Personally I think Final Fantasy 11 did class separation as well as could be expected in an MMO. White mages being primarily healers, though they did some holy/light based offensive spells. With the addition of a sub-job howerver they could further specialise into healing, or gain more offense by learning black magic offensive spells.
The job/sub-job system in my opinion has never been beaten for giving classes extra strategy via which sub-job you have but still not homogenising the main roles of each class.
I played a monk for years in DAOC. While I wasn't a main healer, I did heal quite a bit on my 8's team. It was by far the most fun and enjoyable class I ever played. I really hope they bring staff combat back.
TERA has pure healers, they do almost no damage and can't fill any other role in small scale, large scale or guild PvP/PvE besides healing. Healing in the forms of healing health and removing harmful effects from your characters like poisons or stuns.
They have some CC also. For some realms in DAOC healers ONLY healed... for midguard healers had to CC & Heal. Much different play sytle. Many people also thought that the mid Healer was by far the most enjoyable to play.
This is one of the area's I actually think Warhammer did right/better then many other mmo's.
I'm normally not the type of person that plays healers, I just do not find it that fun to play "Look at the health bars and spam heals all the time" type of gameplay, it gets old SUPER FAST imo, and it's repetitive as heck. THat is why you generally have healers being one of ht eleast played /most sought after classes in groups.
However in Warhammer online the way it worked was that healers actually had to take an ACTIVE part in combat, using their abilities, to help build up "WAAAGH" which in-turn made their abilities better. If you did damage, it built up the WAAAGH meter that buffed your healing, if you did healing, it buffed up your damage metter, etc. It was a way to promote healers to do a variety of things to play best, rather then just healing.
So you didn't just stand around in back of groups, healing people, but actually got into the fights as well, doing many things which in turn made you a BETTER healer.
I enjoyed that kind of gameplay a lot more then I would have had it simply been normal healing and staying out of fights.
The mechanics in WAR were pretty awesome, but the long overdue changes to certain classes such as the Warrior Priest/Disciple of Khaine wrecked the motivation and desire for a lot of players to roll any type of healing class beyond those two classes for a while. That's not to say it wasn't possible to give a WP/DoK a run for their money as a shaman or archmage, it was just far more difficult versus the involvement.
Nonetheless, I'd love to see the mechanics from WAR bleed into Camelot Unchained's healing classes. Although I didn't play a WP/DoK as a main, it was (and still is) the most fun I have ever had in an MMO as a healing-type class besides current day friars (in DAoC) and shadow priests (in WoW).
The only thing I seriously could do without ever having to go up against is the retarded skills the shaman in WAR that allowed it endlessly kite, heal, and damage if it was played by a high skill cap player.
That being said, I'd love to see melee 'AoE' center on caster healers, long range healers with limited root/snare CC, and some sort of combinational shaman type that buffs the group/players and has disease/poisons.
My name is Plastic-Metal and my name is an oxymoron.
Great news. Debuffs, stuns, maybe a dot or two, minimal damage compare to anything else. Warhammer really screwed up in the healing mechanics. When everyone prefers a dok / wp over a zealot / rp for a main healing role, something is wrong with the game. That's not saying people don't play rune priests or zealots. But if a single skill or two makes a hybrid more desirable than the main class, something is really really wrong. Nothing wrong with hybrids but they should never outshine main roles. They should simply add versatility to a group. Need a little extra healing or dmg?
I am ok with Anarchy Online's take on doctors. Doctors could do damage but it was very minimal compared to every other profession. Soloing took for ever. People also had to have a crap-ton of credits and time invested in those doctors in order to get them doing high damage (as far as docs go). Extremely rare and hard to get stuff. Even then it was still minimal compared to every other class (even the fubared ones) in average gear. Granted I haven't played AO in a few years, after the population took a serious nose dive. For the most part though and like I said, most of the fully gear doctors had years of time invested in those characters and still couldn't burst anyone down for the most part. They kited and or waited for their attackers to make a mistake.
