Healer Targeting System

Haemosu

I am assuming I can click on Party/Raid members and select them for certain heal skills?
Will we be able to also click on the individual who isnt in Party/Raid for the same selection?

I was a healer in another game where we had a Defensive Target as well as an Offensive Target simultaneously.
Will this be a thing in AoC?

Asking for a friend. 😁

Kearavain

I would assume this system would be in there as it is pretty important for multiple roles in raids - however, personally, I am more worried (with no mods) hover healing will not be implemented. I doubt I will even be able to go back to traditional click and hotkey healing after so many years - but you never know.

Haemosu

Kearavain wrote: »

I would assume this system would be in there as it is pretty important for multiple roles in raids - however, personally, I am more worried (with no mods) hover healing will not be implemented. I doubt I will even be able to go back to traditional click and hotkey healing after so many years - but you never know.

I was thinking more PvP than anything else.
Being able to select someone not in your party helps. One can TAB party members or click on their name in party, but to select someone not in your party a simple clicking of that player should suffice. Is that what you mean by hover healing?

Noaani

Hover healing is when a heal is cast on who ever your curser is on in game.

It is worth noting that many heals (not all) will be targeted via action combat mechanics, not tab target mechanics. This means you may have to physically aim them, rather than selecting a character to target them on.

While I appreciate having offensive and defensive targets, I personally prefer to have target and targets target as my two targets selected. I'm hoping we will have the option of this when the game launches, as I find it far superior.

Vhaeyne

By offensive and defensive target, do you mean "focus target", and "target".
I would hope they have that.
Not sure I have seen "offensive and defensive target"

What game had this?

daveywavey

I liked being able to assign my [F#] keys to my team-mates, so if I wanted to select the third player in the list, I'd hit [F3], etc. I always found that helpful.

Noaani

daveywavey wrote: »

I liked being able to assign my [F#] keys to my team-mates, so if I wanted to select the third player in the list, I'd hit [F3], etc. I always found that helpful.

Indeed, I've yet to play a game where this isn't a thing. I have never played a healer and clicked on a group member to target them.

rikardp98

In most tab targeting games I either use "click on target" or hover over the target I want to heal (in my raid/group frame).

In classic wow their is also a pretty cool macro that allows you to mouse over heal, but also heal targets target if you don't hover over any player. So it's easy to both tank heal and raid heal.

maouw

I find hover healing really useful in League when a fight starts getting too chaotic

daveywavey

When the shit really hits the fan, though, sometimes all you can do is look at your party's health bars, so being able to switch between them quickly with your [F#] keys is really really useful. I used to spam out heals like that in Guild Wars.

Jamation

I've played games with the "hover" heal thing but still preferred the guarantee of being able to target them manually. Not trying to risk losing a party member because someone decided to dash in front of my mouse.

Only time I've really used that hover thing is when there is an AOE and to reduce time the AOE casts where your mouse is instead of you having to click the skill and then click the AOE placement again.

Asgerr

I remember in Tera, which was heavily focused on action combat:
- Some skills had you click on the target to heal
- Others had you click the ability and the you would hover over multiple targets, which highlighted them as locked on and then the spell was cast

Something like that could be useful, specially if the camera turns with the mouse like an fps. Cause then some party members may end up off screen, but still be targetable.

Otherwise yeah tab or F# to select your party members and click on the enemy for the same.

What I don't want is a tab targeting that works on both party members and enemies at the same time. Meaning I press it once it highlights the nearest being, starting from the left, cause if my teammate is the 5th one, he might be dead by the time I tap Tab 5 times. I don't wanna have to select enemies before my team if I have to heal.

rikardp98

daveywavey wrote: »

When the shit really hits the fan, though, sometimes all you can do is look at your party's health bars, so being able to switch between them quickly with your [F#] keys is really really useful. I used to spam out heals like that in Guild Wars.

They mouse over macro I'm talking about uses the health bar. If I have my mouse over a friendly health bar in my UI I will heal that target.

I personally have not used F# keys to target a friendly target in my group but I think that should definitely be an option.

Haemosu

Vhaeyne wrote: »

By offensive and defensive target, do you mean "focus target", and "target".
I would hope they have that.
Not sure I have seen "offensive and defensive target"

What game had this?

It was TSW (The Secret World - Rebooted as Secret World Legends - No PvP in this iteration afaik.)
as a Healer you could have your Target selected in Red (Tab Targeting Style) and your Defensive Target (Tank/DPS or your Favorite PvP Partner) in Green.
Your Target receives any of your Offensive Skill Damage and/or Debuffs and your Defensive Target receives Heals and Buffs.

Noaani wrote: »

Hover healing is when a heal is cast on who ever your curser is on in game.

