Healing makes combat bad

I'm not sure what you're saying exactly. But I do want to point out that healing is totally a part of the DPS equation. It just subtracts from your DPS the more your opponent performs it. Healing is not a defensive skill, it's a counter weight to attacks. There's a huge difference between Dodge and Healing. Dodge doesn't give back health, dodge avoids being hit in the first place. But once you're hit, healing is the only thing that gives that health back.

Look, I've never played EQ, WoW or any of those types of games. So I don't know why healing is so important to people. To me it's just a huge crutch that ruins roleplaying and is abused by 9 out of 10 players. It's really a meaningless "easy button" that allows players to have control over their loss of hit points, when the reality of a real "fight" or "challenge" is that you're not always going to be in control and sometimes you'll have to run or be patient. The idea that we're all supposed to get healing and spam it as much as possible as a way to "survive" seems like very bad combat design to me. But what do I know, WoW had like 20 million people playing it at one time, right?

I guess I just don't understand why we don't average the amount of times players have to heal themselves and just automatically do that? We could remove the entire life sigil and save everyone the trouble of clicking "healing touch" 10 times every fight.

 

To begin with, the assertion that healing somehow makes you an unstoppable killing machine in this game is absolutely false. If you find this to be true then you are not fighting mobs of the appropriate difficulty.

To say that healing is cheating in combat because it allows you to kill mobs is the same as saying that casting damage spells is cheating because it kills mobs.

If there is any problem with healing it is the same problem all classless systems fall into. Healing is to accessable to everyone because everyone can do everything. It's as simple as that. Unless they make it so spells are lined up in opposition to one another (if you have life spells you can't have death, if you have earth you can't have air, etc) then everyone will pick and choose skills/spells as they please. Some will do it to min/max, some will do it based on playstyle, some will do it based on what they envision their character to be, and most will do a little of all of those. Which I'm pretty sure is the point of this system.

 

You know, more than anything, I'd think you'd want to do something about the death magic branch of OPness more than healing. That branch of magic not only damages, it also heals at the same time.

All heal does is heal you, it in itself won't kill anything. Death magic, will and does both at the same time. Heal, you actually have to attack in addition to heal in order to kill something. So, if we get down to it, before we do anything about the OPness of healing, I'd hope they'd do more about the death magic. It's a death magic, after all. Use it too much and it should eventually kill you - like a timer counting down your time to death maybe?

waits to hear the screaming of death users

 

I wish you would have played them Baron because I really appreciate what you try to bring to this game. People who have played them are many times coming from a different experience than having just played role play games. I love aspects of role play games, but I appreciate what we did in wow too. It was a game that kept you on your toes to not let your team mates down. I did not always want to have that challenge, but when I was in charge of keeping the whole party alive with my Shaman healing from because we were fighting a boss who was throwing horrible things at us, I took it very seriously. I was worn out when it was over. So anyway this is not a criticism because I do understand where you are coming from in wanting the best for the game, and healing is not always the most fun way to stay alive, so I can glimpse that there is so much more we can do besides heal. It's just that in certain situations healers are desired or some kind of protection for your team if you are grouping, and it's hard to make the game without having those protections be available in the game. I hope that makes sense and thanks for addressing this. I know your topic perhaps jumps out to some and me at first like, 'hey don't take my heal away or nerft it' lol, but I am trying to take it from how it will play out in this game for the good of the game. Things like are we challenged and rewarded in playing a character to the fullest potential? or are we lac lustre and just fight and heal.
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Let's not forget that Drocis is bringing up a very valid concern. I at least agree that come launch 1 skill that everyone chooses to use is a bit boring/repetitive and thus not good for the game?

Healing right now just reminds me of the earth innates - you need to get them if you want to live. They're not expensive and based on where they are in the skill trees, they're easy to get. They have such an insane bang-for-the-buck with regards to survivability that you'd be crazy to not get/use them.

At least for me, I'd love it if when someone ask "what skills you have?" you could name them all without adding "and obviously healing"... after a while you wouldn't even have to add that part in - it would just be assumed by everyone and would result in shock if a player didn't have them. I'm "testing" and I'm currently testing a non-magic melee fighter. If a non-magic melee fighter can't succeed in this game come launch then things may be difficult for those players stubborn enough (like me) to not change their character away from what they want their character to be because it's easier and/or necessary.

 

The difference is that defensive mechanics are perceived as inferior when opposed to healing. Personally, i just want the rest of defensive mechanics to be as competitive as healing. There are other people who doesn't want to rely on healing because they don't want their characters to use magic (like Sara above) and potions are too expensive... I don't think we could reach a state where healing mechanics can be just removed from the game, but options are always good, so having some sort of "cheap" healing mechanic outside of the life tree (like the good ol' bandages) may be appropiate.

