Defeat the Emperor with Lesser Heal

[MongoJerry]

DEFEAT THE EMPEROR WITH LESSER HEAL

(Originally posted on the WoW Bnet forums)

As many high level characters on the PvP server know, Wannacookie has been organizing serial Blackrock Downs emperor runs in the small hope that he will one day be the proud owner of Ironfoe, the epic mace that only the emperor drops (in like 1 in 10,000 times the emperor is killed). I've joined Wannacookie on many of these runs and have had the pleasure of helping to refine tactics in the hope of shaving a minute here and a minute there off the time of the runs. The runs are all about speed and the worst thing that could happen is to have a party wipe in the middle of the emperor's room, wasting all the time spent getting there.

Today, while waiting for our group to gather, I mentioned that I used the emperor's staff when soloing but that I used the The Hammer of Grace, combined with the emperor's scepter when in a party so that my priest's heals would be 76 points stronger. One of the party members then mentioned that the mace was in fact bugged. It didn't actually increase the power of the healing spells cast by me. They only increased the power of the healing spells cast *on* me. In fact, it's likely that *all* such items with +healing on them work that way. After a fair amount of cussing, I then switched to my staff.

But then this got us thinking. What if Wannacookie, as our warrior tank, wielded the mace? And what if a mage cast cast Amplify Magic on him to give him another +80 to heal? I, as the priest, could then spam Rank 1 Lesser Heals on him and do over 200 points of healing each time for only 35 mana. Plus, since I'd be casting it over and over, there would be a good chance for criticals (and as I'm holy speced, I get a +10% chance of crits on Lesser Heals). That way, I'd often get a +100% bonus to my mana regeneration and I'd often give Wannacookie a +15% armor bonus on top of his already huge armor value.

Did it work? Oh, boy, did it ever work! Wannacookie pulled the emperor and the princess off their dias, and I kept Renew on him and spammed Lesser Heals. On occation, I'd toss in a Flash Heal, but for the most part, Renew and Lesser Heals were enough to keep Wannacookie's life stable. Our group was made up of 1 warrior (Wannacookie), 1 priest (me), 2 mages, and 1 paladin. Except for one or two heals by the paladin, my priest handled all of the healing during the battle. How did the battle end? The princess and the emperor died and I had only used 1/3rd of my mana supply. In fact, after the princess died, I actually gained mana, because of my high spirit and the +100% mana regeneration bonus.

On the next run, we decided to be daring and not kill the princess at all, which you're not supposed to do, according to the quest story. This was a much tougher battle. I threw a few Mana Burns on the princess to keep her from casting too many spells, and of course Wannacookie needed more healing, since he was having to deal with both the emperor and the princess at the same time for a much longer period. How'd it go? We won, and I'd used up my entire mana bar. No bandages or mana potions required, though, and no second priest or major secondary healer necessary. Pretty much, the fight was a piece of cake.

This battle illustrates two bugs/design flaws that need to be corrected quickly in the game:

1. First, items that give +healing bonuses should improve the wearer's healing spells and not give the wearer bonuses when they themselves are healed. All this time, people have been under the impression that items that give +healing are priest or paladin items, when in fact they're warrior tank items if anything.

2. Items that give bonuses to healing and for that matter damage should give percentage bonsuses rather than straight addition bonuses. That is, the Hammer of Grace shouldn't give a flat +76 to healing. It should give something like +8% to healing. Similarly, shadowweave items shouldn't give straight bonuses to shadow damage. They should give +% bonuses to shadow damage. That way, you don't have the situation of having Rank 1 Lesser Heal healing 200+ health or Rank 1 Shadow Bolt doing 300+ damage while requiring little or no mana to cast.

[Bolty]

2. Items that give bonuses to healing and for that matter damage should give percentage bonsuses rather than straight addition bonuses.

This also applies to the mage's offensive arsenal. High-level mages who go item hunting are gathering equipment that can add over 200 points of damage to fire. Plug that in to the mage's fast-casting Rank 1 Fireball and you can see how sick that would get, while using almost no mana.

While it's nice to make the mage a more equipment-dependent class by giving them these neat bonuses, it reeks of cheese.

The bonuses need to be percentage based across the board or the item gatherers are going to quickly upset game balance when the game goes retail. It'll be Diablo II all over again.

-Bolty

[MongoJerry]

This also applies to the mage's offensive arsenal.  High-level mages who go item hunting are gathering equipment that can add over 200 points of damage to fire.  Plug that in to the mage's fast-casting Rank 1 Fireball and you can see how sick that would get, while using almost no mana.

Actually, the biggest unbalance when it comes to mages and items is how they work with aoe spells. In the Blackrock Depths instance, there's a room called the Lyceum that has hundreds of non-elite dwarfs in it, all on fast 60 second respawn timers. It's a neat challenge that's different from your usual "pull a small number of mobs, kill them, repeat" instance encounter. You often get swarmed by 10-15 dwarfs at a time, so aoe is hugely important. If the mages spec's in arcane, has improved aoe, and then wears a lot of +damage items, they can totally clean house. That 200 points you mentioned gets multiplied by every target in Arcane Explosion's radius, so in that room, you're talking about a bonus of 2000-3000 damage per cast.

[Roo]

The bonuses need to be percentage based across the board or the item gatherers are going to quickly upset game balance when the game goes retail.  It'll be Diablo II all over again.

Seems to me that percentage based solutions give rise to exactly the exploits that plague Diablo II and LoD. The Breath of the Dying runeword comes to mind on that thought. Not terribly unbalanced in a Phase Blade but laughably so in an ethereal Colossus Blade.

A percentage solution is only viable if every possible combination is considered, especially the extremes and any multiplier effects. If you miss one combination, the masses will find and exploit it.

A more elegant solution, and far easier to test and balance, would be an absolute cap, or a cap per level. Perhaps a maximum of 1 or 2 points per level in the fire spells example would yield 60 or 120 at projected endgame power. Caps would cover those unforeseen combinations.

[MongoJerry]

Seems to me that percentage based solutions give rise to exactly the exploits that plague Diablo II and LoD.  The Breath of the Dying runeword comes to mind on that thought.  Not terribly unbalanced in a Phase Blade but laughably so in an ethereal Colossus Blade.

Agreed. Warning bells were going off in my head even as I wrote that the damage and healing modifiers should be changed to percentage based. However, I think that it wouldn't be too difficult to keep percentage based modifiers from becoming too powerful. One can assume that a character has gathered the best damage/healing item available in every slot and consider what it does to the most powerful spell in that character's arsenal at level 60 and then see if that's too powerful or not, considering that the person would have to sacrifice a lot of int and spirit when wearing those items. I also think that in general these kind of modifiers should be kept generally weak. For example, one could have gloves that give +1% to fire spell damage and a small bonus to int and/or spirit. Things only get crazy when there are items for different slots that all give large bonuses.

Incidentally, I also prefer to have these bonuses be small for PvP reasons. One thing I like about PvP in Wow over Diablo II is that the equipment and build setup for PvP isn't too different than that for adventuring. That is, a person in their adventuring gear still has a reasonable chance to beat someone who's geared up for PvP. If the +damage bonuses on items were large, then PvP gankers would sacrifice int and spirit to wear massive +damage outfits, making it so that a general adventurer basically has no chance in a fight.