self heal

What do you guys think about the self heal powers for blasters? Specifically i'm referring to the cold epic pool power "hoarfrost". Is it worth having when its only up every 4 minutes or so? I'm really only thinking that it is beneficial for the health set bonuses to maybe place in it.
Thanks

its nice to have, I dont notice the +hp that much since with afew bonuses and accolades you can hit HP cap. but it's nice to have, especially if you're soft capped to something.

Well consider the alternative, Aid Self from the Medicine Pool. Hoarfrost heals about 50% more and is guaranteed to work. Aid Self has a 20second recharge though. Also of course Aid Self requires you to take Aid Other or Stimulant.

In general Aid Self is a more consistent heal that can be used to reduce downtime between groups. However since it is interruptable it is unreliable in combat (although with sufficient defense it can work). Hoarfrost is on a long recharge so it won't be up every combat but it makes a much better panic button due to it's higher heal and shorter non-interruptable cast time. Enhanced it's slightly better than a Large green inspiration so you basically get an large green inspiration that you can use once every few minutes.

As a side note, the max HPs bonus from Hoarfrost isn't that great. Blasters have a relatively low HP cap (133%) and if you pick up the various accolades you're already most of the way there so Hoarfrost will only give you a portion of the extra HPs. Even if you don't have the accolades Hoarfrost takes you almost to the cap unslotted so the bonus HP it reports when slotted are not what you'll actually get (the heal works just fine though).

I would say that Hoarfrost is likely a waste of your time as a blaster, given the alternatives. The main two offences are that it has an even longer recharge than a typical Dull Pain clone (as might be expected by it being in an epic pool) and that blasters have a very low HP cap. That last bit is misleading though: Blasters have the same max HP as most squishy ATs, but long ago their base HP was increased above the other squishies. As a result, they are closer to the HP than most other ATs. A blaster with the +HP accolades and no set bonuses will only get +13% HP from Hoarfrost, and it's quite reasonable to reach the HP cap with sets (or come close enough to be irrelevant).

As a result of this, Hoarfrost for blasters is mostly reduced to a large heal on a gratuitously long recharge. If you are taking it for the heal, I would argue that either Aid Self (somewhat smaller heal value but about 30x faster to recharge) or packing a few extra green insps would suit your purposes as well or better. The //Cold epic has some nice stuff, like Frozen Armor and Hibernate, but Hoarfrost is almost as lackluster an addition to it as Melt Armor was to //Fire.

I found Aid Self to be brilliant on my Blasters when I started playing many years ago.

Patching myself up between groups meant that I could save my green inspirations for use in combat when I need ed them as panic buttons. This is even easier these days with inspiration combining.

Hoarfrost,in comparison, allows you to use it in mid-combat, but is up so infrequently that it wont substitute for green pills. So in that way, I'd say it sounds less effective than Aid Self.

Has anyone had success using the Healing Proc? I noticed the heal is both small and unlikely to happen but on some of the fast recharging attacks especially in say an AV battle it might have applications.

Don't forget that you can slot Aid Self for interrupt reduction. Five Doctored Wounds and an Interrupt IO give you a fairly powerful and fast recharging heal that can usually be used in combat (provided you don't have a DoT on you) and some nice set bonuses. Even without the interrupt IO I find I can get it off in combat fairly reliably if I time it right... the actual interruptable period is a only one second instead of the full 4+ second animation time.