How to Calculate Your Healing Effectiveness (Debunking Healing Myths)

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Obtena.7952" said:No correction needed ... I'm talking when NO one was measuring it all.

Again no. People measured it this way back then. The measurement itself was BIASED. He identified those biases because those people were missing how to analyze essential information about DPS which is damage PER second. You can manipulate the DAMAGE side of the equation by manipulating the TIME it takes to do that damage.

What I said isn't invalidated by any of this though ... no agreeable calculation can be made for damage mitigation because there are damage mitigating elements that are dependent on the person playing,

Is this not exactly what I've said and the opposite of what you were saying earlier? You said dodging is "the best" without needing to measure it, and I said that you can by giving it an average that brings it out of the realm of the unrealistic (dodging infinite amounts of damage) to realistic dodging as an average of the amount you will face in an encounter.

Someone already commented that dodging is sometimes omitted in favor of just healing through it...that's information based on practical behavior. You don't know if what you will dodge will always kill you, nor can you dodge every single ability to maximum efficiency. If a boss does an attack that does 7k, then according to you, one would dodge this 7k damage, when it is perfectly plausible to just heal through this damage. In other instances, where an attack does 25k damage, healing through it becomes implausible and dodging becomes the most optimal strategy. Your assumption is that dodging in either case is the most optimal strategy, which is not true, just because it can mitigate a potentially infinite number does not mean it always will.

[Obtena.7952]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Obtena.7952" said:No correction needed ... I'm talking when NO one was measuring it all.

Again no. People measured it this way back then. The measurement itself was BIASED. He identified those biases because those people were missing essential information about DPS which is damage PER second. You can manipulate the DAMAGE side of the equation by manipulating the TIME it takes to do that damage.

What I said isn't invalidated by any of this though ... no agreeable calculation can be made for damage mitigation because there are damage mitigating elements that are dependent on the person playing,

Is this not exactly what I've said and the opposite of what you were saying earlier? You said dodging is "the best" without needing to measure it, and I said that you can by giving it an average that brings it out of the realm of the unrealistic (dodging infinite amounts of damage) to realistic dodging as an average of the amount you will face in an encounter.

So dodging can't be the best damage mitigation unless we measure it? "Giving it an average" is now a measurement? Again, let's not confuse measurement with calculation ... you aren't measuring anything if you just assign a value to how much damage a dodge can mitigate. That's why this theoretical exercise is misleading ... because the result depends on the player. Sure, present your calculated optimal healing values ... but other than that, no claims can be made about optimal play using them ... EVEN if you want to talk about healing.

This calculation approach was how false meta was pushed before DPS was being measured at the beginning of this game ... and it was proven inaccurate by people like Nemesis when they ACTUALLY measured it. Don't fall into the same trap where you did something on paper and you convinced yourself it's THE answer. That answer is incomplete if you are going to talk about optimal play.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Obtena.7952" said:"Giving it an average" is now a measurement?

The average is the AVERAGE POTENTIAL, which is a theoretical potential for which dodging will mitigate over the course of some arbitrary amount of time, and this potential is and can only be expressed as an average. This means that if one WERE to be playing at 100% efficacy over any period of time, they would mitigate on average the median number of the hits you would take during an engagement. The average potential (10,000 from the previous example) is what CAN be measured, where as the efficacy can only be estimated, but will always be some number lower than the theoretical maximum potential (0 - 20,000 from the previous example).

The efficacy CAN actually be practically measured (using the same technique laid out by Nemesis) but it requires knowing what the enemy does, and how much damage it would have done if you otherwise wouldn't have dodged. For example, Let's say you were to dodge every time off cooldown, meaning every 10 seconds you dodge. Let's say now that you were to fight a boss that does some arbitrary number of attacks during an 180 second long engagement. In this fight you've dodged 18 times. If the boss did 100,000 damage by the end when you never dodge, then on average, you took approx~ 550 damage per second. Dodging 18 times means you will ON AVERAGE dodge approx 10,000 damage over the course of 180 seconds (550 x 18 dodges). If the average theoretical maximum of mitigation from dodging is the median number mentioned before (10,000 damage per second) then your efficacy to which you are utilizing your dodges in this fight is 5.5% of the average potential.

Gaining higher efficacy in the above scenario, means dodging attacks that do the most damage. But that number will always range between 0 and 20,000. make sense?

This is the SAME approach that people were using to push optimal play with DPS before it was being measured ... and it was proven inaccurate by people like Nemesis when they ACTUALLY measured it.

No it's definitely not the same. The entire point of the exercise follows the philosophy laid out by Nemesis. You extrapolate a theoretical maximum number (The potential), and you go and you see how well you meet that number in the field (The efficacy). The potential because it is the theoretical maximum is the upper limit to how much you could do in perfectly ideal conditions, and the efficacy at which you play your build will ALWAYS be a fraction of that number. This is how Nemesis makes his builds...by creating builds that can attain high efficacy during engagements where you aren't in the most ideal situations...