Sure people got killed by them but in most cases it was always player error, not gear related. Watching docs kite groups of pvpers all across WA and OA at stupidly high speeds (everyone involved) and basically not being able to do anything but heal themselves and cc, just to see one dumb player get picked off was funny as hell. But same went for the docs. If they got snared / stunned and out of position, chances were pretty decent that the doc was about to get burst down, even if fully decked out.
People would look at these few (insanely geared) players, everyone on either side knew who the 220 doc's were (were that scarce), and say "That looks fun!" without understanding just how much time and effort those doctors spent getting to that point. They were players who absolutely enjoyed healing in groups and stuck with it. Eventually they could get some nice perks / rewards after awhile. Those perks never turned them into god mode, they could not stand in one place tanking hordes of people. The best gear probably didn't even make them average as far as dps. Solo docs would just kite people till someone made a mistake or simply out-lived them through kiting. Which is fine imo. In other words at some point the other player could of dis-engaged.
Sadly I was never able to get mine maxed and geared like I wanted. I enjoy support roles. Was in a small corp/guild and population as a whole was dieing off at this point. People were skipping Pen at the time and going straight to Inferno and being carried. Very clique'ish groups, not very many of those even. While I was able to get help getting keyed. I didn't have very active 220's in the guild / corp which I was in. It would take days for me to get into an inferno team. Literally. Not because I wasn't online and waiting / trying. I literally spent days idle asking and searching, waiting / hoping.. Maybe I had voiced my opinion once which wasn't popular about something? Dunno.. Don't think so. There were well known people in my corp as far as I know I had decent rep. Just no one was around. Most only logged in for AI / Beast raids or the odd event. Hell if it wasn't for the mass decline in population I'd still be playing AO today as a doc.
After seeing this I will keep an eye on Camelot. We'll see though, hopes aren't that high given Warhammer. Not to mention most people hate (it seems) playing this style of healer.
Originally posted by colddog04 I thought pretty much every MMORPG (edit: well, fantasy style ones anyway) had pure healers except maybe GW2. Or are you saying that you think he's implying they will do absolutely nothing except heal?
Well, back in DAOC pure healers really did nothing but heal in RVR, sometimes there was some buffing/buff shearing but those abilities normally were weakened by the spec into strong healing abilities. And you did absolutely no damage during the fight, just didn't have those abilities.
Which made them a real challenge to level in PVE (well, solo anyways) and you could not respec easily once you got past level 40.
That's the type of healer I miss as well. I pretty much started Mmo's in Shadowbane. As a healer, I just healed. I needed folks around me at all times in case my ass got jumped lol. Very little damage output, but I was fine with that in exchange for my healing prowess.
LOL I'm sorry.... if you ever ran an 8man in DAoC with a healer that "just healed" you should've kicked them out.
Clerics and Druid had much more to do than just heal, and Healers (the class in midgard was actually called "Healer") had even more than those two.
Some of the best healers in the game were the ones that could keep everyone alive in their group while simultaneously interupting casters, aplying stuns, dieseases, mezs, roots, shearing buffs from enemies, rebuffing allies, using MLs and RAs, curing dieseases, dots and nearsight, keeping celerity up! etc, etc.
While I agree dedicated healers add a (imo mandatory) layer of strategy for enjoyable PvP, lets not pretend llike 90% of MMOs don't already use them. Honestly, GW2 is probably only Triple A MMORPG to have come out in the past forever that hasn't used dedicated healers.
First off: all Jem and the Holograms references shall be exalted.
Well played.
But more on topic even "pure" healers in DAoC had other roles to play. Hell, pac healers from midgard were the most well-rounded CC class in the game if you took quick casting out of the equation (and even then they were CC monsters.)
Clerics were mez-bombing healers. Not sure how many people remember the mez bomb era, but it rivaled the Enchanter pbaoe approach for a while.
As far as druids went in hib, they became ironically some of the toughest solo classes to take down. Pets, disease, roots.... Just nasty.
All of this was in the context of these being pure healers, and it was (in my perhaps misguided opinion) never unbalanced. If daoc got one thing right, it was healers.
LOL I'm sorry.... if you ever ran an 8man in DAoC with a healer that "just healed" you should've kicked them out.
