posts.
If one skill excels in another area such as healing like the OP says. That's why skills are in fact different. If you want to play a healer, go for the best skill suited for that. If that is what makes you enjoy the game more.
I for one don't care for being a "healer" but I am currently leveling Priest and Unarmed. Using Priest as more of a combat skill than healing. Sure it may not be the best combination but I find it very enjoyable to play. Only in the mid 40's on both skills, and probably wont be a good combination towards current end game.
The game is still in Beta. There will undoubtedly be some re-balancing in the future.
Keep the input coming for the Devs.

[Golliathe]

How can you state this as a fact? Do you know this for sure?

You can click on people and look at their class choices. You can recognize most of the sounds they make if you have been playing for a while.


If you are just "Guessing" based on what you know, then it is no more valid than my belief that BC is more popular than Priest.
Did you place characters into different guilds and look at what they are playing? You might have not done this but I have (not necessarily explictly for this purpose - but more of a dual purpose thing). Some people talk more than others but you can hear quite a few things if you listen (read) to what they have to say. You can also dig for info on people when they shout for a group for things like GK.

I have seen 5-10 priests for every bard/bc/mental/psych healer in the past ~120 days. I do talk to people and ask them questions especially on low level shopping/storage characters. I find it interesting that priest seems most popular among SEA, EU and NA players; usually culturally different peoples play games with very different mindsets.

Call it an unofficial survey but it is something I have been thinking about for a long time.




please do not use statements I have made in the past in arguments with other people. Otherwise you are dragging me into your arguments like you did earlier.

It would have taken a lot less effort to just say hey go read the damn thread. But I doubt he would have bothered. But on the brightside you are here and can add to the discussion. Im not trying to make anyone mad by the way.



My argument is that for healing group purposes priest makes mentalism look like a poor choice by comparison. Here are some undeniable facts comparing the two classes:

1. Both skills have an epic attack and can be setup to be a good damage dealer.
2. One skill has a rez the other doesn't.
3. One skill has the ability to remove any nasty debuff you encounter and the other has nothing.
4. One skill has 4 heals while the other has 2 (and some other skills that lock each other out - which can sometimes heal).


5. The only thing mentalism does better are group buffs like adrenaline wave and power wave. But using those waves messes up your healing potential so be careful using them! (note: priest does not have this inferior design problem)


Yaffy, do you agree with these points? Is having a rez better than not having a rez? It is a simple question. I have noted that you consider debuff removal pointless. Most people in GK do not consider unfetter pointless. It allows for much faster and safer pulls of monsters. Poison removal is fantastic in a few places in the game; most of the time it's pretty crap but when it is relevant it is nice to have.

You seem to want to undervalue epic attacks but honestly for a healer who uses 4 heals and maybe 2 attacks you can make some decent damage with an epic and one other power (depending on mod availability). Are you going to tell me an epic attack is not well suited to do good damage? Most of them do exactly that.

[Golliathe]

As I follow this thread, I would say; I am glad that the various skills are in fact different and not cookie cutter of other skills with different names. I get the impression the OP would like that.

I'm wanting to see all the heal classes be equally viable. Some of them are more equal than others right now. Unfortunately people who have a vested interest in playing class X will get mad if you want to negatively change it (by making it comparatively weaker by buffing competing options).

How do you justify the healing potential of a class that heals less, doesn't have a rez and has fewer heals than a competing option?


I have made efforts to say rework these things and necro might be pretty good (without even buffing the skills themselves but mechanics around the skillset). I would love to see necro be a good class; not that I want to play it.

I want to play neither priest or mentalism as a healer but it doesn't take much effort to realize one is much better than the other.

[poulter]

From memory (of old patch notes) & my personal experience /bias:

Priest is the only specifically designed group healer
Druid is a jack-of-all trades (& possibly best in class for AOE healing)
Psychology is a balanced damage /single target healer (i.e. yourself)
Mentalism is a group focused buffer with decent damage and healing capabilities
Pig is a variation of all the above & before priest arrived, best in class for group healing when combined with another healing skill

All the above are already viable & occupy different niches in the game.
They do not need to be equal & I, for one, welcome that they have different pros and cons.

