Suggestion Bloodmage seriously needs a buff...

[Kekosawr]

Problems:

• Bandage. 5 sec cast time AND 5 sec cooldown makes no sense. Why is it longer than other healers? I've heard it's "intentional" because BM is "not supposed to heal during combat" but then why not just base it on the combat timer? Have it work normally like other healers outside of combat.
• Soulbond. Whenever the party member you cast it on gets hit, you fly up into the air and you keep flying up with every hit. I've flown up high enough to take half health fall damage.
• Make Soulbond work both ways and be able to cast on enemies. Soulbond only damages the BM if their target is hit but the target doesn't take half of BM's damage. This would definitely make BM more viable in combat if they could cast in on a player attacking them so every hit BM takes damages the enemy.
• Same cooldown on Drainsoul as Smite. Because: why not? Smite has 4 second cooldown while Drainsoul has 7 seconds which makes unspec'd healers have better DPS than Bloodmage. Is BM is intentionally not supposed to bandage during combat, let them regain their health through Drainsoul. It's their only damage dealing skill from the start and it's less viable than every other healer class despite the fact that BM is supposed to be more of a combat class.
• Diamond and Gold hoes do the same damage as Iron. Other healers got them buffed from 3 to 4 damage while all 3 hoes do only 4 dmg for BM. If this is intentional, again, this doesn't make sense for a combat-oriented class. Disciple deals 6 damage with a stick yet Bloodmage deals less damage with hoes than every other healer.

Overall, Bloodmage is not a good combat class or healer class and even if there's plans to overhaul the class completely, in the meantime it'd be very simple to just edit the damage values to balance it the same as the rest of the healer classes. My main concern is the hoes, the long cooldown on drainsoul, and how long and inefficient bandage is.

 

[Glent]

I agree with most of this.

 

[Shadownub]

I'll flick back to a previous post here where I dumped some of my older ideas in - I still think they stand, and still think that after Pre-Dragongarde Testing, where Bloodmage was 'slightly' overpowered, the Bloodmage is now pretty horrendously underpowered.

Personally I agree with everything you've said, with the exception of Soulbonding - Apart from the bit about you flying upwards when you take damage, which I agree is annoying, but I think that might be unavoidable. Apart from that, I don't really think there's any need for Soulbond to be changed, and it certainly shouldn't be usable on enemies - it is, if anything, a Healer ability, not an offensive one. The bloodmage may be an offensive class, but it isn't a Healer. As for the bonding going both ways, then it seems a bit pointless if both users within the bond are in combat. I like it the way it is.

As for everything else...

Skills that need tweaking:

- Syphon: Bloodmages are a healer class. While syphon is very pretty, it just doesn't do enough at the moment, and it actually grants the caster slightly more health than it takes when used on self, which shouldn't be possible at all. It would be nice to see syphon become an ability that can only heal other users, as I believe it was first intended, and then to remove the cooldown entirely so bloodmages can transfer large amounts of hp from themselves to a party member with ease, making healing others much easier . Mana cost hanging around 10% and a total of 5hp transferred from the caster to the target is fine, so that Bloodmages can transfer a maximum of 50 before having to wait for the mana to regenerate. (Update to this: I just noticed that Bloodmages don't have Syphon right now. Bring it back.)

- Drainsoul: Bloodcasting hp loss makes drainsoul slightly pointless as far as draining that hp goes. As deadandown said, it's inferior to smite because of its lower range and higher CD when compared to smite. I supported smite's removal from the Bloodmage's arsenal, as having both was silly, but drainsoul does need to be able to qualify with smite offensively.

- Skills that need removal or a lot of changes:

- Bandage [Bloodmage version]: As mentioned with syphon, bloodmages are a HEALER class. At the moment, bandage has been nerfed to very long cooldown for the bloodmage to discourage bandaging in combat (According to Multi). While the idea of this is sensible enough, bloodmages do need to heal themselves away from combat, as well as healing other users a respectable amount. Waiting 16 seconds for bandage to be used is annoying, and if syphon were tweaked and another non-combat heal provided, bandage isn't really needed anymore for a healer class. After all, they forgot smite, so they could forget how to bandage too.