Clerics and Druid had much more to do than just heal, and Healers (the class in midgard was actually called "Healer") had even more than those two.
Some of the best healers in the game were the ones that could keep everyone alive in their group while simultaneously interupting casters, aplying stuns, dieseases, mezs, roots, shearing buffs from enemies, rebuffing allies, using MLs and RAs, curing dieseases, dots and nearsight, keeping celerity up! etc, etc.
While I agree dedicated healers add a (imo mandatory) layer of strategy for enjoyable PvP, lets not pretend llike 90% of MMOs don't already use them. Honestly, GW2 is probably only Triple A MMORPG to have come out in the past forever that hasn't used dedicated healers.
+1, this guy gets it.
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
LOL I'm sorry.... if you ever ran an 8man in DAoC with a healer that "just healed" you should've kicked them out.
Clerics and Druid had much more to do than just heal, and Healers (the class in midgard was actually called "Healer") had even more than those two.
Some of the best healers in the game were the ones that could keep everyone alive in their group while simultaneously interupting casters, aplying stuns, dieseases, mezs, roots, shearing buffs from enemies, rebuffing allies, using MLs and RAs, curing dieseases, dots and nearsight, keeping celerity up! etc, etc.
While I agree dedicated healers add a (imo mandatory) layer of strategy for enjoyable PvP, lets not pretend llike 90% of MMOs don't already use them. Honestly, GW2 is probably only Triple A MMORPG to have come out in the past forever that hasn't used dedicated healers.
+1, this guy gets it.
He got the job description right, but the roles mixed up. Pac-healers didn't have access to celerity, buff shearing, or diseases, but Aug-healers and Shamans did. His key point that healers did much more than just heal is correct though.
While my pac-healer spent 10 minutes killing a AFK with her 2h Hammer (I was so nervous expecting the guy to return before I had time to complete the kill), I didn't mind because I was valued for my other abilites
Pure healers are always popular, even if many think they are boring.
LOL I'm sorry.... if you ever ran an 8man in DAoC with a healer that "just healed" you should've kicked them out.
Clerics and Druid had much more to do than just heal, and Healers (the class in midgard was actually called "Healer") had even more than those two.
Some of the best healers in the game were the ones that could keep everyone alive in their group while simultaneously interupting casters, aplying stuns, dieseases, mezs, roots, shearing buffs from enemies, rebuffing allies, using MLs and RAs, curing dieseases, dots and nearsight, keeping celerity up! etc, etc.
While I agree dedicated healers add a (imo mandatory) layer of strategy for enjoyable PvP, lets not pretend llike 90% of MMOs don't already use them. Honestly, GW2 is probably only Triple A MMORPG to have come out in the past forever that hasn't used dedicated healers.
+1, this guy gets it.
He got the job description right, but the roles mixed up. Pac-healers didn't have access to celerity, buff shearing, or diseases, but Aug-healers and Shamans did. His key point that healers did much more than just heal is correct though.
While my pac-healer spent 10 minutes killing a AFK with her 2h Hammer (I was so nervous expecting the guy to return before I had time to complete the kill), I didn't mind because I was valued for my other abilites
Pure healers are always popular, even if many think they are boring.
Pretty sure he was generalizing across all three of the arch healers / support healers ... ie clerics, druids, healer shaman
Some people in this thread seemed to think that Midguard healers just healed. L.O.L. Playing a pac healer well was hands down the most difficult class in the game. I honestly was terrified of rolling a pac healer as I was afraid I would mess it up so bad. And if you did, the consequences were disastrous.
For those of you unfamiliar with what a pac healer did, they basically did CC and healing. They had to time stuns, mez, and amnesia perfectly, as well as heal. You were a special breed if you could play one well. Anyone who thought healers just healed in RvR is dead wrong. Emphasis on dead.
While every1 who ever played a pure healer seems to have a different idea about this, I really like the prospect of having them back. (I'm more of an aug healer type neway) Bring on the fun!
