Diamaht wrote: » Chicago wrote: » Diamaht wrote: » Noaani wrote: » Diamaht wrote: » Keep in mind that you still want healers to be appealing. You can nerf healers into extinction: 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. This is where the secondary class system comes in to play. If y ou are at risk of being jumped while out by yourself, take tank as your secondary. If you are heading out for large scale PvP with people you know will keep threats off you, take cleric as your secondary. With the plan of it being hard to change secondary class, this obviously doesn't work - but I am of the opinion that it will be made easier to chage secondary than has been stated in the past, precisely for reasons like this (the class system as designed is wasted if players can't reasonably change secondary once a day). Hopefully. It still drives players away to a degree. If Tanks and Healers (I'm mentioning both, because this entire conversation is identical if it's about Tanks) need to constantly switch to be effective then that further reduces population. Older EQ2 was a good example of this, you often had to search far and wide for a healer or a Guardian. Healing and Tanking are work, DPS is just making big numbers and farming dopamine at the end of the day. This is coming from a Ranger main. People will say "do I want work and responsibility or do I want to take a hormone shower?". If DPS can easily take out healers and tanks, a far larger percentage will just say to hell with it and take a nice shower. Agree with alot but to be honest, once you master healing, it's not work at all, infact you can almost ignore most mechanics in dungeons because of your positioning, may change with ashes dungeons though That's true, a good player can use the game itself to his advantage. So that asks a new question: How high do we want the skill ceiling to be? In other words "He's fine as long as he does x", "He's fine as long as he does x and y", "He's fine as long as he does x, y and z" etc, all add further gating to the profession with more and more requirements to competent play. Add that to the additional responsibilities that both the healer and the tank have to the group. It all can compound the entry barriers to the class. So how rare do we want healers to be?
Chicago wrote: » Diamaht wrote: » Noaani wrote: » Diamaht wrote: » Keep in mind that you still want healers to be appealing. You can nerf healers into extinction: 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. This is where the secondary class system comes in to play. If y ou are at risk of being jumped while out by yourself, take tank as your secondary. If you are heading out for large scale PvP with people you know will keep threats off you, take cleric as your secondary. With the plan of it being hard to change secondary class, this obviously doesn't work - but I am of the opinion that it will be made easier to chage secondary than has been stated in the past, precisely for reasons like this (the class system as designed is wasted if players can't reasonably change secondary once a day). Hopefully. It still drives players away to a degree. If Tanks and Healers (I'm mentioning both, because this entire conversation is identical if it's about Tanks) need to constantly switch to be effective then that further reduces population. Older EQ2 was a good example of this, you often had to search far and wide for a healer or a Guardian. Healing and Tanking are work, DPS is just making big numbers and farming dopamine at the end of the day. This is coming from a Ranger main. People will say "do I want work and responsibility or do I want to take a hormone shower?". If DPS can easily take out healers and tanks, a far larger percentage will just say to hell with it and take a nice shower. Agree with alot but to be honest, once you master healing, it's not work at all, infact you can almost ignore most mechanics in dungeons because of your positioning, may change with ashes dungeons though
Diamaht wrote: » Noaani wrote: » Diamaht wrote: » Keep in mind that you still want healers to be appealing. You can nerf healers into extinction: 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. This is where the secondary class system comes in to play. If y ou are at risk of being jumped while out by yourself, take tank as your secondary. If you are heading out for large scale PvP with people you know will keep threats off you, take cleric as your secondary. With the plan of it being hard to change secondary class, this obviously doesn't work - but I am of the opinion that it will be made easier to chage secondary than has been stated in the past, precisely for reasons like this (the class system as designed is wasted if players can't reasonably change secondary once a day). Hopefully. It still drives players away to a degree. If Tanks and Healers (I'm mentioning both, because this entire conversation is identical if it's about Tanks) need to constantly switch to be effective then that further reduces population. Older EQ2 was a good example of this, you often had to search far and wide for a healer or a Guardian. Healing and Tanking are work, DPS is just making big numbers and farming dopamine at the end of the day. This is coming from a Ranger main. People will say "do I want work and responsibility or do I want to take a hormone shower?". If DPS can easily take out healers and tanks, a far larger percentage will just say to hell with it and take a nice shower.