[Obtena.7952]

Again ... 'giving' something a value isn't NOT a measurement. No matter how you justify that assignment, no calculation is going to account for the influence that player behaviour has on the value of non-measured damage mitigation actions. That's important to recognize because that consideration is related to the suspicion I have that higher skilled players are much less reliant on heals for damage mitigation than lower skilled ones. You can't just gloss over that with an average because these differences will likely result in orders of magnitude differences in whatever is being calculated. That was the case for DPS and I have no doubt that since the mechanics are similar here, it will be the case here as well.

I am just going to tell you the same thing I told the meta calculators 8 years ago. You're calculations don't mean much without a practical consideration of what is happening in the game. And just like those meta calculator guys, I have no doubt that such a simple healing potential calculation is grossly inaccurate as well.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Obtena.7952" said:Again ... 'giving' something a value isn't NOT a measurement, so no matter how you justify it, no calculation is going to account for the damage mitigation differences account from player behaviour. That's important because that consideration is related to the suspicion I have that higher skilled players are much less reliant on heals than lower skilled ones. You can't just gloss over that...

Your suspicion is not relevant here either. Nor is your conclusion that dodging will always be the most optimal mechanic for all situations because it's not true...

About measurement, you need to understand something very basic here which is common scientific knowledge. NOTHING not even in physics can ever be accurately measured courtesy of quantum mechanics (not even just QM, its a mathematical Axiom). You will never have exact values in the real world, nor would you have exact values in the game...because the game has by virtue of it's design has variables built into it's very fabric that you simply can not get around. This is another thing Nemesis points out btw...Ever notice the Damage range on a weapon being 1099-1199? That is CEMENTED as a range for all DPS calculations and you can NEVER get an exact DPS value for every encounter, even if all conditions are ideally met and all things are in a perfectly controlled environment. The game will ALWAYS give you a RANGE at which your DPS will fluctuate by virtue of the above, and therefor all DPS calculations are just AVERAGES between RANGES.

The range for evaluating damage mitigation is no different than the range that a DPS weapon can give you...It's just that Damage is shown to you in a combat log where as mitigation is not...therefor you can not give yourself anything more than an educated guess about how much it is mitigating.

Ill say it like this... a non educated guess would be assuming, that protection gives you a near infinite amount of damage reduction because in theory if you took for example, 33 billion damage in one second, protection would mitigate 10 billion damage. This statement is TRUE...but it is NOT PRACTICAL because you would have died 22.99998 billion damage ago. It would be ridiculous to assume that protection or any other damage mitigation for that matter, is the best thing in the game due to having theoretically no upper limit on its mitigation in theory and, that saying otherwise is tantamount to denial of any educated guess on how much it could be ACTUALLY mitigating. Sound familiar...It's Nemesis signature slogan "ACTUAL DPS VALUES."

The purpose of the average's is to give you a more practical value in the form of an average (derived from a range) that helps you access a MORE ACCURATE value in practice.

If you asked me you should go back and watch Nemesis's video's causeA ) you either haven't or...B ) You don't understand what he really did or how important it was.

[Obtena.7952]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Obtena.7952" said:Again ... 'giving' something a value isn't NOT a measurement, so no matter how you justify it, no calculation is going to account for the damage mitigation differences account from player behaviour. That's important because that consideration is related to the suspicion I have that higher skilled players are much less reliant on heals than lower skilled ones. You can't just gloss over that...

Your suspicion is not relevant here either. Nor is your conclusion that dodging will always be the most optimal mechanic for all situations because it's not true...

About measurement, you need to understand something very basic here which is common scientific knowledge. NOTHING not even in physics can ever be accurately measured courtesy of quantum mechanics (not even just QM, its a mathematical Axiom).

Except I'm not questioning the accuracy of a measurement here ... we are talking about a calculation and the question at hand is how accurate that calculation is based on the collective experience and history of the game. I'm proposing it can't be accurate be because of numerous factors, one of them being the variable nature of the non-measurable damage mitigations that you have simply assigned some value to. As for quantum limitations on measurement accuracy ... the changes in times and energies involved with the measurement of DPS videos and Golem Kills will result in NOTHING near that limit ... so you can file that in the "I read something on Google about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle one time" bin.

The people calculating DPS to push meta were wrong 8 years ago. That was a result of TOO many unconsidered factors that had a significant impact on the practical DPS values from real ingame play vs. the theoretical ones they calculated. Why do you think this calculation for healing potential is any different? My suspicion relating non-measurable mitigation values to player skill is just ONE of those factors. The additional factors are the same ones that made the DPS calculations not just inaccurate ... but plain wrong.