I didn't play a pure healer in DAoC, just for this reason, they were hard to level. I played a shaman, but I was a buffer. The only way you could level them was to team up with people to kill stuff. As a buffer, most people welcomed you into thier mass pull aoe group. Since you could buff them to Thor status. Plus, who didn't love having infinite stamina
Some people in this thread seemed to think that Midguard healers just healed. L.O.L. Playing a pac healer well was hands down the most difficult class in the game. I honestly was terrified of rolling a pac healer as I was afraid I would mess it up so bad. And if you did, the consequences were disastrous.
For those of you unfamiliar with what a pac healer did, they basically did CC and healing. They had to time stuns, mez, and amnesia perfectly, as well as heal. You were a special breed if you could play one well. Anyone who thought healers just healed in RvR is dead wrong. Emphasis on dead.
Yes, I agree, the Midguard PAC healer had the most challenging role, but in Alb the role was entirely different, mostly healing with some buffing/shearing. CC was handled by Sorcerers primarily, Minstrels as 2ndary. (never played a Hib healer).
On Mordred the Midguard healer was the preferred one due to its versatilty and was certainly a priority target whenever you saw one. (I was one, and I felt the wrath quite often)
But one thing healers in DAOC were never famous for (well, except thosd darn hibs) was doing damage, just wasn't what you were expected to do, keeping alive 1st and foremost was, then primary healing and then the rest of your utility belt.
Still, they were a far cry different than most games healers today, as anyone who tried to solo level one can attest to. (very group dependent in most cases)
I'm just happy this title is going back more to the traditional healer role, though I suspect there will be alternate specs for the more damaged minded person available.
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The only game I didn't mind healing in was DAOC. I could heal and I had other things I could do like my Midgard healer, I healed, I had a small speed buff, I could mezz, stun, I could buff people up, I could cure poisons etc., I could ressurrect, I had so much else I could do in a fight than just sit and heal, and I was so useful to my group.
One thing I hope CU has is the block that Tanks had to help shield people, it was awesome.
But one thing healers in DAOC were never famous for (well, except thosd darn hibs) was doing damage, just wasn't what you were expected to do, keeping alive 1st and foremost was, then primary healing and then the rest of your utility belt.
Still, they were a far cry different than most games healers today, as anyone who tried to solo level one can attest to. (very group dependent in most cases)
I'm just happy this title is going back more to the traditional healer role, though I suspect there will be alternate specs for the more damaged minded person available.
Smite clerics and nature druids weren't bad damage dealers. Both of mine were specced in those lines until R10. I'd love to see CU do away with buff lines and then let healers choose between healing, damage (nukes, pets, poisons, or even melee), CC, or some of all.
You didn't really need to go higher than 35ish in healing in DAOC and could make do with as little as 30. It would be nice if fully speccing heals really paid off in CU. I wouldn't want it to be so that you were forced to go that high in order to heal decently. But if you spec 50 heals, people should notice the difference.
But one thing healers in DAOC were never famous for (well, except thosd darn hibs) was doing damage, just wasn't what you were expected to do, keeping alive 1st and foremost was, then primary healing and then the rest of your utility belt.
Still, they were a far cry different than most games healers today, as anyone who tried to solo level one can attest to. (very group dependent in most cases)
I'm just happy this title is going back more to the traditional healer role, though I suspect there will be alternate specs for the more damaged minded person available.
Smite clerics and nature druids weren't bad damage dealers. Both of mine were specced in those lines until R10. I'd love to see CU do away with buff lines and then let healers choose between healing, damage (nukes, pets, poisons, or even melee), CC, or some of all.
You didn't really need to go higher than 35ish in healing in DAOC and could make do with as little as 30. It would be nice if fully speccing heals really paid off in CU. I wouldn't want it to be so that you were forced to go that high in order to heal decently. But if you spec 50 heals, people should notice the difference.
I think daoc did a very good job giving options yet severe consequences for speccing the wrong way, you defined your role.
Granted healers didn't have a damage line, but they were by far the most complex useful class in the game .. remember 3 healer groups anyone? so sick.
I am glad that the GW2 method did not sink in to all future games.
We need as much variety as possible and I would like to see Healers get some much needed love. I will say that Vanguard did a very good job of healing. They wre damage based though for the most part.
