So the haste changes have been pretty well gone-over, but it seems the healing changes have been more of a footnote in those discussions. I have some questions about how or if the healing changes shift balance between classes.

Protective abilities and groups: Healer sancs someone, then heals them. Are the heals at full effectiveness because the healer knows sanc, or reduced because the target doesn't? If they're reduced, is it by the same amount as damage is resisted? Similarly for bards: does resisting + healing songs no longer work more efficiently than just singing heal alone? If so, am I wrong to conclude that it is typically undesirable to use protective abilities while ranking (because you lose effectiveness in both your own healing abilities, your target's natural healing, and your target's ability-based healing)?

Regen-based shifters: Have regenerating forms been significantly downgraded? Is it the case that they cannot have both a/b/s and good regenerative ability? If so, are they weaker now compared to forms like armadillo or mongoose, both of which get almost full use of a/b/s (except for no outside healers)

Overall, it seems that defensive preps are less useful for classes that are adept at healing. Would it be right to conclude therefore that classe which survive by having high hitpoints or strong evasive abilities have gotten better in comparison?

I mean these questions sincerely, I'm not trying to complain about changes I don't know the ramifications of. I've brought up the issues that stand out to me, but they seem so obvious that I can't believe the staff hasn't thought of these things. So the question is either, what am I misunderstanding about these changes, or what makes it so these are not major shifts in class balance?

Not that I'm objecting even if they are major balance changes. I personally believe in change for the sake of change (in entertainment, anyway). Maybe it just means that now a different set of classes should be considered the challenge classes.

Everything just got more time intensive.

I may be wrong though.

PK can always be tweaked, even pretty easily to balance things out. But I just had this terrible thought. CF prides itself for a huge world, with many places to explore. And the true greatness of PvE comes from killing the devilish mobs, that are rarely beaten. Now, ideally when you pitch up against something like archmages, archdevils or whatever buff thing you want to destroy, you will want to have a fairly big group, say 5 persons minimum (or one fire giant AP ;) (sorry, couldn't resist)). It might include a healer, invoker, bard, perhaps two warriors or warrior + offense form. Now realisticly one side has at most 6-7 active heros these days. On top of that you need people who are competent enough to lead the group and survive. As recent experience has shown, really tough groups who have the interest and time to push in 6 hours straight come up once in a blue moon. (When was the last time someone got Satan's tattoo.)

Now, I am uncertain if sanc affects healer healing, and I don't think it does (someone can mayby verify this?), simply bard resist + shields would be over 50% reduction. If healing is proportional to reduction (I assume it is), this would result in over twice the healing power required for similar effectiveness.

After playing for quite a while, I'm only now starting to enjoy the PvE side of CF, and I think there is a lot of cool things to see. If things work as I assume up there, I think a serious powerdown has hit exploration groups.

So, it all brews up to these final questions. Have these things been thought over? Has the toughness of say, hell mobs been tweaked? Am I talking out of my ass?

My concern really is that it might become virtually impossible for a strong enough explore group to emerge without out of game preplanning, and this kind of defeats the point of having areas like Hell, altogether.

I talk about this in one of the other recent threads about this last set of changes. Sorry, don't have time at the moment to dig up a link, but more information is out there.

Link: http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=6&topic_id=15091&mesg_id=15100&page=

This would be awesom.

>So the haste changes have been pretty well gone-over, but it
>seems the healing changes have been more of a footnote in
>those discussions. I have some questions about how or if the
>healing changes shift balance between classes.
>
>Protective abilities and groups: Healer sancs someone, then
>heals them. Are the heals at full effectiveness because the
>healer knows sanc, or reduced because the target doesn't? If
>they're reduced, is it by the same amount as damage is
>resisted? Similarly for bards: does resisting + healing songs
>no longer work more efficiently than just singing heal alone?
>If so, am I wrong to conclude that it is typically undesirable
>to use protective abilities while ranking (because you lose
>effectiveness in both your own healing abilities, your
>target's natural healing, and your target's ability-based
>healing)?

If I've read the other threads in the forums correctly if a healer communes sanctuary on someone and then heals them the healing is less effective due to the damage redux. However if the healer has sanctuary on themself they don't get reduced healing since it is something they normally learn. Basically if it's something from your class/cabal then the reduced healing through dam redux doesn't affect you. Only if the dam redux is from an outside source. I.e. a bard's healing won't be affected by a resist song but the warrior in their group wouldn't heal as good as they normally would without the resist. IMMs feel free to correct me on this.

>Regen-based shifters: Have regenerating forms been
>significantly downgraded? Is it the case that they cannot have
>both a/b/s and good regenerative ability? If so, are they
>weaker now compared to forms like armadillo or mongoose, both
>of which get almost full use of a/b/s (except for no outside
>healers)

With shifters the A/B/S would, from what I've read, affect their regenerating forms adversely. In that these forms won't regen as well as they would without use of A/B/S. So if you're running around in anaconda form with A/B/S up your regen just took a big hit. Whether or not they're weaker compared to other forms now has yet to be seen, I think. Again, someone feel free to correct me on this.

>Overall, it seems that defensive preps are less useful for
>classes that are adept at healing. Would it be right to
>conclude therefore that classe which survive by having high
>hitpoints or strong evasive abilities have gotten better in
>comparison?

This other stuff I don't know about at all. Hah.

I was told by a player with one that after the change with abs they healed 12 hp a tick slowed, thats a regen form that normally does more then that every 4 seconds.

n/t

Without other affects in play, that can't be right.