Musician Archive
Thread: Ent. Healing XP Rate Needs to be Looked At
LeBob wrote:
it's based on how many mind wounds and BF you heal... and if there are multiple ents then that is less BF and mind wounds healed per ent...
Actually if you'll read the thread linked in the post above yours you'll find out this isn't true. The xp you recieve is linked to the mind wounds, BF and buffs of the whole group, not just you personally.
So why does the xp slow down as you go up into the eliteprofessions? To answer that, look at the requirements per box... I believe the entertainer branch requires 1000, 5000, 10,000 then 25,000. Then the elite professions require 25,000 75,000 125,000 175,000 for two branches.
Now given that the xp you recieve is related to the healing and buffing by the whole group, ideally you get all the xp for healing everyone that comes in with wounds. If someone comes in with 500bf, you get 1000xp even if you are a novice entertainer grouped with a master musician and the master musician does most the healing.
So now if you assume you can get 25k healing xp a day that means:
Day 1: Entertainment Healing I, II, and III completed at a cost of 16,000 xp, 9000 xp into Entertainment Healing IV.
Day 2: Entertainment Healing IV completed, 9000 xp into Wound Healing I. (Assuming you can get novice by this time, if not you'll hit the 50k cap in 2 days and stay until you get novice)
Day 3: Wound Healing I completed, 9000 xp into Fatigue Healing I.
Day 4: Fatigue Healing I completed, 9000 xp into Wound Healing II.
And so on.. Day 5&6 you complete Wound II, day 7&8 you complete Fatigue II, day 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13, you complete Wound III. Day 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 you complete Fatigue III. Day 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25 you complete Wound IV. Day 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 you complete Fatigue IV.
To put this another way... A new musician solo gets 4xp per tick of music xp. The healing xp is statistically speaking constant from novice to master elite so I won't even make an assumption as to what it is. The first box requires 1000 of each. The second box 5000 of each, and finally diverges at the third box. For the entire entertainer line, you need 66,000 music xp and 41,000 healing xp. But the very last boxes require 225000 dancing, and 125000 healing. That seems fair, right? The ratios are similar as with the entertainer branch. But consider this - remember how I said the healing is constant? Well, the music xp isn't. That new musician that got 4xp per tick of music xp is now getting 38xp per tick of music xp for a little under half their career, assuming they go knowledge first like most do. I don't remember what I got at music 4, but I'm going to guess 20xp per tick. That means the music xp gained as a musician vs an entertainer is around 2-4 times more.... Yet the ratio of music xp required to healing xp remains fairly constant.
Still with me? Cause I just explained why healing xp comes so fast as an entertainer yet slows to a crawl as you near master.
Anyway, healing xp does not scale at all. You just heal them faster, which means more xp in the short term because you are healing more at once, but if you add it all up once they are healed, the xp is identical.
You can read the experiment I did about healing xp in a thread I linked above, or look here for a long post I made about what is wrong with the entertainer class from a pure game mechanics (IE xp, ideal place for entertainers, etc) point of view. I even come up with proof of what all entertainers have guessed all along - that coronet is the best healing xp in the game.
Hi Tiaga,
I've read your other thread, which was very helpful and thoughtful, and I posted a reply there. A quick summary, with a couple extra points tacked on:
1. Does Dancer healXP "spike" higher than Music heal XP?
2. Even if music heal XP doesn't scale, that's not unique to Musicians. BE DNA sampling doesn't scale, either. Nor does medical XP. Yes medical XP is far too easy to acquire -- and I say this as a master medic and aspiring Combat Medic.
3. Even if heal XP is the slowest line, is that so bad? People already master Musician in a week. How much faster does it need to be? As Musician Correspondent, I firmly believe my profession is as important as a Bounty Hunter or any other profession. A profession that is easy to master becomes diluted in importance.
4. Doesn't heal XP measure an important entertaining quality: the ability to find an audience? I wouldn't mind replacing one heal line with a crafting line or a singing line, but in principle I like the idea of heal XP.
5. Yes, people are more careful about dying now. But people are also much more willing to "create" wounds for healing now. The coming CH changes may also take some damage from pets and put it back on players.
6.I finally did get a chance to do some testing of Music and heal XP on Test Center. My admittedly unscientific impression was that the XP numbers were fine -- not noticeably different from when I first leveled my Musician. And I have a friend who just mastered Dancer on Test -- a server with a very low population. If she can do it there, then we can do it on live.
The xp rates, as it were, hasn't changed. You still get the same xp for healing someone. (Spike bug aside) However, the sources of healing is less, discounting artificial wounds.
I'll ask my dancer friend how she made master. AFAIK, she did it the old-fashioned way, just by dancing for audiences.
Yes, people are manufacturing wounds to make up for the fact that fewer people incur the ghastly wounds we saw in the first few weeks of the game. I'm not sure the answer to that phenomenon, though, is to make it still easier to obtain healing XP. People will still manufacture wounds, and Musician will be even easier to master than it is now. A better answer would be to prevent these kind of healing workarounds -- tumble-to-standing healing comes to mind too -- but there may be no easy way to do that without interfering with core gameplay.
NewJedi wrote:
2. Even if music heal XP doesn't scale, that's not unique to Musicians. BE DNA sampling doesn't scale, either. Nor does medical XP. Yes medical XP is far too easy to acquire -- and I say this as a master medic and aspiring Combat Medic.
In reference to DNA Sampling/Harvesting...you may not get more per sample, but you can sample the same critter multiple times with higher success rates as you get better at the skill. When starting out, you typically get one shot at it that usually kills it, and you can't sample anything big with any degree of success. The higher in DNA Sampling you go, the bigger the stuff you can get, so the more xp you get, and you can sample them more often before you kill them or they beat you over the head for sticking a sterile Q-tip in their bum. (I don't even want to know why doing that kills them!)
