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The Art of Healing
Playing MMO after MMO one thing remains unchanged. My love and passion for the healing role. Doing damage or tanking doesn't interest me too much. I enjoy the feeling of keeping everyone alive to do their jobs. If anything healing is a unique role in an MMO game. As your contribution to the raid or group isn't hurting things or managing a string of combo's that needs to be timed perfectly. Instead, healing is all about predicting and reacting to the damage being inflicted upon the party. Lots of games handle healing differently. Slow and methodical, where you have to manage your mana. Every heal is vital and if you spam too much you go oom and your party dies. The quick and explosive, where damage is being hurled across your teammates at record speeds and your fingers dart across the keyboard to try and desperately keep them alive. In all honestly I've enjoyed both styles of gameplay, and it would be hard for me to completely choose between either.
The Art of Healing: The Way of the Heavenly Mind
How to heal is simple, watch someone take damage. Then cast a spell to make it all better. Mastering healing is a much more complex thing entirely. At the height of my days, I could predict a heavy blow from a boss by the milliseconds. Timing and planning my heal ahead of time so it would land the exact moment after the damage was taken. Making it almost feel like it never occurred at all. What healing is, is essentially battlefield awareness. Where is the damage going, who is going to be hit by it? Who the hell is standing in the fire again! The healer is constantly looking at what is happening to the group and managing the damage. But for most games what that amounts to is staring at 6-40 player health bar tabs clusterfucking up your screen. A lot of the time as a healer I'm only paying attention to my actual surrounding when it's required by a raid mechanic or I need to be in the range of an idiot halfway across the map.
Way of the Heavenly Mind, is simply a toggle ability that the healer would have. This could be unique to the Cleric or other future archetype healers could get a variant of it. But what it essentially does is turn the caster into siege mode. Your camera pulls back and up like you are playing an MOBA or RTS game. Your character is slowed and might get a boost to mana regeneration. In this mode, you are opening yourself up to the gods so that they may guide your hand. This way you are actually viewing the battlefield itself, watching everyone run around getting into danger. Rather than watching it happen via the health bar slowly declining. It would be a powerful way for the healer to gain insight on who needs healing and why. But also puts them at risk of danger because of the limited mobility. So the Clerics heal could have alternate effects when in the "siege" mode and out of it. What this does is also make the healer decide if casting the toggle is worth it or not. Is the fighting too fast paced and he needs to run around, like in pvp? Or is he safe from harm and out of range? I feel it would add a unique aspect to healing within an MMORPG.
Does this sound like a good idea? If not let me know what and why. Or if you like it but think it needs some changes feel free to tell me too.
The Art of Healing: The Way of the Heavenly Mind
How to heal is simple, watch someone take damage. Then cast a spell to make it all better. Mastering healing is a much more complex thing entirely. At the height of my days, I could predict a heavy blow from a boss by the milliseconds. Timing and planning my heal ahead of time so it would land the exact moment after the damage was taken. Making it almost feel like it never occurred at all. What healing is, is essentially battlefield awareness. Where is the damage going, who is going to be hit by it? Who the hell is standing in the fire again! The healer is constantly looking at what is happening to the group and managing the damage. But for most games what that amounts to is staring at 6-40 player health bar tabs clusterfucking up your screen. A lot of the time as a healer I'm only paying attention to my actual surrounding when it's required by a raid mechanic or I need to be in the range of an idiot halfway across the map.
Way of the Heavenly Mind, is simply a toggle ability that the healer would have. This could be unique to the Cleric or other future archetype healers could get a variant of it. But what it essentially does is turn the caster into siege mode. Your camera pulls back and up like you are playing an MOBA or RTS game. Your character is slowed and might get a boost to mana regeneration. In this mode, you are opening yourself up to the gods so that they may guide your hand. This way you are actually viewing the battlefield itself, watching everyone run around getting into danger. Rather than watching it happen via the health bar slowly declining. It would be a powerful way for the healer to gain insight on who needs healing and why. But also puts them at risk of danger because of the limited mobility. So the Clerics heal could have alternate effects when in the "siege" mode and out of it. What this does is also make the healer decide if casting the toggle is worth it or not. Is the fighting too fast paced and he needs to run around, like in pvp? Or is he safe from harm and out of range? I feel it would add a unique aspect to healing within an MMORPG.
