How many players should it take to kill a healer
Chicago
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
Whats everyone's thoughts on this?, from previous experience I think many games miss the sweet spot with healers in PvP and make them either too easy to kill or damn close to impossible.
Watching A1 footage back, there are quite a few videos of clerics doing things like 7v1, this should never be allowed to happen in a MMO,
Personally I think healers should be able to withstand at least two other players attacking them, but I also believe that there should be out play potentials for people to burst down a healer with silences or cc.
It's definitely a tricky thing to balance, I'm interested to hear people's opinions
Watching A1 footage back, there are quite a few videos of clerics doing things like 7v1, this should never be allowed to happen in a MMO,
Personally I think healers should be able to withstand at least two other players attacking them, but I also believe that there should be out play potentials for people to burst down a healer with silences or cc.
It's definitely a tricky thing to balance, I'm interested to hear people's opinions
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The trick to getting healers to work in group based PvP is to give others the ability to keep opponents from attacking them in the first place.
Tanks and CC keep healers out of the action, and in return healers keep tanks and CC topped up with health.
This puts the survivability of the entire group or raid as being a result of the effort and skill of the entire gropu or raid.
for me this feels balanced out because usually in an MMO a tank can't just go head to head with DPS and can't pull agro like they would in PvE. Going after the good healers, the ones that are pocket healing the good players will usually peel off and gang up on me to protect their healer.
now there are times when a healer can hold their own when they have a bunch of people on them through self healing, but this is a trap people fall into cause those players are just getting kited around and it's not a smart position to find yourself in.
I don't know how to explain the math here but it's usually like if you only have a few healers and they keep a whole zerg alive, losing 1 person to distract or chase off 1 healer would be in your teams favor, but to have 7 people would not. chasing a healer around like that as a mob is just a failure on that team.
you don't have to kill the healer, just keep them from doing their job.
That was until my clan leader pointed out to me that good marksmen were responsible for keeping mages and healers zoned out of the charge, and good warlocks were responsible for keeping those marksmen busy so the healers could get something done. I was only noticing the bad ones, because the good ones were playing their own archer-v-warlock minigame without me.
Was a really fun lesson to learn, I've looked at pvp parties completely differently ever since, and I appreciate every game that manages to create those kinds of solid role dynamics.
The typical line up is "tanks > dps > heals" BECAUSE healers are squishy and not because they can outmatch 2 damage class players.
PS: My perspective of how 1 on 1 duel among different roles should play out...
- Dps vs Healer: DPS wins.
- Tank vs Dps: Tank should have clear advantage as it can mitigate damage and stuns/cc/etc
- Tank vs Healer: Inconclusive because both can negate damage some way or the other.
1) having to defend themselves renders healers essentially useless to their team while they're under attack, and/or
2) their tankiness is limited in duration. Between 30 and 90 seconds tops of strong defence buffs mixed with heals, then they start to crumble, and/or
3) if you silence them or debuff them with an effect that disables receiving healing/shields, or manage to drain their mana, they just instantly topple over (unless their team protects them, at which point we're not really talking about the healer's tankiness anymore).
All of these are unlike the tankiness of a proper tank.
Now if you get into the nitty gritty of things, there is a massive amount of variables that come into play. But I think with all things being equal, you want that stalemate as the ultimate goal. The damage a DPS can do should be the same as the healing a healer can do. The variables come in with CC/Mana(Or Class Resource)/Positioning/Etc. All of these things introduce the variable of player skill, which would determine whether the Healer or DPS won in said fight.
And that is just for a single target healer vs a single target dps. There's sooo many more things to consider when going into say teamfights with aoe healing, aoe damage, burst heals, burst damage, focus firing/healing. I'd never expect a fully group centric spec'd healer to survive a 1v1 with a single target gank spec'd rogue, for instance. But I'd also never expect an aoe spec'd mage to endanger a more single target focused healer.
Tons of variables. But again, I think the basis you should aim for is stalemate when looking at raw power. Then allow spec, playstyle choice, gear choice to alter things and keep that rock/paper/scissors dynamic going. And I feel like Intrepid has that as their goal. I doubt things are balanced that way in Alpha right now but I'm fine with that. Long road of tinkering with power levels ahead before the game is launched.
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Class comp should also play a role in this balancing act.
A tank should be able to kill a healer too, though it would take longer. Tanks should have more disruption abilities. But I would expect tanks to focus on protecting allies by disrupting enemy dps players before going to disrupt a healer to help push kills.
In simpler terms, a player doing simple damaging rotations only, should never kill a healer.
It should be a team focused balance situation.
Frontliners focused on killing.
Midliners focused on supporting frontline damage to help get the kill, and overall team support since they have a larger field of vision than frontliners.
Backliners focused on support.
But he can't take his attacker down either. He can only survive against him.
In that case it should take only "1,5 dps players" to focus a healer down and they should do in 10 seconds at maximum, even less if more people focus on the healer.
All accounting for that this healer is also not healed by yet another healer that is allied with him.
But if the healer gets ignored by everyone, this allows that wound unmaking menace to do about TWO times the amount of healing than a single DPS can do in terms of damage in that time.
So attacking a healer is always priority, to keep the healer down to the "also just ONE other player" level instead of two in one.
Personally I prefer version 2.
I dont have a defined number of how much dps or player count it will need for this to be accomplished until we see all class kits, and test.
The real question will be. Do parties just run two clerics?
It really depends on the situation I guess, if you are going out looking for PvP then yeah maybe you run to clerics, but most of the time I'm guessing it will be groups fighting over dungeon spots or grind spots and it might hinder the Rest of your gameplay to run 2 clerics
They need to be capable of doing their job vs sustained damage from multiple people or what is even the point?
1v1 should be possible when you are able to shut them down instead of out damaging them. Meaning cc, mana drain etc.
