I'm worried about healing!

So I've heard that healing in the siege is basically shooting health at people. I'm really worried that my main method of healing is going to be pew pewing health back up in the MMO. I am all for skill shot heals as abilities though!
I don't want to see Ana from Overwatch be the main way all healers heal you know?

That being said I'm not against it if that's the way it's going to be. I just feel like it's going to be so much trouble! The dps walks in front of you, the tank goes behind a rock, ect. I guess I can see these as game mechanics if it's done correctly, but this is why I'm worried. Thoughts?

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Hartwell

Yeah, true action combat and supportive roles never really mix in a fast pace setting. I suppose how I'll feel about it will depend on the final result. How fast do characters move? How high can people jump? Can they spam jump? Will there be spammable dash moves?

There have been times in target-based MMOs where I gave up healing players that moved too quickly out of my range or line of sight to heal other players. If people were encouraged to wiggle constantly to avoid ranged attacks, I don't know how I would feel with healing that with a single direct healing projectile. I hope people aren't jiggling all around in a massively multiplayer setting, getting in the way of line of sight constantly.

Noaani

In theory, almost all aspects of combat in the MMO should have both tab target and action variants (I've heard CC may be the only exception to this, though I have my doubts that is how it will end out).

So, while pew pewing health at your friends may well be one way a healer class may be able to be built, it won't be the only way.

unknownsystemerror

The idea was to get away from the "Tanks in the front, healers in the back!" meta that plagues so many other games group content. The proposed idea two years back was to have heals be more of a in the thick of it instead of at the back of the raid with a healbot mod. Since we have seen almost nothing about actual mechanics about heals now that isn't under NDA (sieges people can chime in), it is just a wait and see like so many other things.

Wandering Mist

I see what the OP means. Having to manually target heals at your teammates means being able to predict what those teammates are going to do, which is a lot harder than trying to predict what the enemy will do. You often completely miss your heals purely because your teammate did something you didn't expect, like running towards the enemy on low health instead of away from them.

GW2 tackled this problem by having all healing abilities be big aoe spells that were very easy to aim. Unfortunately the result of this is that in raids the general strategy is to stack up as much as possible and only spread out for specific boss mechanics that require you to, which to me kinda defeats the point in having an action combat system.

@unknownsystemerror I'm curious, why do you think that having the tanks in the front and the healers in the back is a bad thing in group content?

Noaani

Wandering Mist wrote: »

I'm curious, why do you think that having the tanks in the front and the healers in the back is a bad thing in group content?

This is what I never understood about Intrepids position on this point as well (as it is their position afaik).

If I want to be in the thick of it, I'll be a tank or a melee DPS, if I want to be back a bit, I'll be a ranged DPS or a healer.

Where is the issue in that? We have options, those options work well, we know what those options are, why change it?

Jahlon

Probably a bit early to be worried about healing.

We've seen tab healing in Alpha 0, and we know you can choose up to 75% tab abilities if you want them.

Zephirius

I agree with Jahlon on not being worried about healing just yet. I know it's been over 2 years, but when I played the cleric in A0 it felt okay, albeit a very rudimentary implementation. I will say, though, that I'm not a fan of "shooting" someone to heal them, like healing arrows. Maybe it's the word "arrows" and "shooting" that I dislike. In any case, we'll have a chance to test it in A1 and beyond and hopefully it will be a good system. If not then hopefully our feedback will help Intrepid course correct.

chaoko954

Good to know about the alpha 0. That helps alleviate my worries. Still a fun topic to discuss. Action combat healing is gonna be a challenge.

Heartbeat

The whole thing with them not wanting tanks in the front and healers in the back feels like they're trying to break the pattern that players have been playing with for years with exceptions to games that allow players to play with a very unique style. If they try to do too many things their own way it could shy players away from it if its largely hated by the community even though it would still be unique. personally the way I see it is healers are generally squishy, putting them in "the thick of it" is just going to get them killed quicker unless the class itself has higher def stats or self-buffs, but then that would make actual tanks less useful without giving them absurdly higher defense. We find a pattern where how much should X class be able to do before its considered OP whether it be dps or defense or movement abilities. There's nothing wrong with having healers in the back, isn't the whole point of having a secondary class to augment abilities and allow for different playstyles between 2 healers? I didn't really read through the thread at all i just heard how intrepid doesnt like tanks in front healers in back and wants to change it, just my thoughts on that, it would be hard to balance it without making something else less useful imo