No single skill should be good at everything, especially if there are other options available e.g. resurrections.

[Golliathe]

From memory (of old patch notes)

Priest is the only specifically designed group healer


No single skill should be good at everything, especially if there are other options available e.g. resurrections.

I can accept the entire premise might be flawed if priest is supposed to be the only full healer class; but if that is the case then maybe priest damage should be examined a bit?

You can make a very high damaging priest and make it very close to a build like mentalism (using an online tool or ingame mods). It doesn't exactly seem right that priest gets to be the best healer and have high damage potential. Imagine if you slashed priest damage literally in half. There would not be a need for this thread - priest would heal more but it would suck at damage. Note I am not saying that should be done I just wanted to point out what I see to be a flaw with priest : it has high potential for damage, it can be built to heal super well, and has nice utility options (not necessarily all at the same time). You cannot say the same for any of the other classes in this thread.

I am fully understanding that maybe we don't have the full picture. Mentalism for example might have way more damage if crits can go much higher via level 100 or 125 phrenology.

Consider for a moment the fact that we might get weather witch in the near future (some were hoping for this patch). Imagine if it ran fast in combat, could fly, had great potential to build AoE as well as single target and because it has a weather element could rather easily ignore cold effects. That would be a terrible power creep as it would pretty much 100% replace fire. When you play as priest, and play along priest when compared to other classes you can see that maybe something is amiss.

Suppose for a moment all of the following is true:

1. Priest was built to be the best full party healer
2. Priest can be built to do very high damage
3. Priest will ever only be the class to have lots of removal buffs


Do you feel that would devalue the support healing of other classes? I for one feel it would as you could level up priest to 70 and have a high damage class if you want it or the best healing class if you want it.

One perk that I think we have not considered much is that priest works as an animal form. To me that gives it another +1 in terms of is this better than that when you consider there are support classes like bard/bc that pretty much lose all function as an animal. What I don't see are lots of -1's to make priest not be the ultimate option (as in my witch exmple)

[Jarlaxle]

I can accept the entire premise might be flawed if priest is supposed to be the only full healer class; but if that is the case then maybe priest damage should be examined a bit?

You can make a very high damaging priest and make it very close to a build like mentalism (using an online tool or ingame mods). It doesn't exactly seem right that priest gets to be the best healer and have high damage potential. Imagine if you slashed priest damage literally in half. There would not be a need for this thread - priest would heal more but it would suck at damage. Note I am not saying that should be done I just wanted to point out what I see to be a flaw with priest : it has high potential for damage, it can be built to heal super well, and has nice utility options (not necessarily all at the same time). You cannot say the same for any of the other classes in this thread.

I am fully understanding that maybe we don't have the full picture. Mentalism for example might have way more damage if crits can go much higher via level 100 or 125 phrenology.

Consider for a moment the fact that we might get weather witch in the near future (some were hoping for this patch). Imagine if it ran fast in combat, could fly, had great potential to build AoE as well as single target and because it has a weather element could rather easily ignore cold effects. That would be a terrible power creep as it would pretty much 100% replace fire. When you play as priest, and play along priest when compared to other classes you can see that maybe something is amiss.

Suppose for a moment all of the following is true:

1. Priest was built to be the best full party healer
2. Priest can be built to do very high damage
3. Priest will ever only be the class to have lots of removal buffs


Do you feel that would devalue the support healing of other classes? I for one feel it would as you could level up priest to 70 and have a high damage class if you want it or the best healing class if you want it.

