Healing tests in EV hard (CM/Seer)

[Aritok]

1.2 is out some time now. Yesterday i had the chance to test the old stuff with the new changes.

We ran EV hard mode two times for two groups. First group was with my sage (full columi) second run was with my commando (full rakata+).

 

The result was as expected. If the idea of the patch was to balance these two healers, they failed. But if they wanted make the sage the better of these two healers, they did really well.

 

 

My first impression without the logs: The sage healing is easier, more effective and alot better. No Force problems at all with healing during the run.

But alot more with the commando, because single target healing on the AEs make is a bit nasty. If you have to cast 4 heals in a row (and this already include BI), you end up with lowered ammo regen already. And the weak AE with 4 targets is not even close enough to heal the raid, and nothing compared to salavation.

 

But after the logs it came excactly to what i was thinking. Salvation is destroying the whole balance and messing up with everything and making the sage the "easy way" healer.

 

 

Both raids took around 1 hour (sage one a bit faster, commando one a bit longer).

Sage raid was: 2 Sage healer, 2 Shadow tanks, 1 Shadow DPS, 3 sage DPS.

Commando raid was: 1 Commando healer, 1 Scoundrel Healer, 2 Commando DPS, 1 Sentinal DPS, 1 Vanguard tank, 1 Vanguard DPS, 1 Gunslinger DPS.

 

Overall healing for the OPS:

Sage healing: 2.285.368 healing; 940,5 HPS (Salvation 48,5% - 1.109.034 healing)

Commando healing: 1.488.064 healing; 483,1 HPS

 

Boss 1 - XRR-3:

Sage: 427025 healing; 361 sec; 1183,4 HPS

Commando: 300591 healing; 344 sec; 872,7 HPS

 

Boss 2 - Gharj:

Sage: 564493 healing; 499 sec; 1130,7 HPS (pure overheal that was not even need. But salvation dont cost much, so its easy to spam).

Commando: 318674; 475 sec; 670,2 HPS

 

Boss 5 - Soa:

Sage: 583722 healing; 785 sec; 744 HPS (serrious problems with soa and pylons hitting him in phase 3 )

Commando: 374374 healing; 609 sec; 614,3 HPS

Fixes of Soa made the fight really easy now. Nearly no damage at all to the raid. Ball Lighning damage was nearly full absorbed by force armor (not even in these healing numbers). So you can easy add 20 or 30 force armor for over 3k each to the healing numbers (around 60-100k extra)

 

On all fights, the sage had never ever any problem with force and could have healed alot more. The commando wasnt full at the limit as well on most times. But sometimes in the low ammo regen area.

 

 

 

At peak times, like the trash clearing, the sage could easy reach over 2200 HPS, without any problems. And this even for some time. The commando can reach 1700 HPS, but only for a short time, because once the ammo is gone, its over with HPS.

The overall constant HPS for the commando seems to be, from all tests, at around 1100 HPS. something that i calculated as well before the patch (with my gear, that is used for the logs as well). The sage, with salvation, easy at constant 2000 HPS without any problems.

 

 

I will go on an do more tests on each fight i do. But honestly bioware: Give me ONE good reason why i even should play the commando for healing anymore. What does the commando have that the sage cant do better and easier? Not even to forget these great toys that are not even in the logs. Like force armor and rescue.

 

 

And again, do not forget one part on all these numbers. The sage had only columi, not a single part of rakata. The commando is full Rakata and better. Given this, the sage could do around 10% more healing with equal gear to the commando. With pure single target healing both are about the same. But the salvation let the sage go skyrocket in healing. And btw, its the same for flashpoints with 4 players. The difference is not as high, but still alot.

 

 

 

Few more exmaples:

- Average targets hit with salvation: 4,97. Average targets hit with Kolto Bomb: 3,58.

- Most heal from sage: salvation (48,5% = 1.109.034 healing). Most heal from Commando: MP (32,4% = 481.555 healing).

- HS cast: 110; MP cast: 130; Salvation casts: 47

- Average heal per MP: 3704; average heal per Salvation: 23.596; average heal per Kolto Bomb: 5342

- Healing Resonance (from relic proc), Medpacs and Adrenaline Rush dont crit.