I agree, and i kind of like the balance between magic schools (They're already lined up, but they don't oppose between them), but i don't know how other people may feel about not being able of becoming and ice and fire mage. Because of the classless thing is why i'm always talking about other healing options and changing the healing skill tree so instaheals become a bit expensive from a progression point of view.

I don't think we can make the game fun without any heal mechanic in its current state, but we shouldn't be relying on it and forgetting the rest of options.

This has been discussed as well, and we've been told that death magic was compensated... it does damage but not as much as other magical schools and it does heal but not as much as life spells.

 

The game can´t really do away with magical healing in my opinion. What it can and should do is:

> Bring defensive skills more in line with healing, so that healing becomes just another form of damage mitigation.
> Swap Healing Touch and Purify or require Healing Touch to be channeled
> Introduce opposing magic schools (i.e. Life/Death, Sun/Moon, Earth/Air, Fire/Water)
> Gain EXP only when actual healing occurs (i.e. not standing around and spamming a heal when at full health)

Those are viable options that can even be introduced in conjunction.

 

Its not the classless system. People using blades won't randomly switch to bludgeons in the middle of combat even though they could. The thing that makes magic more accessible than different weapons is a really low dependency on reagents, and no dependency for low level.

 

The problem is that if you try to be patient or run away to get a breather, the critters you were just fighting snap back to their spawn point and magically insta-heal. So it's not just PC's that have access to heal... I wouldn't mind heal being more limited if wolves and spiders didn't have access to it either. The ruffians, kobolds, and other humanoid critters should only heal if they have a potion on them or a healer nearby. Then you can limit access to heal for PC's.

I built and ran a Neverwinter Nights world that worked just like that. My players loved that. Even if you solo'd and weren't a cleric you could hit and run, of course the monsters didn't snap back to a spawn point unless they lost sight of you.

The problem with heal right now is that due to the mechanics of everything else it's a requirement when soloing. Make it possible for players to use other tactics besides having to stand toe to toe especially when soloing then you can look at limiting heal.

 

I successfully played the game solo without Healing Touch for a long time.

 

Congrats, not everyone is that good. I can do the same as long as I'm in plate too... But that sucks when I'm trying to play a nimble archer in leather or cloth. Like I said the overall mechanics need some major work before you get rid of heal for the masses.

 

I was playing with leather armor. It just required you to pay attention to what you were doing and be prepared to retreat. Yea, the mechanics need some work.. but the biggest problem IMO is that skills don't have responsive feedback in the game, in the sense that it always felt very abstract and still does. When you block, you don't see yourself blocking a strike, etc. The defensive skills and everything could be beefed up to make it seem like they help more, but ultimately the devs need to do work to give players responsive feedback.

I think even making the mechanics better, though, players will either continue to use healing as a crutch, or healing will continue to be nerfed to the point that its annoying to use.

 

Well I for one want to see more ways to heal.

 

I totally agree with you on the feedback part. But I still think if they refine the mechanics for other play styles, healing can then be limited by maybe requiring medicinal herbs (ie reagents) or a longer, interruptible casting time.

 

I just don't think it's balanced correctly yet, that simple.

If you can spam healing, then there is an issue with the mana amount. So you fix that, you don't remove that skill.

A warrior with some healing magic should be able to heal, but only so much because he most likely concentrates on fighting more then healing. Now, with this new skill system, how do you capture that to make sure that mana raises only so much?

Interesting to see how this plays out.

 

Healing lets you hit far above your weight class. I just beat an Ebon Cultist Champion with a melee character, I won because I could heal faster than he could damage me, and my focus restored faster than I needed to use it. Even if the Champion had 5 times as many hitpoints, I still would have won.

 

I would say that if you can melee something into the ground while gaining health and focus one of several things was happening. You were way higher level, you out geared that mob by a long shot, focus regen needs to be balanced better or healing needs to be balanced better.

What level is that mob? What level were you? What gear did you have? It all plays into it. To just say healing is op kind of misses the point. If you just started a new char and walked in with starting gear and killed him then I see a definite problem. If you sat around for 5 hours spamming heal to level it while leveling up other skills and were able to walk into a newb dungeon and kill one thing then I'm just not really impressed and I hope the game isn't balanced with that in mind.

 

I was level 22 and kitted in as much heavy armor as I could strap to myself. I was the literal embodiment of a tank. The ECC out leveled me by quite a bit as I only hit him maybe 1 in 5 swings while almost every attack of his landed. For whatever reason, the combination of heavy armor and the ECC's sluggish attack rate, he was scoring a ton of damage, but I could heal much faster since I could stand still and benefit from the reduce focus cost and extra crits. Over the course of the battle, he must have done 8 to 10 times my maximum health in damage to me, but I finished the battle at full health and around a third focus.

 

I totally disagree that healing during combat should be removed. Just like any other skill in the game, if you don't like it - don't use it.

 

I think he was really asking for it to be balanced....