TT vs AC: Healer edition

The posts regarding TT vs AC are overwhelmingly about doing DPS with the occasional mention of healing. I thought it may be good to have a thread dedicated to people's opinions on this topic strictly from a healing perspective.

My opinion:
I see AC okay for some heals such as frontal ~10-15 yard cone heals, PBAoE heals, or GTAoE heals. I could see an augment giving the play the option to switch a heal from being GTAoE to targeted AoE. It could be the same strength either way and each one would have its own tactical benefits (targeted AoE would be faster to cast, but GTAoE gives a better chance to hit who you want to hit).

AC would be terrible for single target heals/hots/shields (imagine trying to snipe the tank with a heal over and over again while 5-6 melee DPS keep getting in the way. Or imagine trying to put single target HoTs/shields on the group before a damage spike and having to skill shot each one of them). I'd put chain heals in this category as well, but perhaps to a lesser extent since at least there is a higher chance to smart heal the person who needs it (assuming each heal jump doesn't weaken in power).

For these single target heals/hots/shields, I don't think traditional TT is the answer either... It's all about mouseover healing (sometimes referred to as mouseover macros).

To provide some context, when I do any sort of competitive healing in WoW the first thing I do is replace all of my healing keybinds with mouseover macros (as this behavior is not default in WoW... Shame on you Blizzard! It can be done via macros or addons only). My macros looks like this (replace "Flash Heal" with the name of the spell):

/cast [target=mouseover,exists] Flash Heal; Flash Heal

What this does is:
1) If I have my mouse over another player's unit frame (or character in game), then that player will get the heal (regardless of what I'm targeting)
2) If I am not mousing over anything, then my target gets the heal if it is friendly
3) If I have no target or my target is an enemy, then I get the heal

This setup makes it much quicker to respond to healing a group/raid as I just hover and hit the keybind. It's about 50-75% faster reaction time than clicking to target > heal > click to target > heal. This is especially important for any sort of healer who mixes in damage while also healing (which is required for some of the most fun classes in WoW like Disc Priests. But really is something every good healer should be doing to maximize healing downtime). Switching targets between your team and the enemy team/boss can be annoying and even more inefficient that switching between targets in your raid. I like to tab target the enemies while I mouseover heal my team and weave the dps/heals to optimize my gameplay. This makes the healing EXTREMLY satisfying. If I was focusing on just healing I probably wouldn't do it as its just becomes a wack-a-mole game.

Oh, on a related note, I hope AoC has some sort of grid UI for raids as well as the option to use that UI for party healing as well. The default "party spread out on the left hand side of the screen" is terrible for healing, especially for anyone gaming on a widescreen monitor". Having a compact grid that shows health/mana/buffs/debuffs for the group/raid that can be positioned more closely to the middle of the screen is the way to go. (I'll include some screenshots some time of my WoW UI if there is interest).

Not having mouseover healing + a grid I can position on the screen would be dealbreakers for me to be a healer. I've done heals, DPS, and tanking competitively and healing is by far the most challenging. It doesn't need a heavy focus on AC to add to the already intense split second decision making needed to keep your team alive.

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Comments

Leonerdo

Keeping it brief. I enjoyed TERA's Mystic class, which could heal with a lock-on kind of heal. You hit the skill, mouse over up to four people and it locks on to them, then release to heal them. Plus a boomerang heal, and little health orbs you could toss/drop on the ground to be picked up later.

There's plenty of ideas for good action combat heals out there, if Intrepid is willing to take the risk on them.

I can't remember where I heard about this, but it's also possible to have a combat system allowing for multiple targets to be selected simultaneously. Like you could keep a healing target and enemy target at the same time, so you don't have to switch all the time to weave heals and damage.

Saedu

hmmm... I should go try out Tera's system. So far my experience with healing has been best in WoW. I think overall they did a really good job with healing... its more challenging that DPS or tanking, and there are a lot of good options of healing types they have. Some AOE healing is a PBAoE or a GTAoE. Some AoE healing you target one player and it chains to 3-5 other players (so you can make sure you heal who you need to for sure, then get some smart heals on top of it for others). Some AOE is through dpsing, some is chasing hots (e.g. you put out your hots on a few targets and when you cast a heal on one target it also AoEs to the other target's with your HoT/shield on them). Various cast times/mana costs/cooldown timers also add to the variety.

Having a wide variety of heal options/styles is a good thing. The one thing I wouldn't really advocate for is a single target sniper/skill-shot like heal as it would have to be really strong to work and there is just too much that can go wrong with it due to bad DPS/tank movement. Maybe if it heals all targets in its path and its not too OP it would be okay, but if its just the first target there are gonna be a lot of dead tanks cause the melee DPS got in the way.

I'm also not too much of a fan of orb healing. Its an okay idea so I'm not totally against it, but in my experience the DPS are too lazy/unaware to move to grab the orb so it often goes unused or used at the wrong time.

Frostshot1

Priest healing in Tera was fun. I enjoyed it. The other, not so much.

Revenant healing in GW2 took a big hit a while back, and is not so great now. GW2 mass pvp is all about standing within 6' of other teamates and spamming buffs and damage. That is a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. I would prefer a system that doesn't require buffs to be constantly reapplied. That would be my main complaint with GW2 combat. Otherwise the combat is a lot of fun.

WoW has some decent healing models, I enjoyed the variety when switching from Druid to my Priest.

I personally hope there is a combination of healing skills available in AoC, single tab targeted, AOE circles, HoTs, healing marks, and directional heals. Give some choice to how we play, and ability to modify things for different situations. Instead of just being the water fountain people have to bring on dungeon runs.

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