Have Healers and Mages Become too powerful?

Over the years of MMO's I have seen the classes evolve into what they're today. Back in the Day in a MMO casters would suffer large interuptions when casting, so any melee on them would greatly disrupt them, hence needing a party for them to have a "clean pocket" to do what they do best which is heal and do damage.

Now over time people wanted to be able to do more content on their own and at least be ablew to have some soloable content, and rightly so, it is boring always trying to find a group.

That being said, have games gone too far in what we have given mages and healers?
So now they can solo any mob, in most cases many mobs at once
Suffer no penalty for being hit
Have shields,escapes,roots

So is their a downside to playing a healer or a mage?

Mage is maybe a bit squishier but that was always the case as it should be with massive damage output.

Healer, seems of any game of late can take on multiple enemies to kill just 1 healer. where are the silences, the kicks, the stuns...

What are your thoughts on todays healing and mages? in games like Archeage mages rule all and it's not even close, in New World Healing Is Top Dog, In WoW Shadow Priest For years and Probably still is Was the best.

I get it, healing is boring, but that doesn't mean when need to make it so OP that they need to be gods to get people to play it.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Mag7spy

I wouldn't use new world as an example for much tbh, healing was added without design intentions.

What older mmorps are you referring to with healing (where it wasn't op) in your mind set.

TheHiddenDaggerInn

DAoC would be a older MMO where healing was much different, you wouldn't see a healer running around looking for pvp by himself, or soloing mobs, they just were not built like that. Warhammer Online However they started to get pretty OP as well

Mag7spy

Santanico wrote: »

DAoC would be a older MMO where healing was much different, you wouldn't see a healer running around looking for pvp by himself, or soloing mobs, they just were not built like that. Warhammer Online However they started to get pretty OP as well

I would say that even melee classes or the genre as a whole has changed giving classes more mobility in attacks and movement. The buffs aren't just to cleric or mage like classes. To get a older feeling like that you essentially would have to slow down combat on all classes and remove mobility.

Current classes that are melee wouldn't have clerics or mages have any chance what so ever. Also the other thing is i dont think people enjoyed being sitting ducks to cast spells all day. Its just not as fun gameplay as being able to actually move around and do stuff.

Though it doesn't mean there can't be some skills where you need to channel, I'm sure you will see that in aoc.

TheHiddenDaggerInn

ya for sure. I don't think we will ever see the old old days of MMO's with interuptions and such, and people needing groups to do content. And that's ok, I just don't want to see 1 or 2 all powerful classes in a game and I'm really hoping AoC thinks about that when making the gear for the game and how it affects the abilities.

CROW3

Well, to be fair - once you master bending the forces that literally created the universe, you tend to be OP. 😉

Going back to DND, the power of each classes is situational, which is the advantage to a diverse adventuring party. Some games gave a little too much ‘you’re good at all things all the time’ to caster classes to compensate for lack of armor, melee power, etc.

I can speak to WoW best. Examples include Frost mage, Mistweaver monk, and Resto druids. In vanilla, WoW was much more rock-paper-scissors (so is DND). Mages had clear advantage with burst and range, but if a warrior closed distance they were toast unless they escaped. This encouraged diverse groups to form so the advantage of one class covered the weaknesses of another.

However, as WoW leaned heavily toward casual solo-play (a general shift for most mmos too), classes had to become more self-sufficient. Everyone gets a heal! And classes became more oatmeal and players becoming less about working as a team and more self-centered.

I’m hoping Ashes changes this, refocusing us back to playing as teams. This will have the effect of classes becoming more rock-paper-scissors again, and to your point not making some classes be godlike in all scenarios.

TLDR : class imbalance is a function of majority solo play, so the more Ashes focuses on teams, the more a given class will have clear strengths and clear weaknesses.

TheHiddenDaggerInn

I guess the most important issue for me will end up being, the whole Rock, Paper, Scissors theme, if they truly stick to that then we should be ok.

Azherae

I think I don't see it that way.

Many people in the older MMOs used to think 'Healers are good for quick leveling' because they basically get a lot of invites and people often put up with less skilled ones.

But from MUCH anecdotal experience, people also treat healers like disposable bots around 50% of the time. Like, 'will get their group of DPS friends together, maybe befriend the tank if they aren't part of the group, but the healer is just an interchangeable thing that you don't befriend much'.

Not sure of the arrow of causation there if there even is one, after all, a healer in super high demand who doesn't turn down parties won't necessarily get too close to any given one.

Anyways, problem is that DPS 'can always solo mobs' even if it is expensive (obviously hyperbole) and the 'tradeoff' was often that Healers 'couldn't'.

