Talk: Healer's Covenant/Archive 1

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Discussion

Every day I love this game more, but I'm scared that Anet could be unwittingly sinking into Power Creeping. Bubbinska 06:37, 22 September 2006 (CDT)

Into what? Asmodeus 05:30, 23 September 2006 (CDT)

Power Creep Bubbinska 07:40, 23 September 2006 (CDT)

I don't see how this particular skill is overpowered. First of all, from the description it seems only healing prayers spells are affected. Second, because of the 25% reduced healing from healing spells, you pretty much have to invest your other attribute points into divine favor, or else this skill is a lot closer to being energy-neutral, which restricts this skill to exactly one distribution of attribute points, give or take a level. 25% less healing means you have to cast 33% more of the same spells to get the same healing effect, not counting divine favor bonus. The only skills to work around this drawback are healing breeze and restful breeze (generally unfavored skill imho), because they dont heal. Healing breeze would still cost 6-7 energy which is not spammable at energy regen of max. 3, and is not a spike healing skill, so it can't be used exclusively. Third, to get the most out of this skill, you pretty much have to spam healing skills (hello diversion) of which the good ones have 1 second cast time (hello interrupt). Fourth and final, enchantment removal is common in pvp and much of pve. If it were non-Elite, overpowered, yes. But as it is, it looks like another energy management skill for a particular attribute distribution, but not much more. RolandOfGilead 11:06, 23 September 2006 (CDT)

Breeze is a TERRIBLE way to heal, anyway, so...fuck that. No, this is great for whisper/orison/ethereal/etc. spamming. You don't have to cast 33% more often (keep in mind that the divine favor bonus isn't pwned by this, and that's a good 30%+ of your healing for any good healing monk), more like...20% more often, say, and if you're reducing by even ONE energy on a 5 energy spell, you're hitting the neutral mark. But if you reduce by 3 energy on a 5 energy spell like whisper, you can spam whisper ALL DAY LONG. That's what I've been doing with div spirit all the time, and this is better as it doesn't have the cruel 60 second recharge if it's ganked by a shatter or godly AI interrupts... --Carmine 16:38, 3 October 2006 (CDT)

I find this a VERY powerful elite, and with "enchantment hate", it's only bearing a 5 second recharge, which hardly makes people flinch, even the boon prots with now 10 second recharges. If one was really worried over such a thing they could cover it with vigorous spirit, but 5 seconds... c'mon. As for the energy reduction, this + strings of 5 energy spells = LOVE. Kamahl 22:42, 23 September 2006 (CDT)

Combo this and divine boon. all spells cost 1 less enrgy and heal for most likely a bit more. Still i dont think this is a very good skill.

And lost 2 energy regen? ouch. --Carmine 16:42, 3 October 2006 (CDT)

You know what makes this interesting? It's *not* in Divine Favor like other Monk energy management spells. A secondary Monk could use it too193.61.111.50 07:36, 25 September 2006 (CDT)

Very true. It is also a maintained enchantment. A Mo/Me could use Revitalize AND Healer's Covenant if he simply brings Arcane Mimicry.

Healing light isn't in DF either. It needs to be in healing because it changes healing skills... --Carmine 16:42, 3 October 2006 (CDT)

Shhh! You're not supposed to give out ideas I've come up with! >.<;; I was thinking, due to the lack of sufficient paragon elites, you could make one a P/Mo, focusing on motivation, and just giving him Healer's Covenant as something for the monks to mimicry off... -Kamahl (Not logged in.)

You won't see any 'power creeping' in a game who's skills are constantly examined and balanced. (T/C) 23:01, 26 September 2006 (CDT)

Eh, I don't particularly like this one. mostly because you can't burst heal which monks rly need to do in pvp. Its hardly worth having an infinite amount of 5 energy heals if people are dying all around you :P. I'm sure there's a very good use for it, tho I think people will abuse it for poorer uses (Not a fifty five 00:22, 27 September 2006 (CDT))

Heal Other (T/C) 07:23, 27 September 2006 (CDT)

