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How do you want to see HEALING & SUPPORT in AoC
Marzzo
Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
@chaoko954 post inspired me to write this post.
A lot of people prefer healing and buffing over dealing damage or absorbing it. For this reason, it is important to make this gameplay as fun and interesting as possible.
What people most likely do not want in Aoc or that does not fit in AoC
-A pure skillshot based healing system (Ana from overwatch as a reference)
-Classic tab target spam healing system (Holy priest from wow)
-Full AOE style buffing and healing system (Guild Wars 2)
What I believe makes healer/support gameplay great
-A combination of skillshots, tab target and aoe heals/shields & buffs that are good in different situations
-The ability to cycle between empowering friends and debuffing foes.
-Smaller combos that provide greater power on abilities that are fun to use
-The ability to specialize in either healing/buffing/cursing
-The option to focus more on being more offensive/defensive to suit their prefered playstyle. Do not force healers/support to deal damage if they dont want to.
Other stuff i like
-Different types of buffs. Movementspeed, reduce elemental damage taken, cooldown reduction etc. I love to have a varied range of buffs that make me feel usefull in many situations. I also like to have more powerful single target buffs, and less powerful aoe buffs/buffs that target more people.
-Impactful cooldowns that empower you or your friends a lot. I love to have 1-2 super spells that really make a difference but with a long cooldown. It makes battles epic and make you feel like you really made a difference as a support/healer. Look at heroism on wow for example.
Important stuff that can't be ignored
- Different healing/support classes need to feel unique and engaging. Dont make two different classes with the exact same playstyle but with nature or holy effect on spells.
-Let people customize their kit/talents/playstyle/abilities. People want to express their vision, their gameplay philosophi. Let them do that.
What would you like to see when it comes to AoC healing/support gameplay?
What game has the best healing/support system? In my opinion, League of Legends!
A lot of people prefer healing and buffing over dealing damage or absorbing it. For this reason, it is important to make this gameplay as fun and interesting as possible.
What people most likely do not want in Aoc or that does not fit in AoC
-A pure skillshot based healing system (Ana from overwatch as a reference)
-Classic tab target spam healing system (Holy priest from wow)
-Full AOE style buffing and healing system (Guild Wars 2)
What I believe makes healer/support gameplay great
-A combination of skillshots, tab target and aoe heals/shields & buffs that are good in different situations
-The ability to cycle between empowering friends and debuffing foes.
-Smaller combos that provide greater power on abilities that are fun to use
-The ability to specialize in either healing/buffing/cursing
-The option to focus more on being more offensive/defensive to suit their prefered playstyle. Do not force healers/support to deal damage if they dont want to.
Other stuff i like
-Different types of buffs. Movementspeed, reduce elemental damage taken, cooldown reduction etc. I love to have a varied range of buffs that make me feel usefull in many situations. I also like to have more powerful single target buffs, and less powerful aoe buffs/buffs that target more people.
-Impactful cooldowns that empower you or your friends a lot. I love to have 1-2 super spells that really make a difference but with a long cooldown. It makes battles epic and make you feel like you really made a difference as a support/healer. Look at heroism on wow for example.
Important stuff that can't be ignored
- Different healing/support classes need to feel unique and engaging. Dont make two different classes with the exact same playstyle but with nature or holy effect on spells.
-Let people customize their kit/talents/playstyle/abilities. People want to express their vision, their gameplay philosophi. Let them do that.
What would you like to see when it comes to AoC healing/support gameplay?
What game has the best healing/support system? In my opinion, League of Legends!
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Comments
Aimed projectile healing is heavily avoided in video games. Not many people like it. Few multiplayer games have it. I would only like it if the healing bolts had a few variants that would give them some ease of use:
1.) Healing projectiles that would lock-on to friendly targets that attempt to dodge them in their relentless pursuit of dying.
2.) Projectiles that would explode into mini-AoEs upon impact and heal people caught in the explosion.
3.) Bolts that would pass through players, healing each person that they touch.
A two person buff is likely a wasted one if you’re in a 20-30 man raid
I was more thinking of smaller parties of 8. For the 40-man raids you could scale the buffs up to cover an entire 8-man party.
If you're talking short duration and low target count, it could be a fairly strong buff without hreaking balance of any kind.
Indeed. The original Guildwars had a ton of very cool buffs with unique effects:
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Protection_Prayers#Protection_Prayers_skills
These skills were hard to use effectively but very rewarding if you use them well.
From what we already know from Steven, he considers an "action" ability anything that does not require a locked target.
We also know that 75% of your skills can be from tab or action, but you must always carry 25% from the other category.
