ArenaNet:Skill feedback/Monk/The Problem with Healing Prayers

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Condtition removal woes, underpoweredness and reworking, Oh my! -- 12:47, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

Issue

Many people consider Healing Prayers to be underpowered. Well, if they are, that's not such a problem in itself since they're still necessary, so they still get used. However, some buffs wouldn't go amiss.

Main Issue 1

Mainly the problem is the lack of condition removal. In 8-man teams most people take one healer and one prot monk (at least in HA, anyway, with the excludion of N/Rts and that, but that's another story...), and since the prot monk usually takes Restore Condition, conditions are not really much of a problem. However, in one-monk teams (RA, TA etc) the monk normally has to split between Healing and Protection prayers (at least if s/he is a healing monk) so as to get Dismiss Condition or some other anti-condition skill. Now, while ANet seems to like hybrid builds, it seems strange that Healing Prayers, which involves healing and curing people, can't heal conditions, whereas Protection Prayers can remove them easily (Restore Condition, Mend Condition, Mend Ailment, Mending Touch, Dismiss Condition etc.), even though Protection Prayers are ment to be about preventing damage.

This problem also applied with hexes until recently as well.

Main Issue 2

Protection Prayers shouldn't really heal (Zealous Benediction springs to mind) and so those skills which do should be evaluated. Obviously to prevent a total reversal of the current position (i.e. Prot Prayers becoming too weak while Healing Prayers are imba) some healing in Prot Prayers is of course fine, but it should be healing like that applied by Shield of Regeneration, for example, because a "shield" is still a form of defense or "protection" even if it does heal you. From a practical point of view as well as a thematic one Prot Prayers would just be too weak otherwise.

Suggestion

OK, this would be quite radical, but quite a few of the Protection Prayers skills should be moved to Healing Prayers. In particular, the "mending" skills (since they suggest you are mending/curing/healing a condition). The problem then would be that these skills and others, especially other Protection Prayers condition-removers, would then have to be re-evaluated and probably rebalanced, which I can understand ANet not wanting to do from a purely practical point of view.

Secondly, Protection Prayers condition-removers being reworded or rebalanced should preferrably be changed to less counteractive skills and make them more like protection against conditions - for example, something like "For X seconds, whenever you suffer from a new condtion, the duration of that condition is reduced by Y%".

Skills

Some examples of what I'm suggesting (though it's the idea not the specifics that I'm pushing):

Mend Ailment. 5 3/4 3 .

Spell. Remove one Condition from target ally. For each remaining Condition, that ally is healed for 5...57...70 Health. (Attribute: Healing Prayers)

This skill is moved to Healing Prayers to give Healing Prayers some more condition removal. Decreaseing the recharge also makes it compete with Dismiss Condition (currently hybrids in 4v4 tend to take dismiss over this because of the faster recharge. Also the scaling of dismiss favours hybrids).

Mend Condition. 5 3/4 2 .

Spell. Remove one Condition from target other ally. If a Condition is removed, that ally is healed for 5...57...70 Health. If that ally is still suffering from a Condition, you gain 1 Energy and Mend Condition recharges twice as fast. (Attribute: Healing Prayers)

Mend Condition boasts a very fast recharge, but like RC can only target someone else, so in small matches nobody takes it, and in large ones it's eclipsed by RC. Giving 1 Energy back when your target is still suffering from a Condition allows you to take advantage of it's fast recharge because you will be able to use it on them again more quickly (and the double recharge would also help with this). This skill is also moved to Healing Prayers to give Healing Prayers some more condition removal.

Mending Touch. 5 1/2 6 .

Spell. Touched ally loses two Conditions and is healed for 6...36...44 Health for each Condition removed in this way. (Attribute: Healing Prayers)

This skill is moved to Healing Prayers to give Healing Prayers some more condition removal. Since it's primary use is already on healing monks in combination with Draw Conditions to use on the RC, the health gain has been decreased so they don't benefit from it too much. However, the activation has been decreased to allow it to remove Daze more easily (considering someone with draw and this is using up two slots, it seems fair enough that it's useful, especially considering that the combination doesn't heal the person you draw at all).

Dismiss Condition. 5 3/4 3 .