One perk that I think we have not considered much is that priest works as an animal form. To me that gives it another +1 in terms of is this better than that when you consider there are support classes like bard/bc that pretty much lose all function as an animal. What I don't see are lots of -1's to make priest not be the ultimate option (as in my witch exmple)

Can you throw out some dps numbers of priest vs mentalism and other classes from on the testing you've done? I can no longer take these kinds of statements from you as fact anymore based on your past history of this thread and others where you've been more often wrong than right. I mean it surely can't be that one single epic attack on a 60 second recast timer that you've mentioned at least 10x right? Because I assure you that mentalism dps > priest dps.

[poulter]

I think the guiding principle is: Yes, it can, but not all at the same time. You are limited by having 6 spells available at a time & the available mod combinations.

The same approach can be seen in Bard, Archery & Druid.

Bard has 3 songs, but realistically you can only build for 2 of them at a time

Archery can be built as Single target damage with crowd control, DOT or AOE, but you effectively have to choose 2 of the 3 in any build

Druid can be debuffer, healer or damage dealer (via poison). Again, only 2 of the 3 are viable in the same build

To my mind, Priest is no different. You cannot enjoy all of its' capabilities in 1 build.

However, combine Archery (Single target & AOE) build with Druid (Debuff & Healing) build and you can mitigate most weaknesses plus produce a combo that can solo most elements of the game at level 70.

[Golliathe]

To my mind, Priest is no different. You cannot enjoy all of its' capabilities in 1 build.


Are you saying then that you see no problem with priest (if it is in fact a better healer than another class in the list and has very good damage potential)?

Doesn't that make competing options very unappealing?

Class Build option 1: amazing capability as healer, has rez, has other nice perks, and you can swap gear sets and be a great damage dealer.

Class Build option 2: below average options as healer, has no rez, and can be a great damage dealer.


Given an informed choice nobody is going to pick the second option (in this case mentalism). That is the very definition of poor balance.


Because I assure you that mentalism dps > priest dps.
The issue is that priest healing is massively better than mentalism (along with better perks like having a rez and being able to remove afflictions). In other words Priest damage doesn't suck but mentalism healing is lackluster compared to priest healing.

If that is true the only thing that makes sense from a balance standpoint comparing these two classes is to either buff mentalism or nerf priest (I will ask you to remember that I don't really think priest should get nerfed. But can you tell me any game where the "raid healer" has great damage potential on par with a dps character?)

I think I presented several options on how to make mentalism be a lot more fun to play (less tedious) and perhaps better balanced.

[poulter]

Caution: My recent experience is based on current end-game content using best-in-slot (BIS) gear. My views may not be representative of those experienced by most level 70 players.

I do see a problem with priest - namely the extended casting /channeling times.
My preference is to use instant cast or heal over time (HOT) spells, especially when solo.
I find druid suits my requirements much closer than priest. As mentioned before, I don't use priest for mainstream healing.

As for other healing options, I find bard /druid or mentalism /druid far more forgiving & reliable when running GK in a group.

Priest resurrection spell is only useful in a group & (from memory) doesn't apply to the caster. It is useful when someone takes a rage crit & dies, but is very niche /situational plus can take too long to activate if it is the puller that is dead.
I find that Bard AOE resurrection is a game changer & is a better fit.
Plus in a geared group, most players have 2 resses each and (often) self-ress capability.

Gear:
I carry 3 sets of gear in GK and change to suit the party composition and area of GK or boss. This still gives me c. 50 free inventory slots plus a 20-slot crate.
At a press of a button, I can adjust my capabilities and play-style to suit the need.

Holy Trinity aka Tank, Healer, Damage
My experience of running GK several hundred times, is that unless the group is doing a speed run (often via Gut Ache to the second level), or still using level 60 gear, no dedicated healer is required. A geared puller using a secondary healing spec. plus two other players using healing secondary skills (e.g. BC or mentalism) are usually sufficient to clear GK.

Mentalism:
Personally, I use it in preference to priest for healing.
I also have a Ment /Psych build that can 1-shot kill the outdoor mobs in Gazluk followed by 2 lesser nukes that can 2-shot kill a second mob during the same fight.
Priest is a better healer than Mentalism, but can't match the flexibility that Meant provides.