Most likely what will end up happening is that tab-preference healers will take a bulk of their abilities from tab category, and fill in their action abilities with AOE, round placement, actiony style abilities [including offensive abilities]
Action-preference healers will take more action category abilities, and then fill in with the tab abilities that provide the biggest benefits [heals or buffs or damage].
But it come to me mind that the point launcher may throw healing potion ^^"
I don't have precise ideas but explaining a bit would be enough for you guys to understand my point, I want to be able to control more or less the flow of fight.
With taunts, some MMOs have taunts but it works only in PvE or have a little chance to change my target's target. More than using one skill to do it, it would be nice to have some sort of prerequisites to be successful. I do not want to be only taking the target, but forcing attacks on myself for a short duration.
I want my class kit to be around my teammates (at least in pvp) but not limited to. If I can use some sort of shielding ability that blocks incoming projectile behind me for example. Also sharing a portion of the damages taken from an ally (some games already have this, I think AOC will too). Maybe some minor heals...
With some CC abilities either tab or action, it does not matters. Being able to stop enemies from hard focusing an ally. The famous wall skill could help with that by building "structures" in the battlefield.
(I would like a grab
With a bit of debuffs, like atk.speed slow, move.speed slow etc...
Basically, I want to bring a bit of comfort and safety to my teammates while fighting and disturbing the enemies in their fight.
For example a cleric tank wihe shield could possible do decent job of tanking. Archetype makes toon robust plus cleric could heal himself plus if he had a shield then could possiblely make a decent tank not as Good as a Tank cleric but could still tank his or her fair share of content. And if there was lets say a bard or another Cleric Cleric to support him or her then.
So because of 64 classes and no gear restrictions players have a ton of options, but skill set needs to be more than just healing abilities for healers to be a dynamic. Plus need dps abilities so they can level and explore as a healer.
Just go with a Tank base class and then choose to go Bard, Cleric or Tank as your second class. The Bard should give you the ability to buff/debuff yourself, your allies and your enemy. The Cleric should give you further healing and sustained healing. The Tank should give you further self reinhancement and protection for your allies.
Never forget, that you can switch your secondary class!
Aion’s chanter Was great for its static mantras which could be cycled through but only had a limit of a few that could be active at a time. This let you change what just being present brought to the party on the fly, move speed for heavy movement encounters, mp5 for more drawn out battles, physical or magic attack boosts that you could adjust based on the team comp you were in at the time. It brought lots of thought to what passives buffs were most useful for yourself and the group, but then also let you feel heavily impactful with your off heals, and strong CC from your active abilities. It gave you a lot of flexibility in how you wanted to play.
Control classes are also a a favorite of mine since I guess I’m a bit of a sadist. Classes that are able to support there group by making sure everything is constantly slowed, stunned, or feared are just so fun to play in my opinion. (My main decks are all blue decks in Magic).
I have to say I agree with pretty much all of your points in the original post. I have seen a lot of games that hit most of these, but then they fall short with making it feel impactful. You’re may definitely be giving more dps, You may be the real reason your team mates are staying alive, but then they don’t make it fun to play. There are a lot of ways to make it fun, and with buffs, even though passive and long terms buffs are good, it’s nice to have very short, very powerful buffs as well, that make you go “that chunk of damage was because of what I did” or “that person was definitely dead unless I just did what I did”. Basically they can’t make a support feel their role is entirely replaceable if people just set up slightly different.
League is a great example here. There were a lot that sucked in the first few seasons, but Riot has done a really great job of making supports feel like a vital part of the team.
I don't mine tab target healing, I didn't really like Tera's healing, it was not good for me.
Personally I don't want to be in the back and spam a heal every 4 seconds. I find that sort of play style boring, because things are going well and I just sit back there waiting.
I wish healers could take a more active role in battle having different abilities, like sleep, shield, buffs, debuffs, roots. There are many way to prevent damage that healing.
Potentially:
- barriers that prevent missiles
- buff that reduces damage taken
- slow attack speed of enemies
- switch places with players. For example you use your ability and friendly players get a pop up skill to accept and you teleport in its place
- transfer damage like Shield Other from DnD 3.5
Having a more active role in combat and doing stuff
Making the Archetype support group related and the subclasse support single player support.
If Archetype have group effect abilities, making one player actions more effective for a single player than a buff/heal on a full group, it could make subclass support interesting to have in a group.
Shouldnt it be 16 Archetype supports and 12 Subclass supports?
Yeah idk where they got 24?
I would like to see hots to play with, which makes healing more agile. You get a customization while combining your main healing class with a second class.
My guess is they included Summoner.
