While I know lazy people of all jobs (Healers, Tanks, DPS, you name it), I would never state that the majority of any these job sucks.
Ok, except maybe if you talk about WoW or some such ? I wouldnt know about that one. In the MMOs I've played, Lineage 2 and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, the majority of players dont suck.
And if they do, they will probably be frustrated by these games pretty soon.
I love healing and healing classes, and always play healers in games. I'm ok with healers having the ability to do damage, but I hate games where healing is an afterthought, like it was in AoC (not sure if thats still the case). Healing was boring in AoC and it was one of the reasons I quit that game. If a game requires little healing then that means the risk of death is low, and as a consequence that means the game is likely to have very easy and boring PVE.
I prefer my healing classes versatile and complete, with a lot of spells to choose from to deal with every situation, which why my favourite healer in WoW has always been the priest even though I levelled the other healing classes as well.
One problem people seem to have with healers is that they are always needed for challenging content. This is not a problem when you are like me, a healer though. I love the fact that as a healer, for me all doors are opened and I'm welcomed with a red carpet and flowers thrown at my feet.
I've tried playing as DPS, but for me it is simply way to boring. The first few times you run a dungeon its ok, but after a while i simply bored of doing nothing but pew, pew and whack, whack. To me healing is the most entertaining task, followed by tanking and then a large space after which comes DPS. Therefore I cringe at any ideas from players or developers who claim they want to get rid of the "trinity of dps, tank, heal". If you must remove one of those things, please remove boring dps.
Healing as a primary role I would think is just not as rewarding.
My thoughts are similar to another person's here: DnD 4th edition healing is wonderful. The healer spends time doing damage, but also allows the other characters heals to a limited degree. But healing is limited.
I am not a fan of WoW or EQ style healing. Healing to that degree completely trivializes damage in all aspects of the game. It turns every fight into a damage race, and all tactics in the game surround winning that damage race. That is truly all Warcraft is, at this point. Guild Wars didn't feel much different either, and neither did EQ in boss fights.
The key, in my opinion, to stepping away from the heal-bot aspect of things, and to allow healers to actually play, is to give all characters some semblance of defending against damage. Not in one game is there defenses against attacks for every single player. But if you, for a moment, think about players being able to defend themselves, healing can take a secondary role, and the healer can actually participate in the fight.
Heck, you can make the healer's life more meaningful: in a game where damage is more significant, but less common, being able to heal it is a huge thing, and you'll finally be appriciated as a healer again
I'm also a fan of the idea of healing requiring melee range. If for no other reason than to keep things exciting.
I'd stick to the way Guild Wars implemented them: tactical heal bots. You always play in a team in Guild Wars and that means that the heal class can be a heal class, I also think that constant teaming is much better, if players aren't available then teaming with NPCs. The best way I'd see it would be that you play in a squad of 3 persons and then you're able to pick with what players/NPCs, that way the support roles can be done the way they should be without having to think about making them able to deal damage.
With constant teaming healers can say goodbye to their DPS ability because they got others to rely on that can do it for them. The other thing that should be added is that healing is only for emergencies, the major part of the damage should be prevented. By using skills that increase your blocking chance, make you unable to take more damage than X amount per hit, makes the next damage you take be haling instead and so on. That way healing isn't a matter of clicking the redbars and clicking your heals, it's a matter of watching the battlefield and trying to foresee how the enemy will act, and how to counter that. The heal class then becomes a tactical class that can't just redbar.
This is pretty much the way the healer class is made in GW and it's the way the class should be designed in my opinion. It's clever and it makes healing extremely challenging. This only works in a team-focused game, but I don't see any reason for not wanting a team-focused game if you can "solo" with NPCs.
I agree with the posters who said that Vnanguard healers were 'fun'...definitely my favourite healers (although I've just played Blood Mage and Shaman). However, I've not liked the two opposites on the spectrum in other games I've played - WoW and AoC. In wow it was far too wack-a-mole and healbot, whereas AC was just utterly boring with the heals when raiding (although even my PoM was easy and fun to solo or do 6 man groups in).
But, some people really do like wack-a-mole, and some people like casting an AoE heal every 20s or whatever and then casting a dps spell in between. So is there really an answer that will make everyone happy? Something sort of along the lines of a runekeeper in LotRO is a kind of interesting as well (some of this aspect in Vanguard too) in regards to attunement, so that if you're going all out dps, your heals suffer. </ramble>
I've pretty much played a healer type in most games I've tried and basicly become burned out on the "stand back and watch the bars method".
DAoC- clerics were good but solo ability sucked big time
WoW- stand back healing sucked
DDO- clerics are good soloist but expensive to take in groups. (stocking of wands and scrolls sucked)
FFXI- White Mages were stand back healers with ZERO solo ability. (aggro for casting heals was a death sentence)
I think the way to go is to make healers vampiric in nature. Siphoning life energy from the target they are dpsing and channeling it into other players or themselves. Maybe even offering ways to channel that life energy into three different types: recover (gaining hp), preventive (dampening damage) and enhancing ( increasing damage). Then give the other players in the group the responsibility of switching between the three or more channeling buffs.
