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Building better healers
gobla
Member UncommonPosts: 1,412
With GW2 coming closer and closer there's been a lot of discussion on these forums about healing and healers.
Things like whack-a-mole and playing the party screen instead of the game get mentioned a lot.
Personally I think healers in and of themselves aren't bad or broken. They're just often horribly implemented.
While GW2's solution of just removing dedicated healers will most likely be a good one I don't think it's the only good one. ( Please after this no more references to GW2 save for some of the great and inventive healing skills present in that game. Well of blood and healing rain are, imho, great skills that feature fun healing so if you've got ideas inspired by things like that then please do share them. However please no posts about how dedicated healing sucks and dedicated healing should be removed. And just so no GW2 fanboy has to do it: "A better healer is a nonexistant healer." There, it's been said. You don't have to post it again. )
So now this topic is purely about how to make better, more interesting and more fun dedicated healers. What class mechanisms could make healing more fun? What inventive abilities could remove the whack-a-mole feeling? What features could get healers playing the game instead of the party screen?
Below is a fairly long list of some of my own ideas to get this topic started. You don't have to read them. Feel free to post right away with your own ideas, even if they're already mentioned nobody will get hurt by reading it again. Or feel free to read them for some inspiration ( possibly on how not to do it :P ).
I look forward to hearing what the rest of you guys think of what a fun and popular dedicated healing class would look like.
Cheers,
Gobla.
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One thing I'd like to see is a game which employs a healer sense. Some clear visual indicator on a model that shows how injured people are. It could be a simple glow. When people get under 75% hp they start glowing yellow for all nearby healers, when people get under 50% hp they start glowing orange and when people get under 25% hp they start glowing red. It could be more advanced where people under 75% start displaying some limps and bleeds, people under 50% drag a leg, leave a trail of blood etc. and people under 25% hp have swords stuck in them and occasionally squirt blood into the air.
Next to that give healers a lot more ways to heal. Currently most MMOs healers have direct heals, HoTs, party heals and damage shields. That's it. DPS gets direct damage, DoTs, conditional damage ( backstabs, on frozen targets etc. ), reactive damage ( on blocks, parries, resists etc. ), pets, PBAoE, Targetted AoE, Channeled skills, finishers, openers etc.
How about giving healers a reactive skill that can only be used after a party member got critted. Instant cast, very mana efficient, 10 second cooldown, medium healing amount but can only be used in the 3 seconds after a party member got a critical hit. Will heal the party member that got critted no matter who's targetted.
How about a fast casting medium cost heal which does double healing on a stunned ally but only half on people that aren't stunned.
How about a healer with a combo system? Has overall weaker heals but every heal builds a charge. He also gets finisher heals that use up all charges and can give huge heals when all charges are maxed out.
Maybe a channeled skill which heals for a decent amount but also increases the movement, attacking and casting speed of the person it's used on. On the downside, as all channeled skills, it roots the caster in place.
How about a healer with a fully functional healing pet? The GW ranger pet spec had all sorts of skills that the pet used but were still on the ranger's bar. Pet would use them on his next attack against his current target. This healing pet would function like that, it would always target the lowest health party member ( or if none below 50% then also check nearby other players. ) unless specifically instructed by the healer. The healer then uses healing abilities like the GW ranger which the pet then executes on his target. In the meantime the healer himself could be swinging a hammer, firing a bow or flinging damage spells ( obviously not as strong as DPS classes. )
How about a heal which heals for a medium amount but also damages/debuffs all enemies nearby the ally it's used on? Heals less then your standard heal, costs the same, casts a bit faster and on a medium cooldown ( 10-20 seconds ).
How about a HoT which also stuns the next person to attack the HoTed ally? Would heal a medium amount, have a pretty short duration, be on a long cooldown with a high cost.
How about a short duration buff which does nothing unless that ally loses 50% of his HP during the duration of the buff in which case it heals that whole 50% back. High cost, very high cooldown, instant cast. Does nothing if the ally dies before losing 50% hp.
Maybe a wildfire HoT? Short duration, medium healing amount, 2s cast time, high cost. Once it finishes running on the target it jumps to all nearby allies