I mean, even if you want to assign a value to increase your accuracy, what scenario have you LIMITED your calculation to for that value to be at all relevant? What is the RESULTING accuracy of your calculation after you made those assignments? There simply isn't a general calculation you can make to determine the 'value' of healing or it's potential to players; it's not only highly dependent on the players skill, it's also dependent on the scenario in question where this healing is being applied.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Obtena.7952" said:As for quantum limitations on measurement accuracy ... the changes in times and energies involved with the measurement of DPS videos and Golem Kills will result in NOTHING near that limit ... so you can file that in the "I read something on Google about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle one time" bin.

lol. oh of course you would say something like that. GUESS i have to explain this one too since you clearly don't understand why measurement is always described as an average within a range.

It's an axiom in mathematics about measurement called "The measurement problem," and it has 3 axioms, only 1 of which are relevant to non-physics

1) In order to measure anything to 100% precision, the experiment must be done an infinite number of times, infinitely often.

This rule here isn't a physics thing...this is an axiom in statistics about experiment and receiving results from doing a measurement. Not something you can just "google and throw in the trash bin." This is extremely important when talking about making ANY measurement of any kind.

When we talk about DPS video's and Golem kills, no matter how insignificant the margin of error, there will always be a margin of error. Nemesis clearly talks about this in a video which you clearly did not watch and if you actually knew what he was really about, you wouldn't be discounting what he said because what he said applies to more than just weapon damage ranges...It's boss armor, it's boss mechanics, its player behaviour...those things are not insignificant at all...and frankly neither is the range in DPS weapons...the entire point is that no matter what you do in any and all measurement, the value you get will ALWAYS be some AVERAGE within an ACCEPTABLE Range...

Except I'm not questioning the accuracy of a measurement here ... we are talking about a calculation and the question at hand is how accurate that calculation is based on the collective experience and history of the game. I'm proposing it can't be accurate be because of numerous factors, one of them being the variable nature of the non-measurable damage mitigations that you have simply assigned some value to.I mean, even if you want to assign a value to increase your accuracy, what scenario have you LIMITED your calculation to for that value to be at all relevant?

Again you don't seem to understand what is being said cause i keep having to repeat it.

You want to know how accurate the calculation is...the accuracy is literally that range of 0 to 20,000. Hopefully you haven't forgotten why I'm saying 20,000? (Please don't make me repeat myself a hundred times.) 20,000 is just the typical health of the player, where any hit above 20,000 would have otherwise killed that player. the number you will mitigate an attack for will be between 0 and 20,000 because anything above 20,000 is the same as just being hit by something that does 20,000...because in both scenarios you would die. Therefor you NORMALIZE numbers above 20,000 to a range of 0 to 20,000. This is a very basic and essential mathematical exercise in order to remove infinities. Talk trash about google all you want, but you need to look this up if you don't understand how to do this.

Again...the amount of damage you will mitigate will fall as some number between 0 and 20,000. The average of that range is just the MEDIAN number. If you have a data set for measurement, you would use those numbers in the dataset and use the mean. All it tells you is ON AVERAGE how much you can EXPECT the maximum damage to be, when you mitigate an attack for...it doesn't say that dodge is "always worth 10k healing" it says it's worth some healing value between 0 - 20,000, and on average, that value is 10,000. You need to set your thinking cap forward and learn how to evaluate information so that you can ask better questions, cause now I'm just getting tired of repeating myself over and over the same things.

The people calculating DPS to push meta were wrong 8 years ago. That was a result of TOO many unconsidered factors that had a significant impact on the practical DPS values from real ingame play vs. the theoretical ones they calculated. Why do you think this calculation for healing potential is any different? My suspicion relating non-measurable mitigation values to player skill is just ONE of those factors. The additional factors are the same ones that made the DPS calculations not just inaccurate ... but plain wrong.

I'm not gonna talk bout this. Do you really think i'm some meta pusher when all i talk about on the forum is build diversity? Come on now...

[Obtena.7952]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Obtena.7952" said:As for quantum limitations on measurement accuracy ... the changes in times and energies involved with the measurement of DPS videos and Golem Kills will result in NOTHING near that limit ... so you can file that in the "

I read something on Google about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle one time

" bin.

lol. oh of course you would say something like that. GUESS i have to explain this one too since you clearly don't understand why measurement is always described as an average within a range.

It's an axiom in mathematics about measurement called "The measurement problem," and it has 3 axioms, only 1 of which are relevant to non-physics

1) In order to measure anything to 100% precision, the experiment must be done an infinite number of times, infinitely often.

This rule here isn't a physics thing...this is an axiom in statistics about experiment and receiving results from doing a measurement. Not something you can just "google and throw in the trash bin." This is extremely important when talking about making ANY measurement of any kind.'

Again, if you were MAKING a measurement here, all this would be relevant ... but you aren't. You are making a calculation.

You want to know how accurate the calculation is...the accuracy is literally that range of 0 to 20,000.