Healers would still be responsible for leveling/managing their own channels and can have more active at higher levels. Now instead of watching healing bars and having players yell at healers for a heal or buff, a healer simply has to be in a group to have those abilities available for others to manage on their own. And we can finally participate in more group/raid encounters.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
I suppose my opinion on this matter depends on whether the healer class is being played in a pvp setting or a pve setting. As a pve healer, I believe WAR does it best with its melee healer archetypes. The warrior priest when played as intended (i.e. melee healer, not a stand-back, heal-tosser) is a great experience. Not only are you contributing to the DPS, but you're also buffing your tank, spot-healing the entire group, and providing excellent "emergency" healing in the form of a channelled melee attack.
- To those that play the "stand back heal-tosser" with the Warrior Priest, I want you to realize now, that you've been DOING IT WRONG for the whole time. The recent nerfs to your books/chalices was intended to get you back into the fray, hitting crap, instead of watching it get hit.
On the other side of the coin, the healer in pvp is absolutely smack on with WoW's discipline priest. Nothing is more edge-of-the-seat exciting to play, survivable, and downright useful. With the lightning-fast healing, anti-magic utility (i.e. mana-burn, dispel magic), and stubborn survivability, the Disc Priest is a joy to play. Very close second is the Archmage from WAR, insofar as she plays very similarly, but doesn't quite have the same utility or speed that the Disc Priest has.
Healing as a primary role I would think is just not as rewarding. My thoughts are similar to another person's here: DnD 4th edition healing is wonderful. The healer spends time doing damage, but also allows the other characters heals to a limited degree. But healing is limited. I am not a fan of WoW or EQ style healing. Healing to that degree completely trivializes damage in all aspects of the game. It turns every fight into a damage race, and all tactics in the game surround winning that damage race. That is truly all Warcraft is, at this point. Guild Wars didn't feel much different either, and neither did EQ in boss fights. The key, in my opinion, to stepping away from the heal-bot aspect of things, and to allow healers to actually play, is to give all characters some semblance of defending against damage. Not in one game is there defenses against attacks for every single player. But if you, for a moment, think about players being able to defend themselves, healing can take a secondary role, and the healer can actually participate in the fight. Heck, you can make the healer's life more meaningful: in a game where damage is more significant, but less common, being able to heal it is a huge thing, and you'll finally be appriciated as a healer again I'm also a fan of the idea of healing requiring melee range. If for no other reason than to keep things exciting.
Absolutely agree with this post. Healers should be secondary, not required, for fights. Healing potions are horribly useless in fights, unless you need a quick boost before you're about to die, but even then, they can only be used once a fight. If it's some type of raid, your target can probably negate all the healing the potion did with one hit, making it pointless.
Make the healer nice to have, but not necessary. Imagine if it was like real combat: healers can't do anything significant until after the battle is over. A little first aid or quick healing during the fight, but the main healing, the binding of wounds and such, is not possible until after the fighting stops. If that were the case in MMOs today, everyone would die pathetically fast. At the same time, there's nothing more annoying than someone running around spamming heals, feeling invincible, even though you're ripping his cloth armor to shreds.
I don't think the "holy trinity" will be broken anytime soon. Devs will try hybrids, but there will always be a heal bot in the back.
I like the way healing was done in Mass Effect. Almost every class could heal, and when they healed, they healed the entire party, but there was a cooldown on it. Of course those who spent more points on first aid, healed more.
When I played healers in multiplayer role-playing games, it was mostly because it was easier to find groups. I still jump on the Medic from time to time in TF2, because nobody plays them very much, and even a badly-played medic can change the tides of battle.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
What i think about healers is. I usually need to kill a lot to level it up before I can start healing peeps. It makes no sense. If you roll a healer, you want to heal from level 1. It's like rolling an archer and needing to kill kill with a 2 handed mace the first 20 levels.
How to solve this? Give the healer a damage dealer pet with low armor that need to be healed, from level 1.
I like main healers to be mega-mana dependent and squishy to melee attacks.
1. Healing long lasting battles should be a mix of heal bursts and regeneration. Timing is everything.
2. Healers should be able to armor up to be as defensive as a middle armor level class, but at great expense of mana.
3. Healers should be able to do major burst dps, also at a great expense of mana.
4. Unless the group isn't much good or is way underpowered, I see no reason to have a main heal doing dps or spending mana on magic armor. Healer aggro wipes groups, 'cause squishy healers make sucky tanks.
I also prefer to have utility healers (off heals that can be pressed into service when a main heal isn't available) be significantly less mana or heals/sec efficient than a dedicated main heal. I think a skilled player with a well geared dedicated healer toon should be able to have a major advantage over utility healers. WHY? Because if not, there's no reason to go the extra effort of building an A+++ healer.
Ken
www.ActionMMORPG.com One man, a small pile of money, and the screwball idea of a DIY Indie MMORPG? Yep, that's him. ~sigh~
I am going to tell everyone a story. This story actually happened last night. Which will colaborate some accounts of healers told here so far, and destroy illusions of others.
