Healer Monk and Divine Favor

I have noticed people discussing healer monk builds and stressing the importance of divine favor. I have a succesfull Healer Monk and don't have a single point in divine favor. Am I missing something? what gives...is it march 18th yet?

That's pretty much all there is to it.

Peace,
-CxE

The +3.2hp per rank per spell bonus from Divine Favor. It makes every healing spell you cast better. When you're trying to heal as much as you can, that's huge.

You said you were level 14 before Charles's little comment (Don't worry about him, he has this warped worldview where everyone logs into the game with a fully loaded lv20 character and a perfect understanding of game mechanics...) so what I'd suggest is once you get a few more levels under your belt to invest some points in Divine Favor and see how it works for you.

...thanks...I edited my post after finding the "my monk build" thread at the riverside inn. Alot of good info on monk builds there. but not the info you posted, now I see the light... thanks rex.

What I meant with my brief little, 'I can't think straight enough to make a real comment right now' post, is that since pumping healing is so much more effective than pumping divine favor, you're not going to see a huge hit in effectiveness by just going straight healing. Once you get into the 8+ range, though, the diminishing effect of each level is going to push you towards using a more balanced Orison/Healing layout.

For example, at level 14, you have 65 attribute points. If you dump all of those into healing, you'll be healing for 58 health per Orison (level 10). If you instead split those points up into 8 Healing, 7 Divine Favor, you'll be healing 73 health per Orison. Now at the point of the game when you're level 14 you're just looking at a difference of 15 health per heal, but as your level keeps increasing the gap widens - at max level, the Divine / Healing Monk will be healing 30-40 more health per heal than the pure Healing Monk, and that's something that you can't ignore.

Basically the differences become more pronounced as your level increases, so while you don't have to think about it now you will later.

Peace,
-CxE

So does divine favor also increase variables like the health regeneration in healing breeze for example?

Nope, you have to keep on pumping up Healing if you want non-healing variables to increase. However, pumping Divine Favor will make something like Healing Breeze give a bit of healing up front, which should not be underestimated. =)

Peace,
-CxE

Are you saying that if I have two points in divine favor I will actualy heal 6.4 each time I cast healing breeze?

That's exactly what I'm saying. Well, ok, not exactly - that decimal is rounded off so you'll actually heal 6 points each time you cast Healing Breeze. Or any Monk skill that targets an ally, for that matter - it doesn't matter what it does, it'll tack on healing up front.

Peace,
-CxE

only skills tied to divine healing will scale with it. some skills to consider are:

Divine Intervention
if at a high level and used correctly, it is a real lifesaver

Peace and Harmony
an extra pip of energy can be really useful

Signet of Devotion
can we say free heal? although the 2 second casting time keeps it from being something to rely on

Right, and that gives your Healing Breeze some up front healing to go along with the 2xPips health over 10 seconds. At Healing 12 it's 180 hp in 10 seconds. With Divine Favor 12, too, it's 218 but 38 of those hit points are gained right away instead of over time. If your target is taking damage that can make the difference between them surviving long enough to gain the benefit of the Breeze and Breeze failing to heal them sufficiently before they fall.

As Charles says, that bonus health is tacked onto any Monk spell even those which wouldn't normally have any healing. If you cast Judge's Insight on someone with Divine Favor, they'll gain some health. Same with Reversal of Fortune or Gaurdian or anything else you can target ally with. That makes it extremely good with Protection skills in a manner similar to Healing Breeze but not so much with Smiting skills.

Anyhow, I've put up a table of Divine Favor trying to explain its goodness here. The main reason it's so desirable is that as you advance in ranks it becomes more and more effective. At lower levels, it's adding 16%~20% to your healing and when you're healing for 20 or 30 hit points that's not a whole lot. But as you get closer to 12 it's adding 35%~40% if not more and when you're healing for 70, 80 hit points that can be a large difference.

