bean_jean wrote:
Cranberry, could you do the same analysis for healers? Is there any hope for moderately priced healers to turn up?
Sure, I can, but I'm warning you, it's going to be long and it'll end with a rant.
The healer situation really makes me mad.
And first I should point out that my general rule of thumb is that a healer should heal at least 30% of your max HP (but preferably 50% or full). So if you have 90 HP (or even 100), something that heals 30 or 50 HP is fine. Something that heals 50 HP is useless for a 200 HP pet.
The healers:
Uber-expensive healer/weapons most Neopians will never even see, let alone own:
Illusens Staff and
Wand of the Dark Faerie. My dream weapons... sigh. Heal 20% of max HP every time you're in the red (plus attack and defend and reflect and all that good stuff).
Super-expensive full heal, non-species-specific healers: Jade Scorchstone and Leaded Elemental Vial. They sell for about 40 million each.
Stupid useless HT item that only heals to full 24% of the time and the rest of the time does nothing: Ice Scorchstone (3 mil). Only buy this if you don't mind wasting your time withdrawing from 1-player fights when it fails.
High(ish)-HP non-species-specific healers: Glittery Scorchstone (100 HP, very rare item, rarely for sale, and very expensive when it is), Rainbow Scorchstone (80 HP, several mil, I believe), Crisp Blue Tunic (drains 100 HP from opponent and gives it to you, so they must have at least 100 HP left for it to work. Also requires 750 intelligence)
Lower HP Healers: Greater Healing Scroll (cheap and supposedly fragile, but never seems to actually break even after literally hundreds of uses, 50 HP), Purple Scorchstone (50 HP), Green Scorchstone (40 HP), Blue Scorchstone (30 HP), Red Scorchstone (20 HP), Lesser Healing Scroll (25 HP, really is fragile) (Note: all the scorchstones are a waste of money unless
overhealing is very important to you, as they range from several hundred thousand NP to several mil, and the GHS is only 27k. Also, skip the lesser healing scroll and go right to greater.) Oh, and there's Velm's Healing Potion, which heals 10% of max HP -- fairly useless. There's also Everlasting Crystal Apple, which is an evil little item that heals 30 HP every time you use it -- and you can do so every turn of a battle, if you wish (most other healers break for the battle after one use).
The only decent non-40-mil healers for people with 200+ HP, which are unfortunately all species healers: Elephante Unguent (50% of max HP), Gelert Healing Remedy (50%), Kacheek Life Potion (33%), Blumaroo Health Potion (50%), Bag of Lenny Healing Seeds (50%), Healing Ankh of the Nimmo (50%), Squishy Shoyru Healing Stone (50%), Lucky Uni Charm (50%). The first three in this list range from downright cheap to relatively inexpensive, and the rest are either a couple mil or unfindable due to their rarity (99 on most).
One-use full healers: Lucky Robots Foot, Amulet of Life (around 8k each). Excellent for important battles, but not a long-term solution, obviously, because that's 8k wasted every single battle.
A bunch of useless crap (species or non-species) that heals about 15 HP (Bronze Scorchstone, Magical Healing Potion), 12 HP (Chia Healstone), 10 HP (Lenny Healing Stone), 5 HP (Moehog Healing Root, Minor Healing Scroll), etc. Stay away from this (often overpriced) junk. There are also a couple swords (Blade of Supernova, Blade of Ultranova) that have a chance of healing 47-103 HP or 78-201 HP, respectively, but the healing chance is very low and they only do 5 icons of damage, so they're also useless. Bracelet of Kings can heal 50 HP, but also rarely. There are a LOT of items that heal rarely or heal just a tiny bit of HP. You can do an
advanced search at IDB to see a bunch of them.
Faerie Abilities: Regeneration, Restore or Healing Vapour all heal 33% of lost HP.
As you can see, there are a lot of choices for players with only 25-50 hit points. There are an okay number of choices for people with 50-150 hit points. But when you start getting up to 200 or so, you have ONLY the species percentage healers, the two 40-mil+ full healers, a craptastic healer that fails on you almost 3/4 of the time, or a glittery scorchstone that came from a rare item code and is impossible to get. The healer situation in the battledome is DISMAL and this is what TNT should be working on right now instead of more 9 and 10-icon weapons.
As for whether the situation will improve... maybe. Recently I was complaining to snarkie that I wanted a 50% lupe healer, and she agreed to ask the BD people about it. A friend and I compiled a list of which species are lacking healers, and snarkie did indeed forward it to the BD people. Whether they actually do anything about it, who knows.