Noaani wrote: » Diamaht wrote: » Keep in mind that you still want healers to be appealing. You can nerf healers into extinction: 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. This is where the secondary class system comes in to play. If y ou are at risk of being jumped while out by yourself, take tank as your secondary. If you are heading out for large scale PvP with people you know will keep threats off you, take cleric as your secondary. With the plan of it being hard to change secondary class, this obviously doesn't work - but I am of the opinion that it will be made easier to chage secondary than has been stated in the past, precisely for reasons like this (the class system as designed is wasted if players can't reasonably change secondary once a day).
Diamaht wrote: » Keep in mind that you still want healers to be appealing. You can nerf healers into extinction: 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.
Chicago wrote: » Diamaht wrote: » Chicago wrote: » Diamaht wrote: » Noaani wrote: » Diamaht wrote: » Keep in mind that you still want healers to be appealing. You can nerf healers into extinction: 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. This is where the secondary class system comes in to play. If y ou are at risk of being jumped while out by yourself, take tank as your secondary. If you are heading out for large scale PvP with people you know will keep threats off you, take cleric as your secondary. With the plan of it being hard to change secondary class, this obviously doesn't work - but I am of the opinion that it will be made easier to chage secondary than has been stated in the past, precisely for reasons like this (the class system as designed is wasted if players can't reasonably change secondary once a day). Hopefully. It still drives players away to a degree. If Tanks and Healers (I'm mentioning both, because this entire conversation is identical if it's about Tanks) need to constantly switch to be effective then that further reduces population. Older EQ2 was a good example of this, you often had to search far and wide for a healer or a Guardian. Healing and Tanking are work, DPS is just making big numbers and farming dopamine at the end of the day. This is coming from a Ranger main. People will say "do I want work and responsibility or do I want to take a hormone shower?". If DPS can easily take out healers and tanks, a far larger percentage will just say to hell with it and take a nice shower. Agree with alot but to be honest, once you master healing, it's not work at all, infact you can almost ignore most mechanics in dungeons because of your positioning, may change with ashes dungeons though That's true, a good player can use the game itself to his advantage. So that asks a new question: How high do we want the skill ceiling to be? In other words "He's fine as long as he does x", "He's fine as long as he does x and y", "He's fine as long as he does x, y and z" etc, all add further gating to the profession with more and more requirements to competent play. Add that to the additional responsibilities that both the healer and the tank have to the group. It all can compound the entry barriers to the class. So how rare do we want healers to be? It really is a tough question, I think a big variable will be how secondaries work because people that play healers, tend to have a type of healer they want to play, offensive, mobile, slow tanky big heals, hots etc etc, with only having the clerics it could be very interesting, we may end up with a situation that secondaries are so good that healers are extremely common, or we may have the reverse issue due to not enough variety of healing play styles Either way I don't want to see healers become op to solve this problem. Definitely some testing to be done
Diamaht wrote: » Chicago wrote: » Diamaht wrote: » Chicago wrote: » Diamaht wrote: » Noaani wrote: » Diamaht wrote: » Keep in mind that you still want healers to be appealing. You can nerf healers into extinction: 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. This is where the secondary class system comes in to play. If y ou are at risk of being jumped while out by yourself, take tank as your secondary. If you are heading out for large scale PvP with people you know will keep threats off you, take cleric as your secondary. With the plan of it being hard to change secondary class, this obviously doesn't work - but I am of the opinion that it will be made easier to chage secondary than has been stated in the past, precisely for reasons like this (the class system as designed is wasted if players can't reasonably change secondary once a day). Hopefully. It still drives players away to a degree. If Tanks and Healers (I'm mentioning both, because this entire conversation is identical if it's about Tanks) need to constantly switch to be effective then that further reduces population. Older EQ2 was a good example of this, you often had to search far and wide