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I've already done the feedback related to the zones and other stuff in the General feedback, time for the class related one.
So we both met outside of Tortage to begin our duo. Friend was a Dark templar, we aimed for the good old tank/heal duo that proved to be good in about any game for years, and at the end it's the same here, it worked pretty well. I have to say i was surprised by our dps, way higher than what i expected.
The Tortage soloing was nothing impressive, still problems for our spell scaling and levels here. But i had no particular trouble, anyway i know the area so i moved through it pretty fast as i'm bored with it anyway.
Then at level 20 began the small group. From this point we remained together up to lvl 80 so, no soloing at all. I have to say the routine was about the same from lvl 20 to 80, despite leveling and getting new feats, it only helped in the difficult fights, but most of the time the DK ran to aggro 2 or 3 mobs then we threw our AE and move to the next ones, with his life going up to full with my stacked hots by the time he reached the second mob.
Overall, i felt very useful as a "healer", although i was more of a roaming health regen giver. As i said a few times, i would have never thought that the two hots would make such a difference, i clearly can't see a duo working as well as ours did with no healer. I'd even say ToS in a great small group class as we bring both heal and dps to the group, even if after lvl 50+ my dps began to be... anecdotic. LS proved to be very powerful at the earlier levels, then become average, and powerful again after lvl 65+. Anyway i suffered a lot of the cast time. I can't count how many time my LS went off on a dead mob, usually i could get it off once per fight and that's all.
The typical fight went like this:
-me casting healing lotus
-DT rushing the mobs
-me rushing behind him and casting Life of Set
-me casting Storm crown then LS
-mob dead
And that was against mobs higher than us, usually we were hitting +2 to +7 mobs, with the grind being on mobs +4 to +6 after lvl 40. Only the Boss mobs lasted long enough for me to think about my dps, my main challenge through the rest of the game was to actually land successfully more than one spell on the mobs. As a result, it was annoying to say the least. I really felt like a healbot at lvl 60+ when the DT began to deal great dps, with my only task being to keep the hots up and maybe a LS if he missed some hits on the mobs, or vitalizing jolt in a big pull.
Anyway, when i had the time to land spells (or when i started early in the fight) i got aggro instantly and until the mob died. He had a lot of trouble to keep mobs off me if i tried to dps more than him, and waiting for him to get aggro would of course result in the mobs being often dead before i had the chance to cast more than once. I quickly forgot the idea to use Storm field as this thing got me killed more than any other spell i could cast, on top of eating my mana pretty fast. I thought the level 50 would made a big improvment with cyclones + storm field, until i realized Storm field = all the mobs on me and dead, and cyclones = crash for both of us. So i went for a build focused on LS, storm crown, and the priest feats, making good use of a polearm i got with +16 electrical damage.
Idol of set was more or less useless. Fights lasting 10 to 20sec at best, and us moving a lot between mobs, i kept the feat for long until i dropped it, as i didn't ever find a situation where it helped. Especially with the cast time, usually by the time i cast the Idol and one more spell we're already moving to the next mobs. So i had quite a lot of mana problems, having to keep up the heals all the time and not being able to take advantage of my LS buffing abilities. I took the first priest feat as soon as lvl 10 and this was the only real thing helping me on the mana department, i often had to melee the mobs for a few fights while the mana regen and i could cast something else than the heals again.
The good surprise was interrupt rate. With maxed concentration i had no problem on that: the changes were good and i was pleasantly surprised. Thanks for this.
After lvl 40 i began to really wonder where to allocate my feat points. I even spent 5 level forgeting them completely. Only feats i found to be actually desirable were:
-the mana regen in priest tree
-storm crown (all the feats)
... and that's it. The LS feats did help a bit but i really felt they were a waste because i had nothing better, considering the amount of points and the barely visible effect they add. Although it seems to be partly broken so that might explain the feeling. Elemental fury was cool but long timer and high mana cost when i already had mana issues... I used it only for fun when i had enough mana.
So i was disappointed with the feats, mainly the pets ones, being static in a game that promotes quick fights and a lot of running around. And the cyclones that made us crash, of course, didn't help with that.
Spell wise, i totally forgot charged blast. It was useful only for pulling sometimes and nothing better. It's single target and we were aiming for AE damage, and the damage is low anyway so... I never used it for anything else than pulling.
For the same time problems, i never really used Call lightning. Cast time was way too long to be of any use in an environment where mobs die in a few seconds. I tried Curse of Set as well but despite both of us meleeing the cursed mobs we didn't ever notice a single buff or damage boost, so i guess it's broken. Quickand ? I tried to use it a few times when the DT was forced to run to give him some breathing time, until i realized i can't root a moving mob because by the time the spell goes off, he's out of the green zone. And i couldn't cast it in advance where the mob would run, because the range was too low. So the total times i've been happy with the use of this spell was a big 0, and i've tried to use it about 10 times.
