Why do healers benefit double from Expertise? Can a Dev explain this design decision?

[xdvesper]

I'm not talking about whether healing is overpowered or not. I'm concerned about the implication on gear progression, especially on future sets. Say a DPS class (person A) attacks a healer class (person B).

 

Scenario 1 - everyone has zero expertise.

Person A attacks person B with a 100 damage spell. Everyone has zero expertise so 100 damage is done.

Person B heals himself with a 100 healing spell (after trauma). Again this lands for 100 heal since there is zero expertise.

 

Scenario 2 - everyone farms warzones and gets 1100 expertise.

Person A attacks person B for 100 damage. Everyone has the same level of expertise so 100 damage is done. I know the maths behind this is under debate: if you follow accepted math order of operations you'd come to this conclusion, if you believe the game seperately adds expertise effects before applying them on damage (which is very unlikely) you'd come to a number of 104 damage done. Regardless, this doesn't change the outcome - moving on -

Person B heals himself with the same 100 healing spell (after trauma). However this lands for 112 heal now since there is 12% healing done due to expertise.

 

As you can see, as everyone gears up, heals become more powerful than dps. Currently the disparity is about 12%. In the future it may be 15%.

 

So my question is - why do healers scale with Expertise while DPS classes do not, as the entire server gears up?

 

If you removed the +healing bonus entirely from Expertise then both healers and DPS would scale at the same rate. If the underlying problem is that healers have too much or too little survivability then you can directly tweak this by changing the Trauma debuff % - this has the advantage of balancing PVP for both the ungeared players and geared players. Any mechanic adjustement to Expertise will fail to capture ungeared players, which are still a significant portion of your playing population.

 

Basically, I'm suggesting letting Expertise only affect damage done and damage received: any balancing of healers should be done via Trauma tweaks, so we do not get unintended scaling effects.

 

Right now it would be understandable that lower geared players might complain that ungeared healers are useless and geared players complain that geared healers are unkillable, and it's all because of this unintended scaling.

[nallard]

You are basing your scenario on an incorrect premise. Your math doesn't take into account things like cast times,, procs, buffs and a whole host of other considerations. Not to mention the real considerations like uptime, resource management, and the general ebb and flow of a game.

 

While still far from adequate, you would be better off comparing dps vs hps from testing.

 

In reality, though, these kinds of sterile and made up number games aren't really useful

[Darzk]

If this change were to be implemented I would be a far more effective healer (on an op or sorc at least) wearing my Rakata gear, as the majority of my healing is done to others, not myself. The +healing done is the only thing making the loss of output for survivability worth the tradeoff.

[xdvesper]

You are basing your scenario on an incorrect premise. Your math doesn't take into account things like cast times,, procs, buffs and a whole host of other considerations. Not to mention the real considerations like uptime, resource management, and the general ebb and flow of a game.

 

While still far from adequate, you would be better off comparing dps vs hps from testing.

 

In reality, though, these kinds of sterile and made up number games aren't really useful

 

DPS also have to take these factors into account so they cancel out.

 

It doesn't change the fact that in a whole WZ with everyone at 0 expertise, healers will be significantly weaker than playing in a WZ where everyone has 1000 expertise. As far as I can tell there is no good reason for this. I don't need to do a HPS test: it's a fact that healers will do 10% more HPS compared to before once everyone hits 1000 expertise, while DPS damage contribution remains the same as everyone gears up.

[Altruismo]

I answered this question in the other thread where you asked it, but anywyay:

 

The reason is that damage scales better off raw stats than healing does.

You can balance this in PVE by increasing the health of mobs at a faster rate than you increase their damage.

In PVP, you need to give healing a bit of a bump to keep damage from outdistancing it through raw stats, it's balanced

[LancelotOC]

Yea damage gets about 20% more from stats than healing does. So the 10% healing from expertise tries to bring healing back in line.

[xdvesper]

If this change were to be implemented I would be a far more effective healer (on an op or sorc at least) wearing my Rakata gear, as the majority of my healing is done to others, not myself. The +healing done is the only thing making the loss of output for survivability worth the tradeoff.

 

You are under a misconception: the +healing done applies equally to both others and yourself.

[jdi_knght]

The issue you mentioned is always an issue in any expertise/resilience system, which is a part of why many were against this type of system in the beginning. Damage & Mitigation can be counter-balanced pretty easily. On the other hand, healing screws everything up, because there's no easy way to counter the way it scales (there are technically ways, but many are fairly complex and tough to implement). As far as healing goes, as you get more expertise/resilience, it just gets better.

