Healing makes combat bad

Defensive skills already make you almost invincible to physical attacks. Against melee enemies my character can spam defensive skills and reduce all but the highest level monsters to striking for 0-1 damage around 90% of the time. Conversely, if I use healing instead, I no longer have to worry about magic and (some) DOT enemies as well.

 

Don't forget offhand attack is no focus also.

Healing could need some adjustments but the way that I play (where healing is roughly the same as my other abilities or a little less) it feels fine and I'm certainly not able to just kill everything without difficulty.

I'm sure if I essentially made a healer, where my healing skill was well above everything else due to the crazy amount of xp we were allowed to carry over, who healed and autoattacked then it may work like that. I would hope that works for all the healers out there who specialize in healing.

Next release I'm sure you can do that too, but you won't be able to do anything else because you won't have the xp to level other skills. If you level healing and only autoattack then stop developing auto attack and put xp to other abilities then that's fine too. It's character progression.

I guess I'd just like to know when healing becomes op. At what skill level wearing what armor against what mobs? It's actually a serious question as my playstyle doesn't seem to show healing as overly powerful and certainly doesn't reflect what some people are apparently seeing.

 

In my case, epic plate armor and a shield. Objective is to pump DR and DA as high as possible, and push enemy DPS negative with healing. I'm not sure what enemies are which level, but I was able to take on enemies at least a tier higher the moment I started aggressively healing and the compounding effect of healing has significantly accelerated the rate at which I can take on new tiers.

 

I can see there being a point where you just weren't taking much damage and being able to heal through it. As a non plate wearer I just never get there (or haven't yet). I think with the next release it'll act differently as all of your passives and other skills will use up xp and you'll be stuck just being a pure tank/healer build. If that's how you want to play then that's perfectly fine in my option and I'm not sure it's wrong. I think I'll have to see how abilities level with no xp reserve before I personally make up my mind.

 

I didn't chose the build, the build choose me, as it. I play PVE, so I gravitate to that which allows me to eliminate enemies with a good return for the amount of time I am willing to commit. I wasn't healing and I was getting killed easily, so I started adding healing to by tactics. It quickly became obvious that healing with the best tactic 9 times out of 10 and the more I used it the better a solution it became. Strong tactics are generally bad in a game like this and strong tactics that only get stronger over time are worse. I've mentioned before that I dislike the holy trinity of Tank/DPS/Support, so it is depressing to see SOTA fall so quickly into WoW clone land by embracing it. Striking out and drastically recasting the healer role is one way to depose the trinity.

 

Out of interest... what level are you and how higgh are your defensive skills?

 

Actually I would say healing is OP virtually from the start, relative to fighting without using healing - but that doesn't mean you can beat any foe with healing, just that you can beat foes with healing that you *cannot* beat without the healing.

Here is the test - go fight stuff without healing until you find something that is a challenge. Then fight this same foe using healing as much as you can, and see the difference.

A second test, use your healing as much as you can in fights until you find something that is a challenge even with the healing. Then, fight the same thing without the healing, and see the difference.

In my tests what I find, is that things that are a challenge without healing, are easy with the healing. Things that are a challenge with the healing, are impossible without the healing. My tests have been in mixed armour with plate and cloth mostly, some in full plate, but same results in terms of performance of healing vs. no healing. Current skills are 70+ blades, 20+ healing touch, and various other healing skills mixed in with 8-12 skill level. Note that these tests are with a character with much higher skill in offensive abilities than healing, yet the healing is what tells in combat even so. If this topic is still running once I get those healing skills up higher I would expect even more support for healing being OP, but given my bias to expect such others posting their findings are most welcome.

The thing to remember in testing healing's power, is comparing "with healing" to "without healing" rather than just seeing of you can beat anything with healing; I certainly cannot kill everything without challenge at my level, with or without healing... But without healing there are things I cannot touch that with healing I roll over, that is the main point.

 

I like the idea of healing as another defensive ability. You can use healing to recover hit points or skills like Glancing Blow, Dodge, etc. to avoid taking the damage in the first place. You can factor in armor type as a way to reduce damage too with the penalties associated with it. I don't see any reason healing should only be done with the Life skill tree. I know bandages have been mentioned and I guess that has already been decided not to be put in but it would be another option that would go along more with pure melee fighters who don't want to deal with magic.

I don't think healing is overpowered if it allows you to win a battle that you normally wouldn't be able to. That is if you could also win that same battle by using the defensive abilities instead of the healing. If either work to the point that it allows you to be more effective in battle, that makes sense to me. Of course, if you decide to use both defensive abilities and healing, sure, you can survive even easier but then you have more skills raising which means slower skill increase over all and more focus spent on healing instead of damage dealing during the combat which would mean longer battles and again, slower leveling. It should come down to having multiple options for the same thing so not one particular form of damage mitigation/recovery is required but instead presents various options to the players and their play style.