It is worth noting that many heals (not all) will be targeted via action combat mechanics, not tab target mechanics. This means you may have to physically aim them, rather than selecting a character to target them on.

Hmm. I was aware that TAB wouldnt dictate all skills and was thinking of AoE Heals but i dont think i have ever had to use an Action Heal...

While I appreciate having offensive and defensive targets, I personally prefer to have target and targets target as my two targets selected. I'm hoping we will have the option of this when the game launches, as I find it far superior.

Im hoping we get a wide variety of Options as Healers and Targeting.

CakeBanditJr

I REALLY hope we are allowed mouse over macro healing since we aren't going to have mods! I don't mind AOE healing to an extent but too much of it makes it really boring and makes zero sense to me. I want to use my reaction/aiming skill to either mouse-over or click a health bar rather than spam AOEs. My 2 cents..

Heruwolf

I highly doubt they would let this game go through without raid frames and mouse over healing. That just wouldn't be intelligent in todays gaming community. With no mods, I am somewhat concerned. The macros cannot work like FFXIV's Macros either. As a healer that's trying to keep track of a minimum of 25 people, that just doesn't work. I'm also interested to see how healing a 250 v 250 PVP battle is going to be. Is everyone in the same raid group? Am I going to have 250 health bars on my screen as a healer? Or will I have to have 500 nameplates for allies and enemies? Only time will tell I suppose.

daveywavey

Heruwolf wrote: »

I'm also interested to see how healing a 250 v 250 PVP battle is going to be. Is everyone in the same raid group? Am I going to have 250 health bars on my screen as a healer? Or will I have to have 500 nameplates for allies and enemies? Only time will tell I suppose.

I believe the default party size is 8, and it goes up to 40 for a Raid. I don't think we'll have the 250 health bars issue.

Kearavain

Noaani wrote: »

It is worth noting that many heals (not all) will be targeted via action combat mechanics, not tab target mechanics. This means you may have to physically aim them, rather than selecting a character to target them on.

That is a very good point. I played a MMO about superheroes a while back that had that action style - I enjoyed it but struggled with single target fidelity. Without mods this will need to be the most robust system ever if they want people to take raids seriously, I sure hope they can deliver.

Haemosu

Kearavain wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

It is worth noting that many heals (not all) will be targeted via action combat mechanics, not tab target mechanics. This means you may have to physically aim them, rather than selecting a character to target them on.

That is a very good point. I played a MMO about superheroes a while back that had that action style - I enjoyed it but struggled with single target fidelity. Without mods this will need to be the most robust system ever if they want people to take raids seriously, I sure hope they can deliver.

What game was it?
I dont remember ever having to heal action style in any game I played sounds like a headache with LoS.
It limits your view to a flatter plane.
I guess i could get used to it.

Kearavain

Noaani wrote: »

What game was it?

I am almost positive it was DC Universe Online. It didn't really take off and my guild at the time blew through the end game content, still I remember enjoying healing and the "shield/energy" support class they created.

Oh yes, LoS was a HUGE issue and they applied it to raids/dungeons. It was crazy literally running around when the crap hit the fan trying to find the vital people.

Noaani

Heruwolf wrote: »

I'm also interested to see how healing a 250 v 250 PVP battle is going to be. Is everyone in the same raid group? Am I going to have 250 health bars on my screen as a healer? Or will I have to have 500 nameplates for allies and enemies? Only time will tell I suppose.

My hope (as in, I have no reason to assume this) is that some heals, both single target and AoE, only work on players in your own group of 8, other heals work on any player in your raid, and still others work on anyone not directly hostile to you.

What this will do is force some order to all raid situations, rather than allowing for a disorganized free for all to reign.

It also makes PvE raiding more interesting, which is a nice bonus.

Heruwolf

daveywavey wrote: »

Heruwolf wrote: »

I'm also interested to see how healing a 250 v 250 PVP battle is going to be. Is everyone in the same raid group? Am I going to have 250 health bars on my screen as a healer? Or will I have to have 500 nameplates for allies and enemies? Only time will tell I suppose.

I believe the default party size is 8, and it goes up to 40 for a Raid. I don't think we'll have the 250 health bars issue.

Here's the problem with that.... 40 does not go into 250 evenly. You will have 10 members who are not in a raid group. or are in their own raid group that is significantly smaller than the rest. Of course you could have 10 raid groups of 25, but that just seems wrong... I imagine a different system would be implemented than the standard 40 man raid groups for these large scale battles. Personally, I would want raid frames of people who are close enough to be healed and people who are just slightly too far to be healed. Now, maybe I'm thinking too much WoW and not enough ESO. If most of the heals are targeted then, it's probably moot and you just have ally nameplates up with health bars over them.

