Too many healers?

Will there be too many healers in AoC with too little demand for them?

My concern stems from two bits of information coming from Steven, stated in various interviews.

1.) Clerics will be the only main archetype with a focus on healing, that is, you’ll need to be a cleric/something to fulfill the healer role in your group.
2.) The standard group size will be 8, and the content/PvP will be balanced around the idea of these groups of 8 containing one of each of the main archetypes.

It follows from the above that a group of 8 will require one main healer, allowing that other something/cleric classes will be able to provide some off healing, the ratio of which we have no information on as of now.

I have little experience with MMOs, only ever played WoW and ESO, where the standard group sizes (requiring one healer) are 5 and 4, respectively. And in neither of these games have I seen a shortage of healers, which means that every 4th or 5th player in the game is willing to play a healer. If AoC is balanced in a way that requires every 8th person to play a healer, won’t there be too many of (with too little demand for) them?

#clericunemployment

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Attar

I've only seen the lack of the trinity work in games with active blocking, like champions online. Whoever is getting attacked stops attacking and starts blocking while others do their thing until the mob changes target.

Piedplat

Scifi wrote: »

isn't bard part of the healer group too?

Bard is a buffer / debuffer not a healer.

CCCorp

delghinn wrote: »

does seem quite a mistake to only have one base archetype each to support tank and healer roles

clerics in table top games and literature while often a tier down on raw general damage are often highly destructive to exceedingly dangerous targets like undead and demonic. both monster types that get powered down in video games from their table top and literature counter parts which greatly diminish the combative role for the cleric archetype.
..

Not going to lie, i want to roll High Priest and i really hope i can obliterate undead/shadow/demon monsters xD nothing wrong with an archetype being better at something then another!

Damokles

bloodprophet wrote: »

GW1 only had 1 healer class at launch. The monk.

But GW1 also let you choose two classes at the same time. Warrior/Monk was one of the strongest choices tbh.

Aeri

Damokles wrote: »

But GW1 also let you choose two classes at the same time. Warrior/Monk was one of the strongest choices tbh.

I could be wrong (it's been... many many years since I played the original Guild Wars), but the problem with comparing AoC to GW1 in this way, is that you had access to all the skills of your secondary class, regardless of your primary. Monk/X and X/Monk all had nearly the same healing potential.

This is likely not going to be the case in AoC. While it is entirely possible, is it likely that the X/Cleric classes are probably not going to be nearly as effective at healing as the Cleric/X classes. Well, except Cleric/Cleric, which might be stronger than all the others.

Damokles

Aeri wrote: »

Damokles wrote: »

But GW1 also let you choose two classes at the same time. Warrior/Monk was one of the strongest choices tbh.

I could be wrong (it's been... many many years since I played the original Guild Wars), but the problem with comparing AoC to GW1 in this way, is that you had access to all the skills of your secondary class, regardless of your primary. Monk/X and X/Monk all had nearly the same healing potential.

This is likely not going to be the case in AoC. While it is entirely possible, is it likely that the X/Cleric classes are probably not going to be nearly as effective at healing as the Cleric/X classes. Well, except Cleric/Cleric, which might be stronger than all the others.

We didnt actually compare GW1 with AoC though ;D

You are right though, that the secondary class did give you access to its spells.
(I loved to play Derwish with Assassin for the shadowstep xD)

Cold 0ne FTB

Orell wrote: »

Will there be too many healers in AoC with too little demand for them?

My concern stems from two bits of information coming from Steven, stated in various interviews.

1.) Clerics will be the only main archetype with a focus on healing, that is, you’ll need to be a cleric/something to fulfill the healer role in your group.
2.) The standard group size will be 8, and the content/PvP will be balanced around the idea of these groups of 8 containing one of each of the main archetypes.

It follows from the above that a group of 8 will require one main healer, allowing that other something/cleric classes will be able to provide some off healing, the ratio of which we have no information on as of now.

I have little experience with MMOs, only ever played WoW and ESO, where the standard group sizes (requiring one healer) are 5 and 4, respectively. And in neither of these games have I seen a shortage of healers, which means that every 4th or 5th player in the game is willing to play a healer. If AoC is balanced in a way that requires every 8th person to play a healer, won’t there be too many of (with too little demand for) them?

#clericunemployment

Have you ever played a healer in ESO. Do you know why the queue group finder is mere minutes for a healer or a tank but upwards of an hour for a dps? There is a shortage. It is also hard to compare because how many healers you need depends on the content. Most good ball groups will run up to 8 healers for their raid ((this is out of a 16-24 person group.)) WHere as the PVE equivalent trials run 2 healers out of a group of 12.

CaptnChuck

In this class poll post, https://www.strawpoll.me/20648367, look at the amount of cleric players.