I have played through most every MMO to come out in the last decade or longer. One poster mentioned DAoC which was also my favorite game to play a healer class in. I have played a mixture of dps, and healing classes my entire career in MMO's.
For now though I play World of Warcraft.
WoW depending on how you want to look at it has 4 primary healer classes.
Paladin, Shaman, Druid and Priest.
I play the first one.
Everyone in WoW, or at least I hope they do (odds are some don't) know why they chose 1 of these particular 4 classes.
I rolled Paladin back before paladins were "cool". That's another story though.
Anyway each of these classes can do something different though they have the ability to do at LEAST 2 roles well, some can do all 3 in the trinity.
Paladin can tank, dps and heal.
Shaman can caster dps, melee dps, heal
Druid can tank, melee dps, caster dps, heal
Priest can caster dps, heal <- doesn't seem fair but they get fear so it evens out.
Anyway what you do in a game is always a personal pref. of your own. In my case I play on a PvP server and ONLY PvP unless I am bored I will go heal a Naxx or Uld for my guild. Typically though you will only find me in a BG, Arena or Open World burning down an Alliance villiage. That is just how I prefer to play WoW.
This is where our story will begin. I am a Holy PvP Paladin.
Last night I head into Eye of the Storm, (not a horde strong suite BG on our Battlegroup).
For some reason the horde on our BG really do not get the concept of how the BG's are played. Eye of the Storm for example, holding down towers is important, but the flag is the key, he who controls the flag wins the game. Alas my fellow horde misssed the memo on this.
Halfway through the game we are down 780 to 200.... not very good odds. Alliance had been shreading us on the flag stand the whole time. I finally quit holding my tongue and lose it on them in BG chat.
"Listen, if you want to win this game, and stick it to the alliance I need everyone NOT defending a tower to get your asses in the middle and hold down the flag, do not let the alliance touch this flag again!"
To my surprise 5 players mounted up and bolted for the middle to get that flag! I mounted my Talbuk tossed on Crusader Aura and bolted off behind them, If they had the balls to take on 10 Alliance players for that flag I wasn't going to let them die.
So we all dismount and the fight goes into full affect, DK's death gripping my guys, rogues working on the stun locks.
I pop my bubble, and use Divine sacrifice to soak up as much damage as I could from them. All of them were cursed to hell and had enough stacks of poison on them to kill the Lich King himself. I must have hit my purify and cleanse spell 30 times in 10 seconds. Flash healing as fast as my timer would allow and burning Holy shock cool down as soon as that timer finished like clockwork. The whole time this fight was going on, some of the alliance were trying to take the flag in the middle of the confusion... hell no I said, and I would run right on top of the flag stand and throw down consecration, which ticks damage on them stopping the flag stealing process.
I would also judge those close enough to me to proc some needed abilities for those around me.
When the dust settled, 10 alliance players lay dead at the feet of 5 horde, and not a single one of them died. The druid with us snatched up the flag and travel formed his ass straight to the the nearest horde kept tower.
For the rest of that game the alliance never touched that flag again. 5 players beat the odds because they had a paladin doing what he knows to do, heal, judge, and prevent. They stood there defending that flag the rest of the game, and were out-manned and out gunned several times throughout the match, but they never went down, and the alliance never got the flag back.
We ended that game 2000 - 1800 for the horde.
Nothing whack-a-mole about what I did. I look at it as, it is my duty to make sure the men and woman around me stay alive long enough to do what their classes are designed to do. Mine is keep people alive theirs is to kill.
Each healer in wow can do many different things, it is up to the player to decide how he wants to play.
I never get bored healing, and I never see it as a negative impact in the game we play. It is what you make it out to be.
In my opinion, every class should be able to heal.
Look at how it works in EVE, for example. Some would argue that it's not comparable to other "class based" games, but really it is. If you want to be able to do maximum damage in EVE, you have to sacrifice almost all of your ability to heal. For marginally less damage, you can self-heal quite effectively. In order to effectively heal other players, you need to sacrifice most of your offense.
In other words, it shouldn't hurt your character's offense too much to be able to be able to heal some. Guild Wars is a good example of this. Every class, as far as I know, can self-heal in this game (while in combat), and actually be able to do it quite effectively. In EVE, the phrase "break their tank" is used very often to mean doing enough damage to overcome the opponent's self-healing, because mitigation and healing are effectively the same in most circumstances.
But even in EVE you'll see ships that aren't even equipped with a weapon. These are essentially "healbots," but they also do other things, such as debuff enemies and reduce their offensive effectiveness. A simple ship swap and a refit is all you need to become an offensive powerhouse. But the moral is that you might be able to do just as well, if not sometimes better, by having a group of players with a combination of both offense and defense.
WAR did some interesting things with the healers, and I think it's by far the best attempt at creating a balance so far in the fantasy style mmo. Warrior Priests have one reservoir for offensive abilities, and one for healing, and the healing reservoir only fills up when offensive abilities are used. The more Archmages heal, the more effective their next damaging attack will be, so a strategy of doing lots of healing followed by a powerful DoT is often the best technique. Finally, no matter how you specialize as a Runepriest, you're given a heap of both healing abilities and very efficient damaging abilities, which encourages you to use both.
