How will healing work?

I haven't had a chance to see how healers work, and couldn't find much info online except spell descriptions and animations (no info on cooldowns etc).

Short version: I want to know if healers will work like spammy-heal-bots (like WoW) or if healing spells will be more situational like in D&D.

Long version: I loved playing WoW (while it was good) but it always bothered me a bit when healers just spam spells without end like some weird holy-machine-gun. It feels like the tank losing an Arm on each attack and being stitched up by spells over and over

When someone is healed by a spell, I would like it to be a "wow thanks you saved me" situation, instead of the weird approach of "why aren't you spamming heals on me every second?"

My ideal game would be one where spell casters wait for the right moment to cast a spell instead of spamming it over and over.

How is healing working right now? How are cooldowns and what should I expect?

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Azherae

Right now, since it's pretty early, most enemies just do damage, and Cleric doesn't have any 'remove debuff', so that's probably best for the time being.

So as of now, it's pretty 'spammy', or more accurately 'rhythmic' because of the way the Regen ability works.

I can go into more detail if you want, but as Cleric, in group, I'm usually 'casting something whenever a cooldown is up' in a hard fight, and just swinging once or twice between that if the enemy is one where I can get away with melee, which, currently, is 'basically all of them'.

I also prefer when healing is heavily based on 'prevention' and 'losing' is moreso based on 'we're being worn down', but enemies probably can't be tuned too much until the combat system is revamped, so right now that's how it is.

Fairtale

Azherae wrote: »

I can go into more detail if you want, but

no, that already answers my question. I guess we will only see that for real once the new combat system is done. thanks!

Dygz

In Ashes, Clerics, by design, are not intended to just be standing on the outskirts of combat primarily focused on healing.
When I solo, I tend not to use Heals much. It's generally what I do at the end of combat.
If I duo with a Tank, I do focus on heals and let the Tank deal damage.
In Siege, I mostly focus on Hallowed Ground - especially if I can find other Clerics to rotate with so we have a constant placement of that AoE at choke points.

But, combat isn't balanced well at the moment so it's difficult to know how we will really play once we have more features and mechanics.

Fairtale

Dygz wrote: »

But, combat isn't balanced well at the moment so it's difficult to know how we will really play once we have more features and mechanics.

Thanks! and yeah I noticed that it might be a bit too soon to ask these questions.

If possible, I would like AoC to avoid the "whack-a-mole" healing of WoW, in which each hit from the boss takes 30-60% of the tank's health, just to be immediately healed back up a moment later. But I don't have a good idea of how this could be done better. It just always bothered me how the hp goes up/down as if the tank was being split up in pieces and healed back up after each attack, which doesn't feel very epic to me.

Maybe players shouldn't even lose health that fast. Maybe players should first have enemy attacks "break their defense" and only then be open to damage (you know, like a real fight in an epic adventure?). That way it would take longer for players to actually take damage, raids could swap out tanks when that happens, and tanks/bosses would stop feeling so much like bullet-sponges.

keep trying to block attacks;
when you fail to defend, you are "open" to damage;
next attack can seriously damage you or kill you;
that's when healers cast a shield;

But I have never seen anything remotely close to a system like that.

CROW3

One thing I liked in WoW was that the different healing specs felt substantially different with a ‘flavored’ approach to their healing. The most obvious being the Healadin (major direct heals), the Resto Druid (layered hots), and the Disc priest (focused on mitigation).

To your point on the ‘up and down,’ I wonder if the different cleric classes will cover a similar spectrum such that a Templar has a much different style and approach compared to a High Priest…

Dygz

It's not going to be "much" different because they will all have the same Active Skills.
But, it will be significantly different. Especially how they synergize with others in the group.

"We're not really talking about 64 true classes, we're talking about eight classes with 64 variants... There isn't as much variance between the 64 classes as you might expect. It's not like there are, you know, 64 different versions of... radically different classes."
– Jeffrey Bard

darksinge

CROW3 wrote: »

One thing I liked in WoW was that the different healing specs felt substantially different with a ‘flavored’ approach to their healing...

...I wonder if the different cleric classes will cover a similar spectrum such that a Templar has a much different style and approach compared to a High Priest…

I really enjoyed that aspect of healing in WoW too. I mained a holy pally during one xpac and didn't particularly like it, mostly doing it to support my guild. Later, I mained a resto druid for a while and had a blast.