This + Prot spells = Less E spent, same healing (seeing how prot spells dont directly heal), but no Mantra, no burst when you spam RoF+Mend, and we need to know if it lowers the healing from DF aswell. We'll just have to wait and see. 89.136.42.26 02:28, 29 September 2006 (CDT)

I don't think it works on prot spells, it says "healing" spells which implies healing prayers, otherwise it would've said monk spells prolly. (Not a fifty five 09:12, 29 September 2006 (CDT))

Healing spells, not Healing Prayers spells. "Spells that heal" if you will. So it would work on spells that are specifically used to heal. So, for instance, it would work on, say, Divine Healing, or Healing touch, but it would not work on skills like Healing breaze or Reversal of Fortune, because the skills don't directly heal you on their own. I tried to use examples of skills in different attributes that everyone knows real well, not ones that would work well with the skill.(They're aren't really any other non-elite Divine favor healing spells, exept for Contemplation, which i don't know if it works with the skill since the healing is conditional and I didn't try, the same thing goes for conditional Prot healing skills like Mend Condition) Also, the 25% does not apply to the healing gained from Divine Favor, or the healing gained from Divine Boon, only the healing that the spell does itself.

That being said, this skill also works for other classes that use spells that directly heal, so this skill could be used by Rits and even Dervishes. Not sure about the other class's healing spells, because again, they're mostly conditional and I didn't try.

Sorry I couldn't test it more, I was trying it out near the end of the event. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.185.57.90 (contribs) .

Are you sure it works on all healing spells instead of Healing Prayers spells? Did you actually test this out with, say, Divine Healing or is this conjecture?--Kiiron 18:55, 3 October 2006 (CDT)

Nitpick: It wouldn't work with CoP because CoP is a skill. --Wil 16:22, 29 September 2006 (CDT)

This skill only works with spells from the "Healing Prayers" line. E reduction doesn't work with Rit spells that heal, Protection spells that heal, or anything else that isn't a Healing Prayers spell. Also, it works with Heal-over-Time spells like Breeze. It also doesn't affect Divine Favor. Spells like Vigorous Spirit still heal for their stated amount as well. Dwaynas Kiss adds all the bonuses from hexes/enchants, then takes off 25% of the total. On a rather interesting note Dismiss Conditions heal is cut by 25%, but the energy cost is not affected (ouch). The same is true for rit heals like Ghostmirror Light, making this skill very bad for split spec builds.

As stated elswwhere, this skill is great for keeping hero energy in line. Its best to use with a setup like 16DF/13H. This puts orison at [63H - (63*0.25)] + 51DF = 98HP / 2E = 49HP/E, which is all counts amazing. This power is best realized with a 40/40 set, obviously.

Anyone else think he'll be taking this skill as a Mo secondary (Tyria/Cantha) or sticking it on a hero (Elonia) just so the party's Mo's can arcane mimicry it? ^^ Ichigo724 17:42, 11 October 2006 (CDT)

I was thinking a Covenant Bonder could be a great bonding build. Cheep heals + Bonds makes for a powerful pve build, also possibly fitting into pvp if you were to throw in an angelic bonding pargon to lighten the load more and for some intense energy gain. I mean, your already maintaing 7+ enchantments, what harm would another do that reduces the energy cost of healing spells like dwaynas kiss. I stuggle to see a donwside to this. --Elixir 16:02, 18 December 2006 (CST)

Überhealer?

Divine Boon anyone? Maybe the energy regen is low, but what amounts of healing! --Angelo

Yes, Divine Boon is discussed in other sections of this talk page too. This + Divine Boon + essence bond x 2 + Blessed Signet, you'll be healing 150+ with 4 energy or less. While not sacrificing much energy lose. Lightblade 17:58, 24 October 2006 (CDT)

Revitalize, holy haste, ethreal light/healing whisper. 200+ heal(with 16 heal and 15 divine) 1/4 sec cast, 5 energy and +3 regen. i think this is so much better than that. also you could add divine boon and some essence bonds for a crap load of healing

Uh, yeah, For the longest time I had NO IDEA what ^that guy was talking about. Then I understood, so I'll post it here. Healer's Boon was once named Revitalize. So if you search for Revitalize, Healer's Boon won't come up. But it is in fact a real skill. Gwen Shadowsound 13:16, 24 April 2007 (CDT)