In general I prefer to choose my targets myself which is more fun but also requires more skill. AoEs are fine as long as we only have a couple - they should not be needed most of the time, so having few, or putting short CDs on them, is better. One large or PbAoE at most IMO since they're at times needed but not skillful or fun. Otherwise AoE should require me to make some sort of choice - the tiny 5m radius TERA AoEs, or WoW Holy Pally (Beacon of Virtue or Light of Dawn). Automatic healing is not fun, either so no leech skills or things of that nature (RIFT Chloro comes to mind as well, where heals proc off of damage - fun for dps minded players, but not skillful and not requiring the player to actively do anything).
Someone mentioned combo healing and I think for healing combos is a bad idea. It works for dps but healing is much more dynamic and requires on the fly decisions as circumstances change. So we need to have our entire skillset available via one button press. The disaster that was Bless comes to mind here, and if I have to get through a 2 or 3 combo skill chain to get to the heal I need, someone might just die in that time.
Long and short term buffs are fun, as well as auras/mantras, as are debuffs and skills that restore resources to the team. I like being useful in supportive ways when I don't need to heal.
Cleric/Chanter in Aion are two of my favorite classes, and I'd say various versions of WoW Holy Pally are good as well. Along those lines, I'd love to be a heavy armored healer, whether that be at range or melee (or both would be interesting).
Also I want to feel powerful - again like Aion and WoW above. That's something some games do very poorly in an attempt to make healers less necessary. All roles should feel powerful and capable at what they've chosen to do - and that shouldn't mean I get poor damage capabilities, either.
And one last thing - always remember to KISS - keep it simple, stupid. Some games try to have overly complex mechanics in healing and that just doesn't add to the fun. It just gets irritating. At best it narrows our gameplay options and skill choices in combat, and at worst it makes skills hard to understand and use optimally. Remember, healing is not the same as damage - it's much more dynamic and if combat and encounters are designed well, we'll have enough to keep us busy, challenged and interested.
I agree, Chanter was an amazing support and one that really felt like what you did had an impact (and wacking stuff with a Staff in melee is also super fun). Part of it for that class was they gave you choices. It wasn't like in some games where the pure support has a rotation they spam and that's it - RIFT was guilty of this. Aion gave you enough different buffs that you could choose when to use certain CD based buffs for maximum effect, and choose which Auras to use as well.
Further to that point, they need to make groups 6 man parties instead of 5. That's what makes a support class work better without messing up the balance of dps players. It allows the support to have a larger impact on a party while also leaving enough room in a party for the support without costing other players spots. It worked really well in Aion and at worst, players can bring 4 dps if they can't find a support.
Well, groups will be a max of 8 people (so that you can take at least one of each base class)
The chanter was one of my first characters in AION and i loved him like my own child. I really hope that the Tellsword (Bard/Fighter) and Trickster (Bard/Rogue) will work like that.
Debuffing enemies with melee attacks, casting auras to buff allies etc, it was my favourite class of all time and i miss it dearly. ^^
If you were good enough you knew when DPS would take damage, or they were just not good at avoiding it, so it was a reactive sort of healing.
Eventually what happened to me, at least in Dungeons, was that healing got boring. I could just spam 1 heal and everyone was safe, really hard to wipe.
On raids it was different, but eventually out of the 50 abilities I might have, I only used 15. Also that, if the healer as damage skills, but they aren't worth the GCD, then they shouldn't have one.
I'm really more concerned with the general combat design and encounter design. The only part specific to healing is that I want a good balance of proactive and reactive heal checks. I don't want healing to be like a twitch shooter, nor a 4X strategy game, but somewhere in-between. Preparation and practice should be just as important as reflexes and instinct. Y'knowha'm sayin'?
8 Tank + 8 Cleric + 8 Bard = 24 i guess ...
But yes 15 subclass... went to quick
Or Tank isn't support for you ?
Well i count the classes differently tbh.
2 melee enduring: Tank + Fighter
2 physical dps: Rogue + Ranger
2 magical dps: Mage + Summoner
2 supports: Bard + Cleric
Melee enduring doesnt just mean that they are typical tanks, but that they are able to endure overall damage BETTER then other base classes normally can.
I count the fighter as melee enduring, because if i imagine a fighter, then i dont see a glasscannon but rather a seasoned fighter who keeps on dishing out pain while fighting enemy after enemy (maybe not direct damage shielding, but rather lifeleeach etc?)
I generally don’t consider tanking a group support role in a PvE environment. Their primary focus is typically on self-sustain and enemy control, whereas I would expect ally sustain and ally empowerment to be a key part of being a support role.
Most games have a trinity, where you have tank, healer and DPS.
Some games have a quad-based system, where you have tank, healer, DPS and support.
This thread is talking about support in terms of that quad-system, which is what Ashes is seemingly taking.
Based on this, the tank class can't be a support class, because it is a tank class.