for a healer or a Guardian. Healing and Tanking are work, DPS is just making big numbers and farming dopamine at the end of the day. This is coming from a Ranger main. People will say "do I want work and responsibility or do I want to take a hormone shower?". If DPS can easily take out healers and tanks, a far larger percentage will just say to hell with it and take a nice shower. Agree with alot but to be honest, once you master healing, it's not work at all, infact you can almost ignore most mechanics in dungeons because of your positioning, may change with ashes dungeons though That's true, a good player can use the game itself to his advantage. So that asks a new question: How high do we want the skill ceiling to be? In other words "He's fine as long as he does x", "He's fine as long as he does x and y", "He's fine as long as he does x, y and z" etc, all add further gating to the profession with more and more requirements to competent play. Add that to the additional responsibilities that both the healer and the tank have to the group. It all can compound the entry barriers to the class. So how rare do we want healers to be? It really is a tough question, I think a big variable will be how secondaries work because people that play healers, tend to have a type of healer they want to play, offensive, mobile, slow tanky big heals, hots etc etc, with only having the clerics it could be very interesting, we may end up with a situation that secondaries are so good that healers are extremely common, or we may have the reverse issue due to not enough variety of healing play styles Either way I don't want to see healers become op to solve this problem. Definitely some testing to be done That's fair, I don't want to see a repeat of the WoW Shadow Priest either. I'm starting to think you and @Noaani are right, this question will be answered by secondaries.
Diamaht wrote: » Hopefully. It still drives players away to a degree. If Tanks and Healers (I'm mentioning both, because this entire conversation is identical if it's about Tanks) need to constantly switch to be effective, then that further reduces population. Healing and Tanking are work, DPS is just making big numbers and farming dopamine at the end of the day.
Chicago wrote: » It really is a tough question, I think a big variable will be how secondaries work because people that play healers, tend to have a type of healer they want to play, offensive, mobile, slow tanky big heals, hots etc etc, with only having the clerics it could be very interesting, we may end up with a situation that secondaries are so good that healers are extremely common, or we may have the reverse issue due to not enough variety of healing play styles
Summpwner wrote: » Healers will need to be able to support a party of 8, so it's likely that they will be able to chain heals on a single target i.e. themselves and withstand DPS from several players. They should however, be very vulnerable to CC; If they can't cast spells, they should die very quickly. This means silence, slows, roots, stuns should all be a death sentence in a 1v1 or 1v2. Hopefully the healer will have build options that allow limited counterplay to CC; either a trinket effect, or maybe a stat that reduces the length of the next CC, or something like that.
Veeshan wrote: » Summpwner wrote: » Healers will need to be able to support a party of 8, so it's likely that they will be able to chain heals on a single target i.e. themselves and withstand DPS from several players. They should however, be very vulnerable to CC; If they can't cast spells, they should die very quickly. This means silence, slows, roots, stuns should all be a death sentence in a 1v1 or 1v2. Hopefully the healer will have build options that allow limited counterplay to CC; either a trinket effect, or maybe a stat that reduces the length of the next CC, or something like that. Groups might be designed around an off healer too btw so 1 main healer and a support class. Healers imo should be able to heal other realy well however struggles to self heal, If a healer can just tank everything and keep themselves alive with multiple people constantly hitting them your gonna have an issue (Remember in WoW when healer were pretty much unkillable with 10 people hitting them, yeah thats whats happens when healer get designed to keep a tank alive agaist raid bosses hitting for 50% of the tanks hp a swing :P ) They should have some self healing but the majority of their heals especialy there crutch heals shouldnt be castable on themselfs. Healers should support their team and their team should support their heals by peeling players off or pressure the opponent heals to pull people off yours