unknownsystemerror

@Wandering Mist I never said that is was a preference of mine either way. The intention behind it was that too many games out there that use the "holy trinity" usually suffer from a lack of healers as some find them boring to play. Most want to play dps and hang in the back where their bad decisions don't cause a wipe, then those are those crazy people who like to tank, followed by those who heal hanging out clicking on whatever auto targetting frame mod allows them to just watch timers cycle. If you go to any game that has a LFG/LFR function (thankfully not an issue in AOC either) the constant role that people are bitching about not being able to find is a healer. Some love it, but most find it boring or hate taking grief when they have idiots that break los in tab targetting or stand in the fire and then get blamed for "Tank died, bad heals!"

HumblePuffin

Even thought they said that, I don’t believe it is their intention to entirely eliminate the idea we have come to expect of most healers.

Augments have the potential to create a pretty drastic playstyle change, so I could certainly see something like the cleric/cleric, or cleric/mage fitting a playstyle that would be more in line with the usual healer class we see a most games.

Then on the other hand with augments from the fighter/tank/maybe even ranger you start to see healers that fit into this more “unconventional” style of being all up in the action through things like radial heals, and maybe things like “whenever you take damage, heal allies around you for X amount, Based on the damage taken or mitigated or etc.”

I know this aims to be a trinity focused game, but I am certainly not against the idea of different teams comps that we may see such as being able to run a tank/healer or healer/tank with a bard for off heals and buffs, or a fighter with the ability to off tank.

I also don’t consider this exactly a new concept. Chanters in Aion could heal a decent amount of content and primarily operated in the thick of it, with possibly moving to the back line if the damage output started to get too heavy.

Revelation online had the ability to play in action combat(soft targeting), and even though I didn’t like it(since it was all or nothing), I knew quite a few healers that swore by the action combat version. ESO has action combat healing, and ESO even has some healing builds for some content that can certainly be played at medium/close range, probably a lot of builds if you aren’t doing cutting edge content.

I feel like the major benefit to healing being a back line role comes from the ability to see everything that’s going on easier. So I do agree that if action combat locks you into a more frontal field of view some people may have issues but that kind of turns into learning to play your class the way you chose to augment your class, than a straight up design issue.

Also with no armor restrictions, if you’re playing an up close and personal healer in light armor I also don’t feel like that is the games problem, that would be people being so entrenched in their ideas of what a healer should that they refuse to adapt.

Playing a cleric with mage augments? Sure slap on that light armor because your goal is to never get hit. Playing a cleric with tank augments that cause your heals to be more melee range focused? Should probably wear some medium/chain/plate so you don’t die to adds/AoEs. But all the plate I have gathered just gives +resistance/health!, how will I ever have the mana to heal? Time to get a crafting friend to make you some plate with mp5 or learn how to make it yourself.

They definitely have options to make all of this work in their broad vision they have given us, and they have some other games that can be used as jumping off points to make it a reality, it’s just making sure throughout the entire testing phases people give thorough feedback to make sure their vision is being achieved to its fullest potential.

Noaani

unknownsystemerror wrote: »

@Wandering Mist I never said that is was a preference of mine either way. The intention behind it was that too many games out there that use the "holy trinity" usually suffer from a lack of healers as some find them boring to play. Most want to play dps and hang in the back where their bad decisions don't cause a wipe, then those are those crazy people who like to tank, followed by those who heal hanging out clicking on whatever auto targetting frame mod allows them to just watch timers cycle. If you go to any game that has a LFG/LFR function (thankfully not an issue in AOC either) the constant role that people are bitching about not being able to find is a healer. Some love it, but most find it boring or hate taking grief when they have idiots that break los in tab targetting or stand in the fire and then get blamed for "Tank died, bad heals!"

Not that it's ever stopped me, but I'm going a little off topic here.

One of the best things Ashes will do is move the group size from 5/6 up to 8.

This means a standard group with 1 tank and 1 healer will go from allowing a group with 3 others up to allowing a group with 6 others.