If you combine Divine Boon, and have sufficiently high Divine Favor, you'll actually do as much up-front healing with Healing Breeze as Elmo can do with Orison. Whether the hit to mana regen is worth this or not is debatable.

lets take a look at a monk vs an elmo, just spamming orison. lets say both have healing at 12 and their primary attribute at 12. lets also say that they both have a maximum energy pool, according to THX's profession table

Orison of Healing
Heal target ally for 67 health.
Casting cost: 5 energy
Casting time: 1 sec
Recharge time: 2 sec
Relevant attribute: Healing Magic

now i am not as proficient at math as some folks here, but let's say that you can basically get another cast of orison on an average of every 3 seconds. with both players having a regen rate of 1.33 energy per second, that means that after those 3 seconds, they would have regenerated 4 energy which leaves the net cost of orison at about 1 energy per cast.

every time the monk casts orison, he will heal for 67+38 = 105 every 3 seconds, which is 35 health per second. at a max of 42 energy, i believe he can cast orison 38 times before his energy bottoms out. that means he can heal for 3990 on a full mana bar.

every time the elmo casts orison, she can only heal for 67 every 3 seconds, which is only 22.3 health per second. however, at a max energy pool of 78 due to a maxed energy storage i presume, thats roughly 74 casts, (almost double the monk), which leads to 4958 health on a full mana bar.

so basically, an elmo would need to cast about twice as often as the monk in order to out-heal him. if i have fouled up the math somewhere, i would appreciate the criticism. but i think it serves to give a general idea of the effectiveness of divine favor versus energy storage.

The important metrics when figuring out just how effective a healer is being are the amount of healing delivered and the cost of that healing. That's Healing Per Second and Healing Per Energy, basically. While it's true that an elmo has a much bigger pool simply saying that an elmo can cast longer denies the existance of energy managment skills like Blood is Power and energy denial skills like Debilitating Shot. Your team won't want your healer to run out of energy. And your opponent's will. You can't count on laboratory conditions of just standing your healer there and letting them cast repeatedly (although it is a good exercise to show why people still play elmos).

Healing per second works just like DPS. It's what you do divided by the time it takes you to do it. It's not the recycle time, ie just how long you have to wait to go again, it's the casting time that's important. And don't forget that spells have "aftercasts". There's a .75 second gap after you finish casting a skill before you can do anything. Ensign's already worked most of this out here. But, if your Orison 1.75 seconds to cast it's not important that it'll take another 2 seconds to recharge. That's because you can be doing other things during that time frame to pack in more healing just as others can pack in more damage.

So, HPS for a no-DF 67 heal Orison is 38.

HPS for a DF 105 heal Orison is 60. Or, roughly 33% better than without DF.

The healing per energy is the amount of healing divided by the amount of energy. HPS lets you know how effective you are. HPE lets you know how efficient.

Both Orision cost 5 energy. So, the no DF Orison is 13.4 health per energy.

The DF Orison is 21 HPE. Or, again, about a third better.

That all lets you know which heal is best for a single cast. That's also why they've raised the amount of healing on Healing Other, because while it did more HPS it was was more inefficient at HPE. Now, it's a little better doing 16.8HPE without DF and only 19.3HPE with it. The Divine Favor bonus is a lot smaller on something as large as Heal Other so it impacts HPS and HPE a lot less. And, of course, the large healing means Heal Other has a HPS of 144 or 166. Why, then, does no one use Heal Other?

That's because it's got a 30 second recharge time. In the space of 30 seconds you can cast Heal Other once. But you can cast Orison of Healing about 5 times. 335 healing is better than 252. Although you'll spend more energy to do it with. And that's where the recycle time comes in. Over time what matters is not "burst" or the ability to do a lot in one, single cast but "endurance" the ability to do it a lot over a period of time. And to do so at the lowest cost possible. That's what Ensign calls energy and time duty. In, say, a minute you can cast Heal Other about twice and Orison about 16 times, after taking aftercast into account. So, you'll spend 2.5 seconds casting Heal Other and the rest waiting for it to recharge. You'll spend 28 seconds casting Orison of Healing. 1072 health worth of healing without DF is a lot more than 504. However, you'll spend 80 energy compared to the 30 you'll spend for Heal Other. Orison's Health over Time is a lot better but it's Energy over time is poor. You'll get twice the healing at more than twice the price.

Again Divine Favor is good here. With it Orison heals for 1680 over a minute and Other only 590. Rather than twice the amount of healing you're getting closer to three times the amount of healing.