No I understand you are making simplifying your calculation with this assignment; I think there is a problem with that, but I've moved on from that unresolved issue. I'm asking you now for something far more relevant to the thread.

The accuracy of your calculation is the amount your calculated values relates to the actual values. So you did the calculation for healing potential ... how does it relate to the ACTUAL healing potential in the game? You're whole claim is you debunked the myth you can calculate healing potential ... is one of how accurately your calculation matches ingame reality.

I'm not gonna talk bout this.

I didn't expect you would ... even though the same factors plague your calculations as badly as they did the people that used DPS calculations to push a false meta.

You can't calculate your effectiveness as a healer ... but it's not because of a lack of a meter ... it's because the calculations can't consider all the factors that would tell how effective a healer someone can be ... just like the DPS calculations couldn't calculate people's effectiveness as DPS dealers either.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Obtena.7952" said:The accuracy of your calculation is the amount your calculated values relates to the actual values.

Yes. Because all hits that occur only MATTER when they do damage within the range of your health how much more accurate can you get really?

Fact, when you are hit for more then the health of your HP, you will go to downstate because you become invulnerable upon death, thus blocking all additional damage that comes to values above your HP. In the combat log, if you took a million damage in a single hit, it registers in the combat log as taking 1,000,000 damage but you only take the amount of damage equal to your health anyway. So the calculated MAXIMUM potential value is going to range between 0 and the typical player health.

The combat log is going to show you exactly what happened to you...but it doesn't ACTUALLY matter that you took a million or only took 20,000. This is why you normalize.

And also, you can measure damage mitigation because the combat log does give you enough information to tell you what you mitigated. You literately can backtrack everything you blocked, evaded or mitigated. So long as the mechanic has a name, you can find it, evaluate how much damage it does or can do and then add that up using Nemesis's method. Your literally being irrational to think you can't backtrack to find realistic in field values for mitigation. But if you want to continue thinking dodges have infinite value go head...i won't stop you.

Example:

Guardian's Wrath hits me 9 times. i evaded the attack once ,blocked it 3 times, and was hit by it 5 times.

In total, Wrath hits me for 4,169. (1153+772+748+748+748 = 4169)

The average damage that my block and evade has in value is this number divided by 5. which means the healing value of my block and evade in this encounter is on average 833.8 healing.

You understand?

Throw in an attack that hits me for 150,000 damage that I also happen to block. the average unnormalized damage that i took would be 1153+772+748+748+748+150,000 = 154,169 and divide by 6 attacks to get an average. Therefore according to YOU, on average I mitigated/healed 25,694 , even though my health is only 11,645.so what happens to the remaining 14 thousand damage per attack? Does it just go POOF and fly away into my inflated value for the damage I just mitigated? Or do we actually evaluate it where it matters, which is at the boundary of player health? who cares if i blocked an attack for one billion damage or 12,000 damage...it literally does not matter how much i took if everything after 11,645 puts me into downstate.

Notice below after attacking a legendary defender. I'm hit for over 120,000ish damage even though i only have 19,000 health (and 3x downstate health for total of 72,000 Health)So tell me... i took 120,000ish damage when I only had 72,000 Health (which includes downstate health). Do you really think I should include an extra 50,000 damage that literally does not matter and exists only to inflate the numbers beyond any meaningfully accurate measurement.

Again you are being irrational if you don't think you can measure mitigation in a meaningful way, and believe that the value of blocks and dodges should be evaluated at infinity rather than being normalized, which any mathematician will tell you is how you would evaluate this kind of data. The above point i'm trying to make here also supports how using inflated numbers can give you values that are actually UNREALISTIC through measurement of something by biasing the measurement. That is again the whole point of what Nemesis set out to disprove.

Edit: made a small mistake just fixed.

[Obtena.7952]

OK ... but none of that addresses my question to you. If you can't show your calculation is accurate based on what's really happening in the game ... you haven't actually shown the thing you claim. I mean, you're showing me things I know; I'm not into being patronized with anecdotes about measurement theory and videos I've seen ... these aren't answering the questions I'm asking you. You're claiming you calculated healing potential to debunk a myth you can't calculate it ... but to debunk that myth, you have show that calculation has SOME level of accuracy ... seems to me the reasonable thing to do here is to actually MEASURE the healing potential of whatever scenario you chose to make your assignments to non-measurable mitigation effects. So specifically ... you have a calculated healing potential in HP over time ... so the expectation is you do what the DPS guys do ... go heal something over time and compare that to your calculation.

I'm not debating why you normalize something or not; I don't care ... I'm asking you to show the thing you claim you have debunked ... that you can calculate healing potential. That's a pretty tall order to me, considering the DPS guys failed miserably trying the same thing and you are faced with the same mechanics that messed up their calculations.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Obtena.7952" said:OK ... but none of that addresses my question to you. If you can't show your calculation is accurate based on what's really happening in the game ... you haven't actually shown the thing you claim.