Channeling synergy

by itself this represents a 60% energy decrease, optimum, bad idea to start using it on 10 energy+ spells. But it doesn't seem too farfetched to say that with channeling you can be casting a lot of free spells - even with only +1 nearby, without DB you're reducing your cost by 50% from 2-1. On another note, I think vigorous spirit+dwayna's kiss could be an effective pve use of this, however VS would prevent use of that new healing prayers cast reduction. Losing 2 pips to divine boon+this, so might be worth taking 1-2 more maintained enchants such as essence bond (for tanks) to make blessed signet worthwhile too Phool 11:59, 22 October 2006 (CDT)

Great Skill for Monk Heroes

This skill is particularly useful for Monk heroes. They heal way too early and generally start healing when health bars are down like 50 health and spam spells like crazy and run dry quickly. Covenant takes advantage of this and reduces their energy costs drastically and allows them to spam non-stop. --GTPoompt 23:33, 21 November 2006 (CST)

I never really paid attention to this, so I'm not saying you're wrong, but I kind of always assumed the AI healers would be very efficient in this respect. I certainly never expected that they would be overhealing, as this is one thing a computer could be very good at. DeepSearch 00:01, 22 November 2006 (CST)

It is a terrible skill for monk heroes. They can't keep anyone alive with it, and when I checked their energy, they had used it all. I don't even know how...?! As DeepSearch said the AI monks are actually pretty efficient. So far I have found Glimmer of Light to be one of the best elites to give them. With their super reactions and a fast recharging higher-than-Orison heal, they can really do a good job of keeping themselves and the team alive. --Carth 18:13, 5 December 2006 (CST)

Are you...insane? Monk heroes are probably worse than most monks in AB (and that's saying something). They waste energy worse than anything else. For example: I've never seen anything else try to heal you with divine favor boosts from prot spirit when outside battle... 76.102.172.202 17:27, 15 July 2007 (CDT)

Terrible, And here's why

25% less healing power.. but everyone is forgetting one tiny thing: 25% less ENERGY REGEN TOO. You lose energy per heal with 10 energy spells heals, and even 5 energy spells turning to 2 energy is only mildly more efficient due to less healing and regen. For what? No healing spike power is what. The only good thing its for is monk heroes, and thats a small part of the game.(Not a fifty five 00:28, 22 November 2006 (CST))

Let's say a spell heals 100 clean (to make it easier, ethereal light or what is it heals 105 or so), with added divine favor (42?). Normally it's 100+42=142 for 5 energy and 4 regen. That makes it castable every 3.75 sec without energy loss, thus 142 energyloss healing every 3.75 sec. With Healer's covenant that spell would heal 100*.75 = 75, with added 42 divine favor so 117 heal on 3 pips of regen with a cost of 2 energy. That makes 117 heal every 2 seconds. So without healer's covenant you can heal about 38 every second and with it around 58. Alright, I based it off 1 spell, go base it on several and the difference will be even better. For example orison will be affected less because it's less base healing, relying even more on divine favor. Sure, this can't be good for a team with both monks using this, but with one spike healer (woh anyone?) and one of these it's great. -Ichigo724 09:32, 22 November 2006 (CST)

Healer's Boon > it personally, but that's me. It's just that you don't get a wide selection of heal skills with this. Orison, Healing Whisper, Ethereal is bad without holy haste or healer's boon (or both), and even then it's not spikey enough. I don't know for sure since I haven't used it yet, but, hmm. --Silk Weaker

Okay so our ratio is about 40:60 or 2:3 then so you get 50% more heal out of it. Now take healer's boon. 150% heal x.75 energy = 12.5% more healing power. However you basically get 16 fast casting, 32 fast catsing with Holy haste and you have spike healing. :P to the covenant (Not a fifty five 09:58, 22 November 2006 (CST))

