Suggestion for Healing Mechanics

CasForelda

So, a friend and I were brainstorming some idea's for making Healers have a more dynamic role than spam out their heals. Here is the one that is the most fleshed out.

Over-Healing
We were discussing a way to prevent a group from just employing pure healing players, and we thought having a negative penalty for healing too much would be an interesting way to shake up any potential meta. Currently in GW2 I have a druid who can pretty much solo heal a group through most content, simply by having a slight "rotation" used to time my skill usage. And, let's be honest, we all know there is going to be a similar kind of build available in AoC. It is simply a function of using the Trinity system.

So the penalty we came up with was that if you got a heal that "over healed" you by a significant percentage of your max HP (say you got healed to 100% and there was an extra 25%) you got a debuff reducing your max HP by a percentage of the heal you received.

-example-

Let's say you had 10k HP and you lost 500 to an attack, leaving you with 9500. Your healer uses a potent healing skill and heals you for say 3300. You will be healed to 12800 HP (I know it is more than your max) and you will be +2800 over your max which is 28% above your max HP. With this let's say you take 10% as a debuff, you will be left with 10,000-280=9720 hp. This debuff can be for 1 minute, and the timer resets when you are "Over Healed" again. and the debuff can stack.

Whether there is a max debuff you can have (say 10%) or it can reduce your HP to 0 is up to the devs, but it would be interesting nonetheless.

I think this would prevent groups from simply having 2-3 healers who spam out heals constantly, seeing as it would negatively affect the group as a whole. Allowing the healing role to be divvied up into Off healers supporting a main healer, where the off healers can focus more on supporting either smaller subgroups or supporting the main group with buffs and debuff cleanses.

BlackBrony

Personally I'd rather have something like Pathfinder or Dungeons and Dragon were healing is not the effective route. But I know that is not possible at all.

It makes the game more strategic and interesting because you have other spells like shields or damage reduction, or even CCing the enemy to avoid damage.
But in large scale groups or raid situation is just not possible.

Your idea might work, but what about Crits? What if you crit and that causes you to overheal?

CasForelda

BlackBrony wrote: »

Personally I'd rather have something like Pathfinder or Dungeons and Dragon were healing is not the effective route. But I know that is not possible at all.

It makes the game more strategic and interesting because you have other spells like shields or damage reduction, or even CCing the enemy to avoid damage.
But in large scale groups or raid situation is just not possible.

Your idea might work, but what about Crits? What if you crit and that causes you to overheal?

As in a Crit heal? It depends on if that is even implemented. Otherwise it is purely based on your Max HP. Even if you get the debuff, your max will stay the same since the debuff itself is just a modifier.

Yuyukoyay

Overhealing is usually punished in MMO's by making healing the highest threat generation abilities in the game. Which means they will out threat the tank if you heal too often. Usually this results in a party wipe.

I do like the idea of not needing a healer to do content. It's very possible to do, but it might not be worth doing in an MMO. Luckily healing is a popular role in games and this game having more party slots kinda balances the role disparity out a bit more. You will have more slots to blow on non healers and non tanks. Which means less parties due to the party size being higher. The less parties means that healers and tanks cost into the community is lower than in other games. Since you are less likely to run out of healers like other games do that lack healing and tanking classes.

There is a possibility that some classes will be more cost efficient without a healer. Pretty much every class with Cleric augments will have some form of healing. We just simply don't know how the healing will be. I'd expect a lot of it to be self healing, but some of the support oriented classes might be able to heal to some extent. You might be able to stack off healers to fully substitute the role.

Ferni

Healers should be punish for doing over healing, not other players directly. High mana consumition and aggro generation should be enough to punish a healer for do more heal that needed.

If a healer is just spaming heal spells all the time that healer should run out of mana and be useless for his group.

I think there is some problems adding a HP reduction debuff when overhealing:

• Do overheal when 2 healers heal the same target by accident in a raid. Let's say your tank is low in HP and you use the most powerful heal skill you have, but another healer do the same. Ops. Maybe in a PvE raid you could manage to avoid this, but what about a caotic massive PvP situation?
• A player use a potion not expecting a heal to come in.
• Critical heal.
• A troll healer decide to overheal you while you are killing mobs to set you the HP reduction debuff.

tautau

Do you punish a tank for generating too much aggro?

Do you punish an archer or dagger for generating too much damage beyond what it takes to kill the enemy?

Why punish a healer for being good at their job?

Sathrago

I feel like you are trying to force Mahjong rules into something that should just be a checkers game. I appreciate the effort to try and create a compelling healing system but I personally do not think this would be worth putting in the game.

better luck on the next endeavor

Dygz

Ashes doesn't really have "pure" healing types, in the first place.

godmilk

One the most engaging and skill-rewarding systems for party survival is damage mitigation and prevention. This type of sustain, we can call it "protection" for the moment, does a fantastic job of creating a much more engaging experience for the healer. So often as a healer, you're just looking at the party window and "red bar healing". Because protection is most effective when used BEFORE taking the damage, you now need to watch the battlefield, follow the damage, and choose the appropriate spell for the type of damage being delivered.

Perhaps you're in a cavern with fire elementals that use slow casting but high burst damage spells. In this situation a protection ability that prevents greater than 10% max health loss from a single spell or attack for the next 5 seconds may be a wonderful solution to avoid your teammates getting burst down and much more skill based than just reacting to the damage with a heal.

Maybe you're in the den of a clan of bone-wielding warrior trolls and they charge your group. A spell that buffs the party with an increased chance to evade/block attacks may mean the difference between being able to survive or a wipe. Just throwing some really basic examples out, but the dynamics here can be wonderfully deep and meaningful.

For me, the main problem this solves is the healer just sitting in the rear of encounter staring at the party health bars and reactively healing the damage. The proactive approach to watching the fight, following the damage and preventing it, creates a much more skillful, engaging experience and also creates a culture where you know right away when you have a highly skilled healer and these players become renowned for their skill server-wide!

Dygz

Ashes Clerics are designed to be more active in battle than just standing in the rear, staring at the health bars.

PotatoMasherAnnie

Dygz wrote: »

Ashes Clerics are designed to be more active in battle than just standing in the rear, staring at the health bars.

This is what I want to hear Can't wait to get into the game and see what "more active" means!

mfckingjoker

Well that's why mana was introduced. I think this obstacle is enough

Kaban

It's enough to limit mana regeneration possibilities. For example in L2 there were no mana potions neither food nor drinks, and mana regeneration was fairly slow doing the raid required multiple healers to cooperate and take turns in order to preserve mana and you could heal someone to full healthg in mere seconds but that was costly and forced you to actually know how much you can heal so you did not overheal. If healing costs and effectiveness are well balanced it'll prevent overhealing just by itself.