I am fine if auto attack still functions but it should never be as effective as using skills during a battle. If you decide to fight and only heal and use defensive abilities to allow you to fight something 2x what you would normally be able to, that is fine as long as using your combat skills instead of going this route is balanced to the point you would be able to kill 2x the number of mobs in the same amount of time netting similar experience/skill gain.

Of course you can also go the glass cannon route and take no healing or defensive abilities and hope to burn through the health of a mob faster than they can take you down. Hopefully that would end up a bit balanced so your downtime would result in similar amount of mobs being killed.

Now, how all that would affect PVP, not sure as I don't PVP.

I just like the idea of having multiple options that result in the same basic thing, be it healing, damage mitigation, or whatever.

 

Level 32 with active defensive skills in the high teens and passive defensive (and all DR increasings skills I could find) in the mid twenties to low thirties.

 

This! 100% agree. The basic mechanics of defensive combat are out of wack. When you can't dodge or parry as effectively as healing there's a problem.

 

I did a test last night and the only thing I can say is if there is something OP it is not healing, it's plate armor. I switched to plate armor and just stood around killing everything in my path in an area that I was just in using chain. So by swapping from chain to plate and changing nothing (to include healing as I always do) and I felt like I was steam rolling everything.

Are any of the people that feel healing is op using something other than plate? When combined with plate armor it makes healing seem very strong. Which isn't the case if you pair it with chain or cloth. I haven't used leather in several releases so I can't comment on that but I doubt it's any different since chain, leather, and cloth feel about the same in use.

Edit: I'm still not convinced this is a bad thing though. If you're using a dps build you should suffer some drawbacks in the form taking more damage. The next release should show us more.

 

i use a sword and light armor, cloth even, heal is superior to all of my defensive glyphs combined.

 

Does anyone have a video showing how healing is op? I hate to keep bumping this thread but for some reason this topic is nagging at me.

 

I think you are right in that healing is superior to the defensive glyphs. I think that leads to a need to buff the defensive glyphs to be on par with healing as opposed to healing being over powered. In my opinion ideally defensive abilities would just be another way to avoid damage as opposed to just healing/recovering from it. Both would take focus and using abilities so no benefit to one over the other.

As for the armor type, I switch to plate as soon as I have enough money to buy it and have for several releases. I tried cloth and leather and would die faster than I could heal to recover, even in starter areas. Switching to plate made a world of difference. I deal with the fizzle chance if I am trying to work in magery and also try to get into the innate abililty that reduces my fizzle chance.

Not sure where the issue is. Do defensive abilities get buffed? Is plate armor over powered and need to be cut down a bit? Should there be more negatives to wearing plate?

Personally I think healing is fine where it is and really can't be removed. I don't think it is overpowered but if you combine it with plate, the two make you a pretty tanky force. Of course, if defensive abilities were buffed so you could combine them with plate would people then be saying the defensive abilities are over powered? Is plate armor what is really over powered?

 

I've not used full light armour with healing this release, I am using a mix of plate and light armour and do imagine that combining plate and any additional defensive skills you can along with healing will best hightlight how healing is overpowered. The best comparision is healing (and defensive skills) vs. offensive powers if we want to see what is out of balance and makes combat less fun. While healing is more powerful that defensive abilities in game so far as I can tell, increasing defensive abilities to the power of healing will make the more important balance worse; that of offensive ability to kill vs. defensive/healing ability to avoid being killed.

I don't want a system where anyone can stay alive indefinitely with others trying to hack them apart due to overpowered healing *or* defense. And in pvp, I never want an attacker to feel helpless because someone's massive healing, regeneration and defense will not let an attack do real and significant damage. It's one thing to lose a fight because you are outplayed, another to be incapable of damaging a foe even when you throw your best attack into their back.

 

I will just have to trust the devs to go through the numbers and see if healing is truly overpowered as they are the only ones who really have the data to make the decision.

I agree if you use healing OR using defensive abilities, it should come down to player abilities assuming the other character is similar in skill and level. Also, a player in the best armor (full plate) who uses only defensive abilities AND healing going against someone playing a full out glass cannon should be pretty evenly matched and either could take the battle. The glass cannon trying to out-damage the healing and dodging of the defensive player before they are out of focus and the defensive player trying to last until the glass cannon is out of focus so they can slowly whittle down the health. Now if the defensive player always wins in this type of battle then perhaps there is an issue but is it the healing is over powered, the armor is over powered, the damage of the glass cannon is under powered or the skills of one player is better than the other? I don't know but I disagree that a full defensive player should never be able to withstand a full onslaught from a glass cannon. They are two completely different play styles, both with their advantages and disadvantages.

Of course when you add in the randomness of crits and the playing skill of the players themselves, it could all be anyone's game.