I must be failing to understand your question at all. I keep repeating the accuracy of everything.

look let's go back to the above example for Wrath.

Wrath hits me for 1153, 772, 748, 748 and 748 damage in the above example.

In theory, the next hit from wrath (or any skill for that matter) can range from 0 to infinity. Course, why should you believe that the next wrath hit should hit you for infinity rather than some value that actually occurs...in order to understand why you are less likely to be hit with a wrath that crits your for infinity damage, you need to do a little math, which I've already explained a hundred times now.

So what you do is you normalize to firstly get rid of infinity since it's invalidated anyway by player health-

So now in theory the next hit from wrath can range from 0 to (YourTypicalHealth) which we will say is 11645.

That above is the range for the damage that wrath could ever possibly do to me. I can assume that whatever damage I mitigate from this skill could in theory fall between this number and that's where the accuracy stops for the calculation...BUT we can go further.

You can determine a tighter accuracy by looking at what the enemy can do. If you do the math and find out how much damage Wrath can do on the enemies build, then you can further squash that range between the range of that number. Let's just say for now that Wrath can do some number between 200 and 1500 damage...don't ask me to go look that up because I don't have the time right now...but the point is that you can go and LOOK and do the math to determine the amount of damage that Wrath could ever possibly do and use that range to further compress the accuracy. So now when you block an attack, if that attack is Wrath, then you can identify that it will block some number between 200 and 1500 (or whatever it is)

The method I use mostly here just abridges the above step, where instead of narrowing down enemy skills to components (which you can in fact do), it just takes the damage you could take from any hit from the encounter as an average of all hits that you took.

So if I'm hit for X Y and Z from the fight, and i block A B and C, then you just take the damage that you took from all sources, normalize any hits that are above your level of health, and divide by the number of times you were hit. You already know that number will fall between some number that ranges between zero and your health because of normalization, so the number will always give you back some value between that range. The average of that number is what you can expect a block or dodge to mitigate on average based on the encounter.

You're claiming you calculated healing potential to debunk a myth you can't calculate it ... but to debunk that myth, you have show that calculation has SOME level of accuracy ... seems to me the reasonable thing to do here is to actually MEASURE the healing potential of whatever scenario you chose to make your assignments to non-measurable mitigation effects.

Okay instead of asking me this question that i keep answering over and over again, let me ask YOU a question, then i can at least correct your responses.

Look at this picture

You are hit 6 times in this picture by a legendary Defender. 4 of the hits are absorbed and 2 of the 6 hits so far has done 63,752 damage. What do you think, using the magical powers of deduction do you believe is going to be the damage that you absorbed is?

[Obtena.7952]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Obtena.7952" said:OK ... but none of that addresses my question to you. If you can't show your calculation is accurate based on what's really happening in the game ... you haven't actually shown the thing you claim.

I must be failing to understand your question at all. I keep repeating the accuracy of everything.

I'm not asking you the accuracy of the individual bits of healing you are doing. I'm asking you the accuracy of the total healing potential ... those things you presented in the posts earlier on. For instance you have a post showing a calculated total healing potential for Druid ... 12,148,097 - 13,948,097. What's the actual ingame result with that build? Maybe your intent had nothing to do with showing heals over time for a specific build and just individual skills?

I mean, the compliment here is DPS ... and it's not really interesting to calculate the individual DPS of a single skill or a build because attempts to do so have bad results ... so we just measure it in game. I would think the same for heals. You got a log, it tracks the heals you get in a specific build, if you WANT to convince yourself a dodge/block has a certain value based on the encounter ... you can do that too.

The relevant question for any calculation is how accurate it is to the ACTUAL value. If it's not close, it has no predictive value. So ... if you calculate heal "x" is 1500 HPS ... and in game it's ... not ... then the question is how close is it. I'm just looking for the value being presented in the thread because I do refer people to info threads and bookmark them. Calculations are great if they are accurate ... because then you don't NEED to make the build and see what the heals are yourself. You can calculate and have confidence you know what will happen.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Obtena.7952" said:I'm not asking you the accuracy of the individual bits of healing you are doing. I'm asking you the accuracy of the total healing potential ... those things you presented in the posts earlier on. For instance you have a post showing a calculated total healing potential for Druid ... 12,148,097 - 13,948,097. What's the actual ingame result with that build? Maybe your intent had nothing to do with showing heals over time for a specific build and just individual skills?

The in game result is called the efficacy. The efficacy is a percentage to which you are utilizing the builds potential. This is outlined in the original post as to why it exists, and why its essential to use because otherwise you are just playing with numbers in a void.

If the druid build has a potential to heal for 12 million to 13 million, (4 million of which comes from actual healing with green numbers, while the remaining 8 million comes from upkeeping protection permanently) Then after an encounter you count up all the healing you did using the information that you have available to you and you see what percentage of that healing you did in the fight.