The two things that have gone away are buffing/debuffing and CC. I would like to see those increased in games. maybe not dedicated, but have content where it is important to have more than just tank/healer/DPS.
I am all for anythign that inceasees the complexity while not making things boring.
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I enjoy playing odd/unique/challenging characters, so I hope that healers will have the *option* to spec for damage. DAoC was quite good in this regard because all classes were designed to be able to do solo PvE, which meant that they were also viable for PvP (some more than others). CU will not have much PvE, so you could fear (or hope depending on your pov) that some classes might simply be unable to kill effectively in any scenario, but I doubt this will be the case. I think there will be plenty of viable spec routes for each class.
When MJ mentions pure healers, I think he is referring just as much to other classes' inability to heal effectively.
Doing battle with a bit of a headache right now (working on this eyechart of Digitial Reward Tiers from home doesn't help) but my thoughts here are:
2) In CU, I want pure healers to play an important role in the game. Back at Mythic I had numerous discussions about the role of healers in future games and while I think self-heals are great for quick PvE-based games, in a game like CU, we want to encourage healers to play that role.
This is much bigger news than buffing classes IMO, looks like pure healers are back, and this makes me very happy.
Since there won't be some sort of heavy PVE grind to make it hateful to create one, perhaps we can go back to the day where the strategy of properly healing (and not getting killed in the process) will come back in style. (and more people will enjoy learning how to do it)
This is wonderful news. My first toon in DAOC was a healer. Little did I know what I was getting into trying to keep folks alive.:P
Comments
Personally I think Final Fantasy 11 did class separation as well as could be expected in an MMO. White mages being primarily healers, though they did some holy/light based offensive spells. With the addition of a sub-job howerver they could further specialise into healing, or gain more offense by learning black magic offensive spells.
The job/sub-job system in my opinion has never been beaten for giving classes extra strategy via which sub-job you have but still not homogenising the main roles of each class.
TERA has pure healers, they do almost no damage and can't fill any other role in small scale, large scale or guild PvP/PvE besides healing. Healing in the forms of healing health and removing harmful effects from your characters like poisons or stuns.
The mechanics in WAR were pretty awesome, but the long overdue changes to certain classes such as the Warrior Priest/Disciple of Khaine wrecked the motivation and desire for a lot of players to roll any type of healing class beyond those two classes for a while. That's not to say it wasn't possible to give a WP/DoK a run for their money as a shaman or archmage, it was just far more difficult versus the involvement.
Nonetheless, I'd love to see the mechanics from WAR bleed into Camelot Unchained's healing classes. Although I didn't play a WP/DoK as a main, it was (and still is) the most fun I have ever had in an MMO as a healing-type class besides current day friars (in DAoC) and shadow priests (in WoW).
The only thing I seriously could do without ever having to go up against is the retarded skills the shaman in WAR that allowed it endlessly kite, heal, and damage if it was played by a high skill cap player.
That being said, I'd love to see melee 'AoE' center on caster healers, long range healers with limited root/snare CC, and some sort of combinational shaman type that buffs the group/players and has disease/poisons.
Great news. Debuffs, stuns, maybe a dot or two, minimal damage compare to anything else. Warhammer really screwed up in the healing mechanics. When everyone prefers a dok / wp over a zealot / rp for a main healing role, something is wrong with the game. That's not saying people don't play rune priests or zealots. But if a single skill or two makes a hybrid more desirable than the main class, something is really really wrong. Nothing wrong with hybrids but they should never outshine main roles. They should simply add versatility to a group. Need a little extra healing or dmg?
I am ok with Anarchy Online's take on doctors. Doctors could do damage but it was very minimal compared to every other profession. Soloing took for ever. People also had to have a crap-ton of credits and time invested in those doctors in order to get them doing high damage (as far as docs go). Extremely rare and hard to get stuff. Even then it was still minimal compared to every other class (even the fubared ones) in average gear. Granted I haven't played AO in a few years, after the population took a serious nose dive. For the most part though and like I said, most of the fully gear doctors had years of time invested in those characters and still couldn't burst anyone down for the most part. They kited and or waited for their attackers to make a mistake.