 

Now they can't just get rid of the healing effect. They have to give +healing to expertise, because otherwise we'd all just use our PvE gear (even in 1.2 there are a few pieces of PvE gear you can swap in without losing survivability or healing output).

 

They try to counter the problem by using the static -healing debuff in WZ, and by giving heals a lower % from expertise than DPS or damage-reduction when it comes to scaling.

 

It's not perfect, or anywhere near. But like I said, healing screws up the system. Thus we see band-aids like Trauma and lower % healing from expertise. It's a matter of trying to make healing work in a system that by design never worked properly for healing.

 

That "other" MMO had (probably still has) the exact same isssue with resilience. And they've been doing PvP for a while now.

[xdvesper]

I answered this question in the other thread where you asked it, but anywyay:

 

The reason is that damage scales better off raw stats than healing does.

You can balance this in PVE by increasing the health of mobs at a faster rate than you increase their damage.

In PVP, you need to give healing a bit of a bump to keep damage from outdistancing it through raw stats, it's balanced

 

This is a good point I hadn't considered. But it leads me to wonder then, why is this mechanic in place at all (the fact that damage scales better than healing). So basically I'm asking the same question, just one step back: why does damage and healing have to scale differently at all, and thus need all these band-aid solutions to patch it back to parity?

Edited April 20, 2012 by xdvesper

[Ushela]

1.2 is a dps zergest anyway, if you ask me healing does need some boost

[kickinhead]

Wooooooow, r u serious?

 

Your approach presupposes that healing actually has the same efficiency as DPS, but while DPS get 8k AoE insta-Crits or 4-5k instants, healers not even get half the output in heal as DPS get in DMG.

 

Healing in this game is atm heavily UP, everyone that doesn't see that just doesn't want to see it.

Edited April 20, 2012 by kickinhead

[Altruismo]

This is a good point I hadn't considered. But it leads me to wonder then, why is this mechanic in place at all (the fact that damage scales better than healing). So basically I'm asking the same question, just one step back: why does damage and healing have to scale differently at all, and thus need all these band-aid solutions to patch it back to parity?

 

I can't answer that categoracally, because I'm not part of the Dev team. But I would assume that its so it's possible to balance PVE content for classes that can heal, and classes that can't.

 

As it is, classes that can heal tend to have an easier time (lower risk of death) in solo PVE content already, tip the scales further in their favour (by scaling healing at the same rate as damage) and you're looking at a pretty serious redesign across all content. For PVE content you have to be able to either kill faster, or live longer.

If healing was 'equal' to DPS, damage would have to be higher to make things challenging for healers, which would be a death sentence to non-healing classes.

 

Better to keep PVE as is, and place a balancing measure on PVP to keep healers in play.

[TheVoidStalker]

Better to keep PVE as is, and place a balancing measure on PVP to keep healers in play.

 

Maybe they could put a debuff on everyone in PvP that makes them harder to heal...

[iceperson]

Stop looking for 1v1 balance in your MMO

[RayJ]

Maybe they could put a debuff on everyone in PvP that makes them harder to heal...

 

Healers already receive a 30% penalty to healing in PvP (and this has been the case since beta), so our heals are weaker. That is basically exactly what you're asking for. the Expertise bonus available right now doesn't even cover the loss of healing from that penalty, and I'm not sure if the diminishing returns will even allow it to in the future.

[Zellata]

This is a good point I hadn't considered. But it leads me to wonder then, why is this mechanic in place at all (the fact that damage scales better than healing). So basically I'm asking the same question, just one step back: why does damage and healing have to scale differently at all, and thus need all these band-aid solutions to patch it back to parity?

 

I think It's because of primary/secondary stats setup, which is too complicated to be balanced properly. It's not an inherent flaw - it's technically possible to balance it, just very difficult to do it right. Systems with only primary stats tend to be much easier to work with. For example, Aion, despite its multitude of flaws, never had any problems with healing - dps balance.

[SinnedWill]

Wooooooow, r u serious?

 

Your approach presupposes that healing actually has the same efficiency as DPS, but while DPS get 8k AoE insta-Crits or 4-5k instants, healers not even get half the output in heal as DPS get in DMG.

 

Healing in this game is atm heavily UP, everyone that doesn't see that just doesn't want to see it.

