Use of Healing in PvP

[DM_Sultan]

This topic I am opening for discussion is a result of a discussion that started over the Shout Channel last night.

Healing by means of pots, kits or some artificial means has always left the player open to taunts. There is no written rule against it, but it has always been considered in bad taste if a player starts spamming heal pots in the midst of a relic raiding or other PvP action. By tradition, it is considered poor and unsportsman conduct. It has been discussed so much in the past that we as DMs and Developers have even considered limitations on how much healing is allowed after the first heal pot is used by decreasing the amount of heal versus the time in between using the heal pot (ie, 1st pot = 100% heal, 2nd pot in same turn = 80% heal, etc.). In other words, it is a big deal, but not a rule that will get you banned like say, spamming the shout channel or using inappropriate language over shout or talk. So you will be told that if you have no honor, use heal pots or items during PvP. It is a tradition here not to use healing devices in PvP and one of two things will happen if you decide to do it anyway. First, you will be targeted by every player in the next encounter and you won't be able to heal fast enough, or second, you will be doing PvP all alone from then on. You are free to chose your course.

Healing or restoration by means of casting a spell is different. That's what the Bard, Cleric, Pally, Druid, etc., took those levels and feats to be able to do in combat. That is fulfilling part of the purpose for their build. It is tradition NOT to look down upon the healing caster for casting in PvP. However, once the caster is seen healing in combat, they will ultimately be targeted by all invaders from then on.

So my advice to any new players is to talk to your faction mates and see what they say about it. Most guilds look down on the use of external healing during PvP, except when it can be CAST by someone. Now, let the discussions begin here and not over the Shout Channel.

Sultan

[Rufio]

Something that was discussed recently on the TC/NC private forums was if cleric healing is too powerful for pvp. I support cleric and other spell or feat-based healing because it is a part of the build, but I believe that clerics can heal too easily and too quickly.

It gets to a point where if you can't disable the cleric, you won't kill them any time soon. Counters work, but since you can't run while countering, it make it really easy for the cleric to duck behind a corner and heal. You can induce spell failure with taunts or bigby 8, but when a cleric can heal to full with 1 spell, not getting your spell cast once or twice isn't a big deal, and you can easily just dismiss bigbys (and TC/NC doesn't get bigby 8 ).

Looking at a wisdom based healing domain cleric, I calculated that they effectively have north of 13,000 hp if they heavily slot heal spells, and I only considered if they healed at half hp and didn't use any spontaneous low level healing spells, otherwise that number would climb much much higher.
That is over 10 times as much hp as a con based barbarian. Even on my battle cleric, I was able to slot nearly 10,000 hp worth of healing without sacrificing melee buffs. Without disabling, it is impossible for 99% of builds to do damage faster than a cleric can heal. You would have to be able to kill someone in half a round if you wanted to out-pace healing domain cleric spamming greater restores, which would be impossible without having 5 guys swarming a single cleric.

What ends up happening is that people are becoming over-reliant on stunning fists, pure fighter rumbles and pure hellballs in pvp, and the cross-classed meleer without the hard disable has no hope. Now, in practice most clerics will slip up and die while trying to do something other than heal, so the best you can do is to lay into them and hope they mess up.

The real problem is that you can't simply nerf healing across the board to make it balanced for pvp because pvm would become much much harder, to the point where taking on endgame bosses like g1 and pelor would be impossible without a party entirely made up of DWDs, so while I think there is a problem, I haven't been able to propose a good solution. The best idea I have is to suppress healing spells and items within all faction areas.

[Amoenotep]

i chug-a-lug like a pro...i care not of what you say of honor.

[DM_Sultan]

Tep, why is your image gone, no, I mean your avatar image? If you are talking about DMz tagged toons, I think they should be allowed to chug in combat always. We are, after all, out numbered by even defunked guilds at all times.

Can't nerf healing across the board? You may not realize what you are saying, Rufio. Are you building a case to have NC clerics nerfed? It sounds like it, but please stick to the subject. Start another thread if you want NC clerics to get nerfed.

Sultan

[Amoenotep]

host site down i think.

also..all i got out of rufio's post was "Something....monstrous wall of text...nerf my cleric...more text...holy crap my eyes hurt...everyone should chug."

[Rufio]

I hear there is this thing called a book that has a lot of text in it.

[Rufio]

But anyways, I thought it was on-topic, the original post didn't seem to leave much room for discussion on the matter of what is acceptable (coming from a dm and all, and many players don't check these forums regularly, so coming to some kind of consensus here won't change what happens in-game much). I don't mind nerfing my own builds if I think there is reason. I like to build things with a wide range of abilities, so it is unlikely that they will be hit hard by any single nerf. NC isn't the only faction with clerics anyways.

[Midterm]

An idea: give spells/pots a cooldown?

For example, Drider and Drow Shifter darkness have a 2 turn cooldown. Obviously 2 turns is a long time, so maybe healing spells vary from 0 to 5 rounds? This would give a practical reason to slot other healing spells besides Heal, Mass Heal, and Greater Restore.

Anyways that is how League of Legends dealt with sustain - all support healers received CD nerfs across the board.
Another idea that came to mind:

Pots of Heal now cast Monstrous Regeneration (5 rounds) that heal you 60 hp a round.

[Eldaquen]

I stated this in shout so will post it here. Healing spells are different from using potions and healing kits. For one there are only so many spell slots that a caster has to fill. If they choose heal or greater restoration then there are fewer slots for offensive type spells. The finality aka limitition on number of possible uses per rest is a huge difference between spells vs potions. The only limitation on potions is the builds strength modifier as to how many can you carry.

