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divsky
Emissary
 
Joined: 13 Mar 2004
Posts: 1054
Location: Iowa City, IA
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 Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2011 9:42 pm Post subject: Massive healing number-crunching post. |
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Playing a healer I began to notice that cure continual was delivering some less-than-stellar performance, both in terms of the amount healed and the increase in mana efficiency the helpfile claims. So I spent some time at the high-dive in the circus (a perfect place to easily damage yourself) to test it. Eventually I ended up collecting a pretty large amount of data on all the healing spells the healer uses and I thought I would go ahead and share them. Here's what I found:
*Cure continual is basically worthless. In only one situation does it actually increase the mana efficiency of your healing. That's when you cast cure continual, let it run for the full 4 rounds, then cast cure serious. This has an efficiency of 2.2 hp healed/mana, compared to 2.1 hp healed/mana from just spamming cure serious. That's pretty small. Meanwhile spamming cure serious heals 27 hp per round, while using cure continual + cure serious heals only 13 hp per round. The very small increase in mana efficiency is just not worth the drastic drop in healing rate.
*The healing bonus from cure continual is additive, not multiplicative. At level 35 it adds about 10 hp of healing to whatever your next heal is, whether it's cure serious, cure critical, or heal.
*The mana efficiency of heal is very close to cure critical, while healing a significantly higher amount of hp.
*Cure continual, cast on it's own, has by-far the worst mana efficiency and, of course, heals the least.
And here's a brief overview of the mana efficiency of the healer's healing spells at level 35 compared to it's healing per round, listed at most mana efficient to least.
4 Rounds of Cure Continual + Cure Serious
2.2 hp/mana
13 hp healed/round
Cure Serious
2.1 hp/mana
27 hp healed/round
Cure Critical
1.7 hp/mana
43 hp healed/round
Heal
1.6 hp/mana
66 hp healed/round
Cure Continual
1.3 hp/mana
3.3 hp healed/round
In my next post I will dump the raw data so you can pick it apart on your own if you wish. |
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divsky
Emissary
Joined: 13 Mar 2004
Posts: 1054
Location: Iowa City, IA
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| Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2011 9:57 pm Post subject: |
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If you're wondering how I got these numbers, he's my methods. I used the high-dive at the circus to damage myself. I then healed myself and subtracted my hp after healing to my hp before healing. I made sure I was missing some movement points every time, if I regained some movement I knew a tick has passed during the healing and that heal was thrown out. This all was done with a human healer at level 35. I didn't pay attention to luck, but the prayer spell was up at all times. A total of 20 trials was used for each spell.
I tested cure serious, cure critical and heal by themselves, as well the amount they healed with the healing bonus from cure continual applied. I also tested the total amount healed by cure continual on it's own after the full 4 rounds had passed.
| Quote: |
Cure Continual
19
17
13
13
9
11
10
19
6
7
13
12
16
16
15
14
13
11
18
11
Ave: 13.15
Cure serious by itself
29
30
25
29
29
31
26
31
30
25
22
30
24
31
24
26
23
29
26
21
Ave: 27.05
Cure serious with bonus
36
45
45
36
39
31
36
36
34
43
36
46
37
40
31
34
37
34
46
39
Ave: 38.05
Cure critical by itself
40
47
44
42
44
37
34
42
39
39
41
49
46
53
46
42
44
37
47
41
Ave: 42.70
Cure critical with bonus
47
55
61
46
55
40
53
53
51
61
60
56
50
43
55
40
50
48
51
57
Ave: 51.6
Heal by itself
72
60
62
78
62
68
75
61
66
69
62
64
71
63
66
67
58
51
66
69
Ave: 65.5
Heal with bonus
79
75
73
78
64
67
84
74
79
86
70
70
84
72
74
69
72
81
74
74
Ave: 74.95 |
And from that I did some number crunching and figured out the following data. Note that I wanted to test the efficiency of using cure continual for the full 4 rounds + the next healing spell with the healing bonus (a total of 4 rounds since it's possible the cast the next healing spell the same round as the last heal from cure continual). I also wanted to test the efficiency of using cure continual and then immediately using the next healing spell for the healing bonus. This would result in 2 rounds of cure continual (like above you can do the 2 rounds of cure continual + another heal spell in just 2 rounds). I figured the amount of healing from 2 rounds of cure continual just by halving the healing from 4 rounds of cure continual.