Priest damage vs. Fire Magic
If I need fire damage (e.g. for Zuk in GK) then I find fire magic damage output to be higher and more sustainable. It is common in some Zuk fights that nearly half the damage done is from a single fire magic player. Priest can come close to this, but only due to the synergies provided by the secondary skill (which for me is often Mentalism).

And hopefully, after the latest patch a Hammer /Mentalism (Electric) build that is back on par with Fire and Archery.

[Golliathe]

Caution: My recent experience is based on current end-game content using best-in-slot (BIS) gear. My views may not be representative of those experienced by most level 70 players.

I do see a problem with priest - namely the extended casting /channeling times.
My preference is to use instant cast or heal over time (HOT) spells, especially when solo.


And in a group setting the weakness of priest with cast time is largely avoided because you're not thinking oh my goodness I need this heal for me right now!




As for other healing options, I find bard /druid or mentalism /druid far more forgiving & reliable when running GK in a group.

To max out mentalism you are running 2 waves. That means you are constantly juggling cast A - Cast B which for me takes 3-4x the effort for me to do constantly compared to other main heal builds.

I find mentalism not fun/easy to play unless you are just using one wave. The problem there is that you are losing potential.



Priest resurrection spell is only useful in a group & (from memory) doesn't apply to the caster. It is useful when someone takes a rage crit & dies, but is very niche /situational plus can take too long to activate if it is the puller that is dead.
I find that Bard AOE resurrection is a game changer & is a better fit.
Plus in a geared group, most players have 2 resses each and (often) self-ress capability.

I find in a geared guild group not many people are dying. If you get into a discipline with abilities like mez/root/snare/fear you can kill bosses without a tank in the first place.



Gear:
I carry 3 sets of gear in GK and change to suit the party composition and area of GK or boss. This still gives me c. 50 free inventory slots plus a 20-slot crate.
At a press of a button, I can adjust my capabilities and play-style to suit the need.

My motto for is that space is money lost when you cant carry things: "You pick the one right tool".




Holy Trinity aka Tank, Healer, Damage
My experience of running GK several hundred times, is that unless the group is doing a speed run (often via Gut Ache to the second level), or still using level 60 gear, no dedicated healer is required. A geared puller using a secondary healing spec. plus two other players using healing secondary skills (e.g. BC or mentalism) are usually sufficient to clear GK.
I have to respect that is a lot of times clearing GK.



Mentalism:
Personally, I use it in preference to priest for healing.
I also have a Ment /Psych build that can 1-shot kill the outdoor mobs in Gazluk followed by 2 lesser nukes that can 2-shot kill a second mob during the same fight.
Priest is a better healer than Mentalism, but can't match the flexibility that Meant provides.

Ok so we both agree priest heals better - progress. Can you define flexibility in that sense? I assume you mean its good in build A (for maybe flying), good in build B psych/mental, and also can be used to heal. Mentalism has no frills when it comes to combat benefits in my mind.

My argument is that priest is also extremely flexible. Comparing potential builds I argue that you get more when healing, good enough when damage dealing, and you have tons of frill when healing (mid- battle): rez/status cures.




Priest damage vs. Fire Magic
If I need fire damage (e.g. for Zuk in GK) then I find fire magic damage output to be higher and more sustainable. It is common in some Zuk fights that nearly half the damage done is from a single fire magic player. Priest can come close to this, but only due to the synergies provided by the secondary skill (which for me is often Mentalism).


This is an apples and oranges comparison. You can build say a priest/fire dps set with -taunt gear and you will have nearly infinite power for a super high dps build that does well for AoE and ST.

Killing stuff solo priest can do perfectly fine on its own with a damage spec build. Mentalism heals worse than a full spec healer and while it does more damage as a damage spec is the damage sky high compared to priest? No. I see that as a design problem.

