When Brann is in DPS mode, as opposed to healer, he is far less effective and impactful on the gameplay than when he’s in Healer mode. Much of this is simply due to the nature of healing vs. damage, but some of it is the result of design choices for Delves specifically. (keep in mind I’m discussing this when your gear and delve tier make the content still a challenge… if you’re farming T8’s for the Vault, none of this matters)
Starting with the things that are sort of natural, that may be difficult to design around…
- It’s really easy for “the computer” to know when you need a heal. If you’re at 100% hp, you probably don’t need a heal. If you’re at 10%, you probably do. But when is burst damage needed? And on what target? What about AoE? This a lot harder to program, but unfortunately the net result is that Healer Brann routinely provides clutch services, whereas DPS Brann is more like a convenience.
- Utility like interrupts and stuns are available in both Brann modes, but if you’re playing a DPS or Tank with Healer Brann, his use of these abilities is not crucial. They’re the cherry on top. When you’re a healer, you generally have less utility (especially interrupts), and are more reliant on him. Similarly to #1, it’s gotta be pretty hard to program Brann to know when to do these things, and on what target, unless you just have him interrupt/stun the really dangerous stuff, which risks trivializing encounters.
- Healing (by a player) generates threat on all mobs in combat, whereas DPS only generates threat on the target. Perversely, this means that Healer Brann is better at off-tanking than DPS Brann is, even though DPS Brann is much more likely to have a Healer player which likely really needs the offtanking more than a DPS/Tank player would.
Why does Healer Brann even do damage anyway? DPS Brann doesn’t heal at all (not that it would be useful, but maybe he could tank a bit instead!)
But there are some design decisions that make the situation much worse.
- Traps vs. Pots. Healer Brann throws healing potions on the ground on a cooldown. DPS Brann throws traps. The problem is that it’s MUCH easier to step on a pot than it is to maneuver a mob onto a trap. Mobs (especially bosses) have sequences they perform that may prevent them from even moving, and Brann randomly (well it’s not exactly random, but you don’t have much control over it) stuns things, preventing them from moving. Nevermind the fact that you can have multiple mobs, and trying to get the RIGHT mob into the trap is crazy levels of micro. I know that Healer Brann sometimes throws Pots into the swirlies and such… that’s annoying. But that also happens with Traps, and there are additional ways that Traps can be useless that don’t apply to Pots. For example, if he throws a pot on the edge of a cliff. You can get yourself there, but good luck getting a mob there without falling off. In any case, the difficulty of utilizing his traps effectively is almost constant… and it’s like his main feature.
- Along the same lines, traps do very little damage, whereas healing pots do a TON of healing. My Brann is 57 now, and 1 pot will heal like 55% of my HP bar on a DPS class. His traps are paltry damage. They’re really barely worth considering unless you can get them to stack up (the trap stacks don’t appear to be limited like the healing pots are), but the difficulty of reliably getting the right mob into a trap at the right time to keep the stacks going…? That’s orders of magnitude more difficult than stepping on a pot when you need a heal. Don’t get me wrong, if you look at meters after a full delve run, the traps do some meaningful damage. But similar to Brann’s utility, this isn’t making or breaking a run. It’s just a convenience. Basically what I’m saying is that DPS Brann should be able to do Big Boy damage at a reasonable player skill level. Right now, it’s absurdly hard.
- Kill Shot is also just a convenience. I find it more annoying than useful. I can count on 1 hand how many times it’s saved me from dying (and I’ve done a lot of delves). This seems like one of his most important DPS abilities, but it’s just not really accomplishing much. It just saves some time.
In case these points aren’t persuasive, just think about how hard it would be, as a healer player, to do Delves without Brann’s Traps or Kill Shot. It would take longer, and probably be a little annoying. But it would be fine. Now imagine being a DPS doing delves without Brann’s healing pots. It completely breaks the concept. DPS Brann’s DPS should be that valuable.
- I haven’t fully figured this out, but I swear there is something wrong with threat on DPS Brann. He has a really hard time pulling aggro on anything. Healer Brann, by contrast, can offtank like a champ. I mentioned this in #3 in the previous section, but I think there are design decisions at play here. Is it possible that DPS Brann has a threat reduction modifier? In one instance when I was testing, I casted a single moonfire on a mob and then just stood there until I died without casting anything else. I did like 400k damage, and Brann did like 3mil, and never pulled aggro. This does not seem right. Similarly I’ve had a situation on my frost mage where I’ll pull with wand, and Brann (spec’d for Healing) starts doing damage, and pulls agro real fast. Then I’ll unload millions of damage into that mob, while Brann does very little, but I’ll never pull aggro. Now this doesn’t happen all the time, but in some delves, this consistently happens, and others it does not happen at all. Something is messed up.
- The Curios are pretty useless for a healer player playing with DPS Brann. I just use the same curios as my DPS/Tank classes. There are three that seemed promising for Healers playing with DPS Brann, but they really don’t work. 1 is the Rage Filled Idol. It would seem to make sense that a Healer player could just heal Brann through this. But remember I’m the one tanking, I don’t have many globals to heal him. Especially on bosses, I use probably 90% of my GCDs making sure I don’t die. Forget Brann. 2 is the Unbreakable Iron Idol. This seems like it would be good for saving my healer butt from dicey situations. Of course, 40% is a pretty high watermark, and as a squishy, my HP spikes below that all the time. It also has a range (not sure what it is) but if the mobs aren’t all right on top of each other, it’s not going to taunt all of them. This is kinda useless in a dicey situation when it just ignores the guy 10 yards away about to Web Bolt you to the face when you’re already at 40%. Anyway, 3 is the Relicblood of Zekvir. You might assume that since I’m doing most of the damage, the damage buff to myself would be useful, and that since I’m a healer, the missing max HP wouldn’t be an issue. Unfortunately, Max HP is probably my single most important stat since abilities hit so hard (in T11) and my HP spikes pretty regularly. It’s not an awful curio, but it’s clearly not worth the tradeoff, so it never gets any use.
I realize this can all be tough to design around. After all, I’m definitely NOT asking for a delve experience where I Just run around and heal Brann. But I think giving the player more control over what Brann does (maybe with specific cues) would be useful. I also think the Trap mechanic needs work. It’s just not nearly as impactful as the healing pots… not by a long shot. While I’m not suggesting that I just healbot Brann, I do think that Brann should be doing most of the damage - especially since I’m tanking.
But overall, if I ignore proposing solutions (and leaving that to the devs), I think the core issue here is that when you’re using Healer Brann, you can DEPEND on his heals to do what they need to do. When using DPS Brann, there’s really nothing meaningful that you can DEPEND on him for.