But then it was changed to not be that way, basically.

It's also a flaw in the way most games design healing requirements, yes, but I think they should all be able to solo mobs, just differently. Tanks be slow, DPS be risky/expensive, Healers be between the two (mana runs out, damage is low).

If Mana doesn't run out, well, there's your problem. Similar for when the only real threat a character faces is 'Is my HP 0 yet? If not, do normal thing'.

Iskiab

I think healers became powerful out of necessity. For example I played WoW for a little bit and never saw a shortage of healers, in earlier MMOs that was never the case.

Healers having decent damage and being powerful made them popular so there wasn't a healer shortage. The same happened with tanks, who are very powerful, but most people don't like to tank so they are never as popular.

People react to incentives, have no incentive to heal and people won't play them. It would be a game of solo players. For healers to not be powerful you'd need forced grouping.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

It's also a flaw in the way most games design healing requirements, yes, but I think they should all be able to solo mobs, just differently. Tanks be slow, DPS be risky/expensive, Healers be between the two (mana runs out, damage is low).

If Mana doesn't run out, well, there's your problem. Similar for when the only real threat a character faces is 'Is my HP 0 yet? If not, do normal thing'.

L2 had a somewhat nice solution. Healers could either only damage undead mobs or make a transformation into a dpsing mage (with lower dps than a standard mage) but lose the ability to heal, unless they transformed back. Their solo farming was either quite slow or as risky as a solo mage's would be.

Depraved

Santanico wrote: »

Over the years of MMO's I have seen the classes evolve into what they're today. Back in the Day in a MMO casters would suffer large interuptions when casting, so any melee on them would greatly disrupt them, hence needing a party for them to have a "clean pocket" to do what they do best which is heal and do damage.

Now over time people wanted to be able to do more content on their own and at least be ablew to have some soloable content, and rightly so, it is boring always trying to find a group.

That being said, have games gone too far in what we have given mages and healers?
So now they can solo any mob, in most cases many mobs at once
Suffer no penalty for being hit
Have shields,escapes,roots

So is their a downside to playing a healer or a mage?

Mage is maybe a bit squishier but that was always the case as it should be with massive damage output.

Healer, seems of any game of late can take on multiple enemies to kill just 1 healer. where are the silences, the kicks, the stuns...

What are your thoughts on todays healing and mages? in games like Archeage mages rule all and it's not even close, in New World Healing Is Top Dog, In WoW Shadow Priest For years and Probably still is Was the best.

I get it, healing is boring, but that doesn't mean when need to make it so OP that they need to be gods to get people to play it.

yeah it would be nice to be able to interrupt casters with attacks other than cc. it would also make the casting speed stat more valuable. it would also be nice ot be able to interrupt fighters abilities too, perhaps at a lower chance.

Mag7spy wrote: »

I wouldn't use new world as an example for much tbh, healing was added without design intentions.

What older mmorps are you referring to with healing (where it wasn't op) in your mind set.

what do you mean? the life staff was one of the first weapons in the game and it was always able to heal o-o it had different skills though

koltovince

Healers are in a weird spot right now where they are shifting more into semi DPS who go back to healing whenever someone messes up or a mechanic happens. While I personally hate doing DPS on a healer I know friends who love an MMO where you can do that, but I think it raises the question is a healer OP if they are able to do decent DPS, AND still be the healer keeping everyone up?

While I don't think healers should do no damage because that would kill non-group healer, I don't think a healer doing DPS a thing in bigger content, else what is the downside of being a healer, doing slightly less damage than the DPS and having immortal healing?

If we are talking the PVP scene I have an example MMO to bring the question of if Healers are too OP is a proper idea. In SWTOR, healers where infamous for being hard to kill, especially if a tank could guard them (redirect 50% of the dmg taken by guarded target to the tank). Before a certain expansion, a healer would never die unless 2 very good DPS, or 3 average DPS would attack the healer out of the 8 man group. Seems very OP right? But after a certain expansion, all DPS and tanks received double the damage from the expansion but healers remained the same, effectively nerfing them.

After the expansion, all healers now can be killed by a single DPS so long as the healer doesn't have a tank, and a particularly dedicated DPS can effectively make a healer useless because all the healing that healer does is on themselves and that might not even save them. Healers were no longer OP, but it felt terrible to play a healer, because anytime an enemy player saw you and you didn't bring a tank friend or get one via matchmaking, you would die and not be able to outheal the damage.