- Skills that make me want to hug you. Don't eat them.

- Transfuse. I love you, Multi.
- Soulleech. I love you, Kain. (Edit: Nerfed as of end of Dragongarde Testing because I used it in a very unfairly overpowered way while raiding the Tree Creepers and it was basically making me immortal ;P I think the new version is very slightly underpowered, but does need a slight buff to the HP regain for the caster. Apart from that, amazing skill, although I'm a little sad to see the Bloodmage's signature skills being given to the Dreadknight.)
- Stealessence. I believe this is actually a fairly useful skill and I do see people use buffs pretty commonly. Would be nice to see it being able to steal Invuln and Smoke (somehow).
- Chant. We needed a heal that was worth using. This is it.

- Skills ideas to improve that Bloodmage thing. Yay!

Skillname: Relief
Cooldown: 40 Seconds
Duration: 30 Seconds
Reagent: None
Rampup Time: Same as original Bandage
Mana Cost: 75%
Effect: Caster heals {amount} health points per second for 30 seconds, restoring most of the Bloodmage's health, but is rooted while healing. Breaks if user is damaged, but if this happens, the mana is still lost.
Notes: Root and break prevents use in combat unless you're a complete idiot. Effectively keeps you healed away from combat. Probably needs some tweaking to make it less godlike, but the concept is basically to be able to heal yourself easily away from combat without the use of bandage, which is supposedly removed.

Skillname: Love [I know, I'm corny]
Cooldown: Several long hours
Duration: 60 seconds
Reagent: Red Rose
Rampup Time: 10 seconds (Mostly to give you an opportunity to break the rampup if you accidentally used it)
Mana Cost: 100%
Effect: Caster loses 10 hp every second to give target (Party member) invulnerability. If caster is killed or the 60 seconds are up, target becomes vulnerable once more.
Notes: Caster isn't expected to survive the 60 seconds. This isn't something urgently needed, just a skill that would be unique and interesting and reflect the Bloodmage's nature in my eyes.

Skillname: Bloodcasting [PASSIVE]
Cooldown: Five Seconds per toggle
Duration: Passive
Reagent: None
Rampup Time: None
Mana Cost: Not applicable
Effect: Switches Bloodcasting on or off. While on (Which is the current Bloodmage default), mana costs of abilities are reduced, but they cost more hp than usual to be used. While off, mana costs are increased but hp will not be lost.
Notes: Bloodcasting can get VERY annoying. It'd be nice to be able to turn it off.

Skillname: Inflection
Cooldown: 60 Seconds
Duration: 15 seconds
Reagent: Flint
Rampup Time: None
Mana Cost: 50%
Effect: All physical hits made by caster within next 15 seconds will grant 5 hp to caster and nearby party members. However, caster is silenced during this time.

The class is overall just a tad overthought sometimes, and could use tweaking, because all of the abilities seem to have been nerfed to make way for other abilities, which have also been a bit nerfed. With that tweaking, though, it's a good class and the core idea is sound. I know a lot of work was put into this one before Dragongarde testing, but after that testing I've seen all nerfs besides the immortalsoulleeching one to be fairly unneccesary.

Hope someone manages to read through all of my wierd colourful writing.

 

[BananaFuton]

Properly balancing drainsoul would be good. I agree that its cooldown needs to be reduced, however, you must realize that drainsoul swings the battle hp's in both healing and damage. This makes it's effective hp swing much larger than smite. If we were to give it a 4 second cooldown, the damage and healing would also have to go down and then we would have to redo the mana costs to prevent it from being seen as a mana sink.

