Runekeeper healing

[DMagius]

I honestly don't want EFTA to be a cashout skill. Personally I tend to use this right after or very soon after I use Word of Exaltation so my attunement is already cashed out or nearly so. To this purpose I use it as an emergency heal on a single target so I bubble them first and then work on healing them. Myself and others gave this same feedback during HD Beta.

I agree with this also. The long induction with no hot aspect makes this skill limited in scope. So. it is much more beneficial as a builder rather than a cashout skill. At level cap even as an emergency heal, I feel EFTA is a waste if it doesnt crit.

On another note, I hope mending verse is reworked or restored in the update. I no longer use it and finally decided not to even trait it in blue line so I could use the points elsewhere. I do use it in the other trait trees but would prefer WoH.

[Radbug]

With the only change to that skill being to make it a cash out skill? That's an easy question to answer; no.

I fully agree with this. Also to say, IMO, cashout skills make little sense to me with induction based heals. It takes too long in an emergency to build up the attunement again. Perhaps for the group bubble I can see it.

For DPS (lightning) the cashouts work much better because:

a) I am mobile
b) My skills are fast and do not have long CDs
c) Rebuilding attunemnet is a piece of cake.

[Pony-o]

Summed up perfectly, Radbug.

So from me that's also a big "no" to changing EFTA into a cash-out skill.

[Leopoldio]

Totally agreed with previous posters - EFTA have to remain the same, without any cashout.
Also, CD should be slightly decreased OR, minding verse restored, or some other meaningful changes.

And some wishes/to be fixed:
1) animations/inductions must be changed for the following skills (since they block for some time executing of next skill, aka delay):
-- Rune-sign of Winter
-- Prelude to Hope
-- Our Fates Entwined
- Scribe a New Ending
- Steady Hands
-- *Bombastic Inspiration (don't really remember if it has animation delay as well)
- *maybe some other skills im aware of

Why ? Because it makes them useless in intense fights. I prefer going for spamming Writs, Minding verse, Rousing wounds, EFTA and bubbles. So I literally don't use those skills (unless fight is slow with no hurry)

2) RK Healing stone - must be buffed, 250 morale doesn't even worth slotting this trait
3) Our Fates Entwined - doesn't worth using, 5.5k dmg is 1 impale/VT. Doesn't help at all in fights.
4) Do Not Fall This Day - can this be changed into simple in combat rez ?
5) Sustaining Bolt heal has too big delay. You always have to use it a bit earlier. If you are at 2k morale, you can apply that one and get killed, because it has 1s-1.5s delay for application.
6) Shocking Touch - animation delay is kinda long as well. Have to wait 1s-2s to execute next skill after this one.

[headhunted]

Dropping in to say hello!

There are some RK changes coming in update 14 but I wanted to stop by and talk about healing. There are some great suggestions in this thread that we are testing out now but I wanted to start a mini discussion with you all about something that has been mentioned a couple times. What are people's stance on EFTA being an attunement builder versus a cashout?

-Jinjaah

Hey Jinjaah,

First of all I would just like to thank you for taking an active role with us in tweaking/balancing RK healing! As for your EFTA question, I prefer having it build attunement. However, from what I've found since HD released, is that my EFTAs are significantly lower at lvl 95 than they were at level 85 (at 85 I was hitting 20k+ in PvP, now 10 levels later I struggle to put up more than 12-13k in PvP). If these numbers were to be significanly tweaked and EFTA was to act more like its SW and EC counterparts (hard hitting attunment cashouts) then I think it would absolutely give RKs much more versatility and dependability in their PvP healing rotations, as well as help close the incredible gap between RK healers and all other primary healer classes.

I'm sure you're doing your best to satiate both the interests of the community, as well as the requirements for balancing gameplay. Keep up the good work!

- Sindhala

[Ghosttaker]

I'd rather have it be a builder but if there was some way to lower the induction some kind of percentage or amount of time per tick of healing attunement and also increase the magnitude of the heal that might work, for me at least. Gives you a reason to want to be at max attunement before casting and also gives you a speed benefit to do so. The skill is easily interrupted, if you change it to a cashout we'd need some kind of induction bonus or we'll never get it off in the moors.

Since you're looking in this thread i'll virtually bump the other one asking about changes.