Does this sound like a good idea? If not let me know what and why. Or if you like it but think it needs some changes feel free to tell me too.
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I'd add that obtaining that ability should be highly difficult; that there would be some kind of limit to the number of such abilities active at one time; and that it would be lost upon death, making you an extra tasty target for the enemy artillery!
Every raid PVE or even most planned PVP raids I've been in, each healer had assigned tasks or groups to heal. There's much more going on then just staring at health bars in a raid at least in every raid I've been in and if your assigned for just one role in that raid there's a dang good reason for it.
Trying to remember which raid I was last in where we used 2 tanks/2 tank healers and 2 OT and healers plus group healers running around all of us. lol Too tired to remember atm.
It's near impossible to be healer to all in a raid group.
Not being attuned to my actual surroundings and looking down at the raid party takes that away I think. Often it is a split second warning to have to move out of ground Aoe or other mechanics. As I think of the many times I've been in raids I can't think of a time this would have really helped. Too many variables I think and would add one more headache to healing. lol
I don't know. I would really have to think about this. Will sleep on it. lol
Bear with me here. I'm not trying to be negative. Just trying to see it from different angles Ok I just re-read your post above. I think you are blending both PvE and PvP healing. For example, you say,
" Is the fighting too fast paced and he needs to run around, like in pvp?"
No one can really compare the pace of one to the other. Raids in general are planned and the roles set. In open world PvP events, some may have set roles but unlike PvE raids you don't know how the human players are are going to respond compared to npc's. Stealth enemies can be anywhere causing havoc, even sneaking up on the healer, and you can't be everywhere or take the time. Again in PvP events or seiges often times healers have set assignments and can't be everywhere. A healer also can't "heal" across a battle field, there are and has to be distance limitations.
"But what it does give is an oversight of the whole raid. You can see your raids positioning, you can notice more easily who is screwing up and more importantly how."
This sounds no better then a mod or dps meter that tallies the DPS and tells the raid leader who to blame for things gone wrong and often times to embarrass them.
In good strategic planning a stealther or look out person should be watching from an advantage point to send info back to the raid leader for him to guide the troops where needed. The ability you propose sounds a little like having binoculars. Not our job.
If worked as you say, it also gives raid leaders/healers an insight to see all and that it would most certainly give the raiding group an unfair advantage in a siege or such. Even if it was a momentary thing on a timer it could make or break the raid. Also you would hear the losers crying how OP the healers are and demand they be nerfed.
AoE healing, curing disease and poison abilites help to cover a larger area also.
Healers then mages are the first to be targeted in any raid. We can't afford to be side tracked by trying to observe all while a rogue is sneaking up on us.
An ability to detect or sense stealthers near by sure would be nice.
Would like to hear more in your idea.
But it as far as the healing mechanics go, I hope that it is based upon resource management and have multiple options for support like direct healing, shielding, buffing, and negative effect removal. But that's just me!
The siege mode is an interesting idea. I don't think it would a necessary mechanic to implement, but if they do, it would be a skill I would probably get. There should be enough healers in any large group to oversee the raid. It's part of resource allocation when dealing with logistical problems. Simply, there's other ways to go about allocating healing resource other than making the healing resource cover a larger area.
As for the comparison to the dps meter... I suppose in a sense it will tell who's getting beat up, but any healer can tell just by looking at the HP bar (actually, anyone in the party can tell if they took the time to look at the HP bar). I don't think the siege mode will add any more evidence to bad play other than knowing exactly where they messed up. If someone is dying too much, who do you blame? The healer for not healing them or the player for taking too much damage or the tank not doing his job? In short, the siege mode isn't something toxic as a dps meter.
As for clutch heals/topping off HP pool, its always a great feeling when you can manage resources well. I think that's what I enjoy the most about healing, is being able to manage cooldown/resources(HP,MP) efficiently.
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As for my personal thoughts on QoL stuff for healers, seeing HP bars is very important. Having the option to toggle on/off party members HP bars over their head would be something I want the most.
As for resource management, it would be great if we can heal other resource too, like MP and stamina. That would make healing more challenging but more rewarding if done right.
I also would love to see some interesting support skills outside of the standard ones we often see (like standard buffs/boons and shields).
EDIT: I would also like to manage my own hot keys. If i can placed "party member target" on my f1-f8 bar, it would help my switch healing targets faster. Even moving the players in the party drop list to organize who takes priority would be fantastic as well.