World of Healing bugged when combined with Divine Boon?

There appears to be a problem with World of Healing when used with Divine Boon, in regard to the bonus healing when the target's HP is below 50%.

It works perfect straight up, but when combined with Divine Boon, the "below 50%" bonus acts more like a below 25% bonus (even lower sometimes).
What's the deal?

The only thing that I can think of is that the game calculates the HP gain from Divine Boon (and maybe even Divine Favor) into the target's total HP BEFORE it checks to see if the bonus is applicable.
So maybe the World of Healing bonus doesn't working right with Divine Boon because the game checks to see if the HP gain from Divine Boon takes the target over 50% before deciding whether or not to apply to bonus.

The thing is, like I mentioned, I think it might add up the Dvine Favor HP gain as well as the Divine Boon HP gain, because I've seen health bars at 25% not reveive the bonus time and time again. The bar pretty much has to be below 20% health to guarenteed the bonus.
Again, this is only when using Divine Boon. It works just fine by itself.

Is it possible that the game does indeed add the Divine Boon HP gain and maybe the Divine Favor HP gain to the target's health before it checks for the "below 50%" bonus?

BTW: I just spent the entire night messing with this, and trust me, the situation I describe IS the situation. I'm not messing with you or seeing things.

Yes the bonuses from DF and Boon seem to hit first, known issue/feature.

Yup, been like that for a long time. At least since April 05.

It's pathetic that your Divine Favor Bonus with Word of Healing is applied first.

Word of Healing Cast time is also way to long.

I dropped it back in April 05. I have never looked back. It's a waste of an elite skill slot.

Ratatass

Go offering of blood as your elite with boon. your orision of healing will do as much as your under 50% word will if set up right...

Personally, Word of Healing is my staple-heal and it works flawlessly for me. I run a no-enchant-heal, 5 mana build and it works great ... AND it works at any life below 50% ... honestly I was using it last night helping a friend with desert missions. Here's a quote from GuildWiki description:

Link is here.

Since I use Word so much, i've become very adept at judging where exactly 50% is on party members' health bars ... as it is no more effective than orison when they aren't under 50%

And to the folks that say it's useless: 5 energy for a, if properly used, 180+ health heal with very fast cast and 4 second cooldown? Come on ...

but what is it..heal other is recharge 3..orison is 2..i know heal other costs more but i think its more effective..

I do also use Orison, after using Word, or if somoene needs a sustain-heal before Word is fully recharged. Here's the stats (both at 16 healing)

Heal Other: 190 health, 10 energy, 3s recharge
Word of Healing: 190 health (106 + 84), 5 energy, 4s recharge

Exact same amount of healing, half the energy, for one second longer recharge.

So, within say, 8 seconds, you can only cast either once twice, using 20 energy for Heal Other, and 10 for word. 1 extra second of recharge, to me, is well worth the 5 extra energy (that's an entire other spell on my bar)

The real question is, is the 5 energy worth your elite slot.

For a pure healing monk? Absolutely. What's your other elite healing prayers option? Healing hands? Only heals if the target is being attacked at the moment by direct-damage (non-DoT or degen damage), and also it is an enchant and can be stripped/shattered/rended. If the mobs you're fighting (or players for that matter, if PvP) switch targets: there goes your spell's effectiveness for the next 25 seconds while it cools down. Word allows for fast-switching inbetween party members for better group health management, and is incredibly good at bringing back that person that just got combo'ed/spiked/surrounded before your prot. monk could get ahold of them.

Good reference for this is: here.

The only elite i'd even consider replacing it with would be SpellBreaker, and even then only for a very specific build for an area ripe with spellcasters, and it would be to keep myself or another monk alive to do our jobs. Even then the 45sec recharge is cumbersome.

EDIT: I just realized that I may be coming off as sort of a jerk, which is not my intent. I am a Word of Healing advocate, and it works very well for me ... I don't mean to imply that it will work well for you, or that anyone is stupid for not using it, etc. so save the flames for someone more deserving, you PM'ers.

Also consider how much health your ally has in this situation. If you have an ally with 400 hp and see the bar dip below half (200 hp) your Boon can easily take him over 200 before Word is applied.

What helped me understand Divine Boon was watching health bars carefully when applying a heal. You will notice it jump up in steps. The first step (Boon) will always be the same. Then you will see a bigger jump from the heal itself. This is a good way to also guess conditions on an ally, too. Aside from seeing the +health numbers over their heads you can watch the health jump from heals like Dwayna's Kiss and Mend Ailment.

