The Inequality of Healing (Full Version)

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Sapphire -> The Inequality of Healing (11/14/2023 10:35:58)

The inequality of Healing, in my opinion, has become apparent. While the creation of the spellcaster lean has helped push for more spellcasting, the universal boost to spells has now given Mages an advantage.

While anyone could, in theory, hop into a spellcaster armor and boost anything, like for example, a ranged healing spell, this would still mean using an armor design not actually meant for a Ranger.

Not only has healing now been made to be more advantageous to Mages, who have an entire MP bar to use for healing since they can just use weapon based skills just as good as other archetypes, but they also heal better than Warriors and Rangers.

I think if we are to seriously look at attempting Archetype vs Archetype equality in as many aspects as possible while attempting to create unique dynamics catered to each archetype, I think it would only be fair that at the very least healing be equally powerful regardless of the mainstat trained.

As a result, I propose that spellcaster leans and generalist robes no longer boost healing spells. They only boost outgoing damage to the monster.

This also will curb another aspect to healing that mages are enjoying some supremacy on: Barriers. The ability to boost barriers with several means is also problematic and barrier stacking can essentially trivialize even bosses.


So again, I propose that healing no longer be boosted by spellcaster leans, Poelala (any boosters), sila's staff, etc etc and only allow these things to boost outgoing damage to monsters.

I think healing equality is an essential part of game balance and no one archetype should get supremacy simply by items meant for a single archtype to use.

I also think berserk , at a later time, might need to be looked at too for it's healing ability, but at least for right now it's a universally used status and therefore for now, it's probably OK.



Ianthe -> RE: The Inequality of Healing (12/1/2023 11:43:47)

Sounds reasonable.



Grace Xisthrith -> RE: The Inequality of Healing (12/1/2023 15:31:31)

I'm a big powercreep worrier, so dropping healing power seems like a solid step to reduce how much stronger players are than monsters (and mages specifically). I am curious about a few things though.

Sapphire identifies spellcaster lean as a main problem in making healing unequal between builds. I think he's right, but also we've got a few spellcaster lean options that are build universal (Wishweaver and Infernal Angel semi rares, and Eternal Champ, and debatably commander Necro (post stat scaling bug fixes at least)). Could introducing more build universal spellcaster leans that appeal to warriors and rangers also solve this problem Sapphire identifies? I'd probably be against this, since like I mentioned at the top, I'm hopeful player power can be cut down to better match how strong (or relatively weak rn) monsters are, but it was a thought I had. I'd also love to see off meta support, like the current FD warrior options pre stat revamp and the 0 Proc weapons that work great for FD builds, and in my mind, warrior / ranger spellcaster would be the same thing. I don't really support this idea, but I thought it was mildly interesting and related.

Big agree that damage shields (barriers mana + chi shields) trivialize a lot, and aren't countered by freedom, boss boost, or damage caps like some other cheesy items we have. Indirectly weakening those options should make boss fights more competitive.

Sapphire also mentions not boosting healing with booster pets and guests, or Sila's Staff or similar effects. This I'm less sold on personally, as all builds have near equal booster access for heal element (you could argue warriors have it best with Oath of Desire, but it's a weak argument IMO mages can and should run it too) (until we get a healing cutlass at least lol). In theory, a warrior casting a healing spell with dual dunamis should heal the same as a mage casting a healing spell with dual poelala. That being said, the reality is most END based healing effects are magic by default, so warriors and rangers, unless they use one of their like 3 special healing spells / skills, can't use boosters as easily. I think this could be "fixed" by spending dev time updating the 5-10 healing spells that scale off END or CHA to follow weapon type for damage type, but that would take dev time. If that does seem like a good course of action, I'd be happy to compile a list of healing effects that scale off secondary stats (so theoretically build universal) or follow mainstat that deal magic damage always, to make the job a little easier.
About the above paragraph, I just thought it was something to remark on, because theoretically, all builds additive boosters should be equal when boosting healing effects, so I'd kinda be against making additive boosters not work on healing spells, but I'm not really that bothered, I just wanted to point it out as a potential counterargument.

