healer balance thoughts-pvp

So AoC isn't balancing for 1v1s, They are focusing more on large scale battles. So I'm curious on peoples thoughts for how with that in mind, that's going to translate over to smaller scale fights. Obviously skill selection, augmentation, skill point allocation, gear, and skill are all going to play a factor. We don't have all the info and I'm just speculating. A lot of games have trouble balancing healers for all content. Do you think the average pure healer(cleric/cleric) will/will not/should/should not be nearly unkillable in a 1v1? Please try to stay unbiased.
In a 1v1 if they are unkillable while they have mana and have enough ways to gain mana back that could cause them to be over powered. On the other hand if they are just unkillable for 45 seconds until they run out of mana they could potentially be under powered and lose every 1v1. Or maby they will be struggling to stay alive for 45 seconds until they are killed or they run out of mana and die. Which way do you think would be the better direction if any of those? You don't want healers to be to strong in small scale fights but at the same time I wouldn't want them to feel weak in larger scale fights. They need to be able to heal pve content and have enough mana to get through boss fights. If you were a healer focused on staying alive and you couldn't even do that in a 1v1 situation, would that feel unfair/fair for you? If you were a damage dealer and couldn't 1v1 a healer would that feel unfair/fair for you?
If the "average healer" is to strong, what about a cleric/tank wearing full plate + shield focused on survivability. With 8 classes, 64 possible combinations, and any class wearing any armor/weapon type, small scale fights could go in any direction. Any other builds you think could transition poorly into small scale fights?

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Geronimo

I would fully expect a healer to lose to DPS in 1v1 every single time (given equal skill, level and gear). Otherwise the games trinity implementation is broken, what idiot would want to roll DPS when they could not even kill an equivalent healer 1v1? And why would we need tanks to absorb damage?

But I would not call that a "poor transition" more of part of the design.

To answer your question though, assuming equal skill and equal level for a healer vs DPS:

Survivable until out of mana is my opinion but certainly not for 45 seconds. Maybe 15 seconds max, 45 seconds is a lifetime in PVP. 15 seconds gives them time to find their friends, 45 seconds they can have a smoke and then go find their friends.

For a true trinity type feel however, the healer should be able to outlast the damage output of a tank and have mana that regenerates fast enough to kill off the tank after a long drawn out pillow-fight.

And then to come full circle the tank should be able to handle the damage delivered by the DPS in order get in enough whacks and kill the DPS.

This keeps everyone in their place with a rock-paper-scissors type concept. It means that any party with different classes will be better than a party of all the same class.

In reality however there will always be variables in skill, levels, gear so it will almost NEVER actually work out this cleanly.

All just my opinion and stated as such.

ptitoine

Well in my opinon if you ru out of mana after 45sec the design is kinda bad. cause How do you expect to heal in raid or dungeon if fight last longer than 45sec.

But I think it always depends of who fight the (cleric/cleric) If you put a pure (dps/dps) it would be much easier than (dps/support - dps/tank - etc ...)

Also healer so be able to deffend themselve in 1v1 situation otherwise it mean their dmg is too low to even quest in solo properly. Not saying they should kill the dps/dps in 2 second but to have a good mix of both healing so they have few opening to dps also not just spam heal to hope someone will save them

bloodprophet

TTK(time to kill) is slated to be around 30-60 seconds.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/PvP#Time_to_kill

With everything being balanced on a group of 8 vs 1v1 and also based on rock - paper -scissors everyone should have a hard counter. and depending on what dps vs the healer this could vary a lot. Depending on interrupts and mana drain, ranged vs melee LOS and so forth. Will be interesting and fun to see what small unit fights look like a year after launch.

Boanergese

What they are saying is that are fine with you killing a cleric in 1 v 1. They don't care about what happens when I am journeying down the road by myself. If rogue kills mage and mage kills warrior, it doesn't matter to them. They don't care about the cat and mouse game. There aren't going to be any glass cannon death in under 10 second builds. They are focused on the 200 vs 200 combat. So, it's going to be my squad of 20 people trying to defend the western wall against your siege weapons and teammate who are protecting your siege weapon. It is going to be 40 on 30 guild wars where we declare a war against another guild. It's going to be guarding a caravan with your 10-20 players against bandits who would destroy your caravan and steal your resources. It's going to be combat on the high sea. They aren't worried about balancing every archetype with every augment combination. That would be too much work. I am sure the DPS will be normalized with 2-3% and different archetypes will bring different utility to the group.

Anarchy1

Boanergese wrote: »

What they are saying is that are fine with you killing a cleric in 1 v 1. They don't care about what happens when I am journeying down the road by myself. If rogue kills mage and mage kills warrior, it doesn't matter to them. They don't care about the cat and mouse game. There aren't going to be any glass cannon death in under 10 second builds. They are focused on the 200 vs 200 combat. So, it's going to be my squad of 20 people trying to defend the western wall against your siege weapons and teammate who are protecting your siege weapon. It is going to be 40 on 30 guild wars where we declare a war against another guild. It's going to be guarding a caravan with your 10-20 players against bandits who would destroy your caravan and steal your resources. It's going to be combat on the high sea. They aren't worried about balancing every archetype with every augment combination. That would be too much work. I am sure the DPS will be normalized with 2-3% and different archetypes will bring different utility to the group.