[Dingoe]

I'm a sage healer. I have only healed as a commando at around about level 36, and I found the area heal to be just silly. This was pre 1.2 mind you. Still, it's insane to think that they can't have all AOE heals work on 8 targets. Why even have a limit? This limit only affects operations and (when it was still around) ilum pvp.

 

Let commandos and Scoundrels have 8 man AOE heals!

[NoFishing]

Sage raid was: 2 Sage healer, 2 Shadow tanks, 1 Shadow DPS, 3 sage DPS.

 

Off-topic, but let me guess, not one piece of consular gear dropped, right!

[Gabe_Grinstead]

OP,

 

I appreciate the informative post. My hope is that Bioware is and has been (as they say) been logging the performance behind the scenes. If this post is accurate and reflective of the majority of encounters, then I think further adjustments will be made.

 

The one thing I think they should 'unerf' is Field Triage. That would put us back in the game because our trick pony would be burst healing, something we did better than the the other two classes. Currently, we are last in every category. Field Triage needs to be restored to 1.1 levels so that we can actually make use of SSC more often than every 2 minutes.

[Dwynir]

I've run into the same situation. My CM is in full Rakata and I outheal him on my sage who is in full columi in every HM operation fight. I don't use salvation every CD and still out heal my CM simply due to burning ammo so fast now and having to wait and spam Hammer Shot heals until it regens.

 

After trying out a storymode of the new op i'm not even going to bother bringing my CM there. It just wouldn't be fair to the rest of my guild to put them through that. I'll instead bring my undergeared sage or the sawbones i'm leveling up right now. Its not that you can't use a CM to heal in the new operation, its just that you are being terribly unfair to the rest of your raid group doing so.

 

I really only wanted to play this game for the unique healing style of CM. Now that this has been royally screwed over i'll be quiting if fixes are not implemented by the time Diablo 3 comes out. Its too bad, this class was a great new flavor for healing.

[Aaoogaa]

OP,

 

I appreciate the informative post. My hope is that Bioware is and has been (as they say) been logging the performance behind the scenes. If this post is accurate and reflective of the majority of encounters, then I think further adjustments will be made.

 

The one thing I think they should 'unerf' is Field Triage. That would put us back in the game because our trick pony would be burst healing, something we did better than the the other two classes. Currently, we are last in every category. Field Triage needs to be restored to 1.1 levels so that we can actually make use of SSC more often than every 2 minutes.

 

They were supposed to have done this on the test server....right? Before the patch was implemented they should have had the metrics....which they seem to su....oh nm

[ArchangelLBC]

Weird question maybe but I'm wondering if things would have been somewhat different with a sage+other healer.

 

Can't speak to healing at all from my own experience but I know when I used to run with a CM in 1.1, we used the CM to main heal the tank and melee since even then the AoE hit the only melee we had, and back then the buffs to damage reduction/Healing received seemed to convince our CM it was worth it to use Kolto Bomb early and often.

 

 

You're right though, salvation is the big game changer with it's ability to heal so many all at once, hope BW changes things up, and with buffs to Kolto Bomb instead of nerfs to Salvation, soon.

[Aritok]

Weird question maybe but I'm wondering if things would have been somewhat different with a sage+other healer.

 

Can't speak to healing at all from my own experience but I know when I used to run with a CM in 1.1, we used the CM to main heal the tank and melee since even then the AoE hit the only melee we had, and back then the buffs to damage reduction/Healing received seemed to convince our CM it was worth it to use Kolto Bomb early and often.

 

 

You're right though, salvation is the big game changer with it's ability to heal so many all at once, hope BW changes things up, and with buffs to Kolto Bomb instead of nerfs to Salvation, soon.

 

I was using the CM as well as tank burst healer. The 10% healing increase (ohh wait, its only 5% now) and the 5% healing increaes from KB (ohh wait, its only 3% now) combined with the 10% damage reduction (forget it, as well only 5% now) were really good for healing the tank.

But as you can see, they nerfed this so badly, that its not help at all anymore. And this is what piss me off. They not only nerfed the healing and the ammo regen, they nerfed on top as well the bonus effects. One of these would have been enough. But all together was a gutshot.

