I’ve been playing a lot with Spear and Shield lately, and I love it. IMO it’s a masterpiece of design – there’s no other weapon with which I use so many different combos. Its only flaw is that, like any other tanking weapon, it would work best with Heal on Stagger, which the Handmaiden can’t use. I feel like it’s the only thing that makes my Shieldmaiden a meme build rather than a meta build.
Why I think it needs Heal on Stagger
Heal on Cleave works fine with Spear and Shield when things go well – that is, when I can attack a lot. But whenever there’s a difficulty spike, I have to clam up and only use block and push. There’s no way I’ll risk attacking while standing in a middle of a Chaos Patrol, and I do have to stand there if I want to be a tank for my group. Unlike a Footknight or Ironbreaker, in any dire situation, I usually die if I take a single strong hit. So while I stand there and just block and push, my hard-earned THP ticks down, and then I die to attrition damage such as friendly fire, Warpfire, or occasional Gas ticks.
Please consider letting HM use Heal on Stagger.
I think a better solution, although a more radical one, would be to merge Heal on Stagger with Heal on Cleave for all careers that have access to either one of these talents. It will essentially work exactly as Heal on Cleave works now, but will also heal on pushes (for the same amount as Heal on Stagger does now). And also all Shield Bash attacks (including flamesword/flamedagger bash) will need to be changed so that they count all targets that get hit by the bash (currently, Heal on Cleave only counts one target per bash). This will solve the problem where kills don’t heal with Heal on Stagger, and also nerf the healing a bit but make it more consistent (heavy stagger attacks will heal 1 HP rather than 2). Right now, stagger weapons heal too much in general with Heal on Stagger, but they don’t heal at all when you kill your target or when you’re fighting a boss. Both these problems should be solved by this change.
Every class should have access to every THP talent. It’s obviously a major restriction on build variety having them limited the way they are, the sooner they make this change the easier balancing will be. I honestly don’t get how we’re still at basically the same place with THP talents we always have been it’s completely absurd.
Seriously FS fix this already you’ve been told forever about this.
I agree but with one caveat – I think Heal on Crit will be too powerful on Pyro with a 55% crit chance. Perhaps she should get a weaker version that heals less HP on crits though?
There are currently 4 different Heal on X talents. A simple way to let every career use any one of these talents would be to merge Heal on Stagger with Heal on Cleave (so that there’s 3 Heal on X talents in total), and then replace Healshare talent with a third Heal on X talent for each career. Healshare functionality can be transferred to Hand of Shallya necklace trait – change it so that when you heal yourself, you also heal one closest player for 20% of their max health.
That would be super bad. Healshare + healer’s touch is super good as it is in the game right now, there is no need to change it only to replace it with another THP gen trait (and limiting build variety). You don’t need THP anyways to justify that change, especially when using shield on Handmaiden.
To be frank, I firmly believe that Healshare + Healer’s Touch is very very bad. However I’ve seen a significant amount of people who use it, so it will indeed be wrong to take it away from them.
Why do you think it bad? You can heal and clear wounds of your entire team with a single heal and you have a chance to not consume it. What else wold you take* if you don’t need THP?
But when do you not need tHP? I’m pretty sure every single career in this game needs tHP generation, and just from abilities isn’t enough. That and healshare really isn’t that good.
Yeah agreed it’d be too much. Now that THP on cleave works properly again I’m not sure THP on headshot/crit still needs to exist. Honestly it’s too problematic with all the weird sources of crit chance in this game anyway.
Personally I wouldn’t merge cleave and stagger since they’re already covering a wide variety of weapons well. I don’t see the issue with the THP talent row having 4 options.
The same should be done for stagger too obviously.
It just a matter of experience and skill. I’ve been running healshare+healers touch with spear and shield nonstop since WoM release and completed all maps on Cata difficulty with said build. This is not me saying “hey look how awesome I am” but rather trying to show my point. THP is just a waste for me when using shield, that’s why I’m running this build.
A proper explanation would take a small essay and I probably still won’t convince you because it’s ultimately a matter of preference. Long story short, Healshare + Healdupe combo is aimed to help your team but it makes YOU entirely dependent on healing items, while a Temp HP talent + either Boon of Shallya, Barkskin or Natural Bond will let you survive with little to no healing items (I often complete an entire Cata run without using one). IMO, letting your teammates have all the healing items helps them more than using those items yourself and healing them for 20% HP. Also, Zealots will hate you.
Unless you need to remove wounds from 2+ players with just a single healing item, usually in the middle of a fight. Plus, when there is not enough healing items around, it will help a lot.
Edit: That¨s the strength of this combo. Removing multiple wounds for a single heal (and you won’t have more if you are runing full books)
Personally I think it’d be best to limit the availability of healshare and instead implement it as a proper talent choice instead of being on the tHP row. I don’t think Unchained or Mercenary will miss it in the slightest, and giving it to someone like RV would work extremely well to make him better at support and make him more unique. That and you’ll very likely see more healshare since you won’t be gimping yourself by not getting tHP. Make it a choice between 30% ammo, survivalist and healshare?
The problem with taking things away is that it will always make lots of people unhappy, no matter how useless these things seem to be. Personally I never ever considered selecting BW’s and Slayer’s “longer dash” talents because they were objectively inferior options in their respective talent rows, but now that they are removed there are a lot of complaints from people who liked these talents for being fun.
Perhaps, but certainly not for everyone. Example: someone who liked to play as a full-nurse Unchained would probably not want to switch to Ranger Veteran.