Diamaht wrote: » Veeshan wrote: » Summpwner wrote: » Healers will need to be able to support a party of 8, so it's likely that they will be able to chain heals on a single target i.e. themselves and withstand DPS from several players. They should however, be very vulnerable to CC; If they can't cast spells, they should die very quickly. This means silence, slows, roots, stuns should all be a death sentence in a 1v1 or 1v2. Hopefully the healer will have build options that allow limited counterplay to CC; either a trinket effect, or maybe a stat that reduces the length of the next CC, or something like that. Groups might be designed around an off healer too btw so 1 main healer and a support class. Healers imo should be able to heal other realy well however struggles to self heal, If a healer can just tank everything and keep themselves alive with multiple people constantly hitting them your gonna have an issue (Remember in WoW when healer were pretty much unkillable with 10 people hitting them, yeah thats whats happens when healer get designed to keep a tank alive agaist raid bosses hitting for 50% of the tanks hp a swing :P ) They should have some self healing but the majority of their heals especialy there crutch heals shouldnt be castable on themselfs. Healers should support their team and their team should support their heals by peeling players off or pressure the opponent heals to pull people off yours I see two issues here though. When assuming group composition, you are designing a class around other classes (and also requiring certain group comps). Those classes will always change, so do clerics always need to be adjusted every time the other classes are rebalanced? Why not simply decide what the class should be and then let it stand on it's own? Also, to compensate for perceived frustration when fighting a cleric, you are proposing that their abilities have different effects on themselves than they do on others. Why should priest have to calculate multiple stat effects in that way when no one else in the game has to? These are examples of nerfing to extinction.
Veeshan wrote: » Diamaht wrote: » Veeshan wrote: » Summpwner wrote: » Healers will need to be able to support a party of 8, so it's likely that they will be able to chain heals on a single target i.e. themselves and withstand DPS from several players. They should however, be very vulnerable to CC; If they can't cast spells, they should die very quickly. This means silence, slows, roots, stuns should all be a death sentence in a 1v1 or 1v2. Hopefully the healer will have build options that allow limited counterplay to CC; either a trinket effect, or maybe a stat that reduces the length of the next CC, or something like that. Groups might be designed around an off healer too btw so 1 main healer and a support class. Healers imo should be able to heal other realy well however struggles to self heal, If a healer can just tank everything and keep themselves alive with multiple people constantly hitting them your gonna have an issue (Remember in WoW when healer were pretty much unkillable with 10 people hitting them, yeah thats whats happens when healer get designed to keep a tank alive agaist raid bosses hitting for 50% of the tanks hp a swing :P ) They should have some self healing but the majority of their heals especialy there crutch heals shouldnt be castable on themselfs. Healers should support their team and their team should support their heals by peeling players off or pressure the opponent heals to pull people off yours I see two issues here though. When assuming group composition, you are designing a class around other classes (and also requiring certain group comps). Those classes will always change, so do clerics always need to be adjusted every time the other classes are rebalanced? Why not simply decide what the class should be and then let it stand on it's own? Also, to compensate for perceived frustration when fighting a cleric, you are proposing that their abilities have different effects on themselves than they do on others. Why should priest have to calculate multiple stat effects in that way when no one else in the game has to? These are examples of nerfing to extinction. Im making the assumption here based on what devs have said but im assuming the devs will be balancing combat based on a group composition of 1 of each class as their base line. Them saying there balancing based on group combat and not solo and there being 8 classes aswell as group sizes being 8 (which is unusualy for MMO) it does lead into believing that is the case. So that would also mean if a group of say 4 fighters 1 cleric + 3 other DPS is absolutely destroying a group of 1 of each class in every situation that would most likely indicate that fighters will be getting nerfed in the future, same if 3 cleric in a party constantly won agaist other group comprised of 1 of each class cleric will probaly be nerfed. if 4 summoner +4 other constantly loose to groups of 1 of each summoner will probably be inline for a buff. if 8 clerics is completely unkillable then by any other group of 8 then you will definelty be seeing a nerf :P but yeah either way there most likly balancing classes around a group with 1 of each class in them