I do not like WoW's type of healing ala whack the mole. Note that I am happy that Blizz introduced dual specs to allow your character to change roles and that makes playing a healie type class far more bearable.
AoCs healing system where you have alot of time to do other things feels pretty good to me. In AoC, you are not just a heal bot. My BS can mix it up with the best of them and still throw out a heal once in awhile. In short, I like the AoC style but then again until AoC (and Blizz dual specs), I rarely had a healing type character.
I'll post my idea again on healers and wouldn't mind some feedback if anyone else found this as an interesting design concept...
What if heals can combo each other? Lets say that heals will combo off the type of healing school it was placed beforehand. Example: you cast a holy heal, it will heal what ever the healing spell is, then you cast a water type of heal. Lets say that the water heal will allow that holy heal to use its full ability and then turn that holy heal into a HoT. Maybe a healer would combo a holy + water heal for long term battles. Maybe a healer would cast a holy heal + forest heal because when the forest heal is reactant with the holy, that forest heal will cost no mana and as a healer your running out of mana. I really think this system here will attract players to try a healer because you have many choices of what to do on many diverse situations. It's like instead of DPS'n you are HPS'n (Healing per second). Lol, yeah that was bad hah.
Originally posted by skydragonren Priest can caster dps, heal <- doesn't seem fair but they get fear so it evens out.
LOL! What? Fear? Are you serious? How does that even it out? How many times to you use fear in a dungeon, or even solo questing with more than one monster nearby? PvP? They made fear pretty much impossible other than to interrupt a spell. Fear? HA! Maybe if priests got Sleep back (from beta) then it might even it out.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I've pretty much played a healer type in most games I've tried and basicly become burned out on the "stand back and watch the bars method". DAoC- clerics were good but solo ability sucked big time WoW- stand back healing sucked DDO- clerics are good soloist but expensive to take in groups. (stocking of wands and scrolls sucked) FFXI- White Mages were stand back healers with ZERO solo ability. (aggro for casting heals was a death sentence)
I think the way to go is to make healers vampiric in nature. Siphoning life energy from the target they are dpsing and channeling it into other players or themselves. Maybe even offering ways to channel that life energy into three different types: recover (gaining hp), preventive (dampening damage) and enhancing ( increasing damage). Then give the other players in the group the responsibility of switching between the three or more channeling buffs. Healers would still be responsible for leveling/managing their own channels and can have more active at higher levels. Now instead of watching healing bars and having players yell at healers for a heal or buff, a healer simply has to be in a group to have those abilities available for others to manage on their own. And we can finally participate in more group/raid encounters.
Those are some neat ideas. Reminds me of the Blood Mage in Vanguard SOH a bit.
What i think about healers is. I usually need to kill a lot to level it up before I can start healing peeps. It makes no sense. If you roll a healer, you want to heal from level 1. It's like rolling an archer and needing to kill kill with a 2 handed mace the first 20 levels. How to solve this? Give the healer a damage dealer pet with low armor that need to be healed, from level 1. I hope some dev read this.
Another creative idea. So the healers gets to be a healer but have a dps pet with low health. Very neat.
I'll post my idea again on healers and wouldn't mind some feedback if anyone else found this as an interesting design concept...
What if heals can combo each other? Lets say that heals will combo off the type of healing school it was placed beforehand. Example: you cast a holy heal, it will heal what ever the healing spell is, then you cast a water type of heal. Lets say that the water heal will allow that holy heal to use its full ability and then turn that holy heal into a HoT. Maybe a healer would combo a holy + water heal for long term battles. Maybe a healer would cast a holy heal + forest heal because when the forest heal is reactant with the holy, that forest heal will cost no mana and as a healer your running out of mana. I really think this system here will attract players to try a healer because you have many choices of what to do on many diverse situations. It's like instead of DPS'n you are HPS'n (Healing per second). Lol, yeah that was bad hah.
I do think this is a neat concept as well. It would make healing more interactive. I would actually like to see something similar where the healers heals are based of performing certain combos and the person with the less HPs are healed (no targetting to keep the healer's attention of the combat). I would also like to see timing and paying attention to become a big part of it. Maybe the healer has to pay attention to when a monster is casting to reverse the damage of the monster into heals etc etc.
I cant imagine not too much else a game can do to spice up a healer. Here are some of my stabs in the dark.
Chronomancer - a caster type who acts like a nuker, but in reverse. You unload mega dps, but the monster regenerates rapidly this damage over time. To balance things out there would have to be some mechanisms like a temporary immunity so the caster cant insta kill things in two hits or have his party insta kill things in two hits. The strategy is keep to decide whether to try to out dps the ticking regen clock of the target or use the time shift event as a crowd control mechanism. This type of character can can also have debuffs which unload their curses up front. the final line of skills a character like this could have is affect cooldown of skills for fellow party members or lengthen (toggle off) skills of enemies.
Another could take advantage of the environment. As many games offer destructible items. Maybe a healer needs to touch an object which radiates healing energy. Maybe a healer sacritice items to unlock their energies or destabilize the items to become aoe damage threats.