Spell. Remove one Condition from target ally. If that ally is under the effects of an Enchantment, that ally is healed for 15...63...75 Health and the durations of all other conditions on that ally are reduced by 10...22...25%.

Since I'm suggesting moving the previous three skills to Healing Prayers, it would be unfair to leave this as it is since it would be eclipsed by the others. Adding a conditional condition duration decrease would give you a slightly different way to combat conditions, and allow it to deal with bulk conditions without the use of RC. This would also make conditions less powerful in small arenas where RC is not used.

Purifying Veil. -1 5 1 6 .

Enchantment Spell. While you maintain this Enchantment, Conditions expire 20...52...60% faster on target ally and whenever that ally suffers from a new condition, that ally gains 3...18...22 health. When this Enchantment ends, one Condition is removed from that ally.

Due partly to the suggested move of condition removal skills to Healing Prayers, and partly due to the current low power of this skill, I suggest a buff. Currently, like it's cousin Holy Veil, it is useful due to the on-end removal, so it can be used to remove Daze easily. However, the faster expiration was too low for many to take it, especially hybrids with low Protection Prayers. Increasing this and adding a small health gain may make it more attractive (now with just your spare 3 pts you can get 28%, which means conditions will expire in 78% of the time, so with some investment it might become useful).

Reverse Hex. 10 1/4 10 .

Enchantment Spell. Remove one Hex from target ally. For 5...9...10 seconds, that ally has +10 armour and hexes cast on that ally take 16...22...24% longer to cast.

OK, this may be slightly off-topic, but just as Healing Prayers lacks condition removal, the hex removal found in Protection Prayers is quite poor. In one day's time, you took it anyway because there was no alternative other than Holy Veil, but newer Healing Prayers skills have overshadowed it (e.g. Cure Hex, Spotless Mind).

This skill in particular is unused because it has a painful 10 cost and a bonus which is neither very big nor often very useful (except perhaps on a derv for extra energy) - in essence you're paying for a bonus you may not need and isn't great anyway. This change would make it more useful since if you're hexed, you're likely facing a hex-heavy team (or at least someone has to have hexes to hex you in the first place), which is where this would become useful, relieving a bit of pressure. The armour bit is just an option to make it a bit more powerful for that 10. Bear in mind that the 1/4 and 10 are actually quite good.

Adding prot skills which actually prot

These are some ideas for some skills which could be added to the game. Now, I know this will probably never happen (maybe they could make some new GW:EN skills to make up for the rather small number), but it might give some ideas for future skill reworks:

Whole Body. 5 3/4 7 .

Target ally loses one condition. For 3...10...12 seconds, the next time that ally would suffer from a Condition, they are healed for 5...41...50 health instead. (Attribute: Protection Prayers).

This would provide a form of active protection again Conditions - for example, if you think you're about to be Dazed, you could put it up so that you don't have the trouble of removing it afterwards.

Holy Aura. 10 1 20 .

For 5...13...15 seconds, target ally and up to 3 nearby allies are enchanted with Holy Aura. The next time any of those allies would suffer from a new hex, that hex is removed and its caster loses 0...2...3 energy. (Attribute: Protection Prayers).

A skill like this would give monks a way to actually protect themselves from hexes, other than Holy Veil, and something of a way of "fighting back" at their assasilants without using smiting (the energy loss could slow pressure on them by e-denied casters). If it was AoE as suggested, though, the energy and recharge would have to be quite high.

OK, I expect to get majorly shot down for this, but hey, discuss away.

Another issue that a lot of people ignore is that Healer's Boon gets in the way of buffing a lot of healing skills. Orison of Healing is a rubbish skill but when combined with Healer's Boon it is actually useful. At the moment, healing monks either run Healer's Boon or WoH.

The problem with healing prayers

You only need one, two at most. It's a matter of how effective they are at spot healing.

Suggestion

Make more healing spells with utility instead of just straight up red bars. Jacobbs 00:02, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Healing prayers works fine as is

As it stands, healing prayers is balanced.

protection prayers lacks many direct healing spells, but gains removal of conditions. healing prayers lacks great condition removal but gains many great direct healing spells. How is this not balanced? I do believe a modest 2 or 3 points can be added to protection (or none at all if you wish) in order to remove conditions, as the condition # removed is not normally associated with the attribute points placed in protection prayers.