Every time I see this skill mentioned, it’s taken as given that it’s meant to be kept up…forever. Less for the heal then for the free resistances attached to the skill. Even without CDR, it’s easy, if annoying, to keep it up forever.
So…If we all keep it up forever, ideally…why is it not just an aura?
If Crate removed the Heal from it, and made it into an aura with the same stats…How many people would be upset? Or would you be happy you didn’t have to periodically press a random button to keep your resists up?
It’s even thematically safe, as the description could easily be used for an aura without alteration.
It’s notable that this ability is significantly more powerful than auras, too, I think (flat damage AND heal AND resists AND % damage too!). I imagine that’s because it’s balanced to be stronger to make up for its clunky need to recast in mind. (a clunkiness that can be especially annoying to pet summoners who use temporary pets. But again, I’d rather have it powerful and healing with clunkiness than a weak permanent aura)
If you’re using the damages, then I expect keeping it as is would make sense, yes. I only use it for the resists. The OA and the HP Regen are nice, but I’m 100% just using it for resists.
Exactly. So technically, I suppose, I should have labeled this thread Aspect, not Blood. But then, the skill on the bar is still Blood, so…
I did try having Blood maxed as well, and the heal isn’t small, it’s pretty handy…But I was still keeping up the skill for the resists, not the heal. Every time I found the heal useful, I had a Mending on me and could’ve used that.
Interesting, I personally find that Blood of Dreag together with Pneumatic burst are all around most useful skills. Hardly ever saw a build with occultist in it w/o maxed Blood of Dreeg.
You dont find heal useful/needed even when facing nemesis/bosses? OA also?
It’s pretty decent at healing pets, with their ton of health (50-100k) flat healing/ healing regen bonus does almost nothing but BoD have % heal and fair cooldown -> useful.
I dunno, keep the cooldown and make it last a few… dozen… hours maybe? Everybody happy then
I like it just the way it is. That heal is awesome and you’ve got a window to choose when you use it in the latter half of the cooldown without the aura dropping.
I’d rather it stay the way it is. We already have way too many toggled auras and it’s getting kind of boring. Plus the heal makes it awesome for when you just need some health back.
CDR makes it awkward to try to “average out” the heal. It is sort of a chore to mash the button for an “always on” skill. But to some extent, there is a bit of strategy for timing the health spike as well. I’m a little divided.
I would probably rather just have it be a toggle, something like 1% per second at rank 1, for example.
If it were a 50% or 100% heal every 75 seconds, then the timing would matter a lot more, and it would be easier to see why it’s an active skill. Imagine if Mirror gave 10% damage reduction and 2% reflection at all times instead of 100% and 20% for 5 seconds once every 50 seconds. This would be a much bigger difference. But the 10% heal every 15 seconds is a lot closer to being a constant rate than it is to being a powerful spike worth planning around.
An in-between option would be for the aura to be a toggle, but for the % heal mechanism to be the same as Menhir’s Will. (Cooldown=15 seconds, if you go below 40% health, heal for 10/12/14/whatever%)
That would allow less control. If you had several such effects, then you would lose the option to spam one and stay capped, saving the other for emergencies. This drawback doesn’t exist as much if it’s a constant %health per second toggle.
One last option - I forget what they’re called, but you know those optional skill alterations? You could have one like that, and let us decide. For the cost of one point, the spell could become a toggle that is more energy-efficient per second, but the heal rate is averaged out to assume a somewhat low CDR value. Maybe some other double-edged buff/debuff could be bundled in to make it a more interesting choice. Maybe the burst version could gradually weaken between casts, compared to the stable, averaged-out version.
I hated having to cast these skills so much that I used to use a macro to automate the process. When the modding tools came out, I simply increased the duration of the skills to about ten minutes. It feels much better to use.
A common request for it is for it to have a 1 point transmutor node for it to convert into an always on aura, in trade for losing the heal. Buff the HP/5 with the transmutor by +50%.