My last concern would be about potions. Potions are to my understanding mostly outside balance, and at 250 END, they heal 925 (1042 from END bonus) (621 at 0 END) HP for 100% melee (1 turn investment). Pure healing spells with standard penalties and spellcaster lean (no other boosting effects, without the 1.125 from END) heal on average ~735 HP (source, I was messing around a few days ago and by chance collected a bunch of data on this to theorycraft for Wishweaver shield's use cases). So, if you removed spellcaster lean, they'd heal on average ~535 HP per cast, investing 200% melee. So, no matter your stats, potions would outperform normal healing spells, and cost 0 resources. I'd personally hate to see potions become the meta healing option, because it's just so boring. I don't have a real suggestion on how to fix this though (nerf potions? Buff healing spells while nerfing them? Both seem extremely suboptimal), but I wanted to bring it up. ---crazy solution, buff regen's turn delay bonus (and all turn delay bonuses) so it's a viable alternative to potions?

All in all, very supportive or weakening player healing, and making it more equal for different build archetypes. I'd support keeping additive boosts affecting heals, regardless of their source. I'd be bummed if potions jump back up to optimal healing options



Sapphire -> RE: The Inequality of Healing (12/1/2023 16:12:21)

Alright, so if we have a healing spell that gets stats from DEX, STR or INT then things that boost those damage types should remain a viable strat to boost healing, as it's tied to the item designed for the archetype. Either that, or none of it. But spellcaster leans, are obviously meant for Mages. It's no different than Ranged or Melee lock armors. It's designed for them. Should a Mage be able to hop into an armor designed for a warrior and get some massive benefit? One of the huge reasons for the oncoming multimaul nerf is this very premise. So Probably not. Same idea applies here to spellcaster leans.

My guess is (maybe I'm wrong) is the eternal champ type armors with spellcaster leans built in might be why the replies here have been silent, and although that very well could be unfair of me to say, I think it's still fair to say that at a foundational level, we should be striving for archetype equality. Item support will end up swaying this somewhat, but if damage is always being reviewed as being equal over time, and monster damage and player HP's are all standardized mathematically, then we shouldn't be having one archetype thrive over the others in healing due to how items designed for them interacts with healing spells.



legendd -> RE: The Inequality of Healing (12/1/2023 20:18:16)

Finally, and happy that staff is onboard. People are beating challenges with 0 stat due to these shenanigans but often overlooked because the "attacks" damage are on self and not monsters making FD overpowered. You can say that you are being efficient but is due to item interactions that allow these, if I am making sense.



dizzle -> RE: The Inequality of Healing (12/1/2023 20:53:49)

I fully agree that caster lean probably shouldn’t affect heal spells. The ability to resource loop so efficiently as mage is, I think, a big reason why the gap between archetypes is as it is. I’m discounting using potions here, but the idea of a resource loop is to essentially spend resources to get resources in order to spend them again, and you have to achieve a net gain in resources to make it effective. Since costs for everything are balanced and on the same standards for the most part, you can’t effectively shuffle resources around without using various methods to boost your healing (except for pet/guest resource loops). Having a free 1.375x multiplier advantage (from an armor that you’re already inclined to be carrying in the first place) over the other archetypes seems unfair.

With this being said I think that boosting heals via booster pets/universal damage boosters are mostly okay, so long as the problem of non int scaling heal spells dealing magic damage (and vice versa) gets addressed. However, I do think that something like berserk affecting healing is questionable. Berserk sacrifices BtH to deal more damage. But when you’re using an auto hit spell such as virtually every standard healing spell/skill in the game, you’re sacrificing literally nothing at all and still getting the multiplier. This is further compounded by stacking berserk from different items but we already know this.

Anyway, I’d hate to see player only resource looping get obliterated via collateral damage from this. If you reduce the ability to boost heals down to only +healres items, then what you’re doing is just replacing Mage as the most effective healer with Cha users. You’re essentially widening the gap between Cha and the other secondary stats, and just as mainstats need to all be equally effective, so too should the secondary stats.



CH4OT1C! -> RE: The Inequality of Healing (12/2/2023 5:47:16)

This is reasonable.

As @Grace Xisthrith has pointed out, there are alternative ways around this. As they mention, you could greater encourage Warrior/Ranger based spellcasting options, though this has numerous complications surrounding build identity. Another alternative would be to released more weapon-type healing attacks.

Speaking of which, as @Sapphire mentioned...
quote:

I think if we are to seriously look at attempting Archetype vs Archetype equality in as many aspects as possible while attempting to create unique dynamics catered to each archetype, I think it would only be fair that at the very least healing be equally powerful regardless of the mainstat trained.

I agree with this logic. With that in mind, currently there's more of a push for Mages to focus on spells, while Warriors and Rangers stick to weapon-type attacks. This means any future Weapon-type healing effects need also to be lean independent for this change to be adopted. This is to be consistent with the above rhetoric; Mages would be disadvantaged in that scenario.