As I mentioned I under stand all that. But there will still be small scale fights open world as well as arenas. Since they are balancing for large scale fights/raids and not balancing for small fights there could be large power gaps in 1v1s. Not complaining, just discussing which classes people think may be above average in smaller scale battles. IMO healers that are balanced for large scaling fights/raids tend to not scale well with smaller scale fights. Generally Stronger then you might want them. Healers need strong enough heals to top off a tank with double their own hp, as well as the other 6 party members, and enough mana or mana recovery to outlast long raid battles. Just my opinion.

edit:spelling

Jahlon

So, food for thought here.

Everyone is always concerned with "Who beats who" at max level.

The truth is, at max level, factoring in equal gear AND equal skill (i.e. super computers who make mistakes less than 3 times in a million opportunities) nobody should win a 1vs1, it should be a stalemate.

The tank and the healer look at each other and say "are we really doing this"?
The tank and the damage dealer both know, the DD can't outpace mitigation, and tank shouldn't have enough CC to contain the DD when he tries to juke and away.

And the Damage Dealer again should not be able to burn down a healer, but the healer should not be able to pursue the damage dealer when he tries to escape and disengage.

Geronimo

@Jahlon I see what you mean but I think having a round-robin type of pecking order improves diversity.

Meaning: a party of all tanks will lose to a party of tanks, healers and DPS.

If all classes were equivalent in 1v1 then it follows that 3 tanks would be equivalent to 1 healer, 1 tank and 1 DPS.

Or to put it another way: if a healer could stare down a DPS 1v1 there would be no reason for the healer to run when the DPS is after his hide, if the healer has no reason to run why would we need a tank for him to hide behind?

Anarchy1

Jahlon wrote: »

The tank and the healer look at each other and say "are we really doing this"?

And the Damage Dealer again should not be able to burn down a healer, but the healer should not be able to pursue the damage dealer when he tries to escape and disengage.

That first statement made me laugh:)

I also agree, for the most part. The times I died as a healer was when I would focus to much on damage let my health drop and they would get a nice combo/stun/interrupt. Or a skilled dps that just outplayed me. The times I could win were when they were forced inside a "containment area" like a duel. Or id bait them to stay engaged keeping my health slightly low. But a lot of the time it was a stalemate and we just went separate ways.

Geronimo wrote: »

@Jahlon I see what you mean but I think having a round-robin type of pecking order improves diversity.

Meaning: a party of all tanks will lose to a party of tanks, healers and DPS.

If all classes were equivalent in 1v1 then it follows that 3 tanks would be equivalent to 1 healer, 1 tank and 1 DPS.

Or to put it another way: if a healer could stare down a DPS 1v1 there would be no reason for the healer to run when the DPS is after his hide, if the healer has no reason to run why would we need a tank for him to hide behind?

When you have multiple damage dealers, multiple cc, and stun its much harder for any class to stay alive. they need peels when you focus a target. Or they might just CC the healer until they kill one of his teammates. A healer may potentially stare down a dps in a 1v1, but 3v3s completely different. You can't just face tank and expect to come out on top.

Dygz

That Cleric/Cleric might be unkillable, but that doesn't mean they will also be able to do enough damage to kill their opponent(s).

Anarchy1

Dygz wrote: »

That Cleric/Cleric might be unkillable, but that doesn't mean they will also be able to do enough damage to kill their opponent(s).

That is true depending on in combat life regen, or if the non cleric can heal or not, If they can't they may have to retreat or slowly be whittled down. The most basic heal could keep them alive against a cleric/cleric indefinitely.

Dygz

Doesn't even have to be a heal - it could be stellar damage mitigation or strategic use of passives, like Health Regeneration and Defense Mitigation and Physical Evasion Bonus.

Kovrm

Jahlon has a video about the RPS balancing stuff on YT. It went pretty deep, and fairly detailed. Worth the time to watch/listen, imo.

daveywavey

Kovrm wrote: »

Worth the time to watch/listen

Azherae

Without repeating my usual Mitigation-Cooldowns-Attrition diatribe (people who know me know where to find those, so I reference it in this way only):

As a Healer I expect Mitigation classes to lose to me eventually if I take Damage over Time stuff or can stay in melee range, and Burst Damage classes with higher cooldowns to beat me because I can't heal fast enough. I only expect the 'are we really doing this?' from High Priests and other Shadow Disciples, even with other Cleric/X combinations I generally have some expectations based on what the X is supposed to help them do (whether it pushes them closer to Mitigation, where I expect to win, or Attrition, where I would probably lose)

In 3v3 I expect protection or distraction to force the enemy Burst Damage classes to have no damage available left to face off with others if they insist on killing me. That is, some of their time or power goes toward someone else or is prevented, giving me a chance to heal everyone and live either because buying me more time lets me get more healing done, or distracting the enemy forces them to use mana or abilities that were then not used to damage me.