With friendly soulbond as it is (ignoring armor) and bloodmage having one of the highest health pools in the game plus healing and lifesteal on top of that, an agressive soulbond would leave very little way for any class without dispell/heal to kill a bloodmage and not kill themselves. They would auto-win versus half the classes currently in herocraft. If this were to be implemented, they would need to reconfigure soulbond to transfer a significantly smaller portion of the damage than half. Also, how would it interact with itself and other agressive or friendly soulbonds? Clearly we cant have it be just a "whoever gets it off first/last wins" skill. Having multiple overlaping and interweaving agressive and allied soulbonds sounds like a recipe for loops if I have ever seen one.

By the time you recode soulbond to do all this and not crash the server you have effectively remade the class anyhow. This is not a quick fix.

Sure, give them one more damage on the hoes, that seems fine.

 

[Lil122j]

Bloodmage always looked like the coolest class to me, but then hearing everyone saying how bad it sucks made me stay away.

I think it should have a minor damage boost and a passive lifesteal (with a cooldown of course). Possibly make Soulleech the bigger hp steal with a moderate cooldown and have drainsoul spammable but with lower damage and healing values. As a sacrificial healer, they should definitely have the highest healing rate as well.

 

[teddytazer]

I think they shouldnt even get smite. Since when is blood mage something holy..

 

[Lil122j]

Agreed, no smite. Maybe something that does alot more damage but sacrifices their health. Harmtouch or something similar possibly?

 

[Zaspar]

Agreed, no smite. Maybe something that does alot more damage but sacrifices their health. Harmtouch or something similar possibly?

A nerfed version of Harmtouch would be plausible imo

 

[Kekosawr]

Base healer has higher DPS than Bloodmage.
That's how poor this class is right now.
Healer's Smite and BM's drainsoul both do 12 dmg and have a 7 second cd, whereas the other healer specs all have 4 second cd Smite. However, healer can use diamond/gold hoes to do 4 dmg while BM's gold/diamond only do 3 dmg. On a side note, Drainsoul has a range of only 10 blocks compared to other healer specs having ranges of 15 blocks.

This class wouldn't be nearly as bad if we had the same 4 second cooldown on drainsoul.

I'd also like to point out that you can't use Transfuse on other players, and there's almost no reason to use it on yourself as a bloodmage in the early levels because you can't use enough mana to need to regen it. It'd give them some utility if they could transfuse mana to other players the same way Battery works, only taking BM's hp instead of its mana.

-------

Also whoever it was talking about how Soulbond interacts with multiple other soulbonds, you don't know how it works but it's actually the last Soulbond cast that works. If I soulbond you and then your friend soulbonds me, then it cancels my soulbond and only your friend takes damage when I do.

Also, soulbond tends to kill bloodmage pretty quickly, large health pool or not, coupled with the fact that it sends you flying up in the air enough to take fall damage. It's only useful you're willing to die to mitigate the damage on someone.

I'm not all too concerned about changing that though.

But buffing drainsoul and hoes would be very nice and a pretty quick fix, so I honestly don't see a reason not to. :S

 

[BananaFuton]

I did not properly indicate that I was referring to your aggressive soulbond suggestion until later in the post. Clearly you did not read all of it. I will make it more apparent in the beginning*Edit applied*. To the mechanics explanation, even if it were last cast the same problem applies.

Lets talk numbers on drainsoul. Being that it both damages, heals what sort of mana cost, cooldown, and damage do you propose?

 

[Kekosawr]

I said I wasn't concerned with changing soulbond.

Drainsoul does 12 heals 5 because you take 1 dmg after using it. IMO taking that damage is kind of pointless and annoying but not a big problem.

Option 1: don't change the health it heals, just reduce the cooldown to "not terrible". Bandage is useless, I'd like it to work normally but only be usable if you're not combat tagged. That would make it so it can't be used in combat.

