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Healing & Support vs. Damage & CC

In most games I've played with healers present, healing is heavy and player crowd control is heavy. Every player is generally given some CC. DPS classes are caked with 4 second duration CC on their actionbars to combat heavy heals and support. Healers can be put out of a fight in PvP for more than 30 seconds at a time in some games.

How do you think Ashes of Creation should handle this? Should healing be heavy and CC long or should things be scaled more moderately? I've played in both style of games and I'm fine with either myself, although as a healer I do have a preference to be in control of my character more often than not.

Comments

  • With experience in WoW arenas (Low Rating) a lot of time stunned is not very good especially if the DPS in this game will be bursty. Thinking from a pvp perspective CC should be short but on shorter CDs in my opinion.
  • [quote quote=8705]With experience in WoW arenas (Low Rating) a lot of time stunned is not very good especially if the DPS in this game will be bursty. Thinking from a pvp perspective CC should be short but on shorter CDs in my opinion.

    [/quote]
    In WoW, I'd do battlegrounds and the heavy healers would heal me to full and I'd heal them to full. Healers would dispel other healers from magic based CC. Get 3 healers together and then the DPS couldn't do much about it if they didn't also have 3 healers. Have only 1 healer on a BG team and then get rolled over by every healing spell getting interrupted.

    It is a system that works, but it is very delicate. Just 1 heavy healer being freed from the burden of heavy CC can win a battle.
  • I prefer the idea of having diminishing returns for all CC.

    Back when I played wow, some CC had different diminishing returns and this led to some long long CC chains where it was not fun. I even saw a video once where a horde team mind controlled and CC'd an alliance member all the way to the horde flag room in WSG....
  • Diminishing returns help, but in WoW there are different forms of CC and some with varying lengths and separate diminishing returns attached to them.
  • Well I'm not sure how the top end PvP'rs would think, but I prefer all CC to share diminishing returns.

    One way to really help with the CC issue is make LOS (line of sight) actually work, like trees or boulders effective. In WoW LOS would not work half of the time on older maps (not sure if that has changed or not).
  • When diminishing returns works well, DPS players hate it from my experiences. They end up tripping over each other when they want to use their CC. It is just hard to coordinate instant cast spells. When diminishing returns doesn't work well then it is like it isn't even there. The CC almost always lands and is only good at restricting the no cooldown abilities.

    It's a very odd system to balance from what I've seen. It makes CC builds a little less practical in large groups when those builds are competing against everybody (and their dogs too if there are pet classes present).
  • The way it was designed in WoW was based off of smaller groups and balanced around arenas, so a lot of it breaks with larger groups but still does the trick.
  • Having to stack 3 healers is a pretty boring way to play in any situation, IMO. I don't mind healers being "OP", as long as there *is* a way to counter them. A big problem with PVP is zergs, and if the healer/healers aren't able to counter them with the help of their group due to not having enough CC, heals, light armour, etc, then fights become very boring very fast. Now if a group with one good healer can fight a small zerg (say 4v10 or so) because the small zerg is made up of people who expect to just spam their skills for the healer to die, and then that should be possible. If they *are* able to kill the healer by rolling their face across the board, then it's probably not balanced the way it should be. Though obviously the skill of the healer often plays a major role, this is assuming said healer knows what they're doing.

    So it's really finding the balance there. I personally like how ESO handles CC where you can break out of it with a quick, and spammable, skill. CC's are still an annoyance, but you're not going to have to stand there useless while you die/are being healed.
  • I played a Chanter (support/healer) in Aion. Solo healed alot of 4-5 vs 10-15 fights. Managing between buffing, debuffing, and healing characters. That was hectic as all get out but fun. Also helped having alot of mana items. Chanters weren't known for their great heals unlike the Cleric. Love seeing "Holy crap, you're a chanter?"
  • The way I see it is I enjoy diminishing returns. As mentioned with wow it's kind of nice because it's not a total immunity to the CC, duration is just reduced by a percentage based on how many times that "class" of CC was used on them in a time frame. SWtoR's system was pretty interesting too. After 4 hard CCs you were "white barred" and immune. This got made you pay attention and not just faceroll all your CC hotkeys. I enjoy that version because it requires cooperation between teams, and intelligent use of your CC.

    If they go a route with no immunity or diminishing returns a 10-20 second CD CC break based on class would be nice to see. It also promotes intelligent play because CC can be very prevalent in the game, the risk being you broke a CC at a wrong time and no you will be chained into oblivion.

    It'll be interesting to see what method they decide to go with or if they end up give us a little mix of it all.
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