So with the above example given, I want to ask if you think healers not being "too powerful" is a proper downside to being a healer in PVP? Getting focused is a given, but there has to be a counter for healers to receive from being focused by the enemy. The downside shouldn't be play with friends who can group with you, nor should there be zero downsides to play a healer. But a balance must be maintained or else having too many downsides can kill the role in certain content.

TheDarkSorcerer

There shouldn't be a "downside" to play any class. It's called balancing the game right... Ranged classes should be squishier but output higher dmg. And healers should be able to tank if needed.

Magicka Sorcerers in ESO (weakest class in the game) is looking at this thread like:

Iskiab

Problem with threads like this is first people have to agree on how things should be, but no one does. For example, a competent healer shouldn't be able to be killed by a single player.

That's a simple statement that everyone should agree with if they think about the subject for a while objectively, but most people don't get past, 'I want to PK people, and I can't PK a healer by myself, so I don't like it, especially since I don't play one'.

I think before jumping into counters for things, first discuss about how things should be, then discuss about how it can be implemented.

JamesSunderland

Iskiab wrote: »

Problem with threads like this is first people have to agree on how things should be, but no one does. For example, a competent healer shouldn't be able to be killed by a single player.

Even if that single player(Not a tank nor a healer) is more skilled/geared than that competent healer?

CROW3

Iskiab wrote: »

a competent healer shouldn't be able to be killed by a single player.

So all things being equal, a healer can’t be killed by another player in 1:1? I disagree. Classes need to have advantages over some, and weaknesses to others.

Noaani

CROW3 wrote: »

Iskiab wrote: »

a competent healer shouldn't be able to be killed by a single player.

So all things being equal, a healer can’t be killed by another player in 1:1? I disagree. Classes need to have advantages over some, and weaknesses to others.

I think it is perfectly balanced if a healer can't be killed by an equal DPS or tank.

The equalizing factor there is that the healer can't kill the DPS/tank either.

TheDarkSorcerer

CROW3 wrote: »

Iskiab wrote: »

a competent healer shouldn't be able to be killed by a single player.

So all things being equal, a healer can’t be killed by another player in 1:1? I disagree. Classes need to have advantages over some, and weaknesses to others.

Well the disadvantage of being a competent healer and not being killed by one player is that this healer probably can't kill a fly with it's low dmg output. That's the disadvantage.

Electronn

In my view, healer classes should allow the player to choose where they fall on the dps/healer spectrum. Top tier raiding guilds will demand that their healer be spec'd all the way to max healer, but this should leave very little room for the healer to do damage. And if the healer wants to spec to do decent damage, it should take a good bite out of their healing. Pick your spot on the spectrum.

I agree with @Iskiab that a dps should not be able to solo kill a healer who is on their game, but the healer shouldn't be able to down the dps either. That should be a stalemate, a battle that lasts a very long time and comes down to who is the most skilled with their class. The dps is doing big damage with the healer healing through it, while the healer is doing much less damage that the dps is countering with procs and consumables.

Myosotys

Santanico wrote: »

Over the years of MMO's I have seen the classes evolve into what they're today. Back in the Day in a MMO casters would suffer large interuptions when casting, so any melee on them would greatly disrupt them, hence needing a party for them to have a "clean pocket" to do what they do best which is heal and do damage.

Now over time people wanted to be able to do more content on their own and at least be ablew to have some soloable content, and rightly so, it is boring always trying to find a group.

That being said, have games gone too far in what we have given mages and healers?
So now they can solo any mob, in most cases many mobs at once
Suffer no penalty for being hit
Have shields,escapes,roots

So is their a downside to playing a healer or a mage?

Mage is maybe a bit squishier but that was always the case as it should be with massive damage output.

Healer, seems of any game of late can take on multiple enemies to kill just 1 healer. where are the silences, the kicks, the stuns...

What are your thoughts on todays healing and mages? in games like Archeage mages rule all and it's not even close, in New World Healing Is Top Dog, In WoW Shadow Priest For years and Probably still is Was the best.

I get it, healing is boring, but that doesn't mean when need to make it so OP that they need to be gods to get people to play it.

It's true that in the past magicians/healers were classes for fast xp, farming ressources and group PvP support but not 1V1 PvP. I liked it.

If a warrior cannot kill a healer in 1V1 (heal better than damages), I think it is still fine. But I hate when healers have some heavy damage spells... I prefer to have 2 chars, 1 char for physical damage and one healer.

I dont think healing is boring, I love to play a priest but a real priest healer support.

And I hope devs schedulled some resist elements spells easy to reach to any classes.

Mag7spy

Competent dps should be able to kill a healer as there should be ways to spec against healing as well.

Child Item