 

The only "8k AoE insta-Crits" in the game is Smash from Rage Jugg/Marauder and its mirror version for mirror specced Guardians/Sentinels. This damage is actually closer (when at maximum effect) to ~5-6k against an equal expertise Sage/Sorc without anything to mitigate damage and no dfensives up (which takes the most damage from smash, ~ 4.4-5.2k for medium armor wearers without defensives, ~ 4k tops for heavies/tanksins/shadows without defensives). Furthermore, it's not insta-crit. It requires a good bit of empowering in order to get to maximum effect, and there are many ways to counter the process of empowering it. It's also easy to avoid (even if you're the intended target) unless everything you have that would counter it is on CD, and the only time multiple people get hit by it is either the result of the rage specced marauder using force camo with full stack of shockwave to get position on a cluster - if a cluster doesn't see this coming from a jugg or marauder without force camo positioning (blatantly obvious just by checking if any melees are in shii-cho form), then they're pretty bad and deserve to get "lol-smashed".

 

"4-5k instants" - other than Ops/Scoundrels being able to dish out big hurt on a single target every 15-20s, these only come from crits on attacks that also require "empowering" - and with the exception of Mercs Heatseeker missile (which still supposedly is dealing ~6k on equal expertise squishies such as sage/sorc), the damages are closer to ~3.8k - 4.5k on an equal expertise squishy taking a powertech's railshot crit at maximum effect. Hell, the most I've seen a sniper hit my sorcerer for post 1.2 is 4200's with a followthrough crit.

[fungihoujo]

 

Scenario 1 - everyone has zero expertise.

Person A attacks person B with a 100 damage spell. Everyone has zero expertise so 100 damage is done.

Person B heals himself with a 100 healing spell (after trauma). Again this lands for 100 heal since there is zero expertise.

 

 

You lose right from the start. If I do a 100 damage spell with zero expertise on someone with zero exp, I do 100 damage. If I heal someone for 100 with no exp, I heal 70.

 

What healers would give for ANY level of expertise to make a 100 heal heal for 100.

[klorinator]

You lose right from the start. If I do a 100 damage spell with zero expertise on someone with zero exp, I do 100 damage. If I heal someone for 100 with no exp, I heal 70.

 

What healers would give for ANY level of expertise to make a 100 heal heal for 100.

 

you missed the part where he said "after trauma"

[LrdScorpio]

In PvP, Healing vs dps can not be measure directly.

 

For healers it would be more like healing + dmg output + any buffed absorbtions. That combined number would be more accurate as healers do not give up 100% of their dmg in order to heal well.

[Shlamorel]

Well healing is reduced by 30% when we are in PvP combat (we get a debuff called Trauma). This kinda offsets the expertise bonus I would imagine.

[Balmuck]

you missed the part where he said "after trauma"

 

Lol, after trauma.. That's a very nice way to cover up his stupid numbers.

 

 

Let's be realistic and very basic.

 

If we're taking a 100 damage and 100 healing ability and factor in the expertise at the most basic levels, without considering the billion other factors, the 100 damage would hit for about 122 with the way the current expertise works, and the 100 healing would hit for 78.4, if you factor in the -30% trauma debuff and the 12% expertise you get on healing if you're maxed.

 

 

If things worked the way he wanted them, it would only make healing more OP, because if we're talking about just pure, raw, PVE numbers, healing is a lot more OP that way then when you factor in trauma and expertise.

[Rouncer]

It's because at a low gear level it's better for the games to be faster as they are more likely to be made up of PuGs. By which I mean groups with low familiarity with each other, ie unlikely to focus fire targets. Such that a healer will be successful enough in those games even without any sort of boost from expertise and even after Trauma plays it's role.

 

As everyone involved gears up and is getting more expertise they are also gaining skill in how they play and are more likely to focus fire others even if inadvertently just because they will, as a group, look at a situation and recognize the same high value targets. Having the increased healing at the higher skill level is then beneficial as it lengthens the individual conflicts inside of the game, rewarding better play, and making the games more enjoyable/challenging to all involved.

Edited April 22, 2012 by Rouncer

[vimm]

Wooooooow, r u serious?

 

Your approach presupposes that healing actually has the same efficiency as DPS, but while DPS get 8k AoE insta-Crits or 4-5k instants, healers not even get half the output in heal as DPS get in DMG.

 

Healing in this game is atm heavily UP, everyone that doesn't see that just doesn't want to see it.

 

8k AoE insta-crits?

[ebado]

Well healing is reduced by 30% when we are in PvP combat (we get a debuff called Trauma). This kinda offsets the expertise bonus I would imagine.

 

It more than offsets. It's not even close. Healers are still in the hole by a lot. It's not even close to possible in-game right now to achieve the level of expertise needed to offset trauma.