Anything coming in the way of mobility and animation lag?

[Kander]

About, cashout skill, as stated before, I'd say that if skill gets a cooldown reduction (to around 10s) and a potency increase with permanent splash heal even if no critical heal on main skill, then it could be a cashout, but as it is right now it's not a good idea, since it's usually used right after or before a bubble, and it would just mean a huge nerf. So if skill is turned into a cashout skill, then we must receive a decent increase in its healing.

And thanks for communicating to us actively, Jinjaah

[Nouri]

We already have two cash out skills in heals. Why would we want a third in the same line? This skill has already been nerfed badly in HD. I got bigger heals off this skill at level 85 than what I get now at level 95. Why nerf it yet again?

[Jillymala]

I'd prefer not to see EFTA as a cashout personally.
If the magnitude was the same as pre trait tree/class revamp then I'd be ok with it but since the heal is significantly lower now I'd expect it to be a builder not a cashout. I'd love to also see this or woh as a mobile skill as I feel the skills we have can be tweaked a bit better for mobility.

[Kortaan]

I'll add my opinion on a few skills in the healing line for the RK;

Though I'm not very happy about Epic for the Ages at the moment, I do agree it shouldn't be a cashout skill. If making it a cashout skill makes it a ton more reliable in being a big spike heal, maybe. But currently the heal is just way too unreliable, the induction is quite long and so is the cooldown, but whenever the skill doesn't crit I always feel like I just wasted a lot of time I could've been casting something else. I really don't want to lose attunement in the process aswell.

I also don't see any point in putting points in the Truly Epic trait. This trait is far far too situational to justify spending five trait points on it in my opinion. Not only does EftA have to crit to even make use of the trait points (they're just wasted every time EftA doesn't crit) there also have to actually be people in the vicinity of the target that benefit from a spike heal. So I'd be spending all those traitpoints on a situation that arises in 1% of the fights I do, and then I still have to hope EftA crits.
I would much prefer this trait giving a bonus crit chance just for EftA, or a bonus to the base healing of EftA instead.

Now, moving to Mending Verse. I understand that this skill is dangerous to buff, since it's available to all specs of the Rune-keeper. However, I think a two second induction on a HoT that only lasts for six seconds feels a bit too long. I would like having the fifth rank of Prophetic Word either lower the induction of Mending Verse to somewhere between 1,5-1 second(s), or giving it the extra two pulses back we lost, pushing it back to a ten second duration. This way if someone really wants to have MV their DPS build, they'd be forced into spending 20 trait points into the blue line. This might also give us a bit more survivability in PvMP, at the cost of DPS traits.

I don't like Bombastic Inspiration at all. It sounds good on paper, but after having the skill for half a year the only use I found for it was stacking healing attunement while running as fast as I could from a creep raid. I wasn't even using it for the burst heal (cause I was delaying that by 8 seconds every cast) but I really just wanted a meaty bubble to survive the coming onslaught.
However, I'm not sure making the burst heal trigger below a % Morale threshold is the solution.
Say the threshold is put at 50% HP. Does that mean when I apply a fresh Bombastic Inspiration to a target below 50% HP, it triggers immediately? In that case, you just gave the Rune-keeper an instant burst heal on a 2 second cooldown that gives us 3 healing attunement, which can also be used on the move. So it shouldn't trigger immediately? But when should it trigger then? After a second? Back to the 8 second threshold?
I personally don't see how a % threshold trigger would work. A spammable burstheal (which if I recall correctly, is capable of some really nice big critheals) would just make us silly overpowered in PvMP, to the point where unless we're silenced or disarmed, healer RKs are practically unkillable unless bursted instantly. Going somewhere in between for the trigger duration would just make the skill massively complicated and unreliable.

I personally don't think we need the Bombastic Inspiration healing, I've been doing fine without it, just using the skills I was used to from before HD and having the new mass bubble added to that.
What I do miss in the post-HD healer RK kit, is group damage utility. I wouldn't mind seeing BI converted into some kind of damage utility.