There are a number of ways to assess finding out protections mitigation potential, but the most accurate way, is to count up all the applications of the boon by using the duration. If the duration of the fight was 3 minutes, that means if it was perma'd180 seconds of the boon was applied to each player, For 10 characters that's 1800 concurrent seconds of protection. So the number in ARCDPS will show some number from 0 seconds to 1800 seconds of protection (per player it would be some number between 0s - 180s,) and if protections value is evaluated at mitigating 5000 (where if the typical health is 15,000, then an attack that strikes you at or above 15,000 would have killed you, thus making the range of damage range from 0 - 15,000. we take 33% of that maximum to get 5000), then that is 9 million maximum healing in the form of mitigation.

The above potential means that in order to get close to this number the player needs toA ) Mitigate attacks of 15,000 per second damage always with protection.B ) Maintain Protection at all times.

So the efficacy for protection in this build here, is the ability to meet the above 2 conditions, which in practice is impossible to do. You can get close...but you can never get 100% efficacy, because you will never always mitigate 15,000 damage per second (It will always range from 0 to 15,000 meaning that on average, it will be some value sitting around 7500, and lower and higher depending on the fight). An argument here could be that the mitigation should be taken AFTER the attack rather than before, which pushes the potential higher ( again if evaluating, player health at 15,000, 21,000 damage would be the highest attack you could take before protection comes in to reduce that damage down to 15,000 which is a number between the range of 0 and typical player health.) That's up for debate, but it only means that the potential for protection would be even higher then the number I had originally given it. We could debate this that's no issue and really would be a more interesting question to discuss rather than me explaining how to do the method 100 times.

Now back to the concept, In most cases, the efficacy is always going to be a significant fraction less then the potential. The purpose of the calculation is to try and better meet the above conditions by pushing your efficacy up...and that can be done in a variety of ways based on the information you gleam from the calculation. That's all it's meant to do...give you a value to compare your performance to so you can make better and better decisions about things. Rather then the typical way players compare values (which is comparing HPS numbers to other players using different builds) you are just comparing your build to the same build used at 100% efficacy.

The relevant question for any calculation is how accurate it is to the ACTUAL value. If it's not close, it has no predictive value. So ... if you calculate heal "x" is 1500 HPS ... and in game it's ... not ... then the question is how close is it. I'm just looking for the value being presented in the thread because I do refer people to info threads and bookmark them. Calculations are great if they are accurate ... because then you don't NEED to make the build and see what the heals are yourself. You can calculate and have confidence you know what will happen.

So your asking essentially how accurate did I research to find out the numbers... well that's what independent confirmation is for. If for example I'm wrong about Druid's protections theoretical maximum value, someone may come along, show the value of protection is some other number, and then we either agree or disagree, usually the outcome is a better method to determine that value.

Now I go and I show the math in the spoiler tags, usually along with cliff notes to describe how the calculation was made, so that one can independently verify that number by going in and doing the calculation themselves to confirm that number is an accurate number.

Aside from that, the method is designed to never be able to reach the theoretical maximum anyway. If you can reach and go above the maximum (100% efficacy) it means the math is wrong. So if you can heal in practice for 14 million healing on druid using that meta build, when the theoretical limit is 13.9 million, then either the claim is wrong or the calculation is wrong. That's really the entire point of having a theoretical limit and comparing it to the efficacy to which one reaches that limit.

Lastly, i never came here to actually do the calculations myself. I just wanted to provide others with THE METHOD to do the calculation, so that THEY can do the calculation themselves. I was basically just forced to do the calculation because others here demanded I do so...which I'm fine with doing, but that's not why I'm here in the first place. I'm also not infallible, I make mistakes on calculations and I correct those mistakes if I find them.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Obtena.7952"

Here let me explain the calculation like this.

There are two versions of Obtena. There is You, the "real Obtena", and then there is the 100% efficacy version of you, "the Perfect Obtena". Both Obtena's play the same build, but the perfect Obtena version of you plays the build absolutely perfectly in the most ideal conditions imaginable. The real Obtena plays the build at some fraction of Perfect Obtena's performance. This fraction is expressed as a percentage, and is called The Efficacy to which you are playing the build in comparison to Perfect Obtena.

The point in the exercise is to understand how to play as well as the perfect version of you. If perfect version of you can do X Y Z you want to try to figure out how to better and better meet those conditions of X Y and Z.

The caveat is that you will NEVER play as perfect as perfect Obtena. It's is impossible to do because Perfect Obtena is perfect in every way imaginable.

The understanding here, is that we can calculate and figure out how to play like perfect Obtena by adding up values that are the absolute limits of abilities on her build, and we try to evaluate those values by assuming they are used perfectly...which means used on cooldown, and are never under-utilized etc.

When we go into the field, we evaluate our efficacy (as best as we can), and try to get closer and closer to 100%, even though we can't actually reach 100%.