Another option for slower paced games is treat the healer like a crafter. In battle, the healer is essentiallly a field medic. You stabilize your party members, stop life loss from continuing instead of regenerating life. Once there is a chance to "operate" the medic works on the player. A mini game of "operation" and you either regenerate your companion or if you suck at your craft, your comrade takes longer to heal or suffers complications ( debuffs).
I'll post my idea again on healers and wouldn't mind some feedback if anyone else found this as an interesting design concept...
What if heals can combo each other? Lets say that heals will combo off the type of healing school it was placed beforehand. Example: you cast a holy heal, it will heal what ever the healing spell is, then you cast a water type of heal. Lets say that the water heal will allow that holy heal to use its full ability and then turn that holy heal into a HoT. Maybe a healer would combo a holy + water heal for long term battles. Maybe a healer would cast a holy heal + forest heal because when the forest heal is reactant with the holy, that forest heal will cost no mana and as a healer your running out of mana. I really think this system here will attract players to try a healer because you have many choices of what to do on many diverse situations. It's like instead of DPS'n you are HPS'n (Healing per second). Lol, yeah that was bad hah.
I do think this is a neat concept as well. It would make healing more interactive. I would actually like to see something similar where the healers heals are based of performing certain combos and the person with the less HPs are healed (no targetting to keep the healer's attention of the combat). I would also like to see timing and paying attention to become a big part of it. Maybe the healer has to pay attention to when a monster is casting to reverse the damage of the monster into heals etc etc.
Very interesting. Thanks for liking the idea. I have already designed how the healing combos would work, I think it would attract players to play a healing class. I was thinking of having UI feedback from players who take damage instead of them concentrating on their health bars. Examples would include, bleed effects, maybe worn down armor, or even different shades and colors to determine what kind of damage is being taking so you can adjust your heals accordingly. I was even thinking about macroing the heals to different group slots, but that may take away from the challenge I'd like to present here.
Comments
Err ... what again ?
On what basis do you state that ?
While I know lazy people of all jobs (Healers, Tanks, DPS, you name it), I would never state that the majority of any these job sucks.
Ok, except maybe if you talk about WoW or some such ? I wouldnt know about that one. In the MMOs I've played, Lineage 2 and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, the majority of players dont suck.
And if they do, they will probably be frustrated by these games pretty soon.
I love healing and healing classes, and always play healers in games. I'm ok with healers having the ability to do damage, but I hate games where healing is an afterthought, like it was in AoC (not sure if thats still the case). Healing was boring in AoC and it was one of the reasons I quit that game. If a game requires little healing then that means the risk of death is low, and as a consequence that means the game is likely to have very easy and boring PVE.
I prefer my healing classes versatile and complete, with a lot of spells to choose from to deal with every situation, which why my favourite healer in WoW has always been the priest even though I levelled the other healing classes as well.
One problem people seem to have with healers is that they are always needed for challenging content. This is not a problem when you are like me, a healer though. I love the fact that as a healer, for me all doors are opened and I'm welcomed with a red carpet and flowers thrown at my feet.
I've tried playing as DPS, but for me it is simply way to boring. The first few times you run a dungeon its ok, but after a while i simply bored of doing nothing but pew, pew and whack, whack. To me healing is the most entertaining task, followed by tanking and then a large space after which comes DPS. Therefore I cringe at any ideas from players or developers who claim they want to get rid of the "trinity of dps, tank, heal". If you must remove one of those things, please remove boring dps.
Healing as a primary role I would think is just not as rewarding.
My thoughts are similar to another person's here: DnD 4th edition healing is wonderful. The healer spends time doing damage, but also allows the other characters heals to a limited degree. But healing is limited.
I am not a fan of WoW or EQ style healing. Healing to that degree completely trivializes damage in all aspects of the game. It turns every fight into a damage race, and all tactics in the game surround winning that damage race. That is truly all Warcraft is, at this point. Guild Wars didn't feel much different either, and neither did EQ in boss fights.
The key, in my opinion, to stepping away from the heal-bot aspect of things, and to allow healers to actually play, is to give all characters some semblance of defending against damage. Not in one game is there defenses against attacks for every single player. But if you, for a moment, think about players being able to defend themselves, healing can take a secondary role, and the healer can actually participate in the fight.
Heck, you can make the healer's life more meaningful: in a game where damage is more significant, but less common, being able to heal it is a huge thing, and you'll finally be appriciated as a healer again
I'm also a fan of the idea of healing requiring melee range. If for no other reason than to keep things exciting.
I'd stick to the way Guild Wars implemented them: tactical heal bots. You always play in a team in Guild Wars and that means that the heal class can be a heal class, I also think that constant teaming is much better, if players aren't available then teaming with NPCs. The best way I'd see it would be that you play in a squad of 3 persons and then you're able to pick with what players/NPCs, that way the support roles can be done the way they should be without having to think about making them able to deal damage.