I really like the idea of using ground target-able Rune-stones for utility (though I do think the mechanism for placing the ground targeted skills is really wonky and could do with a lot of smoothing out) since it adds gameplay, I have to think where to place my Rune-stone so I have the maximum effect from it during its duration.
I do think all of them should be immune to AoE, so they can actually be destroyed if needed (so they can be countered in PvMP) but won't just instant pop like the Fates Entwined Stone has a tendancy to do when a lot of AoE is flying around, even though often times that is the most ideal situation to have an AoE damage reduction.

What I would like to see for Bombastic Inspiration (and I know this might be impossible mechanically and not everyone will agree to adding ANOTHER rune-stone) is becoming an offensive ground targeted utility rune-stone.
For instance, after placement, the BI stone could copy and store all the damage dealt by the fellowship to all targets within 10 meters of the stone for the next 15-20 seconds. After that, it explodes dealing a large percentage of the stored damage as distributed frost damage to targets within 10 meters from where the stone was placed. It would obviously need to be on a decently long cooldown, perhaps 2-3 minutes.
This would promote forward thinking to where to stone should be placed, communication with the group to deal the highest amount of damage within the duration of the stone and having all the enemies you want to deal damage to on top of the stone.

The previous paragraph is obviously my own wishful thinking. I'm sure there are lots of ways, probably also easier ways to convert BI to a damage utility. I just want a bit more of the pre-HD healer RK back, where you really had to know and plan the fight ahead of time to reach the full RK potential, and I think a skill like that brings the pro-active gameplay back a bit more.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the RK healer currently

[Nouri]

Since Kortaan mentioned Bombastic Inspiration, I'll add my two cents. This skill should be completely redesigned, or scrap it and give us TWDNKU back. The delivery of its big heal and the need for a big heal at the time of delivery seldom coincide. I've wondered many times how such a bizarre skill ever made it past the first design discussion. It's useful as an attunement builder and for its HoTs-on-the-run capability, but that's about it.

Let's talk use cases for a moment. As a healing RK in fellowship, you've spammed BI all over everyone. Then a fellowship member takes a big hit which drops them to less than half health.

Do you?
a) Just continue with normal heals on them, cross your fingers, and hope they're still alive in 8 seconds when BI's big heal kicks in.
b) Throw a bubble or a big heal on your target to keep them alive until BI's big heal triggers, in which case BI's heal will likely end up as a massive over heal.
c) Just use it for its HoT-on-the-run capability, and accept that it's a skill with serious design flaws and limited practical utility as far as its big heal is concerned.

I would have loved to have been a part of that design discussion to understand what people were thinking on this one.

[Arabani]

There are two ways to fix Bombastic
1. Make it trigger early if a target falls under the certain trashhold. 35% would be fine, imo.
2. Redesign it. Make it another bauble\ward. I have two suggestions here:
a) The amount of the ward is bigger, the close the target to death.
b) Regenerating ward (about 200-300 per second, per stack), wich also reduce incoming damage (5% per stack).

I would prefer variant 2b

[Leixy]

Right now EFTA is too much of a nuisance to use under high pressure situations, and a waste of time if it doesn't crit.

Something that may be cool for EFTA, and make it useful, while reducing the chance for it being spammed is,

For every +1 healing attunement, -0.25 second induction for EFTA.

So at +9 attunement that would be -2.25 induction, which would be 0.25 second induct.

[Ghosttaker]

Right now EFTA is too much of a nuisance to use under high pressure situations, and a waste of time if it doesn't crit.

Something that may be cool for EFTA, and make it useful, while reducing the chance for it being spammed is,

For every +1 healing attunement, -0.25 second induction for EFTA.

So at +9 attunement that would be -2.25 induction, which would be 0.25 second induct.

Is it a builder or a consumer in this case? If it's a consumer I would argue for a buff to the actual heal. That or a significant buff to the crit chance of the skill based on attunement.

[JeauxLOTR]

NO Cash out for EftA, we already have several cash outs. We need to build and maintain attunement - keep in mind almost all the Heal skills can't be used while moving. While EftA doesn't heal for as much as it used to, there are many other changes to the Healing line that should be addressed before EftA is looked at.

[Leixy]

Is it a builder or a consumer in this case? If it's a consumer I would argue for a buff to the actual heal. That or a significant buff to the crit chance of the skill based on attunement.

in my scenario, I would think it would have to be a cashout, maybe cashout 2 attunement for every +3 you have. i.e. use EftA at +3 attunement, you cash out 2, at +6 you cash out 4, at +9, you cash out 6.