Heruwolf

Noaani wrote: »

Heruwolf wrote: »

I'm also interested to see how healing a 250 v 250 PVP battle is going to be. Is everyone in the same raid group? Am I going to have 250 health bars on my screen as a healer? Or will I have to have 500 nameplates for allies and enemies? Only time will tell I suppose.

My hope (as in, I have no reason to assume this) is that some heals, both single target and AoE, only work on players in your own group of 8, other heals work on any player in your raid, and still others work on anyone not directly hostile to you.

What this will do is force some order to all raid situations, rather than allowing for a disorganized free for all to reign.

It also makes PvE raiding more interesting, which is a nice bonus.

I can agree with that. PVE Healing is very very fun, there is something very nostalgic about watching raid frames bounce around. Personally, I prefer heals that don't specifically target a pre determined group, but rather the nearest 5 most injured, or 4 or 8 or whatever number balances out best for AoC. The problem with "group only" heals is that they end up rarely being used, because they are almost always inefficient because someone probably doesn't need healing. Any single target heal should definitely be able to heal any non-hostile, imo.

TheHiddenDaggerInn

I agree it needs a dual targeting system, Warhammer Online did this well and I hope they insitute this version. In PvP and when you have both healing and offensive spells it would be very tedious to have to keep clicking to both targets.

Noaani

Don't pay too much attention to the details of that 250 number, that is simply a technical goal for Intrepid. They don't expect people to form up in to exact groups of 250 people and then attack other groups of exactly 250 people, they just want the game to be able to handle that many people.

Heruwolf

Noaani wrote: »

Don't pay too much attention to the details of that 250 number, that is simply a technical goal for Intrepid. They don't expect people to form up in to exact groups of 250 people and then attack other groups of exactly 250 people, they just want the game to be able to handle that many people.

Hmmm, I suppose you're right. I was running on misinformation there. It seems they actually want 500v500. Seeing as these are supposed to be open world, I look forward to seeing how Intrepid handles the UI during that time, because that could thoroughly impact the quality of those sieges.

Haemosu

The 250/500 players dont need to be in the same party.
40 in a Raid is quite enough.
If you are wandering away from your heals then the UI is not the issue.
Hopefully I can select you being outside my raid and pop some HoTs on you if I got the time.
Some players are tryna kill me!

Lycancoffee

I hope that they do exactly what they said they would do, and make some healing skills "on target" while other healing skills should be action based.

"slash target [targetname]" commands are so exploitable. I hope we never see them in AoC. Hiding behind walls, up ledges, and around giant rocks healing party members is also exploitable and a source of so many bad experiences in many other MMO games.

Calling on experiences from many other games, a great healing system that would allow for a better skill curve in healing would involve a variety of heal targeting.

Healing ease should be balanced with healing risk and difficulty. The easier it is to target a heal, the less mobility it should give the caster, and the longer it should take to cast. Here are some guiding examples, all of which should never be considered as absolute rules:

• Some heals could be cast on target and require line of sight.
• Some heals could be ground targeted.
• Some heals could be AoE around the caster and ignore line of sight.
• Some heals could create an object on the ground that explodes in healing after a duration of time.
• Some heals could create an object on the ground that a friendly player could activate to get a heal.
• Some heals could be targetable by clicking on the party name, but require the healer to stand still to cast.
• Some heals could be conical and ignore line of sight.
• Some heals could fire a narrow bolt of healing that hits everything be between the healer and target.
• Some heals that don't require the healer to either face, place, or aim, could force the healer to stand still and have a casting time. These would be easy heals to target but would come with a mobility trade.
• Some heals that allow the healer to be super mobile would be better if they cause the healer to run in and out of the action, or to actually target their partner.

There are so many other creative ways that healing could have variety. I hope that the devs explore many of these options and put some spice into the old "key press to target > heal" system. It was good for its time, but tomorrow's MMO can be so much better.

Songcaller

There was a recent example of 'Droppable Health and droppable Mana' but most people don't pick them up. I don't mean in Ashes or Apoc but in another MMO. I forget the MMO name, I've played too many MMOs. But yeah, heals not directed or passive are never taken up by the majority of the player base in most MMOs.

Asgerr

Neurath wrote: »

There was a recent example of 'Droppable Health and droppable Mana' but most people don't pick them up. I don't mean in Ashes or Apoc but in another MMO. I forget the MMO name, I've played too many MMOs. But yeah, heals not directed or passive are never taken up by the majority of the player base in most MMOs.

That sounds like something a Mystic could do back in Tera. Not sure if any other MMO has implemented that feature though

Songcaller

Yeah, I thought the class was Mystic but I couldn't place the Mystic lol. Mystic Bubbles were good with a good group but if you didn't have a premade group good luck getting people to pick up the bubbles.