The rez wasn't very practical to use as well, as it doesn't work in combat, and the range is very low. So only time where i could use it were in the case of him dieing and me finishing the mobs, otherwise he was camped and i couldn't cast the rez out of aggro range.
The buffs were nothing stellar, other than Wind shield, i think it's the only time my groupmate told me "hey, now that's a cool buff you have !". Sadly this one should be removed soon, so...
The mana regen spell Faith of Set was useful to reduce downtime, sometimes. Never in an emergency fight, because of the cast time. Not sure what is intended for this one but if it has to be the emergency life saver on a 30min timer i'd vote for it being an instant spell, because in its current state we're both dead by the time i can cast it. So the potion wins over the spell here, by a large margin.
Having a tank with me, i didn't suffer much of the LS range. In a group it doesn't matter so i never felt impaired by the low range of my spells, and charged blast was enough for the pulling, as well as being low damage so low aggro on me.
I never really used Cobra stare, again, it's a single target spell and we were aiming for AE. And we rarely were in trouble with the bosses, if we were, a stun wouldn't change the course of the fight anyway. I had the feat for a while, tried to use it, then dropped it.
I tried The Building Storm feat as well. My groupmate told me he got about 20% more damage out of this buff, for a few seconds. Considering this thing takes 9sec to cast i instantly dropped the feat. Again the cast time is not suited to the rythm we had.
Overcharge, i tried to use it, really. But i couldn't find any real use for this, the damage boost is barely noticeable (i'm not even sure it works right now) and not worth the mana or additionnal cast time.
Storm crown was here mostly for its buffing component and not damage. The damage it did for me was not that bad, but the damage done by the DT version was laughable: about 6 damage at lvl 75+ while mine was doing 150ish per tick. Not sure if it's intended, but i can't see it doing any kind of noticeable dps even with 5 groupmates ticking for 6 dmg each.
So that left me with not much to use and not a lot of spells to rely on. Even more than when i was solo, in this duo i suffered of my cast times. Seeing the DT rushing and putting the mob to mid life before i was done casting my first spell was depressing to say the least, and i needed to follow him around close because of the cone heal range, so i spent most of my time moving, healing, with the additionnal LS when i was lucky enough that he would miss a few hits. We began to aim for higher level mobs so i could be of any use there.
I told him a few times in the leveling process "i'm bored" and in fact i was, as the gameplay was nowhere near as fun as soloing and my role was far from being stellar. Healing lotus, Life of Set, Vitalizing jolt. After 60 levels of mindlessly doing that (because as i stated in another post, it takes no skill or planningor anything to heal. Even for vitalizing jolt, in a big pull, i precast both the other heals, and i cast VJ as soon as i'm behind the DT, so that it lands when he's mid life) i'm having a hard time thinking of me being a serious healer in any kind of content.
We tried some group mobs, too. Only thing to watch was if their dps was higher than my healing ability with 2 hots + a potion for the tank. If it was, we had to run, if it wasn't, we would stand here for 5Min and kill it. Vitalizing Jolt didn't change anything, because if i had to cast it to save the tank, there was no chance we could bring down the mob before the timer was up again. I tried the feat to buff our heals: it improved LoS by about 2 points per tick. So i dropped the feat after a while, even if i could cast 5 times LS before casting LoS i can't see how 10hp/sec are worth anything when i'm already healing 160hp/sec and the potion ticks as well.
My survivability was pretty low too, and i died a lot when getting aggro for some reason (LS too fast, storm crown hitting at the first second of the pull and pulling all the mobs on me before the DT could hit them, respawn on me, etc...) without the DT standing a chance to keep them off me, as i died in about 2sec with a few mobs on me. Archer mobs often got 25% of my hp in one arrow (before wind shield of course, that's why i like so much this buff ) and i drank countless potions to survive because of my nerfed healing on myself. I died quite a few times with Vitalizing jolt not healing me as it was often my life saver. Having a shield or polearm didn't make any difference as well. But i think it's fair and i expected to be a paper healer, i just wish i could heal myself decently so at least i'm not forced to run with a single mob on me when the DT is not nearby. I had a pretty glorious moment where i got 2 resists in a row on a single mob with 20% hp left and no mana left so forced to run with 5% Hp and die from aggroing a minion in the process, while the dead DT was making fun of my healing skills.
Needless to say, i'm not happy with our healing as it is now. While i didn't notice that much when soloing, it appeared as a major problem for me when grouped as no matter what i did i couldn't "heal", just keep those two hots and pray that the mobs die before the tank while i tried to help killing them. The cyclones making us crash everytime was a major letdown at lvl 50, as it's my favorite spell so far for the ToS. I think the little chat we had once sums up what is wrong, when we were resting before a big pull. He asked if i was ready and i answered "I'm always ready, but i hope you have potions". Just because the end of the fight didn't depend on me, the healer, but on our potions, and no matter if it was an easy fight or a hard fight, i was still healing the same.