Given the choice of two classes with rpg ratings for healing, utility and damage: if one choice is one is S, S, A and the other is B, D, S who is really likely to pick the second over the first? You may disagree on my rating values but clearly priest has a lot of heals, has lots of debuff removal and rez.

Regardless of the value you place on things like broken bone removal, unfetter, rez - mentalism has nothing on par to offer there. When you need those things mentalism sucks by comparison. That in my mind is a design problem.

What is mentalism good for? It's great in a ST dps build. It's great for flying around. It's great if you want to not have to eat food for low tier content.

It is not great by comparison to other heal classes when you consider the whole picture.


The fix to this in my mind is to make mentalism easier to play while making it closer to priest in terms of utility. How do we do that? Alter how the waves work.

If mentalism for example could just go into a fight and cast wave 1, wave 2, wave 3, wave 4 : that would be a completely different feeling of utility that might be on par or stronger.

If there were a lvl 70 mod that let you have 2,3 or 4 waves activate simultaneously when you activate any wave (maybe 2 armor pieces for +1 mod each?) that would also give mentalism some "Oooooo Ahhhhhh" appeal.

[Jarlaxle]

And in a group setting the weakness of priest with cast time is largely avoided because you're not thinking oh my goodness I need this heal for me right now!



To max out mentalism you are running 2 waves. That means you are constantly juggling cast A - Cast B which for me takes 3-4x the effort for me to do constantly compared to other main heal builds.

I find mentalism not fun/easy to play unless you are just using one wave. The problem there is that you are losing potential.


I find in a geared guild group not many people are dying. If you get into a discipline with abilities like mez/root/snare/fear you can kill bosses without a tank in the first place.



My motto for is that space is money lost when you cant carry things: "You pick the one right tool".


I have to respect that is a lot of times clearing GK.



Ok so we both agree priest heals better - progress. Can you define flexibility in that sense? I assume you mean its good in build A (for maybe flying), good in build B psych/mental, and also can be used to heal. Mentalism has no frills when it comes to combat benefits in my mind.

My argument is that priest is also extremely flexible. Comparing potential builds I argue that you get more when healing, good enough when damage dealing, and you have tons of frill when healing (mid- battle): rez/status cures.




This is an apples and oranges comparison. You can build say a priest/fire dps set with -taunt gear and you will have nearly infinite power for a super high dps build that does well for AoE and ST.

Killing stuff solo priest can do perfectly fine on its own with a damage spec build. Mentalism heals worse than a full spec healer and while it does more damage as a damage spec is the damage sky high compared to priest? No. I see that as a design problem.

Given the choice of two classes with rpg ratings for healing, utility and damage: if one choice is one is S, S, A and the other is B, D, S who is really likely to pick the second over the first? You may disagree on my rating values but clearly priest has a lot of heals, has lots of debuff removal and rez.

Regardless of the value you place on things like broken bone removal, unfetter, rez - mentalism has nothing on par to offer there. When you need those things mentalism sucks by comparison. That in my mind is a design problem.

What is mentalism good for? It's great in a ST dps build. It's great for flying around. It's great if you want to not have to eat food for low tier content.

It is not great by comparison to other heal classes when you consider the whole picture.


The fix to this in my mind is to make mentalism easier to play while making it closer to priest in terms of utility. How do we do that? Alter how the waves work.

If mentalism for example could just go into a fight and cast wave 1, wave 2, wave 3, wave 4 : that would be a completely different feeling of utility that might be on par or stronger.

If there were a lvl 70 mod that let you have 2,3 or 4 waves activate simultaneously when you activate any wave (maybe 2 armor pieces for +1 mod each?) that would also give mentalism some "Oooooo Ahhhhhh" appeal.

This debate is going in circles and you're just repeating things for the 5th time. I'm just gonna say mentalism isn't a healer and the class is fine. Read the previous replies from other people to answer what you just posted. This is a marathon and you win.

[spider91301]

Why the hel is this thread still living