 

Why should i use a CM to heal a tank, when a sage can outheal him on said tank? It make no sense anymore at all to use a CM.

 

Yesterday we did Jarg and Sorno on Nightmare. With me and scoundrel as healer. And i really came to the healing limit. Around 1200 for the few tries we had. 1200 HPS was the pure max i could get with chain healing. Sadly the tank went down so many time into a critical range, that i HAD TO heal him, and ruined my ammo regen this way. So it was only a question if we wipe now because i didnt heal, or in 20 sec because i did heal and went out of ammo.

 

Took us 4 tries. Not because of healing, but because of missing alot of interrupts on the unloads.

1st try: 1113,7 HPS

2nd try: 1121,2 HPS

3rd try: 1145,8 HPS

4th try: 1207,8 HPS (440 sec)

 

Foreman Crusher: 980,3 HPS (402 sec)

Well, this is a different fight, because he has alot spare time where you dont need to heal this much. But on frenzy you have to heal like mad. But even for this are the healing numbers higher than i would have thought.

 

I hope i can do some tests with the Sage today on the same mobs.

 

Sidenote on the healing compare between CM and scoundrel on the raid: Scoundrel 7.9 million, me 6.8 million. But i was really slacking a bit on trash and just doing healing if need. Like for example on bonecrusher. Him 450k, me 200k. There was just not this much heal need so i did DPS. Or Karagga: he did 550k, i only 275k, because all went so well and healing was not need this much. Same on trash, he did about 2x as much healing as me. He even said he was just overhealing. But even with the overhealing, he got HPS of around 1250 to 1500 on some bosses. Numbers i could not even reach with the CM, but easy top with the sage.

 

So here my thanks again to bioware for total ruining the healing balance and messing up the CM this badly. As healer he is worthless now.

Edited April 19, 2012 by Aritok

[RuQu]

Thanks for running these, analyzing them, and posting the results.

 

I apologize for not getting back to you on the logs you sent me. I'm having SWTOR motivation issues at the moment, for obvious reasons.

 

None of your results are a surprise to anyone who plays this game. The cause of the AoE imbalance has been well known since launch (I assume beta players pointed it out too since it is trivially obvious), yet GZ explicitly told us "working as intended." They have no intention to balance it.

 

We told them on the PTS forum what these changes would result in. For a couple of CM/BG who have sent me their post-1.2 logs, my sims showed extremely similar values. They spent all of their budget on story and voices instead of actual gameplay, and that makes this game very easy to "solve." The changes are not hard to quantify, no matter how much they try to confuse the issue with claims of undocumented changes that turn out to not exist.

 

There is absolutely no reason to believe that BW will realize their mistake and change. Posts by the Dev team regularly come across as defensive and in complete denial that any problem exists, just as they always have. They have internal metrics which remarkably bear no relation to what the players see and they don't even attempt to quantify a "fun factor."

 

I think I'm going to be taking a hiatus from this game, as I can't bring myself to login anymore. Perhaps some time away will help. Perhaps I'm wrong and they will start on a path to making a better game or at the very least admit that they are not infallible. I doubt it, though, and I think this game will go down (at least for me, personally) as one of the saddest disappointments and greatest wastes of potential in gaming history.

[ErrantMercenary]

More numbers confirming what many of us have tested into the ground. Thanks for this, even if it's sad to wave goodbye to my Commando so soon.

 

At this point, the only lingering curiosity I have is what metrics I was outstripping that deserved such a sledgehammer nerf. I mean, it clearly has nothing to do with "fun" "heals per second" or "maximum potential output" because you literally just showed that a Commando a full gear tier above other healers still can't compete in a meaningful fashion. I know someone has to be the worst of the three healer ACs, but this seems like a secret Hard Mode mechanic. Want to up the difficulty on your TOR experience? Bring a Combat Medic.

 

But seriously. What are these mysterious metrics? "Green colored-spell effects per hour"? "Ham Sandwiches Consumed Per Operation"? "Average number of sexual partners"?

[Aritok]

Yea, i know that it was talked about this in on the PTS as well already. And everyone knew what will happen with the healing number once the 1.2 comes out. So these are for sure no new numbers and no surprisses.

