"A life innate that increases the healing of others" Best R24 Post Mortem Quote

wait, wouldn't having this (reading OP) start to bring back the classes, where they are trying to make it more sandboxy?

don't get me wrong, back in the day i would head for the healer-type classes before anything else, loved the class.. but nowadays we're heading in the opposite direction - classless systems where you can't be everything you want as well as you want it, but you can be what you want. - i.e. we aren't godlike and grandmaster everything.

 

[QUOTE="redfish, post:Also, making a healer mandatory for a party is something that should be avoided. Because life magic shouldn't be treated as mandatory.[/QUOTE]

This, a thousand times this! Healing is already too strong IMO, and third-party healing is the most powerful of all since it can be thrown on someone any number of times to create an utterly unbalanced amount of healing. In-combat healing kills the satisfaction of landing a good blow to begin with; I greatly hope it will not be further empowered, and in fact will be weakened such as not to be such a necessary mechanism in every combat. Fantasy fiction is not full of descriptions of "thrilling in combat healing" dominating encounters for a reason, I'd hope we it play much less a factor in combat than it does now, relative to other forms of support with solid counters other than "kill the guy who makes nothing die, and who by the way is almost impossible to kill because... that's right, he makes nothing die." Also, especially if third-party healers are made yet more powerful, combat becomes more a game of whack-a-mole when more than one of them are about - "kill that healer, no wait, kill the other healer, no wait - just forget it, let's all go home, this is boring, might as well wield a breadstick as a sword."

I'm for more support with counters, but not more and stronger-yet in-combat healing with no counters.

 

That's because you have nothing to really lose and you're spamming it like everyone else.

That's the point I'm making about healing. With Soul Tap, even at higher levels you don't do that the same way because it can eventually kill you.

 

Are you implying that someone who specializes as a healer should be able to do 1v1 PvP? I mean, the whole start of this discussion was an innate that increases the healing of others. That implies that you have at least one "other" ally that you are healing. Team or group PvP is another matter from 1v1, but the PvP types on these forums seem to focus almost entirely on 1v1, or even 1v1v1 etc. (Get up to 4v4 or so or even FvF and I might even start to get interested. I just don't have any interest in 1v1 e-peen fights, especially with my low frame rate.)

Not every build should be viable for winning 1v1 combat, and it's silly to try. Support builds have no place in 1v1. (This is part of the reason why PvP was only a niche thing in FFXI, because it just wasn't possible to balance support classes to even survive against damage classes, and the damage classes didn't have much in the way of self-healing either. But at least you could switch classes in town like changing clothes.)

 

*takes screenshots for science*

 

my opinion on healing:

as stated above i used to make a beeline straight for healer classes because they were essential and i was good at it, in a strictly-classed type of game, wehre you HAD to have the trinity.

fortunately, today games are more complex and so is this system. the trinity in my opinion is outdated, diluted, and so overused, it has become rubbish. boy did i like healers...anyway, back to point.

i want a game that isn't all about dps and hitpoints, with regards to healing. i want damage mitigation techniques, strategy and tactics employable as opposed to giving you more addition and subtraction to do on a hp meter.

damage shields, avoidance techniques, forced dodgerolls, active and moving combat, as opposed to standing still playing whack-a-mole... i want to be able to have my spells and skills absorb some damage, while i literally position my body in a place where i can do the most damage to my foe, and then try to do just that before my enemy is either aware or can react in time to save themselves - i want to have the exact same done to me while i'm at it, adding to the complexity of the active combat.

one huge step towards this is changing healing from being part of the DPS-festival, and mitigate the damage instead of give the health back.

 

You just described a mix of age of Conan and guild wars combat system. Age of Conan had heals on a cool down that you needed a significant rotation to use along with having the group dodge mechanics and mitigate attacks, with small errors adding up to a wipe. Guild wars has no dedicated healers, where it is about everyone playing smart, dodging, moving out of the MS-paint circles, and mitigating big damage.

Issues with both those games and transitioning to that style combat:

1 - This game is purposed as having an equally measured single player system. I have already been banned once for being vocal about trying to merge a balance between the two. It is not going to happen. So with whatever measures you purpose, keep in mind that a single player should be able to do whatever it is you want along with a group. Hopefully mercenaries/companions/hirelings are the answer to help stop everyone from becoming god and instead hiring a crew to help attain objectives in the single player setting.

2 - Unity - While its fun and can do a lot, speeding up the combat and having the contact to contact strikes and such will prove difficult for the coding team, as compared to dreamworld or havok which, after being modified for their particular interests, benefit heavily with 3d rendered mmorpgs.

Now Ideas:

Some methods I purpose, just ideas, would be the following:

1 - Adjust healing to be a heal over time with a cooldown. Healing touch may start off with 6 second cooldown, but with other skill or item modifiers come down to maybe even no cooldown. Further specialization may render the heal over time down to a 1 second event, thus making it instant. Same for other healing methods (bandages, potions, death, water, ect.). This nerfs healing initially, but with dedication can make it match current methods or exceed it. Same can be done to other spells, making them on par with auto-attacks (Invest so heavily in fire magic that fire arrow is the default auto attack, or stone fist[would make a monk type build interesting], death touch, ice arrow, chaos bolt, whatever.)

2 - Add in a specialization per circle. Someone who wishes to make Life magic their prime magical choice could do a quest or event that makes life either have greater attunement or adds further choices of passives to attain. While at it - Make it resistant to the Decay System. Maybe 1 specialization per group (1 combat, 1 magic, 1 crafting, 1 gathering). Changeable with a quest, or after several quests are done, changeable with a menu section or praying or spending virtue points or something. Or maybe just 1 combat focused specialization and 1 non-combat (interesting builds might then be a crafter who specializes in lunar magic to stealth around and harvest).

3 - Add in bonuses to items/equipment that give buffs to spells. Such as reducing the cool down on a spell, or reducing the cost of a spell, and maybe adding attunement at the same time.

We will have to wait and see, and ideas posted this deep in a thread are generally ignored anyway, especially look at the length.

tl;dr
-Add in specalizations that boost 1 circle and disable decay, while slight adjustments to healing can mitigate it at the start but make it match up to its power with investment and specalizations.