So I wouldn't say it doesn't scale, precisely...just that it doesn't scale per instance, but your ability to do it better does, in fact, increase your chance for getting DNA Sampling xp.
3. Even if heal XP is the slowest line, is that so bad? People already master Musician in a week. How much faster does it need to be? As Musician Correspondent, I firmly believe my profession is as important as a Bounty Hunter or any other profession. A profession that is easy to master becomes diluted in importance.
I dunno how you figure mastering Music in a week. I think I've been back at it going after it for coming on two weeks now; I do it darn near constantly, in Coronet, using AFK macros when I'm not perched in front of my machine. (Just...drop any attempt to convince me I'm the ultimate Sith Lord for doing it, 'kay? I'm not getting into that right now other than to point out that I'm doing it and not acheiving the results I 'should' be by doing so.)I'm even going along with the sick-o things the wanabe Jedi are doing to get more experience, and it's still a brutal grind. I'm in front of the keyboard the whole time I'm not sleeping or at work. (And not sleeping a whole 'cause I'd rather be ATK and having fun than sleep. Too bad I can't skimp on work.) So, let's see...this is a guesstimate 'cause I'm not big on metrics...I've been in the Coronet Cantina for about two weeks about 20 hours a day. So far that's about 280 hours. And I'm still not done with Fatigue Healing 4. I'm actually able to be ATK about 6 hours a day when I have to work...I can go for 10 hours on Saturdays and 14 hours on Sundays (stuff to do with the kidling on the weekend). That is not casual gaming. I thought we were supposed to be able to master a profession in about 3 months of casual gaming, defined as playing2-3 hours a night.
So the only way someone can master Music in a week is through some hardcore powergaming/AFK macroing...which throws the curve off for the projected way it's supposed to happen...which brings usback to AFK macroing.
Which means we're back to why people do it, which takes us back to watching your avatar stand there and be able to do nothing but tootle or be-bop away gets boring, no matter how much you like talking to folks while you do it, which brings us back to content and purpose. For me, anway.
After re-reading some of the stuff posted here...I think to bring it in line with the Music xp gain, the same thing needs to happen to EntHeal xp as happens to Music xp...the more skill in it you get, the more xp you get for healing wounds/fatigue. If that's where the discrepancy is, change one of them. Make it so we get less Music xp, or more EntHeal, for what we actually do. That would also bring it in line with the Bio-Engineering DNA Sampling example; the better you get at it, the better you're able to do it over the same period of time
Tumble to standing is childs play. I have an alias that dumps my entire action bar instantly. (No I'm not going to share it, but I will PM NewJedi to bring it up in the entertainer forum)
That said there is precedent that healing xp should not scale with skill - medics also get a fixed xp/wound ratio. However, their xp scales similar to the BE as explained above.. As you get better, you're able to keep groups alive against tougher opponents, so in a way it does scale. Maybe with the upcoming changes people will have more wounds and BF.
Perhaps increasing the BF gained during combat, both offensive and defensive. (Can BF be gained without being actively attacked?) It seems to be that is our primary purpose since we are the only ones who can do it, we can only do it in certain non-transient places, and we get the most xp for healing BF. (Chances are, if someone has wounds, they have BF as well, and at the rate of bf healing xp vs wound healing xp, we get more xp for their bf than for their wounds, doubly if they had to siti in the med center or a camp for awhile.)
If there is an adjustement made since we don't scale with skill, perhaps it would be to make our healing branches not scale with skill so much.
Echinacea: Yes, my BE sampled DNA a bit more quickly as he leveled up because he grew more skilled -- but you might argue that Musicians likewise may gain more heal XP as they level up because they grow more skilled. If you have the buff, for example, someone is more likely to /listen to you (thus giving you heal XP) than if not. Granted, you'll get the heal XP anyway in a band, but AFK Musicians (those leveling fastest) may be less likely to be in a band.
Yes, the issue also relates to AFK'ing: given the choice between an AFK Musician and a live one, other things being equal, I'll /listen to the Live one -- and give them the heal XP. In that sense, doesn't heal XP encourage ATK play?
Mind you, I wouldn't mind eliminating one line of heal XP and replacing it with song skills or something more active. In fact, I'm all for such a change.
Finally, you ask about Musicians leveling up in a week. Maybe I only chat with powergamers, but I hear about this all the time on my server. Yes, it took me three weeks or more because, rube that I am, I performed at the keyboard without ever macro'ing when the game started. Even if 3 weeks is still the standard -- and I doubt it is -- that still doesn't strike me as too slow when compared to combat professions. But then I tend to be a curmudgeon about leveling. I think it's generally too fast in this game.
I'd still say that ent healing xp is constant. You're likely still in roughly the same group or not, and there is a fixed amount of xp coming into the group.
I can't really comment to effectly on current testing here, but from what I see, there is not an overall rate that you can break it down to such as 5:1
If you look back to when you were working in the entertainer line before the elite profession, you find that Music XP is MUCH slower then the healing XP in numbers, but as skill increases, the amount of XP you get from playing an instrument will increase, yet the healing XP that you get will stay the same if not decrease.
It almost seems like there are different rates given for different actions.
As if healing someone with a Mind Wound while in the ENT line will always provide x * amount healedxp per tick, However, if the same person hasFocus,WillPower, and BFwounds, those are x2-4 * amount healed. However, at higher levels of wound healing skill, you getless of a bonus for healing certian wound types because it is "meanial" at your skill.
Anyway, is just seems that there is a large XP gain curve for Music XP, but a flat line if not reverse curve for healing XP.
just my 2 c, but I will do some testing later.