How much of a difference this will make is anyones guess, but it's a difference in this game that I think is one of the most important.

Narys

Age of Conan did this well in terms of their healing classes using a cone based AOE heal that required positioning but was a little bit more forgiving for sudden reactions from your group mates. They also incorporated a melee based healer in the Bear Shaman that healed through damage.

Damokles

Narys wrote: »

Age of Conan did this well in terms of their healing classes using a cone based AOE heal that required positioning but was a little bit more forgiving for sudden reactions from your group mates. They also incorporated a melee based healer in the Bear Shaman that healed through damage.

WoW did something similar with the melee mistweaver in WoD, but later scrapped it sadly.

Wandering Mist

Damokles wrote: »

Narys wrote: »

Age of Conan did this well in terms of their healing classes using a cone based AOE heal that required positioning but was a little bit more forgiving for sudden reactions from your group mates. They also incorporated a melee based healer in the Bear Shaman that healed through damage.

WoW did something similar with the melee mistweaver in WoD, but later scrapped it sadly.

"fistweaving" still exists in WoW, but it's very situational and most Monk players don't bother with it.

@unknownsystemerror I think that no matter what you do there will always be less players wanting to heal than dps. It's not even so much about the mechanics or healing either, but more the attitudes involved. Healing is very much a thankless role. You do your utmost to help your team and keep the idiots alive, yet still get blamed by ignorant fools whenever they die due to their own stupid mistakes. Putting healers into melee range isn't going to change that.

With regards to making healing and tanking more interesting, most games do this by putting some damage into the class kit. The problem with this is that more often than not it turns the class into a dps class that happens to tank or heal on the side, rather than a dedicated healer or tank. For example, let's look at one of the proposed Cleric abilities for Ashes:

Stolen Blessing - Drop a totem to damage enemies within range and provide that damage done as heals to your allies in range.

Now depending on the numbers and how the fights play out, it's entirely possible that you could keep your party topped off with that ability whilst dealing damage. If that's the case then you can pretty much just do a bog standard dps rotation and let your abilities passively heal your allies at the same time. At that point I would question why you had a dedicated healing class in the first place.

Tanks in a lot of modern mmorpgs work in a similar fashion, acting effectively as dps classes that just happen to be tankier and have threat generation on their abilities. Back in the old days of WoW (pre-Wrath) keeping threat was a skill. You couldn't just spam any ability you like and magically hold aggro no problem. Instead you had to pick your skills and targets carefully to ensure you kept aggro. It was a completely different playstyle to the dps classes.

Going back to healing, if they are going to add dps abilities to the healing classes there should be some restrictions on it. Players should have to choose whether the ability they cast is going to heal or dps. There are lots of different ways you can do this, from simply splitting up the dps and healing abilities but giving them a shared cooldown, to stance-swapping mechanics or combo skills that activate certain effects.

No matter what though you have to make players choose between healing or dpsing rather than letting them do both at the same time.

Damokles

To be fair, all currdntly "known" abilities of the cleric are aoe in some regard, or require you to hit the enemy.

Banish - Teleport the target away from the caster (Rank 2 reduce hate and clear target, Rank 3 snare enemies that are banished)

Divine Form (Focus ability)- increase healing and damage, apply a healing aoe hot around you, pulse aoe heal and damage around the caster (Rank 2 reduce hate and clear target, Rank 3 increase effectiveness of heals in form)

Life Bolt - deal damage based on missing health (Rank 2 add aoe, Rank 3 slow enemies hit)

Lifes Blance - Balance HP of all party members

Lifeline - Chain heal to friendly targets (Rank 2 deal damage to enemies around last target healed, Rank 3 heal and damage scale with amount of targets healed)

Proximity Chain Stun - chain enemies to a certain point, stun them if they leave the proximity

Righteous Blessing - Deliver a spot heal (Rank2 add hot, Rank 3 add dot on enemies )

All of these abilities most likely dont exist anymore, because they are from a pretty old build, but they show the general direction that IS may take the cleric.
If i am honest, all of them look amazing and i cant wait to see the current itteration of the cleric!