I feel like there might indeed be too many healers in this game. But I feel like Intrepid knows this, hence why clerics are given dmg as well. I just hope that they balance it out, as having a cleric that can outheal your damage while dealing a lot of damage to you is just unfun to play against. They will also completely outvalue other dps classes in group content due to the sheer value that healing has.

bloodprophet

looks about right 75% dps and 25% tank/heal.
I intend to start as mage but if there is a lack of healers I'll roll a cleric alt. Was going to anyway but if finding groups gets to be to much of a challenge then heals it is.
When they added group finder to WOW dps que's were super long. I leveled a Discipline healer priest never left Orgimar once I could que. I logged in hit que as healer and got instant groups as long as i wanted them.
Personally glad there will be no group finder. But his worked for me as I was already raiding on my mage and was just trying to power through a healer so I could fill either role as the guild needed. Ended up raiding with both was good fun.

Leiloni

CaptnChuck wrote: »

In this class poll post, https://www.strawpoll.me/20648367, look at the amount of cleric players.

I feel like there might indeed be too many healers in this game. But I feel like Intrepid knows this, hence why clerics are given dmg as well. I just hope that they balance it out, as having a cleric that can outheal your damage while dealing a lot of damage to you is just unfun to play against. They will also completely outvalue other dps classes in group content due to the sheer value that healing has.

Well Clerics are given damage because I think a lot of the classes seem to take inspiration from their more traditional D&D counterparts where Cleric does indeed have decent damage and CC, wears Medium/Chain armor often, along with lots of heals/cleanses, and is more of a fighter than a delicate cloth wearing heal bot.

But in terms of the poll I think it's right on target. In a party of 8, 1 Cleric would be 12.5% of the party makeup. In the poll, they're 14% of the votes. So that works out just fine. If somehow there's an abundance of Clerics, well I'm sure many parties will be flexible in the class makeup so friends/guildies might be happy to take one more, especially if that extra Cleric is more dps or support focused.

lunarsky

In my roughly 20 years of MMOs I have never played a game with an overabundance of healers or tanks. They are always in demand. I don't expect ashes to be any different and I highly doubt /cleric will be able to reliably off heal. I wouldn't get overly concerned about it for now. Since we have only seen gameplay of Cleric, Mage, Tank thus far in the Alpha build it may also be skewing numbers too.

EmoNagger

In my mmo gaming experience (Lineage 1, RO, Knights online, wow in usa/taiwan/china server, aion, RF online, MU online and 2 more I can't remember the name...) there is always a lack of tank/healer class.

Orell

Cold 0ne FTB wrote: »

Orell wrote: »

Have you ever played a healer in ESO. Do you know why the queue group finder is mere minutes for a healer or a tank but upwards of an hour for a dps? There is a shortage. It is also hard to compare because how many healers you need depends on the content. Most good ball groups will run up to 8 healers for their raid ((this is out of a 16-24 person group.)) WHere as the PVE equivalent trials run 2 healers out of a group of 12.

Yes, in fact I played a healer in ESO. Mostly ran stuff with my guild, and we had plenty of healers, so I sometimes had to take a bench, and I also remember spending "long" minutes in the group finder queue. But I trust the judgement of those with more experience in MMOs than myself, and hope that it will work out just fine. The poll quoted above by CaptnChuck seems promising, as there's only a 3% difference between the most and the least popular classes. Other games, as far as I know, have much more skewed ratios.

apmax

There is never an abundance of healers in an MMO. You are crazy.
If anything the huge worry would be there being far too few healers considering there is only one primary healing archetype. We can only hope that cleric secondary classes will be good enough offhealers to make up for not being able to find one of the few primary healing archetype players out there.

delghinn

apmax wrote: »

There is never an abundance of healers in an MMO. You are crazy.
If anything the huge worry would be there being far too few healers considering there is only one primary healing archetype. We can only hope that cleric secondary classes will be good enough offhealers to make up for not being able to find one of the few primary healing archetype players out there.

since the decrepit trinity is stated to be the game play group mechanic they should do the following:

cleric/* differing themes of support however all equivalent and viable
*/cleric differing themes of support however all equivalent and viable

tank/* differing themes of tank however all equivalent and viable
*/tank differing themes of tank however all equivalent and viable

also cleric and tank base classes can aug into dps archetypes to be viable dps in that theme too

if only cleric/* and tank/* are viable in those roles than there is going to be the usual extreme shortfall of players to play those roles. also if tank/tank and cleric/cleric are the most effective at those roles than that's all that will ever be run in challenging content.

bloodprophet

So everyone can do everything at all times?

delghinn

bloodprophet wrote: »

So everyone can do everything at all times?

if they spec to augment cleric then they can provide the healer role of the trinity. if they spec augment to tank then they can provide the tank role of the trinity. the horror. now tanks and cleric mains will be on equal footing to every other class. each of those could more easily try their hand at dps as well.