| Quote: |
Cure Continual by itself
Total Rounds - 4
Total Mana Cost - 10
Total Healed - 13.15
Total Heal/Mana - 1.32
Heal/Round - 3.29
Mana/Round - 2.5
Cure Serious by itself
Total Rounds - 1
Total Mana Cost - 13
Total Healed - 27.05
Total Heal/Mana - 2.08
Heal/Round - 27.05
Mana/Round - 13
4 Rounds of Cure Continual + boosted Cure Serious
Total Rounds - 4
Total Mana Cost - 23
Total Healed - 51.2
Total Heal/Mana - 2.23
Heal/Round - 12.8
Mana/Round - 5.8
2 Rounds of Cure Continual + boosted Cure Serious
Total Rounds - 2
Total Mana Cost - 23
Total Healed - 44.63
Total Heal/Mana - 1.94
Heal/Round - 22.32
Mana/Round - 11.5
Cure Critical by itself
Total Rounds - 1
Total Mana Cost - 25
Total Healed - 42.70
Total Heal/Mana - 1.71
Heal/Round - 42.70
Mana/Round - 25
4 rounds of Cure Continual + boosted Cure Critical
Total Rounds - 4
Total Mana Cost- 35
Total Healed - 64.75
Total Heal/Mana - 1.85
Heal/Round - 16.19
Mana/Round - 8.75
2 rounds of Cure Continual + boosted Cure Critical
Total Rounds - 2
Total Mana Cost - 35
Total Healed - 58.18
Total Heal/Mana - 1.66
Heal/Round - 29.09
Mana/Round - 17.5
Heal by itself
Total Rounds - 1
Total Mana Cost - 40
Total Healed - 65.5
Total Heal/Mana - 1.64
Heal/Round - 65.5
Mana/Round - 40
4 rounds of Cure Continual + boosted Heal
Total Rounds - 4
Total Mana Cost -50
Total Healed - 88.1
Total Heal/Mana - 1.76
Heal/Round - 22.03
Mana/Round - 12.5
2 rounds of Cure Continual + boosted Heal
Total Rounds - 2
Total Mana Cost - 50
Total Healed - 81.53
Total Heal/Mana - 1.63
Heal/Round - 40.77
Mana/Round - 25 |
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divsky
Emissary
Joined: 13 Mar 2004
Posts: 1054
Location: Iowa City, IA
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| Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2011 10:13 pm Post subject: |
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Practical application of all of this information?
-Don't waste practices on cure continual
-When healing your tank, stick to cure serious. If you need to heal more than that, mix heals and cure serious. Don't use cure critical.
-Use cure critical on yourself only if you're tanking and you really need the extra healing per round.
-If outside of combat, either use cure serious if you need the mana efficiency, or heal if you need to heal fast. Don't use cure critical, as heal offers nearly the same mana efficiency. |
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Pops
Joined: 02 Oct 2008
Posts: 108
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| Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2011 10:14 pm Post subject: |
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Nice of you to put in all that effort. I'm not great at math, but if I get the gist, what you're saying is cure continual does increase healing, but by a very small amount, and the over all mana efficiency generally decreases due to the cost of casting cure continual in the first place?
could that be overcome by simply increasing the duration? |
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divsky
Emissary
Joined: 13 Mar 2004
Posts: 1054
Location: Iowa City, IA
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| Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2011 10:33 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah that's right. And you could increase the mana efficiency from using cure continual by increasing it's duration, but that would also decrease overall amount healed per round because you would be waiting even longer before you used the next healing spell, and the healing per round from cure continual on it's own is dismal.
I think it would be a better idea to either increase the amount cure continual heals per round or increase the bonus it gives to the next healing spell. |
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Fireballer
Joined: 20 Jan 2010
Posts: 330
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| Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 5:20 am Post subject: |
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everyone has basically known this. Its like old cure light spam. noone practiced it because even though the idea is increased mana efficiency but more lag time and the possibility of failing 2 casts instead of one, it doesn't work in practice.
It was supposed to be like the light heal spam of RPGs thats really cheap but you need nuke heals to survive heavy damage fights. Anyone else have their clerics on mass light heal spam duty in wizards of the coast games?
