I want to revisit Healing skills!! I am a Cleric i want to play a cleric but i cant!

Mages in SOTA = Over powered game breakers as well. Especially with fire and death and lightening not to mention the melee weapons, and wands they use as well.

 

I did understand where you were coming from on that haha, we can tone down some of the cleric skill in the D&D ruleset, if they put stuff in SOTA similar to that. ( i was thinking more on the giving bonus's to other players and healing type stuff. but it would be nice to have some offense type spells out of sun or life.

 

I think a good way to regulate that would be if your a cleric you need to do nice/evil stuff (anticleric) such as help people and give a gold to that poor beggar in every town. Or lose amounts of heal and help if you dont keep up with what your supposed to be doing whether evil or good.

 

Wizards have win in their name for a reason

 

Good to hear. Looking forward to your next report on scale up!

 

Maybe this would satisfy clerical/pally players?

Order Magic
Buffs, Un-summons, Holy Powers

• Active - Holy Fist, Bless, Holy Bolt, Godly Might, Magic Resistance, Kill Undead, Banish Summon, Sacrifice
• Innate - Order Attunement, Holiness, Empower Order

Where is the balance if something like this isn't there to oppose chaos?

 

~The Insidious Oceans of Magic~
The healer situation that seems at the heart of what's said here, also happened within the progress of Ultima Online.
In Ultima Online's beginnings, that game had something of a balanced nature where any particular skill set, even the more pure class based, seemed in harmony at the time. Then, as it's producers, aided by the steady thirst of the mage players to continue adding new magical content through new spells and old spell's increasing within their power's ability, as a result the healer warriors with their simple sets and ways became obsolete, or insignificant within their value of play by comparison.

~Truth and the Two Sides of Reflection~
Is this something within the gaming producer's make-up as a team, or profession? or is magic the easiest to accommodate as a game changing vehicle? or are such wants of the player, stemming from some first shooter gaming where bullets and medical kits or swards and bandages caused a simplicity of combat to become something that appeals to those who wish to have a more basic form with less thought to the what of the how to accomplish their gaming tasks? or is this desire within our "healing fans" simply because "we like it"?

~Compassion~
To me, magic to the Ultima Game producers is like crack. It's something insidious, that given time will always overtake any of it's player's desires to remain competitive as a healer or attempting to be a common human with no magical ability at all striving to accomplish defeating a game without the addictive crack and regents for all players in the end, to have become a powerful mage. "I don't think it's wrong", I feel that it's only the effects of living in a magical world.
The healing arts are also magical themselves, of that there is no doubt. Yet it seems to me also true, that when any Avatar chr wishes to take a pathway through healing, then that player enjoys creating and playing an Avatar that is more simplistic in it's build and more compelling to play through it's core ability which is the virtue compassion.

~Water or Stone, Do We Shape the World, or Does the World Shape Us?~
As for me, I do feel that from how our Ultima history has treated such desires, of the player's wish to preserve healing as competitive, that history has always shown a wave of magic will always some day overtake any pure healer or pure warrior. Within our current game, I was almost glad to see that the warrior class was a mage, because in that way, no player would have sadness having built such an Avatar and thought that they could have had always equal footing with that of the mage. I believe that we must look at our Ultima's history and accept the fact that, in order to become "The Avatar", that we must have at some time or at one time encompassed all skills to have achieved that tidal. The encompassment of it all, is to become "The Avatar". So why put off the inevitable, to heal is to resist and to attack without recourse is what aggresses towards that tidal. The mage warrior, or the warrior mage, these are our choices, yet I for one, even with a tide of forces against me, choose a path through healing and compassion when given the choice and forgo an easier path to that goal, even if I never reach it, as the magic of our world eats me, fore it's a self sadistic though in the end, that a healer class would have a lasting future against the addictive crack of magic in a world such as ours. Unlike as I was once in Ultima Online, here I'll become water and adapt myself into what the world wants me to be to become "The Avatar".

For me, I'll relent to the game's desires and forgo my own...
...let the magic crack addiction begin...
"Heal Me Bro!"
~Time Lord~

 

Neutral chaotic D&D-Healer - "No, I don't like to heal you today. Maybe tomorrow. Learn to accept death - it's a part of life ..."