It may also be pertinent to discuss certain damage-scaled healing items that could also indirectly benefit from Armour leans like spellcaster.

EDIT:
  • @Grace Xisthrith: There's definitely a grey area regarding boosters. All builds do not have near equal booster/modifier access (skewed heavily in favour of weapon-type attacks, though this isn't important to healing at the moment due to the dearth of weapon-type healing). As of potions, they fall entirely outside of balance outside of standardising heal power and a few pseudo-balanced items that use potions as fuel (I say pseudo-balance because they're inherently using an overpowered resource). They already are stronger than other healing options purely by virtue of them costing nothing to use. Regardless, buffing the turn delay bonus isn't going to resolve that issue (though it definitely should be looked at) because Potions are on demand and Regeneration very much isn't (you have to wait several turns to get the full benefit).
  • @Sapphire: It's not quite the same as a Melee/Range lock because Warriors and Rangers can still use spell-type effects to their full power. It's more that there's a lack of other supporting items to make it competitive. This doesn't undermine your central point though - Spellcaster leans obviously favour mages.



    • Grace Xisthrith -> RE: The Inequality of Healing (12/2/2023 10:53:09)

    Brief response to the other responses since I was rambling about my thoughts:

    Sapphire: Pretty much agree. Although there are a few build universal spellcaster lean, they're definitely designed as mage gear. I see you're open to keeping additive boosters (as long as they're equal by build), which I like, but I'm not too pressed either way. Weakening healing more would make build decisions more meaningful I feel, so I'd be fine if they were or weren't kept to affect healing spells.

    Legendd: I wouldn't point to zero stats as the problem tbh I would point to mana shields on mages : p but I agree with the sentiment, the player has too many extremely strong options.

    Dizzle: Agree, the 1.375x multiplier just makes it too easy. I also agree additive boosters still affecting it would be nice. I also agree that berserk could probably go at some point (now that I finally have poelala to replace fenrir with hehehe --joke--) too, since it's a very powerful option. About CHA users, do you mean they'd be the most effective healers utilizing pets and guests compared to healing spells? I think you're probably right. If I'm being optimistic, the stat revamp will make CHA feel less overpowering, but if I'm being realistic, the plan seems to be to make pets and guests build universal, and guests only **good** with CHA trained, so you may be right. I don't have any ideas on challenging that to be honest, but that's a real concern.

    Chaotic: Agree on theoretical warrior ranger spellcaster lean, also agree on negatives of that pathway. About boosters: All builds have equal support for boosters (except f2p lol) when compared to the same type of damage. Weapon based or spell type. Since we're talking about healing spells, this is how I've worded it. However, you seem to be considering adding more weapon based healing effects into the game for warriors and rangers to use. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I'll start with some ideas since I don't particularly love it.
    1: The goal of taking healing out of spellcaster lean was making healing spells build equal. Adding weapon based healing effects would potentially add more work to solve a problem that was previously solved (although, from what I've been told of the lean code, it's pretty easy to change what elements are or aren't affected by it, so maybe not adding much more work)
    2: We've got a few examples of weapon based healing. Taxing Cutlass / Bell Shell / Shadow Crystal / Other similar effects, which pay a small amount to get tiny lifesteal. Then we've got Algerns and Wishweaver, which pay half damage (idk algerns tbh) to heal. If you're paying half damage to heal, you're taking power out of your healing relative to a spell, so you *shouldn't* outperform healing spells. I can see this realistically changing if we ever get a +50% damage overcharged Algern's style attack, but uh... staff wouldn't do that, right? (also, these effects are now (should be) capped at double expected output, which should put them at max at unboosted spell output, in theory.
    3: Damage based healing items that benefit from leans like spellcaster: I assume you mean siphon spell and other similar items. These should (probably) be capped like Wishweaver. Siphon pays different amounts with different versions, but if it pays 80% spell damage for the heal, it should only be able to heal double the expected, so 320% melee... doing this calculation now shows that my methodology works for not making lifesteal effects stronger than pure healing as long as the damage traded isn't more than half for the effect. Interesting
    --- So you made me think about a lot Chaotic but in summary:
    ---Other build spellcaster support would address this, but is probably negatively productive overall --- Weapon based (or spellbased) healing lifesteal effects shouldn't cause any issues, regardless of disproportionate boosting, as long as: they're capped like wishweaver, and they don't pay more than 50% damage.



    CH4OT1C! -> RE: The Inequality of Healing (12/2/2023 12:20:50)

    @Grace Xisthrith Sort of...

    I'm getting at the player turn model:
    quote:

    100 [Player Damage] + 20 [Pet] + 20 [SP]

    Where:
    quote:

    Warrior/Ranger: 100 [Weapon]
    Mage: 75 [Magic Weapon] + 25 [Spell, used 1/5 turns]

    Therefore, weapon attacks and spells effectively come from the same power source. As we've established, @Sapphire is saying that, due to Mage having greater access to spell-type items that heal, an imbalance is created, and that the balance could be addressed by preventing spell-type skills getting that bonus on armour lean (spellcaster lean in this case). I'm suggesting this is fine, with caveats. This is where we deviate. You're saying that I'm suggesting adding weapon-based healing effects in-game. Not quite - as you point out, they are already in-game and must be treated in kind, because there are ramifications:

    Even if one were to normalise the damage from Taxing Cutlass/Bell Shell/Shadow Crystal etc. to make them heal relative to 100% Melee (if they haven't already), their heals would still be influenced by Armour lean. This would put Mages at a disadvantage because they cannot invest their full value into Weapon attacks, nor can they gain benefits from their spells as per this proposal. Thus, it's an all-or-nothing situation. Irrespective of whether new weapon-type heals get released, the real crux of this post is deciding whether or not armour lean should or should not affect healing. To allow either FO or Spellcaster without the other would disadvantage a group. And this applies to any healing regardless of whether it's damage-scaled, just so long as it's either weapon or spell-type

    I disagree with you on damage-scaling effects. I think damage scaling effects are, if anything, even more complicated. They require an entire separate discussion. Should they be affected by armour lean? That's a separate all-or-nothing in itself. Then one must discuss what effects should and should not affect the healing portion as a matter of practice (which is far from consistent). Currnetly, some of these items are much stricter than others.

    My thought for those would be a heal that is entirely unaffected by anything bar heal resistance, with a modifier based on armour lean. I see heals as principally defensive mechanics and thus are best left as lean independent to 1). remain consistent with regular heals and 2). to reward FD efficiency and make FO/Spellcaster shenanigans inefficient.



    Dardiel -> RE: The Inequality of Healing (12/3/2023 13:46:18)

    I agree that healing should likely be something that's equally usable regardless of MainStat, it would be nice if they each had their own methods of application (eg INT gets healing spells, STR gets consistent/reliable healing, DEX gets setup/payoff moments) but that can be done while also making heals ignore lean.

    I also agree with removing Berserk from autohit effects, and strongly agree with Gibby that the turn delay bonus should be improved from *1.01 (effectively nothing) to *(10/9)^[TurnsDelayed] to accurately compensate - the Berserk change serving to keep Barrier spam from trivializing a lot of content while the turn delay change would serve to give regeneration effects a niche.



    JoeyMeadows -> RE: The Inequality of Healing (12/13/2023 7:01:02)

    quote:

    The inequality of Healing, in my opinion, has become apparent. While the creation of the spellcaster lean has helped push for more spellcasting, the universal boost to spells has now given Mages an advantage.

    While anyone could, in theory, hop into a spellcaster armor and boost anything, like for example, a ranged healing spell, this would still mean using an armor design not actually meant for a Ranger.

    Not only has healing now been made to be more advantageous to Mages, who have an entire MP bar to use for healing since they can just use weapon based skills just as good as other archetypes, but they also heal better than Warriors and Rangers.

    I think if we are to seriously look at attempting Archetype vs Archetype equality in as many aspects as possible while attempting to create unique dynamics catered to each archetype, I think it would only be fair that at the very least healing be equally powerful regardless of the mainstat trained.

    As a result, I propose that spellcaster leans and generalist robes no longer boost healing spells. They only boost outgoing damage to the monster.



    This also will curb another aspect to healing that mages are enjoying some supremacy on: Barriers. The ability to boost barriers with several means is also problematic and barrier stacking can essentially trivialize even bosses.


    So again, I propose that healing no longer be boosted by spellcaster leans, Poelala (any boosters), sila's staff, etc etc and only allow these things to boost outgoing damage to monsters.

    I think healing equality is an essential part of game balance and no one archetype should get supremacy simply by items meant for a single archtype to use.

    I also think berserk , at a later time, might need to be looked at too for it's healing ability, but at least for right now it's a universally used status and therefore for now, it's probably OK.


    Your proposal raises valid points about the current inequality in healing dynamics, favoring certain archetypes. To achieve a more balanced gameplay experience, reconsidering the impact of spellcaster leans and generalist robes on healing spells makes sense.



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