Option 2: remove bandage altogether and have bloodmage heal solely through drainsoul. 12 damage, 12 hp back. Or something along those lines. 10hp. 4 sec cooldown like smite? Whatever. It'd have to be balanced out to be useful. I think healing back full might be a bit too much. On the other hand, it's an interesting concept.

I prefer option 1, no bandage in heal but heal back half the damage you deal. I just really want the cooldown reduced so we can at least have the same DPS as the other healer specs.
Hoe damage increase / Transfuse other players as well. Those are the little changes that would make a big improvement. And all the other stuff I've been babbling on about.

Syphon looks cool too, why is that gone?

 

[TheTMTrainer]

Drainga (Final Fantasy reference)

Spammable AoE drain that deals low damage, but heals 100% per hit. Lets say, 3 second cooldown, 7 Mana, 5 Damage, 4 block radius, and splits the dealed damage between allys (so if you hit 5 enemies, dealing 25 damage, and you have 3 people in your party, each member heals 8 health and you heal 9). Perhaps as a side ability, Players killed spawn a 1/2 health, ally zombie for 20 seconds.

 

[teddytazer]

i say throw out smite and bandage. let them heal only with drainsoul.

 

[BananaFuton]

Given that drainsoul has an hp swing of 17 and best case smite has a swing of 12 with a cd of 5(not 4), It would seem that 1.4x the cooldown would be appropriate for the skill at first glance. This leaves us at 7 seconds which is were we are now.

We must also take into account the fact that other healing classes have more healing utility as well as damage and the bloodmage has buff stealing and silence. The question is how much better is the healing and extra one damage compared to silence and stealessence and how much are they worth? Clearly you argue "not enough" but without proper numbers we are playing guess and check. Calculate out some best case dps/hps numbers for the healer classes and we can go from there.

 

[Kekosawr]

Silence lasts 5 seconds and has a 15 second cooldown.

There's no guess and check when Druid and Cleric have 4 healing spells right at their disposal and 4 dmg melee and Bloodmage has no damage skill besides Drainsoul until 55 which has a longer cooldown and only does 3 dmg with its hoe.

Base healer has 7 second smite and 4 dmg with hoes, that outdoes BM until 55.

It's not a viable pvper and it's not even close to a viable healer until 50. 50. And it's inferior to Druid, Cleric and even Disciple can outheal it.

Also, as stated several times, Drainsoul only does 12 damage. Not 17.

 

[Shadownub]

Great stuff from @Kekosawr

i say throw out smite and bandage. let them heal only with drainsoul.

Drainsoul heals half a heart. Bloodmages are healers - we need to be able to heal.

I'm pretty interested in the idea of a 30 second passive hp steal cast which brings the bm's mana to 0 and freezes mana regen while in effect. Having plated around with and watched the BM development for a year, I think it's safe to say removing bandage leaves us with nothing.

 

[Lil122j]

I'm sure if bandage gets removed, drainsoul and probably soulleech would be buffed to a point where you can keep yourself alive as long as you have mana and no silence. BM would do fine without bandage as long as these other means of healing are good. Imo bloodmage should have slightly higher DPS than any of the other healers or on par with disciple. With the exception of syphon (if it ever comes back), their healing rate on others should be the lowest out of all the healers, if any at all.

 

[BananaFuton]

Silence lasts 5 seconds and has a 15 second cooldown.

There's no guess and check when Druid and Cleric have 4 healing spells right at their disposal and 4 dmg melee and Bloodmage has no damage skill besides Drainsoul until 55 which has a longer cooldown and only does 3 dmg with its hoe.

Base healer has 7 second smite and 4 dmg with hoes, that outdoes BM until 55.

It's not a viable pvper and it's not even close to a viable healer until 50. 50. And it's inferior to Druid, Cleric and even Disciple can outheal it.

Also, as stated several times, Drainsoul only does 12 damage. Not 17.

I never stated drainsoul did 17 damage. Hp swing and damage are not the same.

You have not provided any numbers other than ones we already know. The only new number here is a reference to level 50 and that is a complaint. Go over the hps/dps comparisons to justify your proposal.

