The recent nerf to water elemental healing is actually a forced multiplayer move. The implementation was not thought through and has resulted in basically negating the healing utility pretty much altogether. When a player is playing Multiplayer, he can get a "pet" (another player(ducks)) to heal them when fighting. A solo player does not have access to this type of healing. This puts the solo player at a huge disadvantage as to being able to EVER solo groups of high level mobs. To make the decision applicable to all play is to put a 5 second heal timer on all players being healed by outside sources. I say this in jest because it would be a knee jerk reaction to solve the dilemma caused in the first place by a not thought out nerf. I have no way to actually see how the new 5 second heal is implemented, but from my experience, I am NOT being healed every 5 seconds by my water ele. I have a suspicion that it is healing itself, restarting the timer until he issues another heal to itself or to me. This results in huge time intervals between healing. Melee people are affected the most, but for the most part, the solo player is losing ability to play the game unless they play multi with several healers watching their back, healing at will.
not on topic with the title at all this is feedback to a change to the water eles. Sure you concept is very valid, it is another knee jerk, idiotic dcesion but it does not force multiplayer at all.
I think you can use water eles in private mode too. But sounds like you’re saying that having a water ele was 100% required to solo groups of the toughest monsters. Thats usually a sign something is messed up or OP
Let's change the water elemental to do something else other than healing. That way everyone is screwed equally and fairly! This is coming from a melee that learned to heal himself when needed.
Have to say, there are alternatives for solo players than the water elemental. Never used one myself, mainly play in private, while solo. Yes there is stuff I can't solo, but that is generally because it is the counter to my build and have not diversified my character enough to put on different equipment/deck for those fights. Or I have not practiced enough to be able to do it. I also have no problems with some content being unsoloable. You have companions in offline which I assume is to mitigate that problem where grouping is impossible. Never played offline so not sure if that works, but I assume that is the design. Regards Spung
What kind of heals was your pet giving you? Mine heals and I have GMd it, but the pet does not heal me nearly enough to make it replace a real healer
In all honesty water elemental is still op vrs the other summons it’s not even close. As far as forced multi player -yay too many exploits in the single player versions.
My point is that instead of nerfing the heal action, it should have been left as the advantage of water ele. All of the other summons should have been boosted in their specialties to even the field. I say that this was a forced multiplayer move because the summoned (or tamed pet) is a mechanic that allows private or solo players to obtain the promise of solo or multiplayer choice. It was never said that the solo game would be far less satisfactory than the multiplayer game due to being under powered vs the competition. I mean really, adv level 40 people are routinely participating in high level areas. I hold no animosity for this, it is great that they can. It's just at the other end of the adv level ruler (110 and up) there are areas totally out of reach unless a perfect ranged build and very high skill is used. This leaves so many people hanging.
That is true, but the heals are rare in the heat of battle with the 5 second (misleading to be sure) cooldown. I would not have an issue if throughout the game, no character could be healed except at 5 second intervals, but that is not the case when an avatar(s) is healing you. As stated in the OP, I am not sure whether the timer is reset when the summon self heals.
That's not forced multiplayer, that's forced grouping. There is a definite difference, however subtle. But to be fair, I'd say that it's the other elementals that are under-powered.
This is not my experience. I have found from my guild mates (who are all different builds and decks) that most builds are viable for most fights, not optimal but viable. I'm not sure I'd call out ranged as the optimal either. I would actually be interested if this is others experience, as perhaps i'm missing something that has change more recently. I only have ranged and low level swords (as i said have not diversified too much). Certainly in the past ranged was not considered "optimal" build. Now I will say, if soloing, using light armour is playing this game on hard mode, tried both, for my play style I still prefer light, but doing the chain chest with cloth rest (even when casting lots of non earth/life magic) is much easier than using light. So much damage avoidance and extra HP by having access to the heavy armour tree, and in places like Krull the passive stun resistance made quite a big difference too. The damage mitigation make a huge difference when you have no choice but to be the tank as well as the DPS, ie soloing. I just stayed with light because I got used to the speed and hitting fleet flute every 30 secs is annoying. I prefer to play the build/play style I have most fun with and play the game on hard mode than move to a "better" build and have less fun. Regards Spung
The time between heals previously was probably around 5 seconds. @Chris said that he added 5 seconds to that, so it should be ~10 seconds but it's actually closer to 30 seconds now. If he actually only added 5 seconds then I would have no problem with it but it seems that more than 5 seconds was added to the time. [edit] After some testing, the time between heals is 20 seconds now. @Chris absolutely added more than 5 seconds.