What I really like seeing is players putting in the effort of playtesting the game, even at the cost of their time, so they can output numbers to help the game change for better. |
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Olyn
Immortal
 
Joined: 23 Jul 2008
Posts: 3249
Location: Pennsylvania
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| Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 1:50 pm Post subject: |
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| I've found cure continual useful for mana conservation in situations with two healers or a healer and a paladin. |
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divsky
Emissary
Joined: 13 Mar 2004
Posts: 1054
Location: Iowa City, IA
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| Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 7:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Olyn wrote: |
| I've found cure continual useful for mana conservation in situations with two healers or a healer and a paladin. |
But it never will actually conserve mana. When I tested it, using all 4 rounds of cure continual followed by a cure serious was the only way to make it more mana efficient, and that only made it slightly more mana efficient. That was when I was testing it and ignoring factors like losing concentration.
In actual practice it's pretty much impossible for it to conserve mana. Like fireballer said, since it relies on 2 castings you're much more likely to lose concentration (with both spells at 75% you will have a 43% chance of losing concentration on at least one of them). Also there's a pretty small time window to work with between the 4th round of cure continual going off and the cure continual ending. If you don't get the cure serious inside of that window either you'll lose the healing bonus (if you're late) or you won't get the full healing from cure continual (if you're early). When you use cure continual on another you don't get to see the "You feel a little better" so hitting that window can be pretty difficult.
In any situation I would just stick with cure serious. |
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Fireballer
Joined: 20 Jan 2010
Posts: 330
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| Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 8:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Olyn wrote: |
| I've found cure continual useful for mana conservation in situations with two healers or a healer and a paladin. |
its only useful for drawing out a fight that should end sooner, because you will be fleeing all the time and spending ticks upon ticks spamming continual, and if you misstep in the timing you lose efficiency beyond just not using it. The numbers aren't inaccurate about which one is more mana efficient. More immediate efficiency translates into more long run efficiency.
I suppose it would be efficient for a healer to cast on someone else and then have them use cure serious on their own if thats what you mean. |
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Erlwith
Joined: 22 Mar 2006
Posts: 1626
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| Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 8:40 pm Post subject: |
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| I actually remember saying this the day this change happened. O but without the tl;dr part |
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Fireballer
Joined: 20 Jan 2010
Posts: 330
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| Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 11:50 am Post subject: |
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| divsky wrote: |
Yeah that's right. And you could increase the mana efficiency from using cure continual by increasing it's duration, but that would also decrease overall amount healed per round because you would be waiting even longer before you used the next healing spell, and the healing per round from cure continual on it's own is dismal.
I think it would be a better idea to either increase the amount cure continual heals per round or increase the bonus it gives to the next healing spell. |
cure continual and cause continual are supposed to be opposite sides of the coin. I think if cure continual can be shown to be a misstep as it lowers HPS and mana efficiency, cause continual might be as well. It was pretty awful to play a drow shaman and never be able to seal a fight because cause damage was made continual dependent. Maybe forgoing cause cont is the true way to fight, or maybe its supposed to only be used against other cleric classes but currently its a bit underwhelming.
cause and cure continual should have simply been made into a status effect that lasts for one or two ticks, and doesn't do anything on its own but increases heal and damage if you land those spells while within its duration. the whole damage/tick issue contributes to the problems of lower mana efficiency and HPS/DPS. It was a good idea in theory to have a skill that gets better results from timing, but it didn't quite work out.
Remove the damage/heal components of the continuals. Slightly increase the damage/healing of the direct spells to reflect this, and this should be good enough.
Change cause continual to impede the effects of healing if it isn't used immediately to cause greater damage with cause serious/critical synergy. So for instance, it counteracts cure continual directly by lowing the amount of healing that a cure will give. Say cure continual and cure serious cause cure serious to have 125% efficiency. cause cont drops it to 75%. cure serious at 100 efficiency drops to 50% with cause continual.
Cause continual could also impede healing over a tick as well, so that it becomes an important spell for wearing down fighters.
| Erlwith wrote: |
| I actually remember saying this the day this change happened. O but without the tl;dr part |
I know how you feel when you're right and noone listens.  |
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