Of course, that's assuming max DF. What about Ethereal Light? And Channeling? Let's take it this way, both are -1 regen, so we could just use energy. 117 with ethereal, 2 energy, right? What about 180 with Ethereal 5 energy? Not as good right? Of course Ethereal happens to have recharge, as does every other skill except for Orison and Healing Whisper, and you have a 1 second casting time. =/ It'll kill you in a practical situation, I'm serious. You really will have to spam a lot, so it'd be Orison and Whisper mostly. With 1 second cast, I find that extremely dangerous. KD/Interrupt, etc. What I'm worrying is that although you heal quite a lot for little cost, possibly gain more energy than lost through channeling, you don't heal enough even if you spam it. With 1 second cast and 1 second recharge, and then after cast... hmmmm. --Silk Weaker

On a side note, it is funny casting soothing memories for -1 energy loss (so gain of 1 energy). (Not a fifty five 10:21, 22 November 2006 (CST))

Heh, I didn't even intend to claim this is a better elite than healer's boon. But it isn't a "terrible elite" either like I said earlier. WoH's still my elite all the time. (I only pve monk) Also: I USED ETHEREAL LIGHT FOR AN EXAMPLE. Dear god don't think it's the only skill used, I already said to use other skills. Other skills such as orison only make covenant look better, as they're more reliant on div favor. *edit* also: 1 second casts aren't fast enough? My my, I must be god to have played through all the "interrupts and kd's" in prophecies and factions. -Ichigo724 10:32, 22 November 2006 (CST)

Hell no! Why do you think RoF is the most casted monk spell ever? Because heal sucks for reactivity, they tried to address this problem with holy hasted, glimmer, and h-boon (speaking of which, only use ethereal with h-boon :) ) — Skuld 10:35, 22 November 2006 (CST)

RoF? Read please, I said PVE, that's PVE, also PVE and not to forget PVE PVE. In PvE orison's used waaaaaay more. And ethereal light is fine if aggro's any good. Also: I usually run 16h/13df with orison, dwayna's, ethereal, WoH, breeze, healparty, glyph of lesser energy and a generic res. Works fine. -Ichigo724 11:20, 22 November 2006 (CST)

Skills are only designed for PvP. The MM, which could get quite literally 100 minions in PvE, did not get nerfed till AB (Not a fifty five 11:26, 22 November 2006 (CST))

Riiiiiiiiight, so there are no PvE-based skills? k, pointless to argue with you if you believe that. gfg -Ichigo724 11:49, 22 November 2006 (CST)

None that can be used in pvp as well (e.g. rebirth sig not counting). And name one please (Not a fifty five 13:11, 22 November 2006 (CST))

If you claim rebirth isn't PvE-BASED...(and no, I don't mean rebirth sig because you mentioned it, I mean the actual spell "rebirth") -Ichigo724 13:18, 22 November 2006 (CST)

I'm not even sure why you are arguing about this. First of all, I'm pretty sure it's fair to say that skills are designed for BOTH PvE and PvP, even though it's of course criticly important that they are as balanced as possible in PvP. Apart from that, ANet doesn't even matter here. If Ichigo724 is playing PvE, cares only about PvE, uses this skill in PvE and says it's useful in PvE, while Not a fifty five talks about PvP, then this is not going to lead to anything. DeepSearch 14:32, 22 November 2006 (CST)

We're just fighting :P And rebirth was prolly designed for gvg to get people out of dangerous areas (like if an assasin spiked a npc and died) (Not a fifty five 16:24, 22 November 2006 (CST))

Riiiight, it surely wasn't to prevent wipes in PvE. gg -Ichigo724 17:41, 22 November 2006 (CST)

Yeh its awful. Prehaps it will be good to spot the 8 heal spell spammers so we can kick the m faster :) — Skuld 10:33, 22 November 2006 (CST)

Healer's Covenant destroys the whole point of playing a monk. Monks pump out fast, efficient heals in a way no other profession can easily match. If healing efficiency were the only thing Monks had going for them, then Restoration Ritualists would be used more often, particularly since, unlike Healing Prayers, Restoration has quite a bit more utility to it, containing pro-active damage management (Vengeful/Remedy/Warding), hex hate (Resilient), condition removal (Mend + Restoration), spike heal [Edit: That doesn't leave you at half health <_<] (Spirit Transfer) and the heals themselves are rather strong for the cost in general. They can also emulate the Covenant effect on a broader skill set through Attuned was Songkai. Unless they give Covenant an overhaul, I can't see the point, because for all the perks of a Restoration Ritualist, they don't see much use. Merengue 16:20, 22 November 2006 (CST)