Sure people got killed by them but in most cases it was always player error, not gear related. Watching docs kite groups of pvpers all across WA and OA at stupidly high speeds (everyone involved) and basically not being able to do anything but heal themselves and cc, just to see one dumb player get picked off was funny as hell. But same went for the docs. If they got snared / stunned and out of position, chances were pretty decent that the doc was about to get burst down, even if fully decked out.
People would look at these few (insanely geared) players, everyone on either side knew who the 220 doc's were (were that scarce), and say "That looks fun!" without understanding just how much time and effort those doctors spent getting to that point. They were players who absolutely enjoyed healing in groups and stuck with it. Eventually they could get some nice perks / rewards after awhile. Those perks never turned them into god mode, they could not stand in one place tanking hordes of people. The best gear probably didn't even make them average as far as dps. Solo docs would just kite people till someone made a mistake or simply out-lived them through kiting. Which is fine imo. In other words at some point the other player could of dis-engaged.
Sadly I was never able to get mine maxed and geared like I wanted. I enjoy support roles.
Was in a small corp/guild and population as a whole was dieing off at this point. People were skipping Pen at the time and going straight to Inferno and being carried. Very clique'ish groups, not very many of those even. While I was able to get help getting keyed. I didn't have very active 220's in the guild / corp which I was in. It would take days for me to get into an inferno team. Literally. Not because I wasn't online and waiting / trying. I literally spent days idle asking and searching, waiting / hoping.. 
Maybe I had voiced my opinion once which wasn't popular about something? Dunno.. Don't think so. There were well known people in my corp as far as I know I had decent rep. Just no one was around. Most only logged in for AI / Beast raids or the odd event. Hell if it wasn't for the mass decline in population I'd still be playing AO today as a doc. 
After seeing this I will keep an eye on Camelot. We'll see though, hopes aren't that high given Warhammer. Not to mention most people hate (it seems) playing this style of healer.
That's the type of healer I miss as well. I pretty much started Mmo's in Shadowbane. As a healer, I just healed. I needed folks around me at all times in case my ass got jumped lol. Very little damage output, but I was fine with that in exchange for my healing prowess.
LOL I'm sorry.... if you ever ran an 8man in DAoC with a healer that "just healed" you should've kicked them out.
Clerics and Druid had much more to do than just heal, and Healers (the class in midgard was actually called "Healer") had even more than those two.
Some of the best healers in the game were the ones that could keep everyone alive in their group while simultaneously interupting casters, aplying stuns, dieseases, mezs, roots, shearing buffs from enemies, rebuffing allies, using MLs and RAs, curing dieseases, dots and nearsight, keeping celerity up! etc, etc.
While I agree dedicated healers add a (imo mandatory) layer of strategy for enjoyable PvP, lets not pretend llike 90% of MMOs don't already use them. Honestly, GW2 is probably only Triple A MMORPG to have come out in the past forever that hasn't used dedicated healers.
Well played.
But more on topic even "pure" healers in DAoC had other roles to play. Hell, pac healers from midgard were the most well-rounded CC class in the game if you took quick casting out of the equation (and even then they were CC monsters.)
Clerics were mez-bombing healers. Not sure how many people remember the mez bomb era, but it rivaled the Enchanter pbaoe approach for a while.
As far as druids went in hib, they became ironically some of the toughest solo classes to take down. Pets, disease, roots.... Just nasty.
All of this was in the context of these being pure healers, and it was (in my perhaps misguided opinion) never unbalanced. If daoc got one thing right, it was healers.
/salute
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+1, this guy gets it.
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
He got the job description right, but the roles mixed up. Pac-healers didn't have access to celerity, buff shearing, or diseases, but Aug-healers and Shamans did. His key point that healers did much more than just heal is correct though.
While my pac-healer spent 10 minutes killing a AFK with her 2h Hammer (I was so nervous expecting the guy to return before I had time to complete the kill), I didn't mind because I was valued for my other abilites
Pure healers are always popular, even if many think they are boring.
