How many players should it take to kill a healer

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

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Effah

Same problem in ages were healers are balanced for PvE raids. i realy hope everybody can get anti heal debuffs.

Aszkalon

P0GG0 wrote: »

Same problem in ages were healers are balanced for PvE raids. i realy hope everybody can get anti heal debuffs.

There were "SOME" Abilities around in for Example WoW-Vanilla i think ... ...
A Poison from the Rogues ? One that weakened Healings a bit ? I think a Warrior or other Class had something similar ... ... ?

If Intrepid will make a single Healer being able to take on SEVERAL. Players. at once. -> it will quickly be like Burning Crusade in World of Warcraft again.

Healers will dominate the Battlefield. I am not sure if i would love to see such unparallelled cringe to return ever again. Of Course if it does, well ... ...

... ... it means i will probably need to give up on free Choice which Class i want to play, if i want to heighten my Chances of Success together with whoever are my Comrades and Allies in arms. We will need to "BE" as much overpowered Healers as possible. lol

Githal

Chonkers wrote: »

A base cleric should be really good at surviving 1v1s while lacking particularly good offense, control, and mobility
which makes clerics good at not losing and not winning in 1v1s
considering that people often do not play healers, healers need to be effective to be some fun
If necessary, a standard cleric can survive 4 players till somewhat quickly out of mana, (the 4 players do not have anti healing and lack control abilities)

For me A healer that has no offense/control/mobility/support is so fking boring to play. You just stand there spamming heals and nothing else.
Ofc i am aware that there will be "Support" class - Bard and maybe summoner as well - that will specialize in control/support/mobility, and be lacking on heals, But even so Cleric should have some unique utility skills that if used right (skill based) will let him survive, and without using those skills right he would die 1v1 to most dps classes.

AND even when using those utility spells in best possible way - this should just give healers like 1 min more time to survive in 1v1. For example healer fights other dps, the other dps uses most offensive cds (and they have a cd of 1 min), the cleric uses his cds to survive (which have 1.5 -2 min cds). So now after 1 min the dps has his cds back and if used he can kill the healer which still doesnt have his cds.

Effah

maybe make heals be a short radius around the caster so they are forced to be in the front line.

Vysione

Generally speaking, it should be balanced around ~1.5 to 2 dps to drop a healer, assuming that they both specialize in the same thing. (Single target vs single target, aoe vs aoe.)

You could argue that it should maybe be a little bit higher due to ashes being an open world game with primarily raid fights for all of its prime content - but excluding that argument (It gets very complicated with the aoe situation for both hps and dps), the 1.5 to 2.0 ballpark is about correct for small-mid scale content.

It is roughly the sweet spot where a good solo dps can kill bad and average healers
A good healer can generally survive against a good number of bad dps
A non-specialist dps is pressuring but not killing an equal skill healer
A good healer will be able to make plays to survive longer against ~2 good dps, but the healer will still die.
The party size in Ashes is 8, meaning that fights between 2 balanced parties should effectively never end up in a situation where neither side can die.

The above generally lets dps players and healer players both feel good in a large variety of situations.

Generally speaking, of the same skill level, 1 normal dps should have little chance of dropping a same skill healer of their matching type. However, specialists for countering healers in each archetype should exist. Whether through manaburn, debuffing or both.

I.e. a manaburn/anti-heal debuffing assassin (different from a regular assassin build) should have a "solid" chance of dropping a same skill healer, but should be subpar against other dps players. It should be a specialist decision with a price to become a counter, not a generic thing.

Likewise, you should have to really specialize into getting aoe (if you want good aoe) whether you're a dps or a healer - and thus, a single target spec'ed dps should have a pretty easy time killing an aoe healer and an aoe spec'ed dps should be facing a strugglebus. Whereas an aoe dps should quite easily overwhelm the healing output of a single target healer in a raid scenario, but shouldn't really be able to drop them in basically any situation where the overwhelming aoe isn't a factor - it's not what they've specialized in.

Ashes is a game where you are supposed to be factoring in risk vs reward and making important decisions on the drawbacks/benefits of things. All dps effectively should effectively be able to overwhelm a healer who specializes in the wrong aoe/st field against them (i.e. an aoe healer basically always dying rather easily to a single target dps), but to solo kill any same skill healer who specializes in the same field between aoe/st as you, should require you to specialize (and sacrifice in other areas) in order to have solid shot at it.

Aszkalon

Vysione wrote: »

Generally speaking, it should be balanced around ~1.5 to 2 dps to drop a healer, assuming that they both specialize in the same thing. (Single target vs single target, aoe vs aoe.)

And even that is still VEEERY powerful for Healers, in my Opinion. This still gives Teams with Healers an edge over those with lesser Healers or no Healers at all.

Solid_Sneak

At least a clown car full of clowns and their baloon animsls.

It should tske as many as it takes. These questions do not mean anything in an active environment. If the healer has tsnky gear and Int/Con/Mnt stats, you would have a hard time to pushbsck the spellcasts snd landing CC. And you know, cleric can HoT and just use shield block.

If you play dressman healer, yeah, rogues will shred you to pieces probably.

Praise the Sun the game is class agnostic on armor and weapons, warrior priest builds are fun.

mfckingjoker

Not many, healers should have their mana depleted soon enough...

Michael

It's more complicated than this. They won't necessarily be balancing for 1v1, and are focusing on group PvP. In group PvP, I wouldn't be surprised if a Cleric is easily CC'd in any way and take down quickly by a couple players.

