Healing VS Leech VS Regen VS Ward Gen

Feedback and Suggestions
1

Listed from best to worst for end game viability

  • Leech
  • Ward Gen
  • Regen
  • Healing

Why this order?

  • Leech is by far and wide the strongest health replenishment source. No argument. Why? Because its very proactive, it can protect you 3 seconds into the future and with unlimited amounts. The more damage you do, the more protection for the same amount of leech.
    Ill explain. Your at full health, you hit a mob for 100 damage, you leech 30% hit damage, you leech back 30 health over 3 seconds or 10HP/S. If you take a 20 damage hit 1 second after you already hit the target, your 20 health is replenish from the hit you did in the PAST over the next 2 seconds. You are basically increasing your EHP except against a 1 shot. This is why Leech builds push the furthest in endgame content

  • Ward gen. Ward generation and ward on hit are very powerful, especially the more of it you generate per second. why? Because its very proactive, it can protect you for long periods of time before you even take a hit, it increased your EHP the more you have against all types of hits even 1 shots. There are soft caps thatā€™s why its placed as number 2 on the list, but its PROACTIVE and thatā€™s all that matters.

  • Health REGEN. Health regen in REACTIVE, you must first be hit and missing health for it to be of any good. Like Leech it doesnā€™t protect against one hits, but unlike leech its very limited in how fast it can replenish your health. While its better than healing because it cost 0 mana and applies instantly automatically, its 3rd on the list because its just not powerful enough as a defensive mechanic to be higher, and IMO it replenishes to slow compared to other sources even if you heavily build into it. The max Iā€™ve ever pushed with it is 1300 health regen/s and while it was very effective on a paladin that has massive DR. A leech paladin pushes further in arena.

  • Healing. By Far and WIDE the WORST health replenishment sources in the game. WHY? Because it typically comes with a Mana cost, A cast time, and typically restores to little health to be effective. Two of the best healing skills in the game (IMO) are entangling roots and eterras blessing. Entangling roots can heal a huge area for a good duration of time which makes it a decent healer, but its very mana expensive, 100% uptime is hard, and you usually only healed ever with 300-400% healing effectiveness investment for 200-300 health/s per patch. This healing is applied each second not over a second so unlike leech rate, there is a whole second in-between health replenishment and this leads to deaths. Eterras blessing took a step in the right direction, healing at the start, healing each second, and then another heal at the end of its duration, however it also cost mana, time to cast, targeting can be frustrating in combat, and it still has the problem only replenish health AT 1 second intervals instead of working like leech and regen and applying a constant replenishment effect.

How to fix healing so its more effective

  • Healing should be changed to replenish health the same as leech and health regen, a constant current stream of health, not just a pile of health at 1 second intervals.
  • Healing should work like leech where it is applied for a duration and that duration is not cancelled just because your health is full. Example. You are healed by smite for 50 health over 5 seconds. after 2 seconds your health is full there is still 30 health left, 1 second later you get hit for 20 damage. the final 2 seconds you get healed for 10/s back to full health instead of the healing spell dissipating after the first 2 second when your health was full.
  • This would at least allow it to compete with leech and ward gen at the top.

Ideas? Thoughts?

3 Likes
2

The biggest problem with heals IMO is that the skill has to be on your bar. With a game like this, Iā€™d rather have a skill have heals as a secondary effect that can be specced into instead of the other way around.

Would also help if overhealing granted some kind of benefit.

2 Likes
3

yes. by making healing work the same as leech, over healing would work just as ā€œover leechingā€ currently does, and there for you could proactively heal yourself. making it a ā€œjust as viableā€ source of health replenishment. ATM it just to weak the way its implemented to stand the same trials of gameplay that you can do with leech. I hope its changed in the future as a healer I would love to spend mana up front essentially giving myself a ā€œtemporary shieldā€ going into a battle instead of going in being hit, then while being hit still have to stop attacking, heal myself, by which time ill need a nother heal and so fourthā€¦

4

Rather than overhealing persisting, you could make overhealing turn into Ward via some method. Either skill specific, or (more likely), an itemā€™s special effect.

If it works with HPS and Healing Skills, then two more methods of healing can be assissted with their weak point, that being reactive vs. proactive.

Sure, itā€™s not 100% effective, as ward decays, but itā€™d be a proactive aspect added to a reactive healing method. Also it would require a slot investment, or skill point investment, rather than being available to everyone as a base effect.

1 Like
5

This would be a cool effect. especially if it converted things like the healing per second in maelstrom where you can have 6 health per second, if your full on health this is auto converted into 6 ward per second generated per stack.