 

This is just another prove to Bioware and GZ to show: "here, we were right, you were wrong. You messed us up and there are no hidden changes to compensate what you have done."

 

Its just to sad, that they are to blind and to arrogant to see this. And standing on the point that all is fine and working as inteneded. When we prove them more than once that it is not.

 

Sure, all content is still doable and killable. But its really not fun anymore for a healer (at least not for a commando).

 

I really would love to see some combat logs from nightmare KP and EV with two commandos as healers. If this is even possible at all. But i dont think any guild has two commando healer left after this . As far as i know, i am the only one on my server at OPS level.

[RuQu]

Yea, i know that it was talked about this in on the PTS as well already. And everyone knew what will happen with the healing number once the 1.2 comes out. So these are for sure no new numbers and no surprisses.

 

This is just another prove to Bioware and GZ to show: "here, we were right, you were wrong. You messed us up and there are no hidden changes to compensate what you have done."

 

Its just to sad, that they are to blind and to arrogant to see this. And standing on the point that all is fine and working as inteneded. When we prove them more than once that it is not.

 

Sure, all content is still doable and killable. But its really not fun anymore for a healer (at least not for a commando).

 

I really would love to see some combat logs from nightmare KP and EV with two commandos as healers. If this is even possible at all. But i dont think any guild has two commando healer left after this . As far as i know, i am the only one on my server at OPS level.

 

The results may not be new news, but it is still worth posting/discussing. They ignored the results from PTS, now that it is Live there are far more people with access to the content, so it provides a good check to see that they are seeing the same results we saw/predicted.

 

As for people still healing...you might be right. Reedyn did a survey over on the healer forum. It had some flaws in the way questions were asked that likely introduced some bias, but, if anything, the biases tended to be pro-BW. The results can be seen in his blog post on the topic. As I said, it wasn't perfect, but it shows a large healer subscription loss rate of ~16% for Sc/Op to almost 30% for Comm/Merc. If I remember right, it was about 22% total across all respondents.

 

I know my guild hasn't raided since the patch. Our sign-ups keep coming up 1-2 people short and we don't tend to PUG. I've signed up to tank or heal for each, and our main Sage isn't leaving, so it has actually been a problem with DPS not feeling like raiding, but the result has been me not healing any Ops since the patch. The dissatisfaction isn't reserved just to us healers.

[swtorEleani]

Exactly what everyone predicted beofre 1.2 went live...

 

Sage/sorc healers will still pull high numbers but mostly due to salvation/revivi. The playstyle for us now sucks big time... I spam shield, hot and rivivi on CD and when I've got spare time for a long cast spend it on DI. Sorc heal right now feels like smoothing out the dmg that no one really drops too low, as we're not able to heal them quickly enough with a big heal to neutralize random high spikes in incoming dmg. That's the part of the OP- or the BH-healer, it's such a dull gameplay..

 

Your BH-heal numbers seem a little bit too low, our bm-heal pulled around 100-200hps more than your posted logs in every fight last week. Maybe it's the gear difference. Still a huge difference to OP and Sorcs nontheless.

 

The problem is the combination of healers now: If you bring no sorcs, you will probably prefer two OP-healers. For fights with burst dmg (almost any fight there is) you probably should better not bring along two sorcs and the combination of Sorc and BH has a little touch of masochism; bringing two BH: pointless.

 

I and many others I spoke to during the last two weeks see a downright stampede of healers leaving swtor, I had around 30 direct inquiries. if we've got spots left for dps or tanks, as they lost their guild-healers and they can'T find new ones....

The gamble of Bioware doesn't seem to pay off, almost no one rerolls, they just unsub and move on.

[oaceen]

i haven't done any extensive testing, but my guild did the jarg / sorno fight in KP HM last night with two sage healers and had some problems with keeping up the healing. they could heal everyone for quite a lot, but they ran out of force very quickly to do so, and eventually one of the tanks would die and we would wipe not too long after.

 

we decided to switch me to healing and one of the sages to DPS and had a bit more success.

 

ammo seemed to be a big issue though, but not something that was completely unmanageable. that said, if i stopped healing the tank for more than 5s, he was dead. i could only throw out a couple spot heals here and there on other people (or a nice kolto bomb on a group of people). the 3% inc healing isn't worth it to save for the tank imo, but i was still in that mode of throwing it on the tank as much as i could, so i wasted quite a few of them.