With constant teaming healers can say goodbye to their DPS ability because they got others to rely on that can do it for them. The other thing that should be added is that healing is only for emergencies, the major part of the damage should be prevented. By using skills that increase your blocking chance, make you unable to take more damage than X amount per hit, makes the next damage you take be haling instead and so on. That way healing isn't a matter of clicking the redbars and clicking your heals, it's a matter of watching the battlefield and trying to foresee how the enemy will act, and how to counter that. The heal class then becomes a tactical class that can't just redbar.
This is pretty much the way the healer class is made in GW and it's the way the class should be designed in my opinion. It's clever and it makes healing extremely challenging. This only works in a team-focused game, but I don't see any reason for not wanting a team-focused game if you can "solo" with NPCs.
I agree with the posters who said that Vnanguard healers were 'fun'...definitely my favourite healers (although I've just played Blood Mage and Shaman). However, I've not liked the two opposites on the spectrum in other games I've played - WoW and AoC. In wow it was far too wack-a-mole and healbot, whereas AC was just utterly boring with the heals when raiding (although even my PoM was easy and fun to solo or do 6 man groups in).
But, some people really do like wack-a-mole, and some people like casting an AoE heal every 20s or whatever and then casting a dps spell in between. So is there really an answer that will make everyone happy? Something sort of along the lines of a runekeeper in LotRO is a kind of interesting as well (some of this aspect in Vanguard too) in regards to attunement, so that if you're going all out dps, your heals suffer. </ramble>
Ningen wa ningen da.
----
http://twitter.com/Ciovala
I've pretty much played a healer type in most games I've tried and basicly become burned out on the "stand back and watch the bars method".
DAoC- clerics were good but solo ability sucked big time
WoW- stand back healing sucked
DDO- clerics are good soloist but expensive to take in groups. (stocking of wands and scrolls sucked)
FFXI- White Mages were stand back healers with ZERO solo ability. (aggro for casting heals was a death sentence)
I think the way to go is to make healers vampiric in nature. Siphoning life energy from the target they are dpsing and channeling it into other players or themselves. Maybe even offering ways to channel that life energy into three different types: recover (gaining hp), preventive (dampening damage) and enhancing ( increasing damage). Then give the other players in the group the responsibility of switching between the three or more channeling buffs.
Healers would still be responsible for leveling/managing their own channels and can have more active at higher levels. Now instead of watching healing bars and having players yell at healers for a heal or buff, a healer simply has to be in a group to have those abilities available for others to manage on their own. And we can finally participate in more group/raid encounters.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
I suppose my opinion on this matter depends on whether the healer class is being played in a pvp setting or a pve setting. As a pve healer, I believe WAR does it best with its melee healer archetypes. The warrior priest when played as intended (i.e. melee healer, not a stand-back, heal-tosser) is a great experience. Not only are you contributing to the DPS, but you're also buffing your tank, spot-healing the entire group, and providing excellent "emergency" healing in the form of a channelled melee attack.
- To those that play the "stand back heal-tosser" with the Warrior Priest, I want you to realize now, that you've been DOING IT WRONG for the whole time. The recent nerfs to your books/chalices was intended to get you back into the fray, hitting crap, instead of watching it get hit.
On the other side of the coin, the healer in pvp is absolutely smack on with WoW's discipline priest. Nothing is more edge-of-the-seat exciting to play, survivable, and downright useful. With the lightning-fast healing, anti-magic utility (i.e. mana-burn, dispel magic), and stubborn survivability, the Disc Priest is a joy to play. Very close second is the Archmage from WAR, insofar as she plays very similarly, but doesn't quite have the same utility or speed that the Disc Priest has.
-.Sleepless.
Absolutely agree with this post. Healers should be secondary, not required, for fights. Healing potions are horribly useless in fights, unless you need a quick boost before you're about to die, but even then, they can only be used once a fight. If it's some type of raid, your target can probably negate all the healing the potion did with one hit, making it pointless.
Make the healer nice to have, but not necessary. Imagine if it was like real combat: healers can't do anything significant until after the battle is over. A little first aid or quick healing during the fight, but the main healing, the binding of wounds and such, is not possible until after the fighting stops. If that were the case in MMOs today, everyone would die pathetically fast. At the same time, there's nothing more annoying than someone running around spamming heals, feeling invincible, even though you're ripping his cloth armor to shreds.
I don't think the "holy trinity" will be broken anytime soon. Devs will try hybrids, but there will always be a heal bot in the back.
I like the way healing was done in Mass Effect. Almost every class could heal, and when they healed, they healed the entire party, but there was a cooldown on it. Of course those who spent more points on first aid, healed more.
When I played healers in multiplayer role-playing games, it was mostly because it was easier to find groups. I still jump on the Medic from time to time in TF2, because nobody plays them very much, and even a badly-played medic can change the tides of battle.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
What i think about healers is. I usually need to kill a lot to level it up before I can start healing peeps. It makes no sense. If you roll a healer, you want to heal from level 1. It's like rolling an archer and needing to kill kill with a 2 handed mace the first 20 levels.
How to solve this? Give the healer a damage dealer pet with low armor that need to be healed, from level 1.
I hope some dev read this.
I like main healers to be mega-mana dependent and squishy to melee attacks.