Fungus is right, I believe boon is applied before DF ... and I realized i've been ranting for nothing. I should learn to read a little better before I go off on tangents, as I thought the base discussion was whether or not Divine Favor messed up Word of Healing ... but we're really talking about Boon here ... Someone hit me with the "stupid" bat today.

Boon is a great enchant, although keeping it maintained has always hurt my energy more in the long run ... but that's just my opinion.

Order goes:

Boon
Heal
Divine Favor

I'm going to go make some coffee ...

I have been experimenting more lately with Boon. When I made my first monk, I kept Boon up constantly. Then I realized the low cost of applying Boon. Remember, Boon is linked to Divine Favor. Try boosting Divine Favor instead of Healing Prayers.

With high Divine, I can balance Heal/Prot more effectively. Any spell cast acts much like a pure healing spell. Keep Boon off until you need a big heal or keep Boon on and avoid over-healing to conserve energy. If you need energy, just cancel Boon for a few seconds. Remember also that you will also heal yourself according to your Divine attribute when you cast Boon on yourself.

I like Peace and Harmony when I'm the healer (PVE). Greate for helping the prot monk after zoning and good for pickup groups when you can't count on putting essense bond or balthazar's on someone. In PVP, I've never been able to play a pure heal build. What is your build? Is it the same PVE and PVP? I'm curious to see what's on your skill bar and maybe give it a try.

Ah yes, but good 'ol peace and harmony is no good if you have henchmen ... since you have to direct their attacks with wanding

Sent you a PM with build details, contact me here or ingame if you want to see it in action.

<-was the only monk in Thirsty River last night with a BUNCH of aggro-idiots, and did just fine. Necro says "well hell I brought Blood Is Power for nothing ..."

Thanks for all the great discussion on this guys, I really appreciate it.


"Order goes:

Boon
Heal
Divine Favor"

Can anyone else confirm that this is the case, that the Divine Favor bonus comes AFTER the heal (unlike the Divine Boon bonus)?
If it is, it makes the situation a little better than I feared.

I run a pure healer (so Mo/W, of course, with nothing but 5e spells), with a minimum base of 14 healing, 13 Divine Favor, 4 prot (with all minor runes). Divine Boon heals for 64, and Divine Favor heals for 42.
So if the above quotation is correct, the World of Healing bonus kicks in if the target is more than 64 HP below 50%, instead of 106 HP (64+42) below 50% like I feared.

Divine favor definitely comes after the Heal. To test: don't boon, and take some henchies out into explorable area, let one get beat up only sleightly below 50% health, and Word him. Watch the pretty blue numbers

Ugh, I have such a love/hate relationship with word of healing, it can be so wonderful.. but depending on your bonuses.... ugh. I really wish they'd fix this bug, I dunno if it's just supposed to be like that.. but it doesn't seem to make sense. I definitely think it's broken, and it has been for as long as i can remember. Makes me wait to heal a lot

^^^ That can be a problem. You are temped to wait until the target's HP is low enough for the bonus to take effect.

The key is to just use World of Healing along with Orison of Healing as your 2 workhorse heals, but when the sh** hits the fan, try to coordinate those 2 skills so that the player who is around half gets Orison and the player is around a quarter gets World.
In this way, World of Healing acts as both a workhorse heal AND an emergency heal, all in a single skill slot.

The other option is to keep Dwayna's Kiss on the bar for your second workhorse heal, and just save World of Healing as a pure emergency heal when you KNOW you'll get the bonus.
That's safer, no doubt, but you're using 2 skill slots that way, which can be avoided with the above method and some practiced timing.

I've again spent the day tinkering, and I've decided to do the first method that I mentioned, because I've got the timing down where I can use World of Healing as 2 different spells (normal workhorse heal for normal situations, and emergency heal for when the sh** hits the fan).

My bar looks like this:
Divine Boon
Orison of Healing
World of Healing {E}
Signet of Devotion
Mend Ailment
Vigorous Spirit/other (situation-pending utility slot)
Restore Life
Sprint

By using the method I described above, I'm able to drop Dwayna's Kiss and free up an extra slot for something like Vigorous Spirit (a personal favorite), or whatever else the situation calls for (Healing Seed, a hex remover, etc.)

I feel that using WoH with boon is a bit of a waste anyway. Actualy, using any healing spells with Boon is a bit of a waste. You end up overhealing far too often, and that is not something you can afford with boon. If you do a search on the monk forums, I think you'll find that the majority of boon-monks use pront magic, since it's faster casting, and doesn't overheal as much (Which isn't to say its less effective!).

