wat will happen to wards that already hav wands?

Yay more nerfs! Now that the wand is not going to be inbuilt, you cant use overloaders that actually increase the dps by a decent amount, so if your aiming towards reducing the amount of healers raids take, then eh... this wont be helping it much.

Edit-- all you people that spend "80bil" on an app ward and laughed when the ds was nerfed... HA! JOKES ON YOU!!!

It already takes more than 33% healers in a group. Actually... it took that before the MSP nerf.

The healing ratio beef will help offset that nerf, but we're still worse off than before the nerf.

Making the Wand no longer sticky means a 50% nerf to healing DPS. That's a huge nerf. That means it will take 2x the healers it takes now. That seems like a step in the wrong direction if you are trying to make it so that uber content doesn't require as many healers.

oh great, thanks a lot atlum, so my app ward is useless, yay, fine im gonna switch over to sniper and just toss out my ward

I like the idea of making the App ward not titan overloadable.

However, what will keep the app ward as a Good healing ship? Im not saying it should always be the ONLY choice, but what will now distinguish it from say a Pax?

Pax: more hull, more wep slots, better resists, slower speed

App ward: more speed. (Admittedly speed can be VERY good for a healer)

I still agree with Nelly's other post, that the damage that ubers do would need to be reduced. For comparison, when we do marco, its often:
3 healers, and 1 or 2 MF's.

The App Ward is not all that great as a tech20 IMO and might need a beef or a built-in field, maybe even a built-in inhibitor. Otherwise the pax will be a strong competitor with MUCH better resists.

I'll have to think through some options - but a DS may be a very powerful shield monkey ship now with 4 aug slots and merch 20.

I've thought the exact same about the pax and DS. Not sure why the transference resists help would make it better than the uber shield charger and resists of the pax, or the 4 augs of the DS.

You won't really be healing the wands. I guess the wands can heal eachother and get over 100% ratio 'creating' new shield units... But usually, if you want 33% or less to be healing, there aren't enough healers to heal the dmg dealers, if the wards go heal eachother and make use of the > 100% healing ratio. The dmg dealers would just die, looking at the dmg the ubers do.

so a 50% nerf in healing damage, a 25% nerf in healing range and the after that add a new 30% healing bonus which equates to 15% per nerf rite?

Atm to kill MS we have 6 healers and 1 sniper 2 mf's (this could be 2 snipers as mf's suck for that).. how EXACTLY does this reduce the number of healers? We are going to need more than 3 healers per thatch.

The Blob, 2 or 3 damage dealers, 1 healer, will now become 2 healers and 2 or 3 damage dealers.

Anni 3 healers and 3 damage dealers will become 4 or 5 healers and 3 damage dealers.

Marco and Sputty.. who knows.. 1 or 2 healers and 1 or 2 damage dealers.. depending on how they are augged.. its at least 50/50 healers in all cases.

I guess the point is that if the aim is to change raiding party's from MF/Sniper and App Wards... to more varied options.. ur either gonna have to make ubers weaker.. give us all AT5 like pants healers (soon they wont have that though) OR make the beef a little better than the over all cut in healing.

I always thought that healers get it a little good.. they seem to be the best damage dealers in the game atm.

ATM sxp took about 5 shots to steal agro off me (MF at4 5 venu mags, zeus, sup combo, exc combo, in a pax) while i was spose to be tanking the copper blob. He ended up tanking it in his DS. I know there is a Merchant light fighter nerf coming, but still the fact that his DPS is that high without the TITAN OL and AT3 says something.

I feel that they HEALING DPS should remain at its current level in some form. Maybe upping the healing bonus to that off an app ward with the titan ol on it after they train the skills u mentioned, AND greater levels so u wont need the numbers u need now.. especially since AT is about to make alot less healing happen.

To incite players to start using other classess maybe just work on them rather than cutting down what people have. The last creative thing we saw was the battle thatch. I havent seen many people use them successfully besides Doc, Thanar, and our lads.. But at least snipers became uber in a way.

Maybe open some more doors for RadX and Seers..

- atm a seer is just a sniper mixed with slave master and only randomly gets the sniper damage. (can u get max seer skill with only rc18 available?)

- atm the radiation weapons once again play into that 'still not as good as a sniper' thing because the bonus is good.. the ai's weakness are good.. but the weapons are weak and slow. They also do not get any loot from their targets.

Anyhow ive been so busy lately i havent played much myself, but i popped in to see SXP announce he's quitting the game. Yet another spoilt shield monky who's not gonna renew.. curse u Leroy and Knight1 left and now SXP.. SPOILT shield monkey's quit when they fill up their app wards with PTE's (its only 6 months of daily playing to get the money to buy/make them only to find its gonna be tossed out) ;p

So ill appeal to Atlum to consider how this will effect those with AT3 atm, as well as those who will so have only at4.5, ehehe...

Our uber raids also depend VERY heavily on tweaks.. the recent nerf to the t4 shield salvation will effect me personally alot.. I spent a bundle on neuro tweaking to get them to a level of value. I usually play interferance on uber runs, whilst junkie has all the healers on him. I will also need another healer now because those little tweaks will making me less effective. Please consider changing that particular item back or adding a higher skill/cost item to replace it. The ultra's where spose to be t20 btw.. can u bring them back at t20.

I have written down a 10% transference resist for App Ward (not sure if that's right). This would be a good time to boost that a bit, so that the App Ward remains more desirable for a shield monkey, and to keep the overall healing ability up high enough so that the # of healers needed is doable for ubers.

Thanar

Increasing the trans resist and improving the healing ratio only make it easier to heal without running out of shields. But there is still the problem of not having enough healing DPS. You need to do something to counter the 50% nerf to healing DPS.

Either give new weapons that have a much higher healing DPS, or lower the damage that bosses do.

The ward is about to lose his built in weapon...

Atlum, are you going to implement "healers taking aggro" ? If so I think u could already take that into account: if healers in app ward get shot directly by AIs (or players for that matters) with its current resits, and the crappy poltices, we may as well hit burners and flee...

In this situation, the 20% resist to transference will not matter, the healer would take the damage himself. Compared with a pax, with no in built wand, the only advantage for the ward would be his speed... Then I think a DS would become the best healing ship (4 PtE DS, with the built in OL, better resists, and nice speed).