Someone heavily spec'd into cc should be able to heavily hinder a healer and slowly wear him down. Someone lightly spec d into cc should struggle to take a good healer 1v1.
I agree, I think you should be able to kill a healer with cc if you play your class right, and 2-3 seems fine if their just zugging, the problem for me becomes when the healer can survive 2+ but also dps them down, making them sort of op like in the a1
Thanks for this Topic.
In my humble Opinion, a Healer should already be hard pressed if any Class Combination with decent Damage is attacking him. One versus One.
A Healer should not just "go down inevitably" when being attacked by someone. He should be able to heal against it -> but have the own Hands full and run away and use Attacks, Spells, Damage-over-Time and whatever, to fight back.
Quite similar how it was in WoW at first.
But when a Healer is being attacked by "TWO" People -> that Healer should usually go down. Even if the Healer goes down somewhat slowly by healing against the Damage or so.
Because if not even "TWO" People - Damage Classes included - can down a single Healer -> then You will have immediately the same Situation like in WoW.
Around half the whole Community or above will play Healers in PvP. Why ? Because they are basically invincible when any single Healer is about as strong as Two Players of the same Gear-Level and same Level in general.
This could make PvP boring real quick in Situations where People can't avoid fighting "Healers", lol. Like People would need to have their "targeted Healer" INVINSIBLE for their Enemy Forces when being targeted/locked on themselves,
otherwise the Enemy Healers will know which "Healer" is targeted by their Enemies - and usually heal the Target up without fail - if there are not MASSIVE Damage Spikes on said Target.
I saw this in Worst of Warcraft over the Years happen in Battlegrounds. And there it is even worse - because You can't go anywhere near an Enemy Raidgroup without being immediately perma-stunned until you are dead,
while their "Healers" stand somewhat behind them and heal them up endlessly.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Kinda starting to look for a Guild right now. (German)
Yeah, Shadow Priests in WoW used to be that way. It gets pretty ridiculous.
If you heavily spec damage, you give up a lot of your healing and vice versa.
It should come down to build, so people have agency.
100% agree, and if not Killable by 1 dps, the healer should be extremely hindered in the fact that all their healing output is keeping themself alive and not their team, this will also make the healers choices on positioning have value, and fit the risk vs reward play style, if your team makes the healer out of position it should be felt by everyone
Great example, healers having dots would be pretty bad for the game imo because 99% of classes don't have any defensives against this and. A healer could just dot and run and never die, definitely needs some testing and we will have to see how 2nd class types play out
I agree as long as the player needs to use their skill kit to do so, I don't believe you should be able to zug down a healer
Yeah, you should have to do something other than damage 1v1. If you think about it, if a dps can just kill a priest 1v 1 with nothing but his rotation, how can a priest function in a group setting against 3 to 4 dps focusing a group mate down?
In that scenario, why bring a priest for group pvp when another dps would be more useful? If priests don't have more survivability than a single dps then they are useful only for pve.
Great points but I disagree, the reason is that I think your team should be peeling for the healer, cc'ing dps trying to kill your heals, also the healer should always be playing behind and always be the hardest target for the enemy team to get too, your frontline should make sure of this whilst mid line peels support for the heals
In a 1v2 situation, I think a hybrid cleric would die, but be able to take one baddie down with them, and a full-heal cleric would live longer, but probably not be damaging enough to either opponent to take anyone down with them before going oom and dying. This works out logically because the full heal cleric, while being attacked by multiple enemies, should always have someone there to DPS for them, while the hybrid cleric may or may not.
Yes.
If a Healer is not attacked by Anyone -> then well bad Luck for the Enemy Forces. Said Healer can heal his Allies all he wants.
However WHEN a Healer is attacked by someone comparable to the Healers Character- and Gear-Level, that Healer should NOT. HAVE. THE. TIME. to undisturbed heal some of his Allies - as if no One is even attacking him.
If he can - then the Healer Class is overpowered. Because a Damage-Dealer or Tank-Class can only do their "one thing at a time" - and not several things at a time.
The Moment any single, particular Class is able to do two things at once, where every other Class is limited with all it's Maximum Power already, then THAT CLASS will undoubtedly dominate PvP in one or several ways.
Example : Worst of Warcraft " Isle of Conquest " BG from Wrath of the Lichking.
- > Alliance goes in with like +5 Healers from a whole of 40 People.
- > Horde goes in with like 15 to 20 Healers.
- > Horde entirely WRECKS the Ally Raid like Ten to Three. The Ally Players can run around like they want. They can either not conquer a single Position - or can not hold it for jack.
I would have absolutely no Problem with this,
if i wouldn't be an eternal Alliance-only-Player since WoW Vanilla.
Imagine rolling a "Heal Class" and then mindlessly spam Healing Shots from a somewhat protected Position in a Mass Battle - and that i all that is needed to win. If i wouldn't have any Willpower or Determination to do my own thing, then sure i would do that and always play a Priest or Druid.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Kinda starting to look for a Guild right now. (German)
Healers keep tanks hp up, tanks keep party damage down, damage keeps a force behind the tank so the tank line doesn't fail, and to tie it all together the bard keeps the mana rollin.
In reality I fully expect the clerics survivability balance to come from mana.
Basically while full on mana a cleric can survive really well, even against 3 or 4 opponents, but without a bard it won't matter for more than a short duration.
they should have less self survivability like self heals are only 50% effective or something.
1. If they are too underpowered
2. It's too easy for dps to just have their way with them
3. If you make them entirely dependent upon teammate to avoid getting alpha'd out of every fight
I'd rather not play yet another MMO where Healers and Tanks are hard to come by because it's not enjoyable to play them.
Part of making a game group centered is making sure the DPS are not the overwhelming dominant force in the game.