With boon, you really need some form of elite energy managment skill. Offering of Blood is what most boon-monks swear by, altough Mantra of Recall can work almost as well.

I do use a heal build from time to time, and when I do, Word of Healing is my elite. The alternatives just suck so much for a healing monk.

^^^ You have no idea how many times I've seen those two comments:
1. "you overheal with boon"
2. "you need Offering of Blood to manage energy"

The funny thing is, they're both grossly inaccurate.
(I'm not ripping on you BTW, just those common sentiments )


Let's tackle the first issue first (this one's easy, so I'll be brief):

The average PvE player has about 500 HP, most probably have more, but let's just say 500 HP to keep it simple. A pure healer running boon will typically have say, 14 Healing & 13 Divine Favor. Here's some quick calculations for you:
--> Orison of Healing & Boon: 63+64+42= 169 HP
So 169 would be the typical heal, which is about 1/3rd the typical player's total HP. So when they're health bar gets to about 2/3rds or lower, you heal them, and they get the full effect of the heal. How is that overhealing again?
-->World if Healing (with bonus) & boon: 170+64+42= 276 HP
276 HP is just over half of a player's total HP. For them to be receiving the bonus at all, they're health would have be down in the 1/3rd-ish range anyway, so there is not even a possibility that they won't receive the full effect of the heal. How is that overhealing again?
We can go on and on, but the fact of the matter is, using boon with 5 energy spells is certainly NOT everhealing. I'm not even going to mention 10 energy spells because every boon healer knows never to touch them.


Now the second issue (I could go on forever about this one):

First, I want you to notice the attribute point allocations I listed above (14 Healing, 13 Divine Favor), because that's what you can achieve with only minor runes by being a pure healing monk. Pure healing monk means 100% of your attribute points go into Divine Favor and Healing Prayers (with the leftovers--4 with rune--into Protection). Folks, there is no other way to put it, if you go Mo/N and dump attribute points (usually 8 or 10) into Blood Magic just for Offering of Blood, thus taking attribute points away from Healing and Divine Favor, you are a weaker healer, plain and simple. You also wasted your elite slot that could have been used on a monk elite, which makes you an even weaker healer still.
Now let's examine the rewards of being said weaker healer:
Most Mo/N net about 13 energy from OoB.
Useful? Certainly.
Needed? Almost never (and never for me)
Besides, you'll be using up that gained energy faster because you'll be duming 10 energy to heal every spike, whether it be from two 5 energy spells, or one 10 energy spell. Now I don't know about you, but I'd much rather spend 7 instead of 10.
Which brings me to another point....I get a kick out of all those "energy efficient" Mo/N's out there who bing OoB as their elite and then Heal Other for their emergency spike heal (LOL!!!), in place of World of Healing. Priceless.

But why Mo/W? Because that "W" gets you a free (as in 0 attribute points needed) 8 seconds of sprint, which is the single most underrated ability that a monk can have IMO.
It serves 2 purposes: insta-deaggro for max survivability, and extending your healing range.
Bring 7 Monk skills (please make sure 1 is a rez), and then Sprint.
I die laughing everytime I see a Mo/N or Mo/Me die and then whine about having too much aggro on them ("OMG save me stoop1d warri0r!!1").
I also die laughing everytime I see a Mo/N or Mo/Me whine about someone being too far out of their spell range to be healed in time ("OMFG y0ur to far away!1!").
I hope all that disadvantage is worth being a weaker healer.

I have never had a problem with energy.....ever (except for Glint's Crystal Wave, of course). 54 energy has always done the trick for me. And I heal more effectively than the ever-popular Mo/N's and Mo/Me.
There's no trick to it, I even posted my bar up above in this thread. Very simple; just bring boon, all 5 energy spells, and Signet of Devotion. Signet of Devotion is there for when the target's health is at or above 3/4ths. It's the perfect top off-spell. I keep it going whenever I can; I never sit still and just wait for someone's bar to drop to about 2/3rds (which then requires a real heal). I'm spamming this like crazy whenever I can.
Obviously, the key to this is to be smart about it; you don't want to get caught in a 2 second cast when people are getting spiked. With enough experience, you'll learn exactly when and when not to use Signet of Devotion. And at that point you'll find, like I did, that you'll be able to use it and conserve energy more than you realize.

bla bla bla, that's probably enough ranting, I'll shut up now.

DISCLAIMER: I was exclusively refering to PvE in this post BTW.