[Muscae Volitantes.6523]

A little late to the discussion but the reason I think people are reacting the way they are to your theory is that you're presenting it with a build that's fully spec'd and is expected to focus on healing when it's been proven in practice that boon application and utilities are actually the main purpose of a support class.

I'm still unsure if I actually understand what you are trying to get across but the way I take it is so that people can measure how they perform as a healer and use the information to get better(raise their healing efficacy). But I think you're going about it the wrong way by using a build's healing potential as the ceiling. In order to efficiently heal, you'd want to overheal as less as possible. Overheal is an action wasted that could have been used to (in order of priority) generate boon, use utility, res or attack. Comparing HPS to healing potential would then be an exercise in futility. It doesn't serve the purpose of evaluating one's performance, it's also a trap to overheal as you try to push for higher efficacy.

Healing Efficacy is relative based on a number of things. The main information to take away from efficacy, is to determine how to get higher and higher percentages. There are a number of ways to do this, but to list them off...

1) Having a higher healing potential.2) Healing a group solo3) Fighting more healing intensive bosses4) Improving your rotation or instating a Priority RotationOnly #4 actually makes sense in terms of improving. #1 is a trap, getting higher healing potential also means raising the bars you're trying to reach in the first place hence also raising your chances to overheal. #2 while it actually makes sense in some encounters, it's not practical to solo heal since most heals only have 5 targets. #3 is unrealistic, people will be fighting different bosses.Like many have already said before, healing in Guild Wars 2 is reactionary and as counter-intuitive as it maybe as a healer, healing less to dedicate casting times for boon generation and utilities will make one a better support player.

As to how to measure performance and analyze when to dial down on healing, a better metric would be to compare HPS to the healing skills/traits actually used in the fight and they're healing potential, not the build's healing potential. This actually promotes better behavior as one strives to push their % up because the higher the % means less overheal. Which means they're actually being useful as a healer and can get back to generating boons and using utilities, even attacking. This information can also be used to evaluate whether to drop some healing gear in favor of dps.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Muscae Volitantes.6523" said:I'm still unsure if I actually understand what you are trying to get across but the way I take it is so that people can measure how they perform as a healer and use the information to get better(raise their healing efficacy). But I think you're going about it the wrong way by using a build's healing potential as the ceiling. In order to efficiently heal, you'd want to overheal as less as possible. Overheal is an action wasted that could have been used to (in order of priority) generate boon, use utility, res or attack. Comparing HPS to healing potential would then be an exercise in futility. It doesn't serve the purpose of evaluating one's performance, it's also a trap to overheal as you try to push for higher efficacy.

Thanks for commenting and asking good questions about the post.

The calculation is full proofed against over-healing because the calculation is based only on what you actually heal. Basically, what you said " In order to efficiently heal, you'd want to overheal as less as possible. " Is reflected in the calculation because of how it's setup.

Best way to think about this is the following example.

A boss deals 2 million damage to you and your team at the end of a 3 minute fight. Your (ARCDPS) combat log shows that you healed your teammates for 2 million. If your healing potential is 10 million, then your efficacy calculation will show up as 20%. When evaluating the 4 reasons in the OP, one of those reasons could be that you over-healed by 8 million health.

If you had a boss that does 2 million damage at the end of a 3 minute fight, and your combat log shows that you healed 2 million and you have a healing potential of 2 million, then your healing efficacy is 100%. This means that you played the build as maximally efficient as humanly possible. So again if you have a build where it has a maximum ceiling of 2 million healing over a 3 minute fight, and you healed for 2 million in a 3 minute fight, you did 0 overhealing, and the efficacy calculation reflects this information (by telling you, that you are playing the build with 100% efficacy)

This is why the calculation works not just with pure healing builds, but with all builds, hybrid, healer, even DPS builds that you want to create heal calculations for in trying to make hybrid comps. This is what most people in the thread misunderstand...that it's not about any other element of builds, it speaks only about healing, and how efficiently it is being done in a setting.

As to how to measure performance and analyze when to dial down on healing, a better metric would be to compare HPS to the healing skills/traits actually used in the fight and they're healing potential, not the build's healing potential.

This is unfortunately not true. It sounds like this makes sense, but the issue with thinking about it this way, is that you don't know if you are actually using your abilities to their maximum efficiency. Just because you use Overload Water 7 times in a 3 minute fight, doesn't tell you enough information about whether you are using it as efficiently as possible. The only way to know, is by taking the theoretical maximum number of times you can use it in a 3 minute fight...which in the case of Overload Water, is 8 times.

You can compare your performance, to other instances of your performance, to see if you are Improving, but this would be a relative calculation, and is really just a more watered down version of the original concept, and this relativity between using instances of your own fights as valid comparisons for improvement can sometimes give you false results. For example, if you believe that the most OW water could be used in a fight was 7 times, because you repeatedly get 6-7 times in your playthroughs, then you will think this is the ceiling, when this in fact might not be true, and it isn't. This line of thinking caries over into not just analyzing cooldowns, but with actual green healing numbers.

