Many people lament that abilities don't take enough advantage of sespus, but the problem is without some kind of cooldown system (which is another topic altogether) anything that uses spirit ends up being improved by respia as well as sespus. You end up with the same "problems" as our current system, regardless of how effective you make the ability. Note I haven't done the math for any of this so I'm at "well informed player" levels; take it with a grain of salt.
As a result of this, most suggestions I hear (or come up with) that try to encourage sespus have at the very least a side effect of being a big buff to high respia healers. And in addition any idea that attempts to increase heal speed without including faustus training raises huge red flags, but that is probably a topic for another post.
Just to summarize my opinions on healer abilities that I was going to write at length about. I generally agree that new abilities need to encourage trainers other than what the typical healers train, or at the very least not devalue them. That includes sespus. They should also open up new specialties and options for healers either tactically (on the battlefield) or in a training strategy sense.
It is just a real challenge. One that most other games also face. I think the real solution will end up being branching away from strict "healing" as the only ability of every healer (which is how most other games approach it). But that has to be done very carefully. And it still doesn't change the respia/sespus debate.
*trys to nod intelligently*
ReplyDeleteWell, It's nice you are thinking about it I guess. Not an easy thing to balance.
ReplyDeleteAs long as you don't opt for the 'hard cooldown' route. I think I speak for everyone in saying that would be universally hated. 8"}
ReplyDeleteHrm... One possible offset would be scaling the ability strength based on how much spirit you have remaining *after* paying the initial cost. So Respia wouldn't have time to act as additional Sespus.
Also you could use a sequence of iterative divisions to generate a "bonus" factor. e.g. Bonus% =1+[1(X/20) + 2(X/30) + 3(X/40)]/100 where X is trained Sespus and you round down in some manner. Granularity would probably be a factor though. If too low, you get the 17 rank Troilus step all over again and if too high it eats up cycles. Could always have an NPC you have to visit to "recalibrate" or something and sidestep the processor time issue that way.
But I've definitely rambled enough. More on the Sentinel. 8"}
Thanks for all your hard work Slarty! (And any other GM who might be reading this!)
I've said it on the sentinel, but I'll say it again here.
ReplyDeleteIf sespus were simply ~5 times better it would;
-make it a usefull stat for self healing, since it would give more health per rank then higgy ("Higgrus provides 4.14-8.28 times as much health per rank as Sespus, depending on your Sprite/Awaria" -Gorvin) times as much health per rank as Sespus",
-make bursting better without increasing heal speed through virtue of giving bigger bursts for the same number of ranks, meaning a lower frequency of bursts (making it easier to use in combat, and more like what I think it was intended to be),
-give healers of all types more decisions to make about how they want to manage their spirit. Sespus should give more time healing per rank then respia up to the point where your respia out-regens your faustus. No matter how long you can heal with sespus, infinite is longer.
-make low level healers more usefull without greatly increasing the speed of higher level healers or annoying anyone that didn't get a chance to train to abuse a new ability.
Ok, this would increase burst healing speed without increasing faustus because a burster could afford to put ranks they might have put into sespus into regia, but I'm ok with that, to be honest.
So there you have it. Healers given more traing strategy options, bursting improved, and no new mechanics needed.