 

The problem with healing in this game is that it's WAY too easy to get healing and WAY too powerful to have healing to not put it on every conceivable character in the game.

The attunement system also doesn't work at all to restrict this, since it doesn't do anything to really define your role, as much as just creating an arbitrary oppositional weakness.

What it really needs is some better way of making having a dedicated healer a good idea. My basic suggestion would be that the really strong healing spells put a temporary debuff on you that makes you deal less damage, something like 50% less damage for 10 seconds. That way if everyone just heals themselves all the time it really hurts the damage of the party, but having just one person doing the healing allows the others to preserve their damage output.

Those are the kinds of systems I would implement to retain the classless nature of the game while still encouraging specialization and some breakdown into archetypes when people actually play together without invalidating hybridization while soloing.

 

Although D&D is different to MMPORGs, in that you don't have a global state that all players must rank against, essentially every party in a D&D game generally tends to be an a slope where they're fighting more or less appropriate enemies to their level, managed by how sadistic their GM is, I do agree there are much more powers a "cleric" type could have... i.e., bless, blade barrier, AOE type effects (i.e., group roots) that we I haven't really seen in this game or in a lot of CRPGs in general recently.

 

Dont get me wrong, i could see where if this was a SINGLE player game only, that we would need every skill in the book, but fortunately it is not, unfortunately it seems that even in multiplayer the game is treated like a single player game which knocks out needs for any other character. Your friends other players etc..

 

I suppose the quintessential question there is: Is all the content in the game supposed to be soloable? Since you can play the game offline there is a decent argument to be made that it should be. On the other hand, that kind of makes for a really poor MMO experience.

 

In Offline mode you are supposed to get mercenaries/companions to help you get through some of the tougher situations.
So it's not necessarily an either or situation.

 

There should be better heals the more points you put into it. I agree that healing needs to be looked at.

 

In that case I don't really see a good argument for why there shouldn't be a bit more emphasis on archetypes and characters that can't do it all.

 

I currently play a dedicated healer. I have life/water(douse and soothing rain)/blades.....with a few other things sprinkled in (sprint!). What you are proposing above handicaps me even more in solo play than I already am. I dont want to be forced to group with others regardless of the fact that I generally choose to.

I do agree that healing could use a little love. I also think it's a bit too easy for players not dedicated to healing to obtain effective heal spells.

So far I have had absolutely no trouble grouping with anyone for xp. Most are appreciative for my healing and the pace we are able to maintain.

While some of the higher level mobs have been solo'd by players at varying levels, I'd say the average player can't pull off that feat without a lot of practice or help. As a guild, we go out on group runs once a week and I've never found myself in a position where I was bored or my heals weren't needed.....and that's with a full party of damage dealers.

Just my two cents.

 

Its power is based on how long since you've last attacked, right? Has anyone tested how much of a difference that makes?

 

My experience playing at relatively low levels and with whoever I happen to run into is actually very similar, but I don't usually play early access products for such lengths of time to really be able to experience their "endgame" state.

I have played a lot of other MMOs though and strongly suspect that in a competitive environment nobody is going to want to rely on bringing a dedicated healer, because when you coordinate a group well enough simply cross healing with healing touch will be more effective. Especially when it comes to PvP decentralizing the heals is far more powerful because it gives the enemy nobody specific to attack to shut them down. Even in PvE content if having a dedicated healer doesn't actually help you clear content faster or is absolutely required you very quickly see a meta develop where people don't want them along, like what you get in Guildwars 2.

It's more my general experience with MMOs that says that very few games manage to create a system where having a healer is both optional and optimal, so you either end up with people being forced to bring one or people not wanting one along. Ideally you shouldn't need one but greatly benefit from having one.

Maybe this game has healers perfectly figured out at the high end, I'm not really going to know until I delve deeper into actually playing it once all the wipes are over. I just don't personally see any systems in place that would make me think it's different than what I've already seen many times in other games.

 

I think that is only for the spell healing burst. But I could be wrong about that.

 

In SotA so far it seems that the healer's role is rather one of ressurection rather than that of healing touch.