If you play against a boss that does 6 million damage, and each new instance you reach 4 million, then 5 million...then 6 million...then you are going to believe that once you hit 6 million, that the whatever rotation you procured for this fight, is your most optimal rotation and that you aren't over-healing, But because you don't know the upper limits of your build, you could actually be over-healing 7 million in the next fight... 8 million, 9 million. The ARCDPS number will show you that you healed only 6 million if the boss only did 6 million damage, and you healed 6 million of that damage. In other words, without calculating an efficacy, you wont know whether you could actually be improving or not (where that 3 million extra healing could have been DPS or boons or whatever) and this relativeness carries over and messes up your idea of what's efficient when fighting different bosses, that do different amounts of damage.

Thanks again for your comment, you presented some good questions and I hope i answered them

[TheDeafGuy.4519]

I do like your formula for calculating the potential of a heal build. My only issue is some of the certain abilities used. Overload water will basically top off you whole raid group but it's a channel that pulses before you get the big burst of heal at the end. But with all the healing effectiveness and stat, your pulses theoretically top off your raid before the burst even hits, unless the encounter is still doing massive damage to your raid group.

With a full heal build, it seems like any heal ability you use will top off your raid group then overheal just about. So it kind of contradicts itself for some classes. Take druid for example. I'm not a big fan of druid, but they have primarily burst heals through water spirit, staff 5 and 3, and then CA, the only other consistent mild healing they have is regen, staff 1, and staff 2.

So I will go ahead and beat the dead horse and say that the calculation can be used by some people, but won't be applied realistically in a useful way.

My two cents are the best healers are random consistent heal ticks that will be constantly topping off your allies without being wasted through massive overheal bursts. Some examples would be

firebrand: symbols (with trait), healbow, passive virtue share (trait), elite signet (if needed), regen, tome 2 #4,

Ele: soothing mist, regen,

Now having constant healing ticks with combination of burst heals will make the best healers in my opinion since you can manipulate both forms of healing when needed.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@TheDeafGuy.4519 said:I do like your formula for calculating the potential of a heal build. My only issue is some of the certain abilities used. Overload water will basically top off you whole raid group but it's a channel that pulses before you get the big burst of heal at the end. But with all the healing effectiveness and stat, your pulses theoretically top off your raid before the burst even hits, unless the encounter is still doing massive damage to your raid group.

With a full heal build, it seems like any heal ability you use will top off your raid group then overheal just about. So it kind of contradicts itself for some classes. Take druid for example. I'm not a big fan of druid, but they have primarily burst heals through water spirit, staff 5 and 3, and then CA, the only other consistent mild healing they have is regen, staff 1, and staff 2.

So I will go ahead and beat the dead horse and say that the calculation can be used by some people, but won't be applied realistically in a useful way.

My two cents are the best healers are random consistent heal ticks that will be constantly topping off your allies without being wasted through massive overheal bursts. Some examples would be

firebrand: symbols (with trait), healbow, passive virtue share (trait), elite signet (if needed), regen, tome 2 #4,

Ele: soothing mist, regen,

Now having constant healing ticks with combination of burst heals will make the best healers in my opinion since you can manipulate both forms of healing when needed.

I'll just say this right. That the calculation is based on total healing that's produced at the end of a fight. So it really doesn't say anything about how the ends are justified, it just tells you what you did in the end, and it's up to you to find out how to further and further justify that end. If you healed 5 million Health at the end of a 3 minute fight and it shows you had an efficacy of 50%...you could have done A -> B - > C to get that number...or you could have done B -> D -> A to get that number. It really is just that, a number and nothing more. It's how you analyze the information that the number is providing you that will tell you how to inform your healing, and that ultimately is decided by what you actually want to accomplish really.

In reality, you will always be in situations where you are either over-healing, or not healing enough. The calculation is meant to just show you by a numerical figure, the amount you either over-healed, or didn't heal in the form of a percentage, and it doesn't tell you which one you did or didn't do. It's up to you to further curb elements of your build, or playstyle to just increase the number.

The 4 reasons laid out in the original post, are the pieces information you can gleam if you want to increase the number., and there are a slew of reasons why the number can be low, or the number can be high, but in general, if there was a set of axioms you wanted to follow for a general rule set on how to reach 100% efficacy, the calculation shows you the following in the form of axioms....

A ) You want to never over-heal,B ) You want to never under-heal (Always heal enough where each skill is fully utilized)C ) To be in a fight where your abilities can be used on cooldown and still meet the first two requirements.

Otherwise your efficacy will always show to be below 100%. Such a task is simply impossible to truly accomplish so it's not a bad thing to have an efficacy be a low number or anything. You just always want to strive to increase that number, and in this way I think the calculation is useful.