I like your idea of a buff to the crit chance based on attunement as well. something like +10% chance to crit per 3 attunement. so at 9 it would be +30% chance to crit. on top of traited crit rating, that would be 60% chance to crit EftA. and with a 15 second cooldown, that's a pretty fair exchange imo.

So under your idea and mine, EftA would look like:

1 For every +1 attunement, -0.25 second induction
2 EFTA consumes 2 attunement for every +3, with 6 consumed at +9 attunement.
3 For every 3 attunement, +10% chance for EftA to crit.
4 15 second cooldown

As we said already, I don't know any RKs who use EftA in their skill rotations atm. something along these lines would be welcome.

[papafhill1]

I don't want to see a cash out for EftA.

Instead I'd like to see the following:
- Decrease in CD (to cast more frequently which will help the odds of Critting more with it) from 15s to 10s
- Decrease Induction slightly from 2.5s to 2s
- Decrease Initial Heal a little
- Decrease HoT Pulse to 3
- Decrease healing pips gained from 4 per cast to 3 per cast

I would like to use this skill more often for a powerful heal in tight spots and not to waste Health since a bulk heal is sometimes too much. I would like to use it with a hope of it critting for the splash Health instead of just looking for a big heal. If there is a dire situation and this doesn't Crit the RK can still place a bubble on the tank/group and just focus on HoTs to regen HP until EftA cools down. This skill is a reactive skill in contrast to all the other HoTs that are proavtice skills. That being said I think this skill needs to be a quicker skill to use for a decrease in benefits, but coupled with Truly Epic splash heals on crits will offset this reduction.

Other chances to other skills:
Nothing Truly Ends - make it In-Combat Res.
Glorious Foreshadowing - make it tier down
Mending Verse - Decrease Induction, Increase HoT Pulses, make pulse ever 3 seconds for 18 seconds instead of 2 seconds for 10, increase potency of HoT, slightly decrease initial heal
Rallying Verse - Replace increases to Health with a bubble

There are a lot of different changes that can be made and each player that suggests a change wants it tailored to how they place... I'm the same and these changes would work great for me but that doesn't mean anyone will agree with me. I like a lot of suggestions so far and I'm excited for U14 now. When is it coming out?

[Kortaan]

Since Kortaan mentioned Bombastic Inspiration, I'll add my two cents. This skill should be completely redesigned, or scrap it and give us TWDNKU back.

I very much like this suggestion aswell.

Currently, both the Lightning and Fire lines have really cool capstone skills. The healing line capstone is very meh. Blue line wants a cool capstone too!

[Kander]

About those 3-4 issues to fix on rune keeper I'd like to give my oppinion in all of them:

1- First EftA, I liked some suggestions, just buff it a lot if you do it cashout.
2- Bombastic Inspiration: Morale based trigger could have issues with spammable healings on move and instant cast, so maybe just give a bubble on expiration, or any other suggestion...maybe turn it into a damage reduction skill, or anything else...right now only useful heal of the skill is a decent HoT magnitude.
3- Do not fall this day: Make it useful again. Having half the duration than cooldown, not even allowing you to keep on autorez a single person on your fellowhsip while minstrels can get 1 in combat rezz each 3 minutes to a person after it's dead... Give us a skill the same as minstrel's or captain's ones or just turn it into an useful skill, I honestly don't have any ideas to make it a good preventive rezz without making it either useless or extremely Overpowered, maybe a common in combat revive could be just better.
4- Revive morale trait: Turn it into anything else, cause it's useless right now, why would you care on spending 5 trait points for having people rezzed out of combat with 25% more morale? Could just be a trait to increase HoT pulses or to just drasicallly reduce cooldown of auto rezz(around 5 minutes reduction or more even).