I really hope the secondary archetypes for cleric help achieve various "flavors" of healing. I worry having only one healer class will create a lack of variety. It would be like saying the only ranged DPS will be hunters and the only melee DPS will be warriors. Variety is really important to games like Ashes.

I feel like I'm getting mixed messages because of quotes like Jeffrey Bard that @Dygz shared when paired with other quotes from the wiki :

"The design behind augments is to not just change the flavor so that it reflects the secondary archetype, but it also fundamentally changes the core components of a skill." – Steven Sharif

"Even though augments do radically change the way your active skills provide you abilities, there's still a primary focus on the base archetype itself and not the 64 whole classes." – Steven Sharif

Maybe I just haven't grasped a concept yet, but I feel like these quotes directly conflict with each other. There isn't as much variance between the 64 classes as you might expect, but they will be "significantly different". Augments don't just "change the flavor", but also "fundamentally changes" the skill, but there's still "a primary focus on the base archetype", but also "radically change the way your active skills" work. Eh?

Dygz

Depends on what is meant by fundamental or radical.
Expect Hallowed Ground to always be a healing AoE, but, depending on the augment applied, the damage it outputs could be Shadow damage or a Bleed.A Bard augment might also give allies buffs. A Ranger augment might also Snare or Root enemies caught in Hallowed Ground...or it might Snare or Root rather than deal damage. A suggestion I made on Twitter is that a Rogue augment might be able to also grant allies Invisibility.

We know from the examples that Steven provides that Active ability always does what it does, it just does whatever it is somewhat differently.:

Say for instance, I am a Ranger that has a Charge bolt ability as my primary active skill and I've chosen Mage as my secondary and applied the elemental to it. I now have a Frost charge bolt, and if I fire that frostbolt and hit a target, they may be freezing for a period of time as a debuff and that might slow their speed. If a wizard applies a nuke on a target and that nuke is a frost-based nuke, those two stacking elements might then either further snare (slow the target) or paralyze and freeze the target. So, there are combination out effects that build up: A primary, secondary and some ancillary effect occurs when those are combined.
– Steven Sharif

There's going to be four schools of augmentation for each archetype. One of the schools for the mage is the teleport school. You can take that teleport augment, apply it to your charge skill: now instead of charging x distance over time you're going to immediately teleport to the target dealing x damage and a condition modifier. If you were to apply the elemental school to your class ability you would then instead you would charge x distance; upon reaching target you would set the target ablaze if it's fire or you would electrocute them and deal with damage over time.
– Steven Sharif

You wrote, "flavor", but that is also a somewhat ambiguous and potentially misleading word.
Adding a Frost augment from the Mage Elemental School to the Snare ability of a Scion does not merely change the visual effects of the Snare, it can increase the longevity of the Snare and/or apply a Frost damage that can stack with the Wizard's Frost-based Nuke. That's a bit more than "flavor".
Augments significantly change the Active Skills of the Primary Archetype, but they add to what that ability will already be doing.
Steven's use of the word "radically" appears to be a bit of hyperbole.
Examine his actual examples and then interpret the adjectives "radically" and "fundamentally" as you see fit.

Fairtale

darksinge wrote: »

Maybe I just haven't grasped a concept yet, but I feel like these quotes directly conflict with each other. There isn't as much variance between the 64 classes as you might expect, but they will be "significantly different". Augments don't just "change the flavor", but also "fundamentally changes" the skill, but there's still "a primary focus on the base archetype", but also "radically change the way your active skills" work. Eh?

They probably don't know themselves yet xD

I shouldn't have asked about healing, seeing the answers I notice that we are too early in development to ask about this.

darksinge wrote: »

I really enjoyed that aspect of healing in WoW too.

I also like the way they used to give each healing class a different approach. But I feel like bosses always did too much damage and healers just acted as healbots. I think this is the result of it being a game from 2004, when the boss AI was pretty dumb. So if they didn't make the bosses immune to CC and crazy overpowered, players would exploit the dumb AI (as can be seen in many dungeons where mini-bosses don't have those immunities).

I hope in Ashes they can improve on that.

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