Pretty sure he was generalizing across all three of the arch healers / support healers ... ie clerics, druids, healer shaman
Ozek - DAOC
Niix - Other games that sucked
Pocket healing is back :O
SKYeXile
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Future Crew - High Council. Planetside 1 & 2.
No Pocket Healer for you Xile...
Only for Belgarth
regards
Belgarth
Some people in this thread seemed to think that Midguard healers just healed. L.O.L. Playing a pac healer well was hands down the most difficult class in the game. I honestly was terrified of rolling a pac healer as I was afraid I would mess it up so bad. And if you did, the consequences were disastrous.
For those of you unfamiliar with what a pac healer did, they basically did CC and healing. They had to time stuns, mez, and amnesia perfectly, as well as heal. You were a special breed if you could play one well. Anyone who thought healers just healed in RvR is dead wrong. Emphasis on dead.
_Back in DaoC!_
Yes, I agree, the Midguard PAC healer had the most challenging role, but in Alb the role was entirely different, mostly healing with some buffing/shearing. CC was handled by Sorcerers primarily, Minstrels as 2ndary. (never played a Hib healer).
On Mordred the Midguard healer was the preferred one due to its versatilty and was certainly a priority target whenever you saw one. (I was one, and I felt the wrath quite often)
But one thing healers in DAOC were never famous for (well, except thosd darn hibs) was doing damage, just wasn't what you were expected to do, keeping alive 1st and foremost was, then primary healing and then the rest of your utility belt.
Still, they were a far cry different than most games healers today, as anyone who tried to solo level one can attest to. (very group dependent in most cases)
I'm just happy this title is going back more to the traditional healer role, though I suspect there will be alternate specs for the more damaged minded person available.
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The only game I didn't mind healing in was DAOC. I could heal and I had other things I could do like my Midgard healer, I healed, I had a small speed buff, I could mezz, stun, I could buff people up, I could cure poisons etc., I could ressurrect, I had so much else I could do in a fight than just sit and heal, and I was so useful to my group.
One thing I hope CU has is the block that Tanks had to help shield people, it was awesome.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
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Smite clerics and nature druids weren't bad damage dealers. Both of mine were specced in those lines until R10. I'd love to see CU do away with buff lines and then let healers choose between healing, damage (nukes, pets, poisons, or even melee), CC, or some of all.
You didn't really need to go higher than 35ish in healing in DAOC and could make do with as little as 30. It would be nice if fully speccing heals really paid off in CU. I wouldn't want it to be so that you were forced to go that high in order to heal decently. But if you spec 50 heals, people should notice the difference.
DAOC Live (inactive): R11 Cleric R11 Druid R11 Minstrel R9 Eldritch R6 Sorc R6 Scout R6 Healer
I think daoc did a very good job giving options yet severe consequences for speccing the wrong way, you defined your role.
Granted healers didn't have a damage line, but they were by far the most complex useful class in the game .. remember 3 healer groups anyone? so sick.
Ozek - DAOC
Niix - Other games that sucked
I am glad that the GW2 method did not sink in to all future games.
We need as much variety as possible and I would like to see Healers get some much needed love. I will say that Vanguard did a very good job of healing. They wre damage based though for the most part.
The two things that have gone away are buffing/debuffing and CC. I would like to see those increased in games. maybe not dedicated, but have content where it is important to have more than just tank/healer/DPS.
I am all for anythign that inceasees the complexity while not making things boring.
--John Ruskin
I enjoy playing odd/unique/challenging characters, so I hope that healers will have the *option* to spec for damage. DAoC was quite good in this regard because all classes were designed to be able to do solo PvE, which meant that they were also viable for PvP (some more than others). CU will not have much PvE, so you could fear (or hope depending on your pov) that some classes might simply be unable to kill effectively in any scenario, but I doubt this will be the case. I think there will be plenty of viable spec routes for each class.
When MJ mentions pure healers, I think he is referring just as much to other classes' inability to heal effectively.
This is wonderful news. My first toon in DAOC was a healer. Little did I know what I was getting into trying to keep folks alive.:P