Spells can be disrupted or countered. That fact plays a major reason why the community of players...here and elsewhere do not mind a cleric (or other) from using their healing type spells. Silence is a very easy way to counter a running healing spell caster. Most people don't build with silence in mind. Cast silence on your summon, use wand to focus on the cleric and that cleric's casting is neutralized. Or have your cleric counter, or the no limit chain KD that fighters and other high ab builds employ.

However, with potions there are fewer ways to incapacitate the chugging rival: kd, stunning for example (which can be employed against casters as well). If your build lacks an incapacitating ability such as KD or stunning fist then you won't be able to stop a them from chugging. Potion use is based on how much gold one can collect so able to buy potions up to their strength limit.

It is far easier to stop a caster from healing than it is to stop other builds from chugging endless amounts of full heal potions.

To be fair, since the math was calculated for a caster, what is a possible amount of hit points gained from using heal potions?

Glowing white potions weigh 0.1 poiunds, that is 10 potions stacked weigh 1 pound. Any build that can allot 100 pounds of their carrying capacity to healing potions is able to carry 1,000 potions. The first potion heals 300 hit points. Thereafter the effectiveness of potions decrease by 10% to minimum of 50%. So a chugging build using potion after potion with 1,000 potions can heal themslves upwards of 150,450 hit points.

1,000 glowing white potions = 300+270+240+210+180+(150x995)= 150,450 hit points.

100 pounds allocated to potions = 150,450 hps vs casters 13,000 hps from casting heal spells....which seems out of line. Comparison is over simplified as there is alot going on in game pvp which simply unable to account for in a post.

[Elagneros]

I could care less whether people chug or not. I'd probably take a screenshot of it and necro that chugger topic from a few months ago, but otherwise I don't really care.

[Eldaquen]

I am not seeking a change to heal spells or potions. Simply wanted to point out the differences of each since heal spells are under the mircoscope of public opinion. When I arrived here it was commonly accepted that players did not use heal potions in pvp. Potions for pvm, heal spells for pvp. That has changed some over the years when some choose to be ok with it (even if it was just themselves partaking) while other players remained true to their original no potions in pvp culture.

When those cultures clash there will be differences of opinion.

[Bargeld]

Make a plan. Beat him down.

Chugging is stupid... unless you're a DM, then I understand that you really don't have much on your side and you are fighting against us practiced raiders and defenders. Chugging in that case is fine, especially since they dont need to craft or buy or anything. It's just to prolong their fun and that of the players'.

For a player tho, it's just shamefully admitting defeat. You know it, and so do we

[Shadowalker]

Bargeld and Eldaquen said it all, but for my personal practice.

Healing Kits: I dont object to casual use, ie once or twice a turn, but not sustained if in a ono on one match. My personal use of them (barbarain only one that does, they do get NS4 bonus to heal skill) is to first ask my opponet if they object. Thus far no one has and Ive not used a kit more than once in any one on one fight. Most multiple toon fights, Bumble has had Wing to provide cleric support. Kudos to Wing (TSS).

[Finnoker]

To take away the grey zone .. let the healing be totally accepted same 4 al..


Or no heal at al same 4 al .. in pvp there is. Othervise this mather never go away.

Black and white cant be abused.., unless some ppl have a thing of shoutin chugger

but it never happend. Because they just lost the fight, i have seen it more then once..

[Eldaquen]

I respectfully disagree that healing can be reduced to a black and white analysis when comparing fighters/barbarians to healing able casters such as clerics and druids. To attempt to explain why I feel that way just going to point out that the classes have inherent differences which provides the variety of options we that all enjoy to play. To explain need to use some constants or post will be unruly and complicated. So holding Con at 10, in game this will not be the case as Con scores are rarely actually 10 but for posting reasons please allow for simplicity sake. Also using the assumption of a caster druid instead of a shifting druid for simplicity sake.

All other attributes and gear held equal so to reach a baseline:
-Fighters received d10 hit points per lvl (in NS4 that is 10 hps per lvl). So a pure fighter has 400 hps at lvl 40.
-Barbarians receive d12 hit points per lvl (in NS4 that is 12 per lvl). So pure barbarian has 480 hps at lvl 40.
-A cleric and druid receives d8 hit points per lvl (in NS4 that is 8 per lvl). So a pure cleric (or druid) has 360 hps at lvl 40.
-A bard receives d6 hit points per lvl (in NS4 that is 6 per lvl). So a pure bard has 240 hps at lvl 40.

Taking away clerics', druids', or bards' ability to cast a heal spell puts these classes at a disadvantage just from a base hit point perspective.

Then there is the AB consideration. Fighters and barbarians who do not have magical healing abilities received instead higher AB and hit points (on average).
Fighters and barbarians have full AB progression (BAB of 29 at lvl 40 if pure). Clerics, Druids, and Bards have 3/4 AB progression (BAB of 24 at lvl 40 if pure). Yes a cleric is able to buff using divine power to be at full AB progression for a designated duration. However fighters and barbarians do not have to worry about their AB expiring.

To complicate things further there is the ability score disparity between non-healing capable class vs a healing capable class. Fighters and barbarians are able to spend all their ability points in either Str, Con, or Dex improving AB, Damage, AC, and HPs further. A magical healing capable class such as cleric and druid are concerned with their wisdom score diverting ability points away from Str, Con, and Dex. By their nature and build structure clerics and druids have lower hps, ac, damage output, and/or ab than builds who are without a magical healing ability (fighters or barbarians).

To say healing ability is grey area because one is able cast healing spells to and the other isn't, doesn't take into account that there are other differences in builds. The only true black and white comparison is if we only looked at a class vs the exactly same class.

So a black/white comparison might be (holding ability scores and gear equal): is it fair for one fighter to not be able to heal in pvp while the other rival fighter is allowed to using heal poitions? If that restriction is culturally based where the non healing fighter doesn't out of a self imposed code of honor, while the other is not emcumbered with such a code.