Songcaller

The issue for me when healers are 'in the thick of it' compared to 'at the back' is it is often easier to heal everyone from the back, yet from the front the rear people can be missed. I've played both types of Healer in various games and I don't believe there is a perfect Healer. I'm yet to find the perfect Healer class anyway. I think this is where skill applies. My favorite Healer was the Blood-Mage from Vanguard. 'In the tick of it' healers are often better at fluid fights, while 'at the back' healers are often better for static or limited location fights. I'm pleased to see this thread, I'm itching to heal and can't wait for more news from Intrepid.

Noaani

Damokles wrote: »

To be fair, all currdntly "known" abilities of the cleric are aoe in some regard, or require you to hit the enemy.

This is one of the bigger red lights for this game for me, to be honest.

If all healing is AoE, that means Intrepid expect everyone to be taking damage. This says to me that they have little expectation of structured groups maintaining that structure.

Basically, they expect all groups to end up like the average pug.

Caeryl

noaani wrote: »

Damokles wrote: »

To be fair, all currdntly "known" abilities of the cleric are aoe in some regard, or require you to hit the enemy.

This is one of the bigger red lights for this game for me, to be honest.

If all healing is AoE, that means Intrepid expect everyone to be taking damage. This says to me that they have little expectatuon of structured groups maintaining that structure.

Basically, they expect all geoups to end up like the average pug.

I have doubts you’ve done much healing then. Anti-stack damage mechanics are a good thing, no fight should let someone parse like they’re on a target dummy if the point of it is to pose a challenge. If your group is required to soft stack to avoid overlapping damage, then you need AoE healing. Single target healing is boring and just whack-a-mole, only really useful for use on the tanks and off-tanks when you know they’re about to take heavy damage. Untargeted healing requires group coordination and good positioning.

Edit: And if you don’t expect there to be any ambient damage, why bring a healer in the first place?

Noaani

Caeryl wrote: »

noaani wrote: »

Damokles wrote: »

To be fair, all currdntly "known" abilities of the cleric are aoe in some regard, or require you to hit the enemy.

This is one of the bigger red lights for this game for me, to be honest.

If all healing is AoE, that means Intrepid expect everyone to be taking damage. This says to me that they have little expectatuon of structured groups maintaining that structure.

Basically, they expect all geoups to end up like the average pug.

I have doubts you’ve done much healing then.

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Anti-stack damage mechanics are a good thing, no fight should let someone parse like they’re on a target dummy if the point of it is to pose a challenge. If your group is required to soft stack to avoid overlapping damage, then you need AoE healing.

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Single target healing is boring and just whack-a-mole, only really useful for use on the tanks and off-tanks when you know they’re about to take heavy damage. Untargeted healing requires group coordination and good positioning.

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Edit: And if you don’t expect there to be any ambient damage, why bring a healer in the first place?

I've broken your post in to four parts that I am going to address individually (This is easier than breaking it in to 4 quote boxes imo).

Other than caster DPS, healing is what I have done the most in groups and raids. I've done a fair amount of tanking, I've done a shitload of DPS, but I've done a good amount of healing.

Since I've been raiding in MMO's since the very early 2000's, that is a lot of healing experience.

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I never said AoE healing is bad, I said if all healing is AoE healing it is bad.

These are very different statements.

If there is enough healing being thrown around to keep a tank alive, and that healing is all AoE, that means every other player within range of that healing has literally no fear of being killed unless they take a single hit that is big enough to kill them in one hit.

When playing a caster DPS, the size of the individual heals needed to keep the tank alive in almost every game I've played are bigger than my entire HP pool. If the tank is taking damage, and those heals are being thrown around, what is there for me to worry about?

If all healing is AoE healing, that means mob AoE's are suddenly a worthless mechanic to add, as the healer need do nothing different at all. Rather than having to shift focus from keeping the tank up or performing the other tasks that healers do in some MMO's in order to cast a group/AoE heal, they simply need only carry on doing what they are doing, knowing that the heals they are casting for the tank will take care of that AoE damage.

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I've never played a game where healers have no abilities other than heals.

If you are a healer in a group or raid and only cast healing abilities, you are a shit healer. If you have a debuff, you should be using it. If you have a buff, you should be using it. If you have a damaging ability, you should be using it. If you are doing all of that and still feel like you are playing whack-a-mole, complain to the developers of the shit game you must be playing.

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This is an odd question, the answer is obviously to keep the tank up.

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