[PKCrichton]

About those 3-4 issues to fix on rune keeper I'd like to give my oppinion in all of them:

1- First EftA, I liked some suggestions, just buff it a lot if you do it cashout.
2- Bombastic Inspiration: Morale based trigger could have issues with spammable healings on move and instant cast, so maybe just give a bubble on expiration, or any other suggestion...maybe turn it into a damage reduction skill, or anything else...right now only useful heal of the skill is a decent HoT magnitude.
3- Do not fall this day: Make it useful again. Having half the duration than cooldown, not even allowing you to keep on autorez a single person on your fellowhsip while minstrels can get 1 in combat rezz each 3 minutes to a person after it's dead... Give us a skill the same as minstrel's or captain's ones or just turn it into an useful skill, I honestly don't have any ideas to make it a good preventive rezz without making it either useless or extremely Overpowered, maybe a common in combat revive could be just better.
4- Revive morale trait: Turn it into anything else, cause it's useless right now, why would you care on spending 5 trait points for having people rezzed out of combat with 25% more morale? Could just be a trait to increase HoT pulses or to just drasicallly reduce cooldown of auto rezz(around 5 minutes reduction or more even).

Equalizing the cooldown and duration of DNF is supposedly one of the issues U14 is supposed to address per comments from Jinjaah about U13's changes.

[papafhill1]

About those 3-4 issues to fix on rune keeper I'd like to give my oppinion in all of them:

1- First EftA, I liked some suggestions, just buff it a lot if you do it cashout.
2- Bombastic Inspiration: Morale based trigger could have issues with spammable healings on move and instant cast, so maybe just give a bubble on expiration, or any other suggestion...maybe turn it into a damage reduction skill, or anything else...right now only useful heal of the skill is a decent HoT magnitude.
3- Do not fall this day: Make it useful again. Having half the duration than cooldown, not even allowing you to keep on autorez a single person on your fellowhsip while minstrels can get 1 in combat rezz each 3 minutes to a person after it's dead... Give us a skill the same as minstrel's or captain's ones or just turn it into an useful skill, I honestly don't have any ideas to make it a good preventive rezz without making it either useless or extremely Overpowered, maybe a common in combat revive could be just better.
4- Revive morale trait: Turn it into anything else, cause it's useless right now, why would you care on spending 5 trait points for having people rezzed out of combat with 25% more morale? Could just be a trait to increase HoT pulses or to just drasicallly reduce cooldown of auto rezz(around 5 minutes reduction or more even).

I agree with 3 and 4. I just think 4 should be left alone and the skill itself should be adjusted to an in-combat rez. I love the halving of the duration on Do Not Fall This Day. It's annoying how long you have to wait and also I can't stand how I still have yet to get the Prophetic Word deed because I literally need to play for 41 Hours and 40 Minutes in order to complete this deed which is outrageous. I'm level 50 working on a deed from level 40 (IIRC). I'm not even half way there and the worst part is I need to be in a fellowship or in a skirmish with an escort to cast this on. Just terrible all together. Lower the CD and increase the duration.

As far as 1 and 2 go... I have given my 2 cents on number 1 and number 2 I haven't been able to use so I don't know anything about it.

[Thymelody]

I would have loved to have been a part of that design discussion to understand what people were thinking on this one.

No kidding.. I'm wholeheartedly with you on this one.

As for EftA cashout (assuming no other changes to the skill), I'm half afraid this will somehow make it to Update 14 live due to some "silent" majority that will neither post on these forums nor on BR forums their reasoning behind supporting such a change, but will overwhelmingly support the change nonetheless. Sadly, I wish my fears were completely unfounded.
I'm not quite ready to get out my pitchfork yet, though. I'm keeping my hopes alive, for the time being

[papafhill1]

Since Kortaan mentioned Bombastic Inspiration, I'll add my two cents. This skill should be completely redesigned, or scrap it and give us TWDNKU back. The delivery of its big heal and the need for a big heal at the time of delivery seldom coincide. I've wondered many times how such a bizarre skill ever made it past the first design discussion. It's useful as an attunement builder and for its HoTs-on-the-run capability, but that's about it.

Let's talk use cases for a moment. As a healing RK in fellowship, you've spammed BI all over everyone. Then a fellowship member takes a big hit which drops them to less than half health.

Do you?
a) Just continue with normal heals on them, cross your fingers, and hope they're still alive in 8 seconds when BI's big heal kicks in.
b) Throw a bubble or a big heal on your target to keep them alive until BI's big heal triggers, in which case BI's heal will likely end up as a massive over heal.
c) Just use it for its HoT-on-the-run capability, and accept that it's a skill with serious design flaws and limited practical utility as far as its big heal is concerned.

