Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?

[Daklore]

* Priest heal spells should do more healing with less lag

While that would be awesome... I think the lag -needs- to offset the healing to balance the spell. What? I'm at least open to making heal spells balanced and not just stupid OP restore everything so you can never die unless you run out of mana.

Power heal is, obviously, the strongest heal I can do... I think the lag is -a little- bit much. It could do with some lowering(maybe a seconds worth, tops), on top of lowering the mana cost some(500 a cast, even at level 269, 250 if sorcery or whatever procs). On the flipside, lower level heals(cure light, cure serious, cure critical) could use a little buffing for lower level priest play. As they are, they're not even worth it, even GM'd and with a divinity rune. Heal is nice, could perhaps use a little HP buff(it's useless without divinity rune, which is another problem altogether).

Beyond power heal, the only spells I know of that beat it are divine healing--which would be the example of an unbalanced heal--and restoration. Restoration .... might be unbalanced, and it might be balancedish. It requires a spell component, costs 2000 mana, and fully restores the target... according to Belrath, anyway. Divine healing, however, costs like 50 mana, has barely any lag, and easily heals 6-7K with divinity(power heal is usually about 5-6K).

Other problems priests face, is a lack of offensive options. Which might be resolvable with lowering mobile AC so they can hit with melee attacks(how few we get), but priests would still need some help. Skill damage needs to go up, definately(kick, bash, palmstrike), and priests -really- need some offensive spell help. I know priests aren't supposed to be mages, but, even in Final Fantasy, white mages usually get -some- kind of -good- offensive spell(Holy). Priests, unless you go with the pastor side of the tier, really only have four offensive spells they can rely on. Harm(ironically, cause critical is stronger...), ray of justice, blackfire and dispel good/evil. The last of those four is actually a multi-hit spell, which -would- be promising if its damage didn't suck at higher levels. It's alright at low level. Harm/Cause crit is a one hit spell that might do around 800-900 damage. Ray of justice and blackfire might pop 300-400.

And... that's pretty much the extent of a priest's options for offense.

[Tylon]

So if I'm reading this and I understand it correctly, with a 20k mana pool a priest can heal 200k-240k hp before running out of mana with power heal. That's not taking into account sorcery procs, piety mana pool replenishing or healshield going off at the same time? Why is divine healing having better efficiency a large deal? Isn't it given to a class that for the most part is designed to heal and nothing else?

As far as offensive capabilities of priests go, I strongly caution giving too much offense to healing classes. There'a already the potential there with augmenting for some serious powerhouses.

[Chalgyr]

Any other strong thoughts on the proposed adjustments beyond priests? Obviously there would be some trial and error before we get it 'right' - or do you think it's a horrible idea? Pros, cons?

[Tylon]

I like the proposal for resists, though I'm sure it will take a great deal of balancing to get things rolling correctly! Its good to be moving towards a system where resists don't have as large of an impact.

[Elendil]

I personally am of the "If it isn't broke, don't fix it" school of thought ::shrugs:: At the end of the day, this is your ballgame so your(or Gilly's) word is final.  I think it is fine just the way they are, the resistances.  I know you don't like to hear it, but the priest class seriously needs tweaking of some sort.  I remember once speaking with someone else with a priest char whom remarked that his shield would do more damage that his char could.

[sye]

I think having healing spells changed would be nice.
After all anyone can augment them if they want, but only GM ones would be more cost efficient or heal more.

The system does need to be tweeked, resistances should stay, but ways to alter them, in PVE and PVP could be modified.

[Jadyss]

The scale of resistances is too much and being able to add -50 resist on any custom for any resist is toxic. There should be an element of racial maximums for making sense and for RP. I mentioned it in another post but this complete custom or go home reliance is just plain not good. There should be some limited custom modifications of equipment besides moxes and gems. There should also be racial maximums and minimums.

[Thalia]

Race selection does impact your base resistance level, as do add-on races (e.g., Vampires take a huge hit to relight and I think resfire).

In general, I think a race gets bumped up in 2 or 3 resists and bumped down in 2 or 3 resists.

[Jadyss]

Looks like though everyone can reach a perfection on resistance though.

[Thalia]

Nope.  not all races have enough equipslots plus mox positions. 

[Jadyss]

Nope.  not all races have enough equipslots plus mox positions.

But you can add -50 per each custom item plus there are all the moxes. How can one not reach perfection in each damtype?

[Chalgyr]

It mostly boils down to combinations of things - like if a person has to use moxes that only modify a couple of resistances because the moxes with 3 aren't needed, or because of a goofy resistance stat on the race, the -50 might be overkill and 'wastes' 25 of those resistance points, etc. Not everyone's starting from a flat zero, and some races have more wear spots than others.