Ummm. They need to git gud :p. I’m almost exclusively a cruci player and while spamming it all the time might be the case on trash waves, in 160/170 you absolutely need to conserve your heal (provided the buff is always active) cause not everyone plays lifesteal and health pots have a cooldown.
Word of renewal duration is 30 seconds, with 15s cooldown. You have a 15-second window before you lose all the buffs. Just take notice of it and rebuff when it’s about to expire or when you need the heal. Again, git gud.
I found Word of Renewal, PB an BoD annoying to use at first, but I got used to it and actually came to like how they work. Thing is, you can keep them up like an aura but you need to pay attention, taking the mindlessness out. Due to the cooldown being a lot shorter than the uptime you can use them as a heal when things get tight.
Maybe it’s you that needs to “git gud” since some of the vids I saw were Gladiator Crucible 150-170. They weren’t using Word of Renewal for healing. Load up the videos and watch the icon above the health bar. It’s always reactivated just before it wears off, regardless of the player’s health situation.
^ Here’s a Gladiator Cruci 160-170 clear. Word of Renewal is just mindlessly refreshed all the time. Often reactivated at full or nearly full health. Go to the 3:02 mark in the video just as an example. At literally full health he reactivates the skill. This behavior is repeated across all the videos I’ve seen.
^ Here’s a Lokarr battle. Word of Renewal is activated before he even starts the fight.
^ Another example. Word of Renewal just maintained permanently with no particular strategic activation.
^ I could keep going. And it’s not like all these vids were uploaded by the same player either.
Look, if you want to disagree with me on my aura suggestion, that’s perfectly fine. But you can’t expect me to seriously believe your claims that using Word of Renewal for healing is the most effective way to use the skill, given the video evidence. You really think that it’s just a coincidence that all the players who upload YT videos happen to play in some odd inefficient way compared to the community as a whole? They’re all just noobs that don’t understand how to make the best use of their skills? Very unlikely.
[edit] All the videos I’ve been posting are of Infiltrators. So I’m willing to admit at this time that my assumption may just be restricted to Infiltrators. Don’t have time right now, but I’ll try to find some vids of other Inquisitor classes later to see if the trend holds.
The thing is you cannot use Crucible play to discuss changing Campaign skills.
Not only is the Crucible a totally optional, paid for DLC, but the game play is totally different to campaign play, as you don’t face waves of mobs with a timer in the campaign so having a burst of health when required is extremely more efficient compared to mindlessly refreshing on the cooldown because they are so busy and there’s more time to be able to fire off this health burst than when in the Crucible.
Edit…How is it more efficient (life saving) to suddenly need that burst of health, but you cannot access it because the skill is on cooldown from you using it at almost full health, just because the previous cooldown had expired, not because you were in any need of a burst of health at that moment? Basically it’s wasting the healthy that could save your life by constantly clicking mindlessly as soon as the cooldown has finished.
Rune infiltrator is at the absolute top of builds in the current patch. It’s the exception, not the rule. You don’t use a top tier build to argue that a skill’s component is weak. Even then, unless you have all the optimum items for a runefiltrator, you’ll still need the heals.
1st, 3rd and probably 4th (can’t see the date on mobile for some reason) videos are outdated. Those were played during the DA meta where people stacked all kinda of defenses (DA being the most common) just to have a chance at cruci. Of course it would be a given that the healing is not that good when everyone builds cheesy tanks. But patches change.
2nd video shows a lifesteal build. Healing is already taken care of with the hits.
Show me totem vindicator, rune purifiers, deceivers with no lifesteal that are up to date and are built normally (i.e. no excessive investments into a defensive stat to nullify almost all damage) and tell me you don’t need healing. Hell, show me DEE witch hunter, since BoD and pneuma are similar skills.
Spamming Word of Renewal/BoD/Pneuma and not using it is fine, but to say that not using the heal is more efficient is just flat out wrong, both in theory and in practice. Just because there are some builds that can get away with it doesn’t mean all of them can.
I’m wondering how much impact the Shattered Realm will have on balancing. It’s accessed via the Campaign and is certainly far more Campaign-y than Crucible is, after all. Will it qualify as being similar enough to the main game to be taken into consideration when balancing things?
Anyway, the heal is fine as is and certainly very useful at times. I doubt they’d turn it into an aura at this point, so I guess the best you can hope for is duration item skill modifiers similar to what Blood of Dreeg got.
It will most likely have more bearing than cruci when it comes to balancing mainly cause it’s a feature integrated to the main game itself, unlike cruci which is a totally optional dlc. And if I make a prediction here, realms itself will probably have a large lore significance, unlike crucible.
As it’s part of an expansion of the main game and accessed in the campaign, I’d be surprised if Crate wasn’t trying to keep some form of balance. Unlike the Crucible which you cannot access from in the campaign.
Using cooldown heals to recover from big hits is definitely a strategy and sometimes a crucial one if you don’t have excessive leech or other defenses.
You can mash the skill whenever it’s ready out of convenience against harmless foes, for hard content like Celestials or the toughest Crucible waves, you definitely want the CD ready for healing, which OP’s suggestion would prevent.
Hey, I don’t care to admit when I don’t have all the information. I just noticed how the skill worked best for me as a permanent buff on my Infiltrator that is still leveling (currently 63), and all the vids I could find of people playing with Infiltrator were using it the same way. And yeah I am using a fair bit of life steal at the moment. So I kind of rushed to post this without giving consideration to the wide variety of other kinds of builds.
I’ve only been playing since April of this year, so needless to say I don’t have nearly the experience and perspective as the veterans here.
Linking videos of someone fully decked out with huge life steal is jumping the gun isn’t it?
And really? you level infiltrator and see no value to the healing on PB or WoR? Can you honestly say you never benefited from pneumatic burst or word of renewal heal? or that the heals wouldn’t have been useful? Shame on you >.<
I don’t have anything invested in PB yet. Haven’t started Elite yet though. And no, I don’t remember being saved by WoR’s healing so far, but I am running 24% life steal as I alluded to earlier.
Thanks for your kind words though. Good to know there are nice folks like you in this community willing to cut newcomers a little slack when they admit a mistake.
You’ll start seeing the value in burst healing when you start fighting real hard-hitters like nemeses. For example, if Aleks’s meteor doesn’t straight-up gib you, it’s a lifesaver to go from 20% to 80% with two button clicks. Most life leech matches low-medium sustained damage, and skills like WoR or PB counter burst damage. It’s also great insurance for enemies who can make you fumble attacks, reflect, and anything that turns invulnerable.
As I said you jumped the gun, and it seemed like it was on purpose. Maybe you are a pro arpg player that never needed an extra heal beyond the potion, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the player base need to suffer to make your experience marginally better. Kind of obvious, hence my disapproving tone.
I only mentioned the controller because I assume keyboard and mouse are disabled while you’re using a controller (since I know you can’t move with both at the same time and your skillbar settings change when you switch back and forth) so I was just saying that would rule out assigning some keyboard macro to activate the skill every ~15 seconds. I don’t have any problems actually activating the skill with the controller.
Well I think this thread is probably done, the OP has admitted it was a bit rushed having listened to other people’s points of view, and full respect to them for that, so I don’t see there’s anything left to say on this matter, especially if it’s just going to descend into insults and slights against anyone else.
Lack of slack-cutting towards newcomers is a recurring but not prevalent theme on these forums, especially in the ideas and suggestions section. Considering your post count I wouldn’t consider you a newcomer though.
Don’t let that discourage you, there are a lot of veterans on here that take the time to explain things and overall it’s a great community.