 

i had to hit SCC quite a lot, and had lots of ammo issues afterwards. my rotation was basically kolto bomb at the beginning, AMP on as many people as possible until kolto bomb was up again, then more AMP until SCC ran out

i figured that the HoT from AMP made it better than MP (and since they were the same cost and the latter had a longer cast time....)

 

i found myself spamming hammer shot to top people off, but any burst healing had to be used sparingly or i'd run out of ammo. in one instance, i ran out of ammo, my recharge cells were on CD, and it was very difficult (but i managed) to recover from it.

 

 

we still wiped, but not due to lack of healing. it was due to lack of dps. they kept enraging at about 10-20%

with the 2 sage healers though, we had a few wipes from the tanks dying (and i was specced dps helping out by throwing out a few heals when i could)

 

 

from what i can say from this, a sage + commando healer seemed to work better than two sages for the jarg + sorno fight.

that said, we finished bonethrasher with the same two sage healers just fine though, and the first droid in EV HM seems to go a lot easier with two sages stacking their big AOE heals on everyone, especially during the cannonade (and i was again helping with spot heals while specced for DPS). i don't think we would even want to try it without two sage healers.

[Aritok]

I was just analysing the KP logs again. But this way other way around.

 

Checked my casts, added up the times, and checked how much "spare" time was there.

 

 

Took Jarg fight 4. The fight was 440 sec. I can only take a fight where i was at the limit with healing. Taking any other fight would for sure result in wrong data:

 

- Adding all casts together, i come to 290 sec. Means there are 150 sec where i didnt cast anything.

- Now i took the time and checked how much ammo i would have gained in 440 sec with the given recharge cells and supercharge cells. With the basic of 0,6 ammo regen (even though it was not max all time time, sometimes i was total out of ammo and the regen was gimped. This would give me a ammo pool of 302.

- Adding up the ammo cost of all casts ending at 260 ammo spend.

- Given the fact, that was not always on 0,6 ammo regen, it can be, that i was using the max out of the ammo that was possible.

- This end in 150 sec i could have used HS; means 100 extra HS, with average hits of 274 makes 82.200 more healing. Moving my HPS from 1200 to nearly 1400. I just dont like to waste a GCD for HS, when i always might have to cast a heal. And i dont want to get struck on a HS when the tank is getting punshed. But it seems a few more HS would be possible .

[Soltrooper]

I was just analysing the KP logs again. But this way other way around.

 

Checked my casts, added up the times, and checked how much "spare" time was there.

 

 

Took Jarg fight 4. The fight was 440 sec. I can only take a fight where i was at the limit with healing. Taking any other fight would for sure result in wrong data:

 

- Adding all casts together, i come to 290 sec. Means there are 150 sec where i didnt cast anything.

- Now i took the time and checked how much ammo i would have gained in 440 sec with the given recharge cells and supercharge cells. With the basic of 0,6 ammo regen (even though it was not max all time time, sometimes i was total out of ammo and the regen was gimped. This would give me a ammo pool of 302.

- Adding up the ammo cost of all casts ending at 260 ammo spend.

- Given the fact, that was not always on 0,6 ammo regen, it can be, that i was using the max out of the ammo that was possible.

- This end in 150 sec i could have used HS; means 100 extra HS, with average hits of 274 makes 82.200 more healing. Moving my HPS from 1200 to nearly 1400. I just dont like to waste a GCD for HS, when i always might have to cast a heal. And i dont want to get struck on a HS when the tank is getting punshed. But it seems a few more HS would be possible .

 

It's also more uses of SCC (which means more non hammer shot heals and much more healing)

[Aritok]

But more ammo dont help, when the tank died, because i was stuck in a HS and the next heal take 3.5 sec to hit. .

 

There cant be this much more SCC in the time. I did 11 SCC in 440 sec. Alone the duration and the time it take to charge up takes already at least 330 sec (with 2 MP and 6 HS). So it would have been at least 3 more SCC in the time.

But you give up the straight 3% healing buff for a short time 5% buff with a charge up. In addition you lose the 5% damage reduce when you might need it.

