Lowbie Air Priests

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bryant
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Joined: Sun Jun 17, 2012 03:41 am

Lowbie Air Priests

Post by bryant »

I would like to start by saying that 30m+ airpriests are fun in groups where you join a blaster or a tank and blaster and can bring an immense amount of utility to the table, from a suprising amount of damage to a solid amount of healing.

However for the people lower than 20 million playing an air priest as any sort of healer isn't going to work.. the heals are to small to group, the damage is crap for soloing.

I think the best fix would be to move the vitae spells into the lower levels to make them groupable early, maybe get them the ability to train one of them up so that it will have a failure rate of less than 10 % by level 10. and then move the mend spells higher in the air priest lines.

Why switch vitae and mend spells? In order for mend spells to proc their goodness (full heal and heal over times) you need need masteries which you don't get until you've casted hundreds of healing spells. moving the mend spells later and the vitae spells earlier would provide an upfront value to air priest and then make masteries work for them later on their mend spells to become more mana efficient.
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solar
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Post by solar »

I can see the problem,

Healing spells got a general downtune 'a while back', and this could have been especially bad for low-level healers who don't even have 100% success rate.

Well, they could spam healing touch repeatedly to get their mastery of curing up, I guess, but how much healing are we talking about?

In comparison, as a _sec air_priest with less than stellar spell% and skill%, my healing touch (80% spell, 58% mastery of healing skill, but only 63% divine reasoning) heals 15 hitpoints. For 50 sp. That's not much of a hp/sp ratio.

Other tricks that I can think of low-level healers using is maybe preaching from divine tranquility book. It procs tiny party heals in some of its verses, at a cost of spellpoints. This of course stacks with whatever healing spells the healer casts, and does not break if the party is moving around.

Smoke spells with incenses (from alchemists) are especially useful in parties, though. At a low level, even healing glow might be of use.

Mend skin is cheaper than healing touch, it might be worth spamming in combat even if the target is not within the healing range, since it is a mend spell?

As for offensive side, bladed wind at several tiny targets is still as devastating as ever, or actually more - since it got an uptune.
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bryant
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun Jun 17, 2012 03:41 am

Post by bryant »

I will give you that the damage from bladed wind is rather large for the level at which you get it, but using it in parties isn't something good for a lowbie party situation since lowbie air priests can't heal the party after they reduce their party members hp by 20% or more (depending on skills involved) also lowbies tend to hit their parties more since they have a lower skill in the spell. Heck I almost killed a mage the other day in my own group but luckily I had the exp to have embrace trained up.

I havn't tried the preaching trick as of yet but at level 18 you can only get it to 50%. I will have to do more research into how much this heals a group and how much sp it uses before it is viable to heal a level 10ish army/ranger with spells also being cast.

I have been trying to get some incense without having to make it myself for a few days and have yet to have any sold to me. in order for an ap to make his own incense and then cast smoke takes quite a bit of exp.

Mend skin takes till around level 14 before it becomes viable to heal a low level army or ranger to heal while it's within range, while it's out it is as weak as ever.

I think it's important for lowbies to have the healing class as a viable grouping option in the lower levels. I do appreciate how uptuned the damage is while solo but it just served to reduce the viability while in a group.

grouping is important to lowbies why a play a game if no one there wants to play along side you or if you can't contribute to the ones that do?

balancing this will be tough but i think it is important to the lifeblood of icesus so we don't all end up playing a solo game till we are worth 50+m exp
khade
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Post by khade »

Generally a healer in a party isn't likely to do much offensive casting, though there are exceptions to that. For a small tank or blaster, spamming weak healing spells, even healing touch, can actually help a lot, especially since low level people have low hp maxes. I do think it would be a good idea to give the vitae spells early, since they stop being useful after level 30, but a low level healer is totally viable.
bryant
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Joined: Sun Jun 17, 2012 03:41 am

Post by bryant »

I have yet to see one picked by a low level tank/blaster to help, most of them prefer to solo for the better rate.

you have to remember these people are often not geared, no blessings and don't have knowledge of the areas and what they can kill. exploring in a group is cumbersome and most just choose to go it alone because they know what is good for 1 person and healers at that level fail more often than anything.

even if we didn't move the spells around but made healing touch unable to fail for main guild ap would help.
khade
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Post by khade »

No reason the healer can't organize a party...
bryant
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Joined: Sun Jun 17, 2012 03:41 am

Post by bryant »

not being the one to do the attacking catches meatheads and offies off their guard (sleeping,idle ect)

how about just making the casting failure rate of people below 20m sp ~ 30m lower and basing their effectiveness on level of skill% trained.

It would open up caster classes to lowbies and create a greater variety than army, and ranger.
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