But they do mention they like the rock paper scissors approach to balancing 1v1s so you can expect some sort of match up balance like that. However, you can always take certain secondary archetypes to tip the scales in a certain direction. Also skill should be an important factor as well!

Caeryl

Assuming they're a very good healer:

1 person putting pressure on should be enough to force them to split healing between themselves and the group

2 to stalemate them and require all their healing focus on themselves

and 3 to actually cut through it all to kill them (or 2+ a heal reduction debuff, depending on how plentiful those are)

So sending two players to pressure a healer mid-raid would probably be plenty to staunch a clear attempt unless they brought two healers

nanfoodle

Dygz wrote: »

Three

I change my answer from two to three. Again, if the healer is focusing on keeping themselves alive.

Caeryl

Aszkalon wrote: »

Vysione wrote: »

Generally speaking, it should be balanced around ~1.5 to 2 dps to drop a healer, assuming that they both specialize in the same thing. (Single target vs single target, aoe vs aoe.)

And even that is still VEEERY powerful for Healers, in my Opinion. This still gives Teams with Healers an edge over those with lesser Healers or no Healers at all.

Well, yeah. I’m confused if this is intended to be a reason to not support healers being fairly resilient when healing themselves. It sounds like a reason to be in favor of it, but the emphasis suggests we’re meant to interpret otherwise?

Ruerik

One

Would rather see group based pvp be focused on disrupting the enemy, mitigating damage, and smart tactical play and positioning as a way to manage incoming damage.

Instead of, healers just shrugging off tons of incoming damage like it is nothing, reducing pvp to voice chat "Target xyz, 3-2-1-burst"

Not to mention the countless 1v1 and 1v2 situations that will come up during normal play anyway, turning healers into un-killable gods

nanfoodle

Taerrik wrote: »

One

Instead of, healers just shrugging off tons of incoming damage like it is nothing, reducing pvp to voice chat "Target xyz, 3-2-1-burst"

This is not about making clerics gods of the battle field. Two things here.

1. We are talking about Clerics spec-ed as healers. They should shine in that area. So if just one on one a healer cant keep themselves alive. Something is broken. Do you expect a healer to keep you alive when you getting attacked by two players? At least for a time they should be able to. So they should be able to do the same for themselves.
2. Clerics will be the focus fire of any PvPer that can reach them. It will be their game play. Keep people alive or learn how to keep alive when they become focused fired. Clerics should be able to keep alive with three people on them for at least a reasonable time frame.

Deciding to focus fire on a Cleric/Healer should be a mediative move. Not just an instant way to win an event.

Myosotys

Chicago wrote: »

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

Healer should be killable 1v1 but it depends which healer. I imagine the High Priest to outheal any dps in 1v1. If it's not the case, how he can survive a focus from 3 - 4 or more players???
But If the High Priest has limited dps option, then you'll be able to get him buying time till he runs out of mana.

For the other healer classes, I imagine they will have sightly better dps and slightly worst heal so hard to say.

Then I wonder about the Apostle/Paladin (which level of dps/armor they will have ?)

rollox

It shouldn't be balanced based on 1v1. Would be pretty nasty to say that a Cleric is just dead in any and every encounter against anyone else.

There's some misconception in this thread using the word healer. Lots of assumptions that means just cleric. What about Bard, or a fighter or some class that has their own capacity to self heal?

This isn't about just a squishy priest in cloth robes and a wand. In Ashes you will be encountering healers in all forms be it a dps fighter/cleric or a cleric/mage... Or what about Bard/Cleric. Summoners? Necros? Shadow Cleric Rogue.

I would certainly hope that a Shadow Rogue will lay out serious damage before you even know something attacked you

Spif

This question needs to have TTK factored in.

I personally hate a game where a healer can take someone from 10%->100% in 1-2 casts. More importantly, IMO it's good for the game to have a likelyhood of attrition in 1v1, GvG or RaidvRaid, rather than there being a bunch of stalemates because everything is outhealed (assuming good DPS balance in the fight)

Longer TTK gives a focused character more time to pop cooldowns/disengage/hide behind a tank/get peeled/other good play options. But the general trend of a PvP fight should always be to lower resources (health/mana) much faster than mana can be recovered. This should go for 1v1, GvG and RvR. It should also apply to DPS and tanks, not just healers.

Another good question: how many health bars should a healer's mana bar be able to fill before being OOM?

Songcaller

The famous line from Guilds without dedicated healer killers:

At least one more.

qurion

None! Healers are your friends, and you wouldn't kill your friends? Thr healer you don't kill could be one to heal you later.

Ruerik

nanfoodle wrote: »

This is not about making clerics gods of the battle field. Two things here.

1. We are talking about Clerics spec-ed as healers. They should shine in that area.

The only jobs that ought to be able to handle concentrated fire for more than about 10 seconds are tank specs. And even then it should burn through a tanks resources so he cant do it indefinitely without support.

Healer specs should be just as squishy and just as vulnerable as glass canons.

Your team strategy should revolve heavily around protecting your healers. For example, while some of your tanks should be pushing forward into enemy ranks trying to disrupt the formation and skills as much as possible and keeping defense on your friendly melee dps, you should also need tanks in the backline, disrupting enemy attackers and throwing whatever protections they can on healers they see being attacked and chased down.

Healers should be the very definition of highest risk, highest reward play.

Just one player should be able to out dps a healer trying to heal himself, because the healer is squishy, its the teams responsibility to provide protection and peel for the healer.

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