 

Best example is foreman crusher. I am not using the SCC on this fight as much as i could. Just to make sure i will have it full charged when he goes on frenzy. Because this is the time i need it. Doing it all the time its up means i risk the tank to get killed on the next frenzy.

 

In small its the same on Jarg. I keep a SCC ready for the carb probe time. We have only one tank and a offtank. But for the time the offtank has to take over jarg, its more important to have the damage reduce ready over 1 ammo now and a dead tank 10 sec later.

Edited April 20, 2012 by Aritok

[TempestasSilva]

I am a BH/Merc/Bodyguard.

 

I can tell you that I have raided with an Op healer and a sorc healer in 8man EC Normal. While learning the fights, meaning people are screwing up so there is no shortage of healing needed, in 1/2 Rakata the best HPS I have done is 1187 with 9.3% overhealing. I usually average around 900 HPS on boss fights and about 750 if you include trash and all for the night.

 

On Boss fights, our Operative was averaging 1200 to 1700 and our Sorc was averaging 1600 to 2100. I have not taken their logs and calculated the overhealing, but there is no way it drops their effective healing down to mine and I don't think it matters. Even if they overheal a lot, their output is still way may than anything I can manage.

 

It is my personal opinion that based on the numbers I have experienced and seen in other threads that 1) They may still further nerf Sorc and 2) They don't appear to think my class is underperforming.

 

So my operative is now level 22.

 

Even if they buffed my current class, it would have to be in a way that adds fun, because the heat changes and SCG changes sucked any fun out of healing with this class IMO.

 

Unfortunately, my guild needs me to heal and outside of raid times, I don't get a whole lot of time to play this game. So, I don't know how long it will take to level the Operative and gear it appropriately to take over healing, but that is my goal.

[Hologramx]

CM is already broken even before 1.2 when dealing with overall performance.

I have both at level 50 and both healed EV/KP and that's what I feel, and why I stop playing my CM.

CM are supposed to be good at Single Target healing, which is the role of a MT healer. However, the disparity between their AoE heals with that of sage is too large to be balanced with the disparity between the single target healing, which is only a small amount.

And with 1.2, CM is nothing but only a heroics healer even fully specced and geared.

And their damage as a dps is also horrible. Even a geared CM finds it hard to solo for dailies.

You have to rely on some of your melee abilities for the dps, and yet Mortar Volley requires a minimum range of 5m. What a horrible design. They want us to get in melee or not? I don't think they have any idea about this.

[RoadRash]

Bioware has proven to be clueless when it comes to healing balance. They destroyed Bodyguard's to be the most un-fun class in SWTOR, the class has no mechanic.

 

Yet with all the "metrics" proving them wrong you don't see them post anything about this huge mistake they made.

 

Ignoring it wont fix it and that is the route they're taking shame on them.

 

They need to make it so Healing Scan> Rapid Scan is worth even using to start with. The cost of Rapid Scan after Healing Scan needs to be lowered to be worth using that combo or increase the heal amount of Rapid Scan. Kolto Shell needs to fixed also 16 heat is way to high of a cost for this skill buff the amount it can heal or lower the cost.

 

So many things need tweaking but those are good things to start with.

 

Not getting my hopes up since they seem to be incompetent when it comes to balance,

Edited April 25, 2012 by RoadRash

[Hoojoo]

Bioware has proven to be clueless when it comes to healing balance. They destroyed Bodyguard's to be the most un-fun class in SWTOR, the class has no mechanic.

 

Yet with all the "metrics" proving them wrong you don't see them post anything about this huge mistake they made.

 

Ignoring it wont fix it and that is the route they're taking shame on them.

 

They need to make it so Healing Scan> Rapid Scan is worth even using to start with. The cost of Rapid Scan after Healing Scan needs to be lowered to be worth using that combo or increase the heal amount of Rapid Scan. Kolto Shell needs to fixed also 16 heat is way to high of a cost for this skill buff the amount it can heal or lower the cost.

 

So many things need tweaking but those are good things to start with.

 

Not getting my hopes up since they seem to be incompetent when it comes to balance,

 

wrong forum

[TempestasSilva]

wrong forum

 

Because it is sooo inappropriate for the mirror class to make comments, am I right?