6

I agree with everything except for the last comment in your post Boardman. I wouldnā€™t want every heal to always have a HoT component, Iā€™d like some variety. Perhaps some heals turn the overheal into ward (or ward per sec as helot_commander suggested), and some could turn the overheal into a temporary decaying max health buff.

2 Likes
7

health(blood) shield would be nice and has even been asked for before. I would be all for both a ward and health shield. that would be awesome. :slight_smile:

8

While I agree with your opinion on the effectiveness of the current heal sources, Iā€™m not excited by turning heal into hot un general.

Imho this should depend on the skill and / or class. I see the Primalist mainly as a hot class while Iā€™d like to see burst heal on the Paladin.

I like reactive skills. There are a lot of situations where Iā€™m almost dead and where a burst heal would be nice.

Oneshots are unavoidable at a certain enemy scaling. Having additional sources of proactive generation of eHP will only result in oneshots appear a few arena waves later.

There could be mechanics like

  • Overheal turned into temporary damage mitigation / block / mana or manashield
  • Amount of hp healed turned into temporary damage mitigation / block / mana or manashield
  • Apply a hot based on how much hp you healed

But in the end I like reactive healing skills. This also makes good coop play. The healer in a group needs to pay attention to the hp bar of his comrades. Not only brainless spamming skills on autocast that generate more eHP. Instead react to tough situations and earn the respect of your teammate by having good foresight and reflexes :wink:

9

make leech only possible if health isnā€™t full. Solvedā€¦ next!

10

I donā€™t agree with how you portrayed Health Regen being ā€œreactiveā€, since itā€™s the most passive form of sustain.

Health Regen basically does everything Leech does, while being passive permanently.

I do agree that health regen scaling makes it worse for very very endgame though.

I think health regen is an awesome sustain and we might only need a few more sources of flat health regen to make it more scaleable.

Give Flat Health Regen prefix 1 or 2 more slots (like relic, boots or belt)
Also give some idols flat health regen in addition to % increased health regen and health regen would be in a MUCH better place.

Leech is definitely the most powerful form of sustain.
I would like to see a slight nerf for leech.
I think of something along the lines of: leech gathers way less or no ā€œleech poolā€ while you cannot gain any health (so while being full health or having death seal actived)

That way leech would become way more re-active and you actively need to do stuff AFTER recieving damage for it to be usefull.

Another solution would be to cap leech/sec (with the possibilty to scale this value).
If oyu tie this cap to another stat like max health, it would incentevice going some health, if you want to paly a primarily leech build.
Since leech currently has no cap, going full mitagtion with very little health is the most efficient way and way too strong.

11

Well there are plenty of reasons why almost all meaningfull games got rid of leech or still have it with a far lower ammount of leech.
If they donā€™t want to change leech mechanicly there should be a maximum leech amount that is tied to your max HP. For Example if you have 3k MaxHP you can only leech 300HP/sec. A 10% baseline so to speak while all leech passives and affixes offer 0.5% increase to it so we might end up at 25-30% MaxHP/sec and from there on it getā€™s toned down untill itā€™s in line with other defensive stats. All the numbers are just made up and are a simple example.

I still think Health reg can be the best sustain tool ingame because you canfor incredible ammounts of HP/s and I still think there is room to improve and more possible then 1.5k/s what is 3/4 of the hp most of my toons have untill I build them to tanky. If I donā€™t get oneshot and my HP jumps instantly to full I have enough tank :D.

12

Yeah, then you can give the tankier masteries higher leech caps, or specific skills higher leech effectiveness.

13

For example yes.In the end itā€™s just balancing an twisting some numbers. Itā€™s the least of my concerns atm to be honest and easiely fixable when EHG got time for it. Right now itā€™s bearable and not gamebreaking and Iā€™m pretty sure the workload should go into another direction but itā€™s a nice topic to crunch non the less.
Iā€™ll put it in perspectiveā€¦ different classes can dualwield different weapons only. There is no homogenisation there. Why isnā€™t this mirrored in other aspects as well? Why arenā€™t Sentinels and Primalists HP hogs with leech mechanics while Acolyth and Mage are Ward based? Why canā€™t every class use every weapon but everything is the same old mess just with a different icon and a different look?
There are so many mechanics in this game and I only see two ways to goā€¦ use all the stuff that was made and give classes destinct advantages and disatvatages or get rid of the useless 2/3 of the stuff an make everything the same just with other animations on the skill and deliver the illusion of choice like many other games.
Same goes for healing as well as leech and regen or ward. Paladin best example of a class thatā€™s closest tied to healing stuff. Void Knight and sucking away the life essence of enemysā€¦ sounds neat. Beastmasters healing themself and their petsā€¦ and so on and so forth.
There are so many possibilitys but at the end of the day Ward and leech are most used. Itā€™s like two handed axesā€¦ who the heck is using that utter piece of crap compared to other weapon bases? There is not one Twohanded Axe in this game that is worth to use but the unique maybe.
There is so much stuff to do and as sad as it makes me I donā€™t see a development philiosophy or worthwhile path they take. To much stuff simply makes me questioning if this game will ever come to a point where everything makes sence and is of equivelent use compared to other options with all their merits and flaws.
But thatā€™s just the pessemistic me and Iā€™m pretty sure that I donā€™t see the big picture that might unfold :D.