I would challenge the devs to have two weeks with only main tank and cleric classes able to provide each of that trinity role and then move that viability to the augments the following two weeks. You think that viability will ever be removed from the augments?

By the enormous wait times It is abundantly clear there is not enough support from the player base for a dedicated class for those roles. Allowing anyone to spec into that role for a time will greatly relieve the contention for them.

Judeth

You won't see an over population of healers. Most people want to play DPS because they like seeing big damage on their screen.

delghinn

Raengo wrote: »

You won't see an over population of healers. Most people want to play DPS because they like seeing big damage on their screen.

clerics and fighters are quite popular outside MMORPGs. It's a function of the video game grouping trinity mechanic that has bastardized the cleric archetype into a heal spamming wizard and fighters into toothless damage sponges. And then the game mechanics for each are normally quite dull too.

Ulf

I see with these posts that most of you have played WoW or some WoW Clone, at least in the group/dungeon based play style.

I would like to mention my experience with Lineage 2 that tells me something completely different, as we didn't had that many instanced dungeons to level up, so you relied a lot on open world farming. The max number of members for a group / party was 9. (Increased for bigger content like Epic Bosses / Sieges, same max number but grouped in an alliance system called “Channel Commander " )

I would like to elaborate with the following.

1.- The Open World Pve/Pvp: To have a little context first, If you take a look into the classes of Lineage 2, you can divide the Healer in 3 main different categories. Each one of these, affected differently by their race (Humans are beefy / slower cast speed, elves have lightning fast cast speed, but squishier,etc, you get the idea )
a) Full blown Healer = Bishop / Cardinal--> Heavy and fast healing skills, Combat sleep, okay buffs etc.
b) Support/Healer = Elven Elder / Shilen Elder --> Medium Tier Heals, Great Mana regen/replenish skills, good defense/ utility buffs.
c) Buffer / Healer = Prophet / Warcryer / Overlord --> Heal over Time, Ability to use better combat gear and Excellent party/guild buffs.

In the world, you made your party from what you had in hand, especially if you were a DPS in your way to gear yourself / learn new skills. Sometimes you had your shitty self-buffs.. sometimes you find an Elder... that can do a bit of everything but don't get too cocky because he doesn't have that many heals but good buffs, so you get to farm better that if you were alone. Then you have your high end party, where that same elder, is ESSENTIAL because if not for him (either elf or dark elf ), the heavy bishop/ cardinal, burned through his mana wayyy to quick.

Lineage 2 had this way of giving you the liberty to choose the healer or support you wanted, but it became a game heavily dependent on buffs. I’m not saying that this was a bad thing, but only barely. Because it allowed to have/need more than 1 type of healer/support on your party to get to that sweet buff spot where you have good defensive buffs and amazing attack buffs, and a buddy to heal you. You could do the thing alone and rely on Health pots, but it was way better and faster to do it in a small group of... say 4 or 5 buddies killing stuff. It encouraged a lot the random group play.

2.- Siege, Mass PvP ( Open world ), Epic Boss: Here you had to fine-tune your party ( As in most MMOrpg ) to get the most amount of buffs, without slacking on DPS. So you build your party of 9, most of the time around the type of DPS you had (this sort of dictated what kind of healer/ Support you needed ).

For example If you had frontline Tank/Dps, you needed 1 heavy healer, 1 party buffer and 1 mana charger for your healer ( 3 ) then you had your Tank and Off Tank ( Like a bard or bladedancer ) (5 ), then you had 3 or 4 melee DPS.. if you wanted more sustain, you kicked 1 dps and recruited 1 more heavy healer or buffer, etc. and BAM , party of 9, full buff, ready to kick some a**.
On the other hand, if you had a party of Ranged dps / Mages, you focused on 1 or 2 off tanks and 4 dps with a bunch of elders to sustain mana and heal.

So every class had their thing, every class had this one or a few skills that made them different, cool to play, needed and important for either a random group or an end game/ guild group. The amount of people in the group, allowed you to jump to another area or not, maybe a bit higher level, but with a bunch of off tanks and healers to fight along.
If Intrepid plays their hand right, every class will be playable and interesting, or at least we will have classes that represents different play-styles .

Sorry, got carried away, Interesting topic.
Judging by this, there will be a lot of different types of healers for different playstyles, so more people will find one that suits them ?

TL;DR: Big groups are fun, sometimes you don't have big groups, a variety of healers is fun, give them each a different key feature that feels balanced. Give the player liberty to choose and configure their group/ playstyle the way it suits better for them and don't push constantly for that 1 type of party. A good idea is to try to build the healers around the DPS ? Have healers with skills to support mages and mage parties, other for melee dps, other for ranged dps... Fighting healers ? etc.

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