Balancing hero heals

[Dekar]

Here we talk about healing heroes. I want to focus on 2 heroes and more or less on fontbattles for now, but we can talk about everything related to healing here.


Skill level 6 at hero level 25 without any items, ~1000 max hp on casters.
AC with Cure Wounds: 962 heal every 12 seconds, 850 over 39s selfheal
AA with Ethereal Healing: 1500 heal every 18 seconds, cant heal self

Their heal is pretty strong, but they also have two damage/support skills which allows them to really influence battles.
Gale deals good damage and allows somebody to escape until heal is available. Weed is probably not exceptionally strong as it can be countered but can be a nasty surprise when overlooked.
AA has Meteor and root from Familiar.


So the question is how strong should heals be ( full heal on the average hero? what cooldown? Mana cost?) for the points you invest in it and if the other skills should be taken into account when balancing the healing skills.

I think the heals should be reduced somewhat, maybe even turned into a % of max hp if tanks need it.


On a side note:
Undeads lack a good healer. Yak wants to buff Naga heal while Lich needs dieing units to deal which is not that great. And nobody uses the Garg heal and she sucks overall anyway.

[SuIIy]

And nobody uses the Garg heal and she sucks overall anyway.

Gargoyle is not a "she"? And wtf...that hero doesn't suck?

Skill level 6 at hero level 25 without any items, ~1000 max hp on casters.
AC with Cure Wounds: 962 heal every 12 seconds, 850 over 39s selfheal
AA with Ethereal Healing: 1500 heal every 18 seconds, cant heal self

You're stirring a pot that doesn't need it. The heals are fine how they are, overall. MAYBE, some minor changes or reduction in stat gains, but the main problem is the heros as a whole, not the heals. In the case of AC, she has a good hero becuase virtually all of her other skills are lacking in some form or another. Nerfing her heal would be a very bad idea unless you substantially improved her in other areas. As for AA, how many people acutally level ether (whatever her heal is) past rank one? Let's be realistic. It's seems really pointless to go after that when they are so many other things to fix.

[Emufarmers]

As for AA, how many people acutally level ether (whatever her heal is) past rank one?

It depends on the map. On Stormwail I stack mass haste and meteor because they're so great for pushing and the other heroes on my team are too spread out for the heal to be consistently useful, but on Verdant Falls or Candleburg I would probably focus on the heal rather than mass haste, since keeping heroes alive is so much more important there. Yak demonstrated this pretty convincingly on Candleburg yesterday.

[DarnYak]

I'm not sure I actually leveled heal past one or two, focusing instead on meteor and familiar.

DarnYak

[SuIIy]

I'm not sure I actually leveled heal past one or two, focusing instead on meteor and familiar.

Exactly.

[Emufarmers]

I'm not sure I actually leveled heal past one or two, focusing instead on meteor and familiar.

If it becomes that effective with just one level, it must be broken.

[Dekar]

Bumb as imbalance/general opinion was confirmed by draft mode.

[watermelon]

Not having any kind of healer is definitely a disadvantage to a team in maps not called Stormwail.

The best healer is probably AC because the heal has a really long range and the talent can restore some of her own health. Points need to be invested in the skill though to make the heal strong and the heal does take a chunk of mana from her which she runs out of quickly. AA would be the second best due to Ethereal Healing being very efficient at very low levels. The drawback to Ethereal Healing is that AA can't heal herself and its low range. The effects of being ethereal is not always desirable either.

I don't think it's just a problem with heals though. AA and AC are good heroes overall and their high speed and skills makes it relatively easy for them to escape hero killers.

[DarnYak]

Part of the question is how to properly balance heals. One concern I have is toning them down to the point that a heal needs a full 6 points to stay effecive is likely to be a lot less enjoyable for people to play, or even people hate playing the hero which is arguably a worse result then having the hero get banned.

DarnYak

[BustroQuick]

You could give heals a smaller base value but give them a heal-over-time buff that slowly reaches the full amount. I think TC's might work like this already, but it has a pretty high base. This would mitigate the effectiveness of healing spells in team fights (which is probably what is needed) but keep them strong in smaller battles or outside of combat. The heal-over-time could potentially be dispellable as well.