So since I'm choosing to play heavy Mitigation with only a little Attrition, I don't think that as a healer I should be able to survive 1v1 against Cooldowns builds, assuming they do their damage dump fast enough before all my Mitigation kicks in.

In Open World I believe this means I would always be gank-able because the ganker gets to do the initial big damage, then keep at it while I rush to heal. The correct action from my end would actually be to carefully stagger and time my non-healing Mitigation according to what Class they are, and hope that I survive long enough to get all my good stuff up without CC, but I would expect to always be disadvantaged enough to lose in even fights.

Leiloni

Anarchy23 wrote: »

Boanergese wrote: »

What they are saying is that are fine with you killing a cleric in 1 v 1. They don't care about what happens when I am journeying down the road by myself. If rogue kills mage and mage kills warrior, it doesn't matter to them. They don't care about the cat and mouse game. There aren't going to be any glass cannon death in under 10 second builds. They are focused on the 200 vs 200 combat. So, it's going to be my squad of 20 people trying to defend the western wall against your siege weapons and teammate who are protecting your siege weapon. It is going to be 40 on 30 guild wars where we declare a war against another guild. It's going to be guarding a caravan with your 10-20 players against bandits who would destroy your caravan and steal your resources. It's going to be combat on the high sea. They aren't worried about balancing every archetype with every augment combination. That would be too much work. I am sure the DPS will be normalized with 2-3% and different archetypes will bring different utility to the group.

As I mentioned I under stand all that. But there will still be small scale fights open world as well as arenas. Since they are balancing for large scale fights/raids and not balancing for small fights there could be large power gaps in 1v1s. Not complaining, just discussing which classes people think may be above average in smaller scale battles. IMO healers that are balanced for large scaling fights/raids tend to not scale well with smaller scale fights. Generally Stronger then you might want them. Healers need strong enough heals to top off a tank with double their own hp, as well as the other 6 party members, and enough mana or mana recovery to outlast long raid battles. Just my opinion.

edit:spelling

Intrepid's stance around basing balance around group fights and not solo or 2-4 man groups, is that yes some classes will be better in 1v1 or 3v3 open world fights and they're ok with that. And frankly that's how many MMO's do things. Some classes are good small scale, some are better large scale. Every spec has it's strength and that's a core idea of MMO's.

If a person wants to spec into being a Cleric with great survivability, yes they'll be good at surviving small scale because that's the point of the class, and they're giving up damage, so they will have a hard time soloing mobs and will never kill another player - 1v1 vs a Cleric like that would be a standstill, nobody would die. On the other hand a Cleric could aim for more dps at the cost of healing, and that build would look different as well. All of that is ok.

Not everything will be perfectly balanced and it's not intended to be. If you prefer small scale, try making a class and build that works better solo. You have the freedom to do that with the extent of builds in this game, so take advantage.

Anarchy1

[quote="Leiloni;c-329050"

Not everything will be perfectly balanced and it's not intended to be. If you prefer small scale, try making a class and build that works better solo. You have the freedom to do that with the extent of builds in this game, so take advantage.[/quote]

I completely agree. There's going to be so much diversity in builds I'm looking forward to it. Can't wait until we get more info just to theorize builds.

RazThemun

I find part of the problem within many mmorpgs... is that they spend all this time trying to balance classes... that they then have no time to work on other content. If a class is truly that bad I would rather just change the class then sit around with little content such as questing because all their time is invested in making it so fighting a warrior feels nice as a Rogue, and Mage, and Ranger. Create the archetypes and if people don't like how they feel they can swap the second archetype or ditch the class all together.

Anarchy1

RazThemun wrote: »

I find part of the problem within many mmorpgs... is that they spend all this time trying to balance classes... that they then have no time to work on other content. If a class is truly that bad I would rather just change the class then sit around with little content such as questing because all their time is invested in making it so fighting a warrior feels nice as a Rogue, and Mage, and Ranger. Create the archetypes and if people don't like how they feel they can swap the second archetype or ditch the class all together.

I honestly don't know how much resources companies put into it. Do most companies have a dedicated team or 1 person always checking balance of classes or do they just focus on it when there is a problem. As long as every archetype has a place where it shines or at least contends(whether that's buffing/healing/damage output, crowd control or w.e, as well as not completely overshadowing every other class to the point every group is demanding 12/16 party members be range/summoners. I personally won't care about balancing every little thing. If say a Rogue/duelist is just one shotting people they should be debuffed. I just hate when they overdo it and go to the other side of the spectrum and make classes go from overpowered to underpowered.

Goalid

Just nerf self-healing to the point where it's balanced for whatever you're trying to balance 1v1. Then if there are multiple healers, the strat is to burst one and cc the others.

mcstackerson

One solution to this might come with active block. If a good tank can use their block to mitigate most of the damage, then healers don't need to be designed to constantly recover large amounts of health as the tank gets chunked.

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