1. Healing long lasting battles should be a mix of heal bursts and regeneration. Timing is everything.
2. Healers should be able to armor up to be as defensive as a middle armor level class, but at great expense of mana.
3. Healers should be able to do major burst dps, also at a great expense of mana.
4. Unless the group isn't much good or is way underpowered, I see no reason to have a main heal doing dps or spending mana on magic armor. Healer aggro wipes groups, 'cause squishy healers make sucky tanks.
I also prefer to have utility healers (off heals that can be pressed into service when a main heal isn't available) be significantly less mana or heals/sec efficient than a dedicated main heal. I think a skilled player with a well geared dedicated healer toon should be able to have a major advantage over utility healers. WHY? Because if not, there's no reason to go the extra effort of building an A+++ healer.
Ken
www.ActionMMORPG.com
One man, a small pile of money, and the screwball idea of a DIY Indie MMORPG? Yep, that's him. ~sigh~
I am going to tell everyone a story. This story actually happened last night. Which will colaborate some accounts of healers told here so far, and destroy illusions of others.
I have played through most every MMO to come out in the last decade or longer. One poster mentioned DAoC which was also my favorite game to play a healer class in. I have played a mixture of dps, and healing classes my entire career in MMO's.
For now though I play World of Warcraft.
WoW depending on how you want to look at it has 4 primary healer classes.
Paladin, Shaman, Druid and Priest.
I play the first one.
Everyone in WoW, or at least I hope they do (odds are some don't) know why they chose 1 of these particular 4 classes.
I rolled Paladin back before paladins were "cool". That's another story though.
Anyway each of these classes can do something different though they have the ability to do at LEAST 2 roles well, some can do all 3 in the trinity.
Paladin can tank, dps and heal.
Shaman can caster dps, melee dps, heal
Druid can tank, melee dps, caster dps, heal
Priest can caster dps, heal <- doesn't seem fair but they get fear so it evens out.
Anyway what you do in a game is always a personal pref. of your own. In my case I play on a PvP server and ONLY PvP unless I am bored I will go heal a Naxx or Uld for my guild. Typically though you will only find me in a BG, Arena or Open World burning down an Alliance villiage. That is just how I prefer to play WoW.
This is where our story will begin. I am a Holy PvP Paladin.
Last night I head into Eye of the Storm, (not a horde strong suite BG on our Battlegroup).
For some reason the horde on our BG really do not get the concept of how the BG's are played. Eye of the Storm for example, holding down towers is important, but the flag is the key, he who controls the flag wins the game. Alas my fellow horde misssed the memo on this.
Halfway through the game we are down 780 to 200.... not very good odds. Alliance had been shreading us on the flag stand the whole time. I finally quit holding my tongue and lose it on them in BG chat.
"Listen, if you want to win this game, and stick it to the alliance I need everyone NOT defending a tower to get your asses in the middle and hold down the flag, do not let the alliance touch this flag again!"
To my surprise 5 players mounted up and bolted for the middle to get that flag! I mounted my Talbuk tossed on Crusader Aura and bolted off behind them, If they had the balls to take on 10 Alliance players for that flag I wasn't going to let them die.
So we all dismount and the fight goes into full affect, DK's death gripping my guys, rogues working on the stun locks.
I pop my bubble, and use Divine sacrifice to soak up as much damage as I could from them. All of them were cursed to hell and had enough stacks of poison on them to kill the Lich King himself. I must have hit my purify and cleanse spell 30 times in 10 seconds. Flash healing as fast as my timer would allow and burning Holy shock cool down as soon as that timer finished like clockwork. The whole time this fight was going on, some of the alliance were trying to take the flag in the middle of the confusion... hell no I said, and I would run right on top of the flag stand and throw down consecration, which ticks damage on them stopping the flag stealing process.
I would also judge those close enough to me to proc some needed abilities for those around me.
When the dust settled, 10 alliance players lay dead at the feet of 5 horde, and not a single one of them died. The druid with us snatched up the flag and travel formed his ass straight to the the nearest horde kept tower.
For the rest of that game the alliance never touched that flag again. 5 players beat the odds because they had a paladin doing what he knows to do, heal, judge, and prevent. They stood there defending that flag the rest of the game, and were out-manned and out gunned several times throughout the match, but they never went down, and the alliance never got the flag back.
We ended that game 2000 - 1800 for the horde.
Nothing whack-a-mole about what I did. I look at it as, it is my duty to make sure the men and woman around me stay alive long enough to do what their classes are designed to do. Mine is keep people alive theirs is to kill.
Each healer in wow can do many different things, it is up to the player to decide how he wants to play.
I never get bored healing, and I never see it as a negative impact in the game we play. It is what you make it out to be.
The End.
In my opinion, every class should be able to heal.
Look at how it works in EVE, for example. Some would argue that it's not comparable to other "class based" games, but really it is. If you want to be able to do maximum damage in EVE, you have to sacrifice almost all of your ability to heal. For marginally less damage, you can self-heal quite effectively. In order to effectively heal other players, you need to sacrifice most of your offense.