I do know when I went to the Graff mines for some silver, even with full plate and using all my defensive and healing, if I got more than two gnolls or if one of those were a wizard, I usually ended up having to run away to break combat. Even with only two warriors, if they critted too much I would often have to break combat and start over trying to get just one. This wasn't when I was a new level 5 character either.

I don't think healing is making you unkillable. I think healing AND the defensive abilities AND full plate makes you live longer but again, the battles also take longer.

Hopefully the devs will look at the numbers and see where things stand. I will adapt as required to whatever is changed, if anything. I leave it to them to decide and have given my opinion on the subject.

 

The main issue is about trying to make every kind of character beings able to stand toe to toe with whatever they face. I am not a fan of this as it creates inbred soloers. I believe in the Holy Trinity of character classes in an MMORPG. I do not really understand the concept of soloing through an MMORPG either but it is becoming much more popular it seems. I do like being able to train everything up so that you can swap decks and roles whenever you want. I DO NOT like soloing to be a similar experience and have a similar difficulty regardless of build as long as you toss in a few, very effective spells and skills regardless of what you face.

An idea:
Heavy armor = Innate frequent spell fizzles but less interruptions due to being physically jostled by hits. Heavy armor should slow your physical and magical attacks and movement speed. Harder to interrupt enemies attacks and magic due to slower attack speed.

Light armor = less inherent spell fizzles but more interruptions, more chance of being jostled by hits. Faster attacks and magic speed. More chance of interrupting enemies attacks and magic due to faster attack speeds, faster movement speed.

Light Weapons = Less damage, more chances to interrupt due to faster attacks but less %chance to interrupt due to less impact.

Heavy Weapons = More damage, less chances to interrupt due to slower attacks but more %chance to interrupt due to more impact.

Then by weapon:

Bashing weapons, higher %chance to interrupt due to their jostling nature.
Bladed weapons, Less %chance to interrupt as they tend to slice more than jostle.
Polearms, an average chance between the two above.
Ranged: The largest %chance as someone is struck at a high velocity.

Then by creature type.

Ex: Skellies more resistant to arrows and blades.
Heavy hide and furs more resistant to blunt
Stone, steel or carapace more resistant to blades

More CC/root/slow spells that actually make it easier to be a caster or archer and avoid more interruptions and point blank engagement.

Longer casting times on Healing spells across the board = Greater chance of interruption. I.E. Not near as effective in combat when soloing.

What all this amounts to is not being able to tackle everything with heavy armor and duel wielding bashing weapons with a few heals and fire spells.

 

I agree with this also though, if the devs can manage to balance things out perfectly the defensive and offensive play styles, or various mixes of those styles, should all result in characters that can defeat one another, player skill and luck determining the outcome rather than any element (healing, defense, offense, whatever) being overpowered to determine the outcome. Such perfect balance may not be possible but I agree with the goal, and just feel the healing element in particular is out of line with the rest (but difficult to put in line judging from many other games).

 

... Except SotA is not an MMORPG... It's designed to have solo play and therefor players need ways to play solo without dieing every thirty seconds. Sure the devs have said there will be none-story areas that will require groups, but that the story areas can be played solo. So character skill sets for solo play haves to be considered.

 

Yes it is. It only has a SP aspect to it. Any game that has Multiplayer open world zones in a RPG setting is a MMORPG. And if they do not make hard, group baddies, quests and the like, some people will not stick around. Without progression, without something to shoot for, something bigger than the solo player, people will lose the drive to play it. To have everything instanced and defeatable/obtainable by a single player, then what is left is crafting and socializing which aren't really required because you can use the gold you get from adventuring to buy what you need from vendors. What ultimately happens is that after a play through or two, the Soloist shelves the game and the Groupers have no reason to group and get bored.

I like extremely difficult games where a mistake costs you dearly and without a group of experienced players...forget about it. Games where anyone who spends the time to skill up can succeed to me are not going to cut the mustard. This is my major concern for this game. Right now, SotA is extremely easy. Not in the sense where NPCs have question marks of exclamation points over their heads as quest indicators but in its risk factor and combat system that really allows for little or no strategy and alot of waiting for the deck icons you shoved into your deck to show up. Most likely due to their SP game being, well Single Player and Instanced. I have remade my character for R21 and have not died once. When my HP get low, I can run if I have to. Also note that I do not use any heals or potions what-so-ever during combat. I mine a little, chop down trees a little, forage a little and fight a little in Multiplayer zones by myself. I take what I gather and either sell it or keep it to craft with. And don't get me started with the ability to just run past creatures to get into a mine or some other zone. This bothers me a great deal. I will tell you that if this is the Multiplayer game, SotA has a long way to go still which we likely know considering we are still in development. What "I" add in is alot of socializing in and out of the game. VoIP, IRC and these forums. To be honest, this more than the game play keeps me hanging in there to test out the game. I realize what I have written might be harsh to the devs but I know they've heard it all before and are still going to change and improve alot.