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.

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oOKingOo

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.

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.

Why exactly do you think a healer shouldn't be able to be killed by a single player? That's a pretty wild take if you ask me. A skilled rogue should basically one-shot a healer, and in a 1v1 without tank protection, basically every skilled DPS class should be able to kill a healer. Maybe not burst like a rogue, but burn through the healer's cooldowns and then kill them. Or DPS them until they're out of mana and then kill them. Especially when we are talking about classes that have "less healing received" debuffs. The other way around, I would agree. A healer shouldn't be able to kill a good player of another class in a 1v1 because they are healers and not killers. And a good tank together with a good healer should be a very tanky, hard-to-kill team, but a single healer should get beaten by a good DPS. They are healers, not tanks.

Diamaht

Healers and mages don't actually exist yet so they are not able to become anything at this point.

Although I would like to have two handed swordsman deleted from the game. I've see all the Conan movies and given Arnold's enormity back in his day, I feel its impossible for two handed swordsman to coexist in a balanced way in this game. Therefore they should be preemptively nerfed or outright deleted.

oOKingOo

Tacquito wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

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

Fixed that for you:
Competent dps healer should be able to kill a healer avoid being killed by dps there should be ways to spec against healing damage as well.

Nope. The healer's job is not to be unkillable; that's the tank's job if we are talking about a 1v1 situation. The healer's job is to prevent others from getting killed by DPS but requires positioning to avoid getting killed themselves by DPS. And in a 1v1 situation where everything is equal in terms of skill, gear, etc., a healer should lose to a DPS. Healers are not and have never been strong duel classes. Burst damage, for example, hard-counters healing, so obviously, rogues should counter healers in a 1v1 scenario where everything is equal. If the healer is unkillable, then you might as well take the tank out of the game as they would be an absolutely useless class with zero benefit over playing a healer.

nanfoodle

Fantmx wrote: »

Don't know. Haven't play tested them yet.

This all stems from the Archer showcase. A Cleric took down an archer very quickly. It made me smile and I hope IS does not bow to threads like this. It's nice to see a Cleric have teeth.

TheHiddenDaggerInn

nanfoodle wrote: »

Many wonder in MMOs is why don't more people play healers as they are always needed. Modern MMOs have healers so handy capped it's deadly slow to solo. IMO healers need to be great healers that can also do decent DPS.

Not as much as say a mage or a rogue if they are a melee healer like a Paladin. But 1v1 with their healing abilities, they should be if skilled, be able to stand toe to toe in a fight. This idea that healers need to be just mostly just a healer is backwards. Holy and Evil Clerics had full backing of their God. The more the Cleric aligned with the will of their God, the more powerful they became.

Let's no make limp healers, that their inky role is watching health bars. That's boring and another reason why most don't want to play them.

nanfoodle wrote: »

Fantmx wrote: »

Don't know. Haven't play tested them yet.

This all stems from the Archer showcase. A Cleric took down an archer very quickly. It made me smile and I hope IS does not bow to threads like this. It's nice to see a Cleric have teeth.

I made the post, and the Archer showcase was not the reason at all, as a long time MMO player, I have watched healers grow in power over the years, From WoW to now healers have been over tuned, in fear of letting the community complain about them how they want to have heals, and damage, and survivability. Well hell , why even have other classes, let's just all play healers..

In the good ole days, a solo healer was a dead healer, and that brought the social aspect of them looking for a group and people wanting to group with them. Nowadays people don't seem to want that, so they just want all the benefits of group damage without a group. Nonsense.

Healers should depend on DPS and tanks, like they do for healers.

Also I made this post in October... 2022

Dygz

ILLPeonU wrote: »

If Steven truly wants a OLD SCHOOL MMO, then this is the way it should be. If you want to have some damage play a augmented healer. But a Cleric/Cleric should damage like a wet noodle.

Well, the foundation of Ashes is Steven's Pathfinder Homebrew.
In Pathfinder, a Cleric can specialize in damage more than healing or healing more than damage - or a fairly even blend of both. Clerics primarily being Healers is a limitation some MMORPGs have had.
A Cleric/Cleric also has Augments and one of the four Cleric Augment Schools is Death.
Even a Cleric/Cleric could choose to attach Death School Augments to all their Heals.

Sjelden

I used to main healer in Everquest. A cleric could seldom if ever solo anything, and certainly not efficiently.

Having played almost every MMO on the western market since Everquest, I can tell you that I miss the days when a healer was that - in charge of healing. Dealing damage was a luxury, not a requirement.

As has been mentioned, classes today are way too bland. Everyone can do everything, just slightly differently. I miss MMO games where classes had distinct identiies, abilities and toolsets - and clearly defined jobs.

A warrior (or knight) was needed to tank, a healer was needed to keep people alive, a crowd controller was needed to control the battlefield (pacify/mezmerize adds), and someone with snare was needed to prevent mobs from running away.

That was the glory days of MMO's.

World of Warcraft eventually made Massive Multi-coop-player Games into Massive Multi-solo-(no)player (selfplayingauto) Games.

They accomplished this by introducing
- Multiple roles to each class (tank/healer/dps) with on-demand switch between roles
- Automated group and raid finders
- Teleport to raid or dungeon
- Rewards and raidloot for everyone
- Easy to read gearscore numbers (Use THIS weapon, it is better, no brain needed)
- Mods

I am looking forward to the release of Ashes of Creation, and hope it will be none of these things, and everything that made MMO's great. So far, it is looking good.

Spif

Simple solutions to healers being too powerful have already been thought of:

* Powerful heals are easily interruptible
* Emergency heals are very expensive so not sustainable
* Insta-casts are relatively weak and only good for topping off
* Self-heals are not better than healing for others (possibly worse if you give a class a "healing multiplier" than cannot be self-cast. Like a healing beacon that you can put on one ally but not self)

But most importantly: Non-healers don't have access to significant healing in combat. Very simplified: If the healer deals half the damage of a pure DPS and self-heals for half the damage of a DPS

One big trap that games fall into is making lifesteal heals too powerful. Examples DoK from Warhammer or the early Shadow Priests. This kind of thing just magnifies gear/skill imbalance. IE, if I'm a better player or better geared to deal 10% more damage than my opponent can, all of a sudden I'm not just dealing 10% more damage, I'm also getting 10% more self-healing along with it

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