[Dekar]

Maybe a debuff that reduces further heals after the first one and/or more ways to apply the -50% heal debuff.
How many skills apply -50% heal and how long does it last?

[DarnYak]

I was considering the healing debuff but that just seems like a horrible result.

More healing debuffs are certainly another option, their not quite as nasty as dispels and they're still useful outside of anti-healing. The list off the top of my head:
Rue - Mortal Strike
The one helm who's name I don't recall
TC - Talented Ebb


DarnYak

[SuIIy]

The best healer is probably AC

The best healer or best heal? I'd say TC probably has the strongest heal, overall.

[watermelon]

By healer, I mean healer.

[SuIIy]

By healer, I mean healer.

I'm not really sure how you arrived at AC, then. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I'm reasonably sure TC's heal is far more potent, with a similar mana cost/cd time....and that's not counting the added effects gained by that heal: (increased attack speed or some nice shit?)....?

[watermelon]

I was thinking more about the ease of being a healer than just the full heal. AC's heal has a much longer range than TC's and the full effects are instant which really helps in a pinch. She also moves faster than TC which is useful when she needs to run away or move quickly to heal an ally. Her talent also allows her to recover some of her own health, which helps her be more focused on healing others.

[SuIIy]

I was thinking more about the ease of being a healer than just the full heal. AC's heal has a much longer range than TC's and the full effects are instant which really helps in a pinch. She also moves faster than TC which is useful when she needs to run away or move quickly to heal an ally. Her talent also allows her to recover some of her own health, which helps her be more focused on healing others.

Fair enough.

[Nick.Scryer]

Mortal Strikes aren't usually an answer to balancing against heals. As Blizzard has shown consistently in their awful Arena PvP. At some points they were 50% and ridiculously overpowered, then take them down to 10-20% and they're almost useless. I'm sure that there could have a been (or there is) a "perfect" number for a healing reduction, but I doubt they will ever find it.

Anyway back to our discussion. I think the best option for EotA is "minor nerfs" of heals, to start out say 5% off the base of heals and [5%<=] off the attribute calculation. Also maybe add 2-3 seconds to the cool-downs on the healing spell. I think a couple versions of tinkering around with something similar to this can at least make healing less insane.

[DarnYak]

Mortal Strikes aren't usually an answer to balancing against heals. As Blizzard has shown consistently in their awful Arena PvP. At some points they were 50% and ridiculously overpowered, then take them down to 10-20% and they're almost useless.

I'd say the problem there was the fact that only one class has ever provided the healing debuff, which made that class mandatory. Nerfing it down to 10-20% made it have an effect but not enough to require that specific class - however, I followed WoW PvP even less after that point so I can't really say what the current state is. I"m similarly afraid of Rue becoming a manditory pick (which will become a mandatory ban), but spreading out the debuff would help counter that.

DarnYak

[DarnYak]

Code: Select all

* Cure Wounds
** Cooldown greatly increased, now decreases with level
** Mana cost greatly increased, now decreases with level
** Range greatly increased
** Healing values are now fairly constant, but heavily based on intelligence
** Healing done is now reduced based on distance to target
** Talent Propitiate increased in cost
** Now instantly heals when used on herself

I hope your fucking happy. Not sure what to do with Ethereal Healing yet.

DarnYak

[watermelon]

The heal itself for Ethereal Healing is just really strong combined with the ethereal effect. You could try just reducing the heal or scaling the duration to be longer (with modifications to the heal) so that enemy magic heroes will have a chance to counter.

[SuIIy]

I hope your fucking happy. Not sure what to do with Ethereal Healing yet.

Maybe have a talent (or in the spell itself) where at higher levels the unused heal, if any, is dispersed in an AoE as healing or even damage.

[jamn455]

The heal is too good, why would he make a talent that makes it even better?

[SuIIy]

I thought Yak was talking about making it more dynamic, not that it's overpowered....but I'd agree with you there....

[DarnYak]

I've gone with giving it the exact same treatment as Cure Wounds. As in they're basicaly the same spell now.