In other words, it shouldn't hurt your character's offense too much to be able to be able to heal some. Guild Wars is a good example of this. Every class, as far as I know, can self-heal in this game (while in combat), and actually be able to do it quite effectively. In EVE, the phrase "break their tank" is used very often to mean doing enough damage to overcome the opponent's self-healing, because mitigation and healing are effectively the same in most circumstances.
But even in EVE you'll see ships that aren't even equipped with a weapon. These are essentially "healbots," but they also do other things, such as debuff enemies and reduce their offensive effectiveness. A simple ship swap and a refit is all you need to become an offensive powerhouse. But the moral is that you might be able to do just as well, if not sometimes better, by having a group of players with a combination of both offense and defense.
WAR did some interesting things with the healers, and I think it's by far the best attempt at creating a balance so far in the fantasy style mmo. Warrior Priests have one reservoir for offensive abilities, and one for healing, and the healing reservoir only fills up when offensive abilities are used. The more Archmages heal, the more effective their next damaging attack will be, so a strategy of doing lots of healing followed by a powerful DoT is often the best technique. Finally, no matter how you specialize as a Runepriest, you're given a heap of both healing abilities and very efficient damaging abilities, which encourages you to use both.
I do not like WoW's type of healing ala whack the mole. Note that I am happy that Blizz introduced dual specs to allow your character to change roles and that makes playing a healie type class far more bearable.
AoCs healing system where you have alot of time to do other things feels pretty good to me. In AoC, you are not just a heal bot. My BS can mix it up with the best of them and still throw out a heal once in awhile. In short, I like the AoC style but then again until AoC (and Blizz dual specs), I rarely had a healing type character.
I'll post my idea again on healers and wouldn't mind some feedback if anyone else found this as an interesting design concept...
What if heals can combo each other? Lets say that heals will combo off the type of healing school it was placed beforehand. Example: you cast a holy heal, it will heal what ever the healing spell is, then you cast a water type of heal. Lets say that the water heal will allow that holy heal to use its full ability and then turn that holy heal into a HoT. Maybe a healer would combo a holy + water heal for long term battles. Maybe a healer would cast a holy heal + forest heal because when the forest heal is reactant with the holy, that forest heal will cost no mana and as a healer your running out of mana. I really think this system here will attract players to try a healer because you have many choices of what to do on many diverse situations. It's like instead of DPS'n you are HPS'n (Healing per second). Lol, yeah that was bad hah.
LOL! What? Fear? Are you serious? How does that even it out? How many times to you use fear in a dungeon, or even solo questing with more than one monster nearby? PvP? They made fear pretty much impossible other than to interrupt a spell. Fear? HA! Maybe if priests got Sleep back (from beta) then it might even it out.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Those are some neat ideas. Reminds me of the Blood Mage in Vanguard SOH a bit.
Another creative idea. So the healers gets to be a healer but have a dps pet with low health. Very neat.
I do think this is a neat concept as well. It would make healing more interactive. I would actually like to see something similar where the healers heals are based of performing certain combos and the person with the less HPs are healed (no targetting to keep the healer's attention of the combat). I would also like to see timing and paying attention to become a big part of it. Maybe the healer has to pay attention to when a monster is casting to reverse the damage of the monster into heals etc etc.
I cant imagine not too much else a game can do to spice up a healer. Here are some of my stabs in the dark.
Chronomancer - a caster type who acts like a nuker, but in reverse. You unload mega dps, but the monster regenerates rapidly this damage over time. To balance things out there would have to be some mechanisms like a temporary immunity so the caster cant insta kill things in two hits or have his party insta kill things in two hits. The strategy is keep to decide whether to try to out dps the ticking regen clock of the target or use the time shift event as a crowd control mechanism. This type of character can can also have debuffs which unload their curses up front. the final line of skills a character like this could have is affect cooldown of skills for fellow party members or lengthen (toggle off) skills of enemies.
Another could take advantage of the environment. As many games offer destructible items. Maybe a healer needs to touch an object which radiates healing energy. Maybe a healer sacritice items to unlock their energies or destabilize the items to become aoe damage threats.
Another option for slower paced games is treat the healer like a crafter. In battle, the healer is essentiallly a field medic. You stabilize your party members, stop life loss from continuing instead of regenerating life. Once there is a chance to "operate" the medic works on the player. A mini game of "operation" and you either regenerate your companion or if you suck at your craft, your comrade takes longer to heal or suffers complications ( debuffs).
I do think this is a neat concept as well. It would make healing more interactive. I would actually like to see something similar where the healers heals are based of performing certain combos and the person with the less HPs are healed (no targetting to keep the healer's attention of the combat). I would also like to see timing and paying attention to become a big part of it. Maybe the healer has to pay attention to when a monster is casting to reverse the damage of the monster into heals etc etc.
Very interesting. Thanks for liking the idea. I have already designed how the healing combos would work, I think it would attract players to play a healing class. I was thinking of having UI feedback from players who take damage instead of them concentrating on their health bars. Examples would include, bleed effects, maybe worn down armor, or even different shades and colors to determine what kind of damage is being taking so you can adjust your heals accordingly. I was even thinking about macroing the heals to different group slots, but that may take away from the challenge I'd like to present here.