Without DF, Monk heals are generally a lot weaker than Rit ones. Compare Orison to Soothing Memories or Mend Body and Soul for example. DF is the line that makes monk healing worth it for the spike power and combination with prot. I'd say a rit is more efficient as a support character as they combine more abilities in one spell whereas a monk would overheal, wasting energy. It's just people are used to monks. For example Vengeful is a great spell on tanks for keeping health high while boosting efective dmg output. This lets a monk do a similar "top up" job.

Also, there's one point nobody looked at. Description says "healing spells" *not* "Healing *Prayers*" Can someone try this with straight Rit heals, Imbue Health etc, and tell me if it works on those?Labmonkey 19:55, 8 December 2006 (CST)

Tested with Spirit Light, Mend Body and Soul, Vengeful Weapon, Healing Breeze, Zealous Benediction, Dismiss Condition, RoF, Mend Ailment. Healing Breeze got a reduced energy cost, despite not being a true heal, while the rit and prot spells were unaffected. Looks like Healing spells means all spells in healing prayers. Also tested with Healer's Boon. The bonus health from Boon only applys if Covenant is applied first, for some reason. The half cast time always takes effect.--Khoross 05:27, 7 January 2007 (CST)

And something else people seem to be forgetting: it's got a quarter second activation and 5 second recharge for a reason. I imagine we're supposed to stop supporting it when we need big heals or energy regen, then reapply it in combat when we need the energy management.

Another topic people are forgetting: Divine Boon. With this and Boon, spells cost 1 less energy total to cast and heal for considerably more. I tested with all of the 5 cost Healing Prayers spells except for Ethereal Light (don't have it unlocked), and it gave an average of 30-40 more health with 1 less energy cost, and with a decent e-management like Channeling to cover the loss of 2 pips of energy regen, I never once ran out of energy in a very extended battle in AB, yet I believe only 2 people died (in about 8v8 or so). It is very probable that when ANet created this skill, they intended it to be used with Boon, for this very reason. --Gimmethegepgun 20:00, 14 February 2007 (CST)

Or you could just use Healer's Boon –Ichigo724 20:03, 14 February 2007 (CST)

Healer's Boon is intended for use with high cost skills due to their high output, and not with lower cost since they will chew up the count. With this and Divine Boon it makes the cheap spammable things a bit more affordable and heal more --Gimmethegepgun 21:20, 14 February 2007 (CST)

3 regen, insane heals for 5 energy, [Build:Mo/E Glyph Boon Healer] –Ichigo724 21:36, 14 February 2007 (CST)

Note removed

Xeon removed the note "The strength of indirect healing effects, e.g. Vigorous Spirit or Healing Seed, is not reduced." saying that "these are enchants not healing spells". I'd like to clarify this. First of all, enchantments are spells. The question is: Are these spells considered healing spells? They do heal, don't they? Are the energy costs reduced? Regardless whether they are or not, I think it is not trivial, and should be pointed out. The note should be reworded and put back in. -- 05:40, 15 January 2007 (CST)

That was my reasoning. They are spells in the Healing Prayers line, and they create some sort of healing effect, as opposed to life gain or health regeneration. That's why I considered it non-obvious info. --RolandOfGilead 10:23, 15 January 2007 (CST)

Hmm, read a section in the above talk wrong, ill re-add it. -- Xeon 21:51, 15 January 2007 (CST)

I also removed the note that said that this spell affects signets, and changed it so that it says "affects all healing spells", so the signets are incorporated in that. I tried this with Spirit Light... to my dissapointment it was also reduced just like the signets were, and I didn't save any energy:(. (Terra Xin 19:03, 20 January 2007 (CST))

Having tested this, I can verify that All spells from the healing prayers attribute come at a reduced cost, even vigourous spirit and the like, whose healing still comes in full because they are not a direct heal. Ckal Ktak 15:12, 20 March 2007 (CDT)