I would have loved to have been a part of that design discussion to understand what people were thinking on this one.

After reading this I think I get the big issue. It needs a trigger skill. So if the person takes a big hit you can trigger it to dispel early and have that big heal at the end proc with the trigger. I think it should be a smaller heal if triggered early but it should have some way to deliver the heal when you need it instead of trying to impossibly predict when a big hit comes and getting the big heal to proc right when needed.

EDIT: My idea would be a Tier up for BI. So as each pulse of the HoTs happen you get a BI tier that dispels either when you trigger it or at the end of the HoTs for the best possible heal. Maybe the big heal would happen like this:

If triggered early at
Tier 1 -60%
Tier 2 - 75%
Tier 3 - 90%

obviously the last tier is when the big heal hits so no need to have a tier 4. Just my thoughts, didn't read much of page two of this thread so maybe this suggestion already exists.

[Kortaan]

After reading this I think I get the big issue. It needs a trigger skill. So if the person takes a big hit you can trigger it to dispel early and have that big heal at the end proc with the trigger. I think it should be a smaller heal if triggered early but it should have some way to deliver the heal when you need it instead of trying to impossibly predict when a big hit comes and getting the big heal to proc right when needed.

EDIT: My idea would be a Tier up for BI. So as each pulse of the HoTs happen you get a BI tier that dispels either when you trigger it or at the end of the HoTs for the best possible heal. Maybe the big heal would happen like this:

If triggered early at
Tier 1 -60%
Tier 2 - 75%
Tier 3 - 90%

obviously the last tier is when the big heal hits so no need to have a tier 4. Just my thoughts, didn't read much of page two of this thread so maybe this suggestion already exists.

I'm not sure if adding a separate trigger skill would solve the problem.
You must add a cooldown longer than Bombastic Inspiration itself, otherwise you give RKs a spammable burst heal that builds lots of attunement. (You could argue disallowing movement during for the trigger skill but not being able to move for skills without an induction just doesn't make sense to me.)
But adding a cooldown still makes the skill situational to use. You now not only have to keep track of your stacks, but also whether or not this is going to throw your trigger cooldown out of whack.

The idea behind Bombastic Inspiration was probably that you needed to predict when the damage would hit and pre-emptively provide healing to the target.
On live however, we've seen that this just doesn't work, you either can't accurately predict eight seconds ahead of time when the damage is going to come in, or the burst heal goes to waste.
Putting additional healers into the mix makes this skill even more weird, cause while you're confident and waiting for the burst tick to go off, that minstrel in the other group sees a half empty morale-bar and starts throwing its own big burst heals, that render the BI burst tick obsolete. Hell, maybe the player themselves get nervous and pops a health pot.

A trigger mechanic would promote stacking BI on multiple players in the group and switch to the target that takes spike damage to consume the stacks with your trigger skill.
But at the end of the day I'm still going to run my rotation stacking Writs of Health with Rousing Words on everyone, and while I'm channeling RW, BI is falling off. Meaning I won't have the stacks for the big heals when I need them, cause I just needed to re-apply a new BI HoT.
All in all, I think Bombastic Inspiration with a separate trigger skill would be a very clunky mechanic.

Perhaps we should consider Bombastic Inspiration being that trigger itself, instead of BI and a trigger.
New Bombastic Inspiration could consume all HoTs on a target and heal the target for a large burst, scaling on the amount (stacks!) of HoTs on the target.
But this would make EftA obsolete

[Ames]

Totally agreed with previous posters - EFTA have to remain the same, without any cashout.
Also, CD should be slightly decreased OR, minding verse restored, or some other meaningful changes.

And some wishes/to be fixed:
1) animations/inductions must be changed for the following skills (since they block for some time executing of next skill, aka delay):
-- Rune-sign of Winter
-- Prelude to Hope
-- Our Fates Entwined
- Scribe a New Ending
- Steady Hands
-- *Bombastic Inspiration (don't really remember if it has animation delay as well)
- *maybe some other skills im aware of

Shocking touch has skill lag as well. Essentially most of the skills that got tweaked to do other things and some new instant ones are experiencing this skill lag.