I am trying to agree with you and come up with some well thought out buffs but all I am getting is anecdotal evidence and complaining(In a speaking tone). I want to talk about this buff with some manner of theory-crafting involved both so that it will be considered and we avoid another smite fiasco.

 

[Shadownub]

I'm sure if bandage gets removed, drainsoul and probably soulleech would be buffed to a point where you can keep yourself alive as long as you have mana and no silence. BM would do fine without bandage as long as these other means of healing are good. Imo bloodmage should have slightly higher DPS than any of the other healers or on par with disciple. With the exception of syphon (if it ever comes back), their healing rate on others should be the lowest out of all the healers, if any at all.

What I mean is that healers are healers - they need to be able to heal others if only slightly. It makes sense that they lose Smite, because they have drainsoul, which as has been stated above, needs tweaking. But unless they have syphon back (without a cooldown and with a low mana cost), removing bandage effectively makes them entirely casters, which is not what the class should be.

I agree that the Bloodmage class until very high level is currently far weaker than your average healer. From my experience in the class in test (back when the class had Syphon, regular spec Bandage, unnerfed Drainsoul and overpowered Soulleech), I thoroughly believed it to be very well balanced apart from Soulleech's tiny cooldown, which was later nerfed to make soulleech much, much weaker and heal much less to the caster. I 1v1'd several caster, warrior and rogue classes, and as the Bloodmage is effectively a caster hunter offensively, I could beat all casters apart from the then-glitchy Geomancer, but was unable to do so against Warriors and Rogues for the most part, unless I spammed soulleech in large group fights, which is no longer an option for the Bloodmage after Soulleech was balanced out. I could provide effective heals and combat well, but not as well as a PVP class. My only want at that point was for Syphon to be more capable. Now, on the other hand, I doubt I could beat a Druid, let alone any other class.

Lets look at the Bloodmage's skills at the moment.

Bandage - Nerfed to prevent use in combat. Now half the speed of a regular healer for the same heal. (Suggested Solution: Bring back a regular heal, or remove bandage and bring back a cooldown/rampup free syphon and buff lifesteal skills of the Bloodmage)
Antidote - A base healer skill. No complaints.
Scan - A base healer skill. No complaints.
Drainsoul - As everyone above has been arguing out, useless against smite and a very minor heal considering the Bloodmage's hp pool and the amount of damage most other classes can do in a few seconds. (Suggested Solution: Buff hp gain significantly, or reduce cooldown significantly.)
Transfuse - One of multitallented's masterpieces. Brilliant skill, although the Bloodmage with nerfed drainsoul, nerfed bandage and nerfed soulleech rarely use enough mana for it to be used. Perfect skill in its own right.
Soulbond - Perfect as is, from my experience.
Stealessence - One of the Bloodmage's most unique skills. Although it's unable to steal a buff like invuln, I love it in itself.
Silence - Haven't tested enough after rebalancing to give feedback.
Chant - Good skill, finally enables the Bloodmage to heal effectively after the bandage nerf.. at level 50.
Soulleech - Nerfed slightly, but otherwise the Bloodmage's signature move. Great overall. (Suggested Solution: Increase hp gain to Bloodmage, nothing else needed.)
Hoe Damage - Less effective at hoe combat than any other class - AFTER healer hoe damage was nerfed in the first place to prevent healers becoming 'too overpowered' during the Cleric rape days.

Here's what we've lost, plus one that I've been begging for
Syphon - REMOVED skill. Dunno why. The Bloodmage's unique self-sacrificing heal.
Passive Lifesteal - Ahhh... yeah...


Bloodmage is effectively the Healer's 'tankiest' option, but right now it feels like the class is a pushover. I'd love to see some feedback. Just remember that insulting people posting opposing opinions isn't feedback. ;P

 

[AzenYumCha]

Let's bump this thread, shall we!

Bloodmages!