14

I think that it might be really hard to balance the different mechanics when they work differently on classes. But in general I agree with you. I like asymmetric mechanics. Ward already is a caster mechanic since ward retention is tied to int. And Leech is supported very differently among the classes. But maybe it could be tweaked a bit. I like your suggestion. Why not also nerf leech on certain classes and buff the already existing support of others.

As for 2h axes: What does make them so bad in comparison to other 2h weapons in your opinion?

15

In short: The base phys dmg is okay but they seem to revolve arround melee cold or lightning dmg and low chance tp bleed ammounts. In theory itā€™s the base that offers the most dmg but i realy never used a 2handed axe or have seen anyone using it in a stream. From the outside and without access to data it seems like an unwantede weapon base. Wellā€¦ since DW all 2handed options are unwanted as it seems :D.

16

This entire discussion is about balance. And for to balance things you should have some focus, basic metrics youā€™re trying to keep in a center of all your secondary parameters. I wrote a lot about it.

Game designer should define what players can meetā€¦ in numbers.

  • average duration of regular fight?
  • average duration of boss fight?
  • average number of enemies in a fight?
  • minimum number of enemies in a fight?
  • maximum number of enemies in a fight?

ā€¦ and most important things ā€¦

  • minimum characterā€™s survive time with no active resistance?
  • maximum characterā€™s survive time with no active resistance?

If your tanky character have no other recover options except heal, but he looses all his health in 2 seconds in toughest fight, than even free 100% heal every 2 seconds is a dubious option. Only if you consider standing with a healer behind which should heal you every 1-1.5 seconds. Horrible model in my opinion.

So, if the game in its current state wishes you to die in less than 5-8 seconds, I doubt an instant heal can ever become a playable option, at least for solo play. And yes, I remember about mobility skills.

Same with health regeneration. It canā€™t and SHOULDNā€™T negate all the damage your character receives. But if so, you must have some time to retreat and recover. And this means your ability skills should be available 1-2 times between your 100% and 20% health states - to escape huge damages and to retreat to recover.

And again, all this and less than 5 seconds survive time makes HP. REG. very ineffective.

Health leech. Itā€™s balanced to be good enough with a single target, but with every next enemy your damage multiplies and so the leech. Thatā€™s why I have to repeat myself: all effects (damage included) should reduce their effectiveness with every target affected. But this thought is rejected by the community :disappointed_relieved: .

Also yes, itā€™s only recover mechanics which effectiveness grows with damage AND protections, not just protections. And I think it canā€™t be balanced just via dragging up and down leech values. I believe in better solution, like adding obligatory offensive potential to protection affixes: thorns, rage, counter-attacks (from dodge?).

17

What do you think of leech being unavoidably tied to increased damage taken or reduced max life? This way, the players themselves decide the balance of how much leech they want to aim for - each extra bit of leech makes a oneshot more likelyā€¦
Eg - 30% health leech means you take 15% more damage, so you are always at full life until you reach a level where you get oneshot if you get hit.
This would make leech a viable option for survivability, but would mean that it drops off from being always included in the highest ranked builds. It would also provide incentives to combine it with dodge, block, etc.

18

Thatā€™s why I said it needs to be tied to max hp. Giving it a downside of taking more dmg itā€™ll be the worst option. On the other hand you can add a stat like ward retention to LL that is benefited by attunment. This will lead to choices that need to made. You need to stack 2 attributes if you want leech so acolyths and sorceres who use ward mostly will keep int up and sentinels and druids will naturaly combo it. Not realy sure how to handle it with the rogue but the rogue is op enough to handle a downside :D.

19

One of the imbalanced parts about leech isnā€™t really the leech, it is the absurd damage that some people can scale to. Leech SHOULD heal more than regen over the short-term as it is only activated upon hitting something.

Given that, I would very much like to see a couple item slots have a Hybrid Health Regen affix. Just like the Hybrid Health, it would give an added amount and a percentage increase. I donā€™t know what the numbers should be. Overall, though, Health Regen percentage increases arenā€™t very impactful due to the ridiculously low starting regen amount.

20

Congrats :slight_smile: