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Grace Xisthrith -> RE: Healing (3/1/2024 17:09:47)
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In before I'm not reading allat. Here to put my opinion on many of the topics discussed here. I noticed a lot of stuff I believe to be factually incorrect being claimed, some as opinion and some as stated fact, so I've labeled my thoughts as either fact checks, for those statements I believe to be objectively untrue, or opinion, for my opinions. I'm of course as prone to error as anyone, so my bad if my fact checks were incorrect at points, but I think it's pretty solid. TLDR at the bottom.
Fact checks and opinions
Chaotic 1:
Opinion: "Other spellboosters (Poelala, Sila’s staff etc.) also be excluded for the same reason." I believe it is important to point out that of the three ideas proposed by Sapphire's initial post, SC Lean, Booster Pet and Guest, and Berserk, two of those three have been implemented, and the one that hasn't (booster pets and guests) was immediately something Sapphire changed their mind on two posts later, due to the objective fact that all builds boosters affect spell type skills equally. That's important context in my opinion that discredits your claim that spellboosters were a subject of the GBI
Fact Check: "player damage can no longer boost healing." This was not established by the prior GBI, so your claim is untrue. The changes that resulted from the GBI were limited to Armor Lean from different builds boosting healing. (Debatably berserk as well, but I think most players would assume the berserk healing change came from the DEX lean focus, and focus on autohit with regards to that)
Fact Check: "25% of a Mage’s player damage is used to fuel spell-type attacks, which now cannot boost healing." This is an incorrect statement. Mages "pay" 25% melee on weapon attacks to gain an MP bar. That MP bar is still useable for healing spells. It simply doesn't gain a 1.375x multiplier now. Yes, SC lean comes from only casting spells every few turns, because of trading 25% melee in damage for MP, that doesn't change it.
Fact Check: "weapon-based healing damage must now either not exist, or not be boosted by standard weapon-boosters" same as above, player damage not boosting healing is not the conclusion of the GBI, so this is untrue as well. You correctly state however that FO armor leans (or FD leans) cannot effect healing from weapon based sources. This would require damage based lifesteal items dividing by armor lean, which presumably isn't hard, divide by armor lean is present on various items.
Opinion: "The second precedent set (or rather reinforced) is the importance of no one ‘archetype’ reigning supreme over another, specifically applied to healing in this instance. I believe that this same principle should also extend to all Pet and Guest healing. The same basic principles applied in the previous GBI also apply between non-Beastmasters and Beastmasters." This is your opinion, as you state here. While AQ terminology is infamously fluid, so using a word like Archetype can mean many things, you seem to see beastmasters and non beastmasters as archetypes in the same way that Warriors, Rangers, and Mages are archetypes. I believe this is not the case, for the simple reason that CHA isn't a mainstat. Any player, warrior, ranger, or mage, can now invest in CHA and reap the full benefits. There's no imbalance between the mainstat archetypes, as anyone can choose to invest in CHA. There's no beastmaster armor lean (if there is in the future, healing should be divided by lean). The initial GBI was dedicated to these mainstat archetypes.
I will have another opinion on your next few lines, but first some fact checks.
Fact Check: "Pets and Guests provide a far greater number and variety of healing options" All of the options you list (and all options I know of you didn't list) barring pure SP heal (Pure HP and MP, Damage based HP, MP and SP) exist in spell form. These pets and guests heal in an identical manner to various spells, simply with a different power budget. I'm not sure why you mention Malibu Cowboy Twilly's status resistance here, as it's not a heal (yes the attack that does it heals, but if you're saying part heal part status effect, that also exists in numerous spells), but that's not important.
Fact Check: "They can also reach extremely high values now thanks to Ferocious strikes, and they’re also much easier to sustain" This is an extremely misleading statement with regards to ferocious strikes, and either a factually incorrect statement with regards to sustain, or another misleading statement with regards to sustain. Guests still output the exact same %melee each turn, it's just now RNG dependent for 1/6th of that output. Saying "reach extremely high values" therefore is misleading, the highrolls from ferocious strikes are balanced by their rarity. As for "they're also much easier to sustain," if you mean compared to a Spell, then yes, a guest outputs per %melee resource invested. However, it does this at 30% the speed of spells. If you mean they're easier to sustain than they used to be, than of course, that's factually incorrect, as their upkeep costs have increased post stat revamp.
Fact Check: "Because of their lower baseline, Pet/Guest boosters have often been allowed a far higher power budget. Examples include the more easily available ways to access companion celerity, and the higher baseline of damage boosts." Both misleading and factually incorrect. There are 6 F2P armors (no clones counted, and off the top of my head) that give the player celerity whenever they want. There are ~3? armors that do this for pets and guests, Bard of War, Infernal Champion, and uhh, probably one more. I may be missing a few others, but I'm confident there aren't more than 6 that give guaranteed pet and guest celerity at any time (I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to Bard of War here as well, it's not guaranteed). You could argue Bard of War counts as 8 armors, I'd say that's silly personally. As for Clever Disguise, see SFP and Lovestruck. As for Harvati blade, yes, there's no weapon that gives player celerity by trading a boatload of damage for it (except Pumpkin spice, but it's more situational so I'll give it to you). "Far higher power budget" The strongest guest is +100% damage, same with pets, I'm pretty sure (ignoring charge mechanics, because those of course don't count, they do normal damage each turn, but instead do it all at once). Have you heard of weapon based skills? That's 2x damage. Consider overcharged weapon based skills for 2x+(50%) damage. "Higher baseline of damage boosts" This point is somewhat true, but misleading. You could double a pet's damage with a misc, say +100% pet damage (none of these exist, the highest is Optico with essentially a 1.75x damage multiplier conditional on investing in LUK, and it's valued at 2/3s of that) and that would be +40% melee, while we have Bloodblade type weapons (edge of defiance) that give +30% melee worth of damage. That's ignoring, oh I don't know, elecomp? (Elecomp is applied to pets and guests in 2 niche situations, Void Awakening Form and Daimyo Rider. This does not undermine my point). Any +22% damage misc is worth +50% pet damage, so of course the numbers look bigger on pets, because where they start from is so much smaller, so any resource applied to boost them is 2.5x bigger compared to boosting the player.
Fact Check: "A byproduct of nerfing Mage Spellboosting gear is the indirect nerf of all Spell-type END healing skills. END, the stat that is meant to boost healing, has been curbed yet CHA has not." This misleadingly ignores that all spells (spell type END healing skill is redundant), regardless of resource cost, or stat scaling, STR DEX INT END, or you know, CHA scaling healing spells, were nerfed. You acknowledged in the previous GBI that various SC lean armors are used by other builds, so this nerfed spells of all stat scalings. This was the goal, to prevent someone using SC lean armors from having an advantage, since the vast majority of the time it was mages gaining an advantage over warriors and rangers. END wasn't earning that 1.375x jump in power it got from SC lean, SC lean was.
Opinion: "While the above list is far from exhaustive, I hope it exemplifies how powerful Pet/Guest healing now is compared to practically every other option bar potions." I'm going to investigate this claim, since I don't really agree with it. That being said, the below numbers aren't perfect, they can't account for item support, or synergies, or infamously bugged options (CR72 + Fae). To start, I'll look at CHA as a stat. Assuming mainstat investment, this is how I've derived valuation of the three substats: Comparing what you get as a player without them, and then with them. Starting with END, you gain ~3k HP, 5 Status Resistance, 12.5% increased healing, and ~1/10 of a stun cleanse per turn. 3k HP is either ~2000% melee, or 874% melee. I'll give END the benefit of the doubt and start with 874% melee. 5 Status res is 5% melee per turn, 12.5% increased healing is ~5% melee, but I'll drop it to 4% per turn because no MP or SP, scuffed valuation but close. 1/10 of a stun cleanse is 10% melee per turn. Divide 874/10, 87.4 + 5 + 4 + 10 = 106.4% melee per turn in a 10 turn battle. If it's 20 turns (which is pretty misleading to reality, but whatever), END is /20 instead, so 43.7% melee per turn + 5 + 4 + 10 = 62.7% melee per turn.
CHA: I think a lot of people value CHA wrong. What I'm going to do is compare the optimal Pet and Guest setup at 0 CHA (pet, no guest) to the optimal pet and guest setup at 250 CHA (Pet and guest) and find the difference between their outputs. At 0 CHA, You go from 65% accuracy 20% melee pet (13% melee) and 65% accuracy 22.5%melee output -30%melee input guest (-15.375% melee) to 85% accuracy 40% melee pet (34% melee) and 85% accuracy 60% melee output - 30% melee input guest (21% melee). The difference between those two (0 CHA with guest: -2.625% melee, without guest 13% melee)(250 CHA with guest: 55% melee) is 42% melee per turn. That's all CHA gets, already lower than END in even the longest battles (you might say END doesn't really get the value from its HP, I'll talk about that in a minute).
LUK: Very hard to value the status potency and resistance you get from minor rolls, so LUK is better than my numbers give it credit for. Add on the fact that all crit sources are 2/3s the cost of what they should be, and this further under values LUK. But, that being said, you get 15% melee per turn in player LS, 6% melee from pet LS, 20% melee from Lucky breaks (hard to value because 20% chance of gaining 50% melee is 10% melee per turn, but you cleanse a status of any power, so situational. I'll trust staff valuation of 20%), and somewhere near 5% from Initiative, and like I said initially, giving value to minor rolls is very difficult due to how situational they are. If you trust Lucky Breaks, LUK is 46% melee per turn, if you think they're worth nothing, you get 26% melee per turn, and both of these ignore minor rolls.
The conclusion is, CHA has a similar or smaller power budget to both LUK and END. It's not that "Guests are intentionally mathematically overpowered," it's that investing 250 points in a substat gives the player direct power they don't have to pay for in resources. This analysis doesn't talk about healing specifically, but it shows that CHA's direct power budget is by no means stronger than other substats.
Fact Check: Despite your claim that CHA is a better healing stat than END, Pet and Guest healing is weak when compared to END's HP pool, (I'm equating HP pool to healing, because it directly negates the need to heal). This is incorrect due to the following example. Imagine you use a pure healing pet and guest, which remember, you said this (I hope it exemplifies how powerful Pet/Guest healing now is compared to practically every other option bar potions) about. Pet outputs 40% melee, Guest outputs 60% melee per turn. Both take an always useful penalty, and autohit penalty. 100% melee * .9 * .85 = 76.5% melee per turn. Don't forget to take away guest upkeep, -30% melee = 46.5% melee per turn. This comes out to ~.465*350=162.75 HP in profit each turn. Guess how many turns you'd have to run those to make up END's 3k HP? 18 turns. Are you really going to argue that spending 18 turns with a healing pet and guest out is better healing than just having that HP flat? (this comparison also ignores that with END, you'd have a 20% melee pet acting each turn to widen the disparity). In conclusion, your claim that CHA is somehow a better stat to heal than END is factually incorrect, unless you're claiming fights last 18 turns. As a followup, if you want to argue somehow that misc items that provide 45% bonus pet damage somehow make up this gap, I'd counter by saying the END player in that situation could simply use a defensive misc, and make their HP effectively twice as massive. To be clear, this doesn't mean END is an objectively better stat than CHA, it simply means END is far better for healing (indirectly by removing your need to heal by having more HP) than CHA.
Sapphire 1:
Opinion: "This feels like an attempt to find ways to nerf those players who train CHA since the stat revamp didn't nerf guests as much as some would have liked. I suspect others may agree" I think subtly suggesting there's a conspiracy really weakens your argument, and isn't really debating in good faith.
Fact Check: " Much of the items that this is attempting to nerf are premium of a variety of types." This doesn't matter, as stated by staff, Premium items are not subject to different balance standards.
Dardiel 1:
Opinion: "The solution in my mind is that either the player should get a soft cap on healing to emulate damage caps" This is an interesting idea to me. I wonder if bosses with damage caps could be given a status that inflicts a -damage cap on the player automatically, limiting healing per hit. That wouldn't work well as a cap, since healing effects are entirely arbitrary in their hitcount, but there may be a workaround similar to this, like say, -Plot armor on the player.
Sapphire 2:
Opinion: "Ultimately I don't think any of the arguments make sense in that, it feels a bit "let's choose this to nerf, but not that" Since GBI is player initiated, this is pretty much a reality of all threads in here, so I don't think your point really matters much.
Chaotic 2:
Opinion: "Spellcaster Lean and Spell-boosting items like Poelala and Sila's Staff" again, claiming Sapphire's thread was focused on Poelala / Silas after he recanted that point two posts later is in my opinion, misleading.
Fact Check: "why should Beastmasters dominate healing" as proven above, this is factually incorrect.
Opinion: " Yet we just nerfed END spell-type skills" Again, claiming END spell type skills no longer benefitting from spellcaster lean is misleading, all healing spells regardless of stat scaling or resource cost were nerfed to prevent mages getting superior healing access
Lupul Lunatic 1: No comment
Sapphire 3:
Opinion: "This doesnt mean all damage based heals get nerfed or removed" going off the SC lean standard, they should have their outgoing damage divided by armor lean to equalize healing across builds regardless of armor lean.
Dardiel 2:
Opinion: "Effects that reduce output in exchange for reduced damage (eg FD lean) should theoretically also take reduced healing but it's probably easier that they just go untouched because they already reduce damage dealt." I think given that both STR and DEX builds get a bunch of free damage in FD armors, it probably should be adjusted / multiplied by lean here as well, in this scenario.
TLDR:
CHA isn't overpowered compared to the other substats in power budget. It's somewhere in the middle of END and LUK, or below END and slightly below LUK, depending how you value LUK. My opinion: This doesn't account for item support, which pushes LUK way up, and CHA significantly up, and END moderately up
I personally believe the SC lean change to healing reflects a future precedent of healing not being affected by armor lean, with the goal of preventing builds that use different armor leans from having advantages over one another, although of course I can't know 100% staff intent behind the change
CHA isn't the best healing stat by any stretch of the imagination, END is objectively better unless you're in crazy long fights
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