The new targeting system and healing

The new targeting system has been talked about in both a positive and negative light here on the forums. None of the positives ones were from anyone trying to play the role of a healer, I can guarantee that.

In a very small group, healing can work, with a lot of effort. Once you get into even moderately sized groups it's near impossible to help others. With pets and people and the denseness of people swarming and moving around opponents, it's all but impossible to effectively heal.

You can't target at all anymore, so no clicking the main tank and healing him, no using your function keys to pick out that hurt party member. It's just a blazing nightmare, by the time you get your footing in any situation, the person in question is long dead.

Even when you think you have them perfectly lined up, it seems half the heals are landing on all kinds of other targets. People are trained to move a lot in these games, and you don't notice it much until you have to heal them. Even the steady players are hard to keep tacked down for very long. Just as you think you're about to heal them, BAM, they run off in another direction.

Oh how I would love my function key targeting back. Even being able to click, or tab or lock a target at all.

I'm sure this is going to change, but at this point I don't know if being a healer or even a back up healer is a valid choice.

 

Perhaps AOE healing not requiring a target will become the primary form of group healing in game?

 

There's only 1 AOE healing spell in the life tree, and another in water that pretty well blinds everyone you cast it on. Both of them have long recasts, and wouldn't come close to letting you fill the role. Even if you put them in your deck, they just don't come up enough since it's just the one spell. Either the healing spells should pick the character with the lowest health in the general direction that the healer is facing, or you should be able to somehow select who you intend to heal. You could of course make all the healing spells area of effect in some way too.

Even if a pet shifts in front of a player with full health, the game doesn't know any better. The pet will get healed even though he's not even hurt, and the dying player, well he dies.

I'll be looking out, and I'll see who I want to heal. I'm facing him, but I can't be sure it won't randomly select other characters in my field of vision. It's pretty bad when you're facing your intended target, you're lined up and you still don't heal the right person or thing.

 

Are health bars of party members displayed when grouped? Can you click on those to target? If so, Healers could tab out, click, cast, tab back in.

 

Nope, no way to select a target anymore due to current design choices for combat. Chris was talking about putting in a soft target system... but we'll see how long that takes to implement and how well it works on friendlies.

 

At the Fire Lotus party today, Atos (Chris) said he'd hopefully have some healing solutions in for us on Monday. Maybe it will be targeted area heals like the fireball spell, or more AOE stuff. Hang in there, @danjacobsmith! I'm a healer too, and have been really frustrated these last couple of days, with ressurect broken and party healing so difficult. The devs are on it, though

 

Thanks for the update Margaritte. Great to hear that they're on it.

 

What they need to do is bring back option for manual targeting! There are a few reason I can think of at the moment

1: Healing ( This is obvious )
2: Sometimes you may not want to select the closest target. This happens many times for me... some times I actual let get behind an enemy thats attacking another and help along ( 2 on 1 ) ( this is not possible at the moment or very difficult )
3: I like to cycle through targets to see which is the weakness target ( especially after I use a AOE Death spell or Fire ( We cannot see this now )
4: I find it just more fun selecting my target Manually..

I really Really Really hope they bring back an option for manual selective targeting..

 

Why not just allow other targeting options for healing and emotes, but not for combat?

 

+1, we need options to go along with the main developing ideas, hard to please everyone with just 1 new radical system

 

How about curing and debuff removal spells? We will need more precision to make sure those bad stuff on your allies get removed ASAP. Having AOE cure would be helpful buy maybe too easy. Without AOE, the targeting might end up becoming too difficult since we first need to be able to identify the target and then accurately target him/her. With long cool down on curing, one mistake could cause a group wipe in the intense battle.

 

My problem so far is ranged magic (fire arrow, searing ray, etc.) will go to whatever happens to be in the general direction you are facing. Even if you are in combat, it is possible that you could hit (and aggro!) something that isn't even visible on your screen at the moment. I hadn't considered the implications for healing, but I can see how there are even worse problems with that.

Please, please, please bring back manual targeting! There's no good reason I can think of that the classic targeting can't co-exist with the new system. Right now, combat is the only thing behaving differently in classic mode, and it is the only reason for the (immersion-breaking!) crosshairs to still be on the screen in that mode.

Bonus: the presence or absence of the crosshairs would visibly indicate the current targeting mode.

I really don't like the combat system's obsession with camera position. I like to rotate the camera a lot to see if I'm about to be attacked from behind.

 

Monday is here. I know it's only been a few days. Has there been any talk of a patch in the next few days by any of the developers yet?

 

Doesn't the FAQ page that @Chris has been linking a few times in the past few threads already mention that it currently doesn't really work with healing right now?

One of the discussed changes also mentions that Healing Touch would potentially turn into a short-range AoE spell. So right now they're still messing around with various ideas.

 

Yes oneandonly made reference to a patch in another thread half an hour ago, yay! Hope there's some healing stuff in there.

 

Great news Margaritte. I hope so too!

 

AoE healing is joke, you could sit a 3 year old in front of a PC and tell them to hit a button to cast the AoE heals when they see someone near their character, and just tell your group to run to the healer.

I hope this isn't what healing will come to in this game.

 

Chris had mentioned looking into the "F" keys as a sort of soft target system for healing targets (maybe buffs too?).

Edit found the quote from another post.

@Chris This is worthy of a test id say!!