Less healing makes for a more interesting game.

The focus on healing in this game is currently too strong in my opinion, and this hurts the game in a variety of ways.


Healing in a game screws with the balance of any game in general, because it works as a direct contradiction to what hitpoints are supposed to be: The time you have to win the fight. When you can simply reset the clock over and over it creates a situation where unless the enemy you are fighting is inflicting more damage than you can heal there is no time limit on defeating that enemy, that enemy can not defeat you.

This creates a damage threshold, where nothing that inflicts damage below the threshold is ever a threat, and that in turn has huge implications for game balance. It means that in order for any content in the game to be challenging it needs to be designed around an expected healing number. That in turn means that in order for anyone to do the content they have to be close to that healing number. Similarly in PvP it means that anyone who wants to be able to defeat other players needs to build to stay ahead of the healing threshold. You are basically forced to build your character with healing in mind, because the devs are unable to create challenging content for characters that can heal themselves without making that content virtually impossible for character who can't.

On top of creating these demands on both the encounter design and the way the players build their characters the healing threshold also creates a huge upset in the scaling of damage. For example, if the healing threshold in the game is 90 points every second, then any amount of damage you inflict that is below 90 points has absolutely no value. Furthermore, someone with 110 DPS would actually kill targets twice as fast as someone with 100 DPS. So instead of the value of damage going up proportionally to how much damage you're inflicting, it scales incredibly poorly at the low end (to the point where its value is pretty much zero no matter where you are at the low end) and then suddenly scales incredibly well at the high end, where even just a minor increase in damage becomes a huge increase in kill speed.

As if that wasn't all bad enough, having huge availability and need for healing in all aspects of the game is actually most detrimental to the people who really enjoy playing a healer. When everyone has to take healing skills to have a viable character, everyone is able to cross heal other characters with those skills, and the encounter balance of the game is centered around these expected numbers it means that dedicated support characters who are built to be healers are actually quite worthless barring any extremely difficult content that was specifically designed to require support.

Even if we acknowledge focus as the limited resource in the game, which I don't feel is entirely accurate, it still doesn't really allow anyone to get out from under needing the healing skill just to make that leap from hitpoints to focus. There is no good reason to build the system in such a way and then act as though it's really a free build system. It really isn't at that point.



The best way to improve this kind of situation is to step away from healing as life-bar extension and instead dip into active defense systems like shields. Dragon Age 3 does a pretty good job of this. There are no actual healing spells in the game, instead the support character provide shields to the party. This means the ability to protect people by casting spells is still there, but instead of erasing the damage that's been done they now try to prevent damage from being inflicted. This is an important distinction because when you can remove the damage someone has taken it means their life is no longer finite in a fight, whereas if you can only prevent them from losing life any failure to do so still adds up.

Combining a system like that with other active defense systems like blocking or dodging allows support characters without making them mandatory, and without forcing everyone to dip into the exact same skills for healing.

 

I think just making low-level spells have reagent costs would do the trick personally Then you don't even have to nerf healing so much, or any magic so much for that matter.

Then, allow staves/wands to reduce reagent costs/fizzle rate in one school of magic. Then you could have mages specialized in Life Magic carrying around life magic staves if they want to be healers.

 

I've sort of always felt this way ever since playing ultima online. I remember watching some mages fight and can recall how boring it was to watch two guys running around yelling "In Mani" at each other for 5+ minutes. I still think healing should be a thing, but it should be something you do after the battle, when you're out of combat and such.

 

Never made sense to me that I could be applying bandages in the midst of exchanging blows with my opponent in UO. I agree that healing should be done after either retreating from battle, or victory.

Making healing more specialized could raise the demand for cleric-type builds in all types of game play.

 

Agreed.

 

I still think reagents are an atrocious system that contributes absolutely nothing to the game other than tedious upkeep. It wouldn't fix the problem at all, it would simply create a new threshold of willingness to endure the grind to get out ahead of the reagent consumption. The people who just grind and bear it won't change their behavior, and the people who don't like grinding will play something else, so there is absolutely nothing gained, only players lost.

 

Agree with the OP, healing in combat sort of ruins combat really. I do not like the concept of healing in combat, but feel I must master in in-game since I have found it far more powerful than other mechanisms (offensive or defensive) in game; while healing in combat makes such a difference, one is gimped for avoiding it. As a test this release, I've been picking up a variety of healing skills to test them out vs. combat without them, and those healing skills let my character succeed routinely against foes he is slaughtered by when not using healing. The most powerful healing I'm using at present (the heal over time at the end of the life tree, forgot its name) calls for reagents sure, but that in no way stops me from using it and seeing enemy damage just disintegrate during the fight so that I end fights I'd otherwise be slaughtered in, and I end those fights victoriously and with full health. I don't like it, I'd much rather be able to fight in other ways than heal-o-matic, but that's where things stand.

Also agree with Rabum Alal regarding applying bandages *during* a fight, same thing for healing potions... Can you imagine chugging down a potion *while* someone (or a mob of someones) are beating you down with swords, axes, maces? What about a face full of glass when your potion shatters, or having it sloshed out of your vial while you are dodging about and your hand gets pounded? Magical healing, well there we make our own rules, but I've never seen a non-game fiction source describe the sorts of in-combat healing we see here or in a variety of other games. Healing out of combat, yes, plenty of sources for that, but stitching a guy up with magic or otherwise, and routinely during fights? It just doesn't fly so well, but while that's what we've got in game I'm testing it and using it.

There are better ways to let us support each other in combat than through healing during the fights

 

A few things that might help:

No Innate Focus Skills
Don't increase maximum focus and don't affect focus regeneration through skill points. Focus is a universal resource to be spent on all skills, affecting these values makes it so much harder to balance. Ideally you want everyone to have to manage their focus properly. By having extra regen or a higher cap you're essentially saying focus becomes less of an issue as you level. This should not be the case. A level 100 should have to keep an eye on their focus just as much as a level 1. This is a good first step to balancing combat in general.

Health Shields
Shields are one of the better support concepts in games these days, looking at LoL or WoW.
By shields I am referring to a temporary buffer that is taken instead of your health.

For a start, shields have a finite duration and absorption. This means you need to be using it at the right time to maximize how much damage it negates.
Secondly, a shield does not increase your health. Any health you lose before or after you use your shield is still gone and the shield will not help with that.
Finally, shields are a mechanic that a variety of abilities can utilise. People with skill in Heavy Armour or hold-in-your-hand Shields could also have access to these shields as a form of damage absorption.

Partial Shields / Armour Shields
These are very similar to shields as mentioned above, but act as a partial mitigation.
The concept here is that you create a shield that absorbs SOME of the damage, but not all of it.
This sounds a lot like a simple damage reduction buff, but as it is a shield, it has a finite absorption.

e.g.
If I were to cast a 50% mitigation shield with a shield value of 100 on someone:
Someone hits them for 20 damage. They take 10, the shield takes 10 [Shield: 90]
Someone hits them for 40 damage. They take 20, the shield takes 20 [Shield: 70]
Someone hits them for 200 damage. They take 130, the shield takes 70 [Shield: 0] (in this last hit, the shield simply absorbs up to it's remaining value)

These create shields that can last longer and have strong defensive impact, but do not prevent all damage.

Partial Shields can, once again, be used in many various ways and with different scaling factors for mitigation. For example, Dodge might read as:

Dodge
Creates a damage shield for 6 seconds, absorbing 30% of damage taken, up to X damage. Absorbs 60% while moving.


Just a few ideas for now. Shields and proper focus management seem like a better direction than infinite healing.

 

i've experimented extensively with out the heals and with them, i'd have to say the combats that i witheld healing until after were far more epic, yes, i had an epic battle with a skeleton lol, i had 1 life left.

 

I mostly agree with OP. What really resonates with me is the idea that we shouldn't have every build in the game including heals. I want healers to be special and unique, so that those players willing and able (or even dare I hope enthusiastic and skilled) to play them are treasured for their contribution to the group. I want most characters to think of healing as something that they get from other characters, or out of combat.

However, there is room for a niche build, which GIVES UP A LOT OF POINTS that could be doing dps, and instead gets self healing. It shouldn't be easy. Certainly not tier one of the healing tree available to all from game start easy. On the other hand, it shouldn't be impossible. Removing possible builds because we don't like what they do isn't any better than forcing people to use certain builds because they are mechanically superior.

There must be a middle ground. A place wherein a character could be designed with self heal, if they gave up a bunch of things that other characters take for granted. Then it becomes a trading game again, designing your character, figuring out cost saving measures, making use of every single talent point, every single focus point.

 

Yea, the issue is that the build system is in many ways too open to really allow maximum variety. That may sound backwards, but when there are no restrictions at all the game very quickly crystallizes out an optimal build that everyone must follow.

If we, for example, assumed a build system where you always get one "Defense move" and one "Defense cooldown" in your build you can introduce a choice to the system. Your two picks could be a fast casting self heal and a large self heal with a cooldown, but your two picks could also be a dodge roll and an AoE knockback. Just throwing that restriction of "You only get two defense moves" in the game immediately gives you the ability to actually balance all the defense moves against each other, and make sure that they are all equally desirable to have in a build. Without that restriction however you have to balance everything against everything else, which is simply impossible*, and as a result there will very quickly be optimal builds that players need to adhere to - that in effect reduces the variety of builds despite having a system that, on the surface, allows more of them.

*The reason why it's impossible is because in a free build system the value of skills changes depending on how many of them you already have. The second long range single target damage spell you buy is worth a lot less than the first to your character, because you already have that capability, while buying your first healing skill with that point instead has huge value to the character.

 

i've heard the devs speak about past failures in regards to trying to set up actual eco systems, ya know, where the wolf eats the bunny, the orc eats the wolf ect ect , but people would would just move through the area and kill everything and no one ever knew how they had invested all this time in such an intricate system. the ability to heal yourself up and get right back to it is what makes this possible.

 

IMHO:
For me, healing is fine, as is. Open character development, with more choices, makes characters feel more powerful, and attracts more customers.

Also, balance adjustments to spells, skills & abilities used in PvE, for consensual PvP reasons, is a hole with no bottom.

Finally, time to kill is a very important aspect of a game that revolves around resource acquisition. Being able to recover, out of combat, as quickly as possible, with the aid of focus/health recovery (via spells, potions, or innates) keeps players engaged and interested.

 

I think the problem with healing is there is no choice right now. You can't choose to take something other than healing, there are no alternatives that makes healing redundant.

You can't choose to not take healing at all, you'll just die. If you think healing doesn't fit your character, tough. You need it, no choice.

That's the issue with healing atm, at least for me

 

no healing sounds like players playing pvp and don't like having someone healing when there winning unless tha're getting healing .

but i do agree the healing is a bit high .instead of longer slower healing the faster quick heals make it less life and death .

one way is to slow the time of healing when hit by a 1/2 a second .

you should not be allowed to cast high and low healing casting one after anther . its my favorite way to serve but hitting all your heal spells can heal 70-100 points in seconds half your hp

 

Healing in PvP really doesn't do much except create a very specific requirement to what kind of build does enough damage to actually be able to kill someone. Having people constantly gain health back just makes the focus on CC/Burst and focus fire that dominates MMO PvP worse.

What I want to see in a PvP game is a dynamic where if everyone is shooting at one guy that one guy just pops into cover or blocks or does some kind of other defensive move that negates all that incoming damage at the cost of his ability to attack back, but meanwhile all of his friends are free to just line up a shot and inflict dramatic damage on all those people trying to hit the guy who's hiding. That forces people to spread out their attacks, try to keep the entire enemy team under pressure. You'll get real battles where it's man against man, not just someone calling out targets on teamspeak and everyone just fires at one guy.

In a game with strong healing if anyone takes damage they heal themselves and get cross heals from nearby friends, and spreading damage out becomes entirely ineffective. The only way to ever actually drop someone is to pour all the damage your party can muster into a single target to try and overwhelm the incoming healing for just the split second it takes for the life bar to dip below 0. Those kinds of focus fire fights are such a total abstraction from what a fantasy battle should be that the game mechanics just don't produce what they thematically should.

 

Yes please.
I thought some of the shield skills would at least be somewhat like this, but no such luck.

 

What if healing touch was out of combat only?

 

I think I'd have to include other heals in that also, I have been mainly using the heal over time spell at the end of the life tree (yes, even though it costs reagents - reagent cost just isn't enough to curb overpowered stuff IMO). I feel healing out of combat lets you keep going from fight to fight without having to waste too much time resting/going to a doctor/whatever, without interfering with and spoiling the combat itself, so any suggestions for moving healing to out of combat pretty much win my favour automatically; but I think not including the higher end healing spells would punish the 'poor' character who cannot afford reagents, while making the 'rich' character who buys reagents more powerful to the poor guy in comparison.

 

I don't think that would work with the way the game currently is. Simply making a bunch of skills unusable in combat isn't the same as having a system that works without heavy healing during combat. If you had to use healing skills to patch yourself up outside of combat it wouldn't make people any less reliant on taking healing skills after all, it would just shift when they are used around. In a game with a strong focus on survival and resource management there is room for learning specialist out of combat skills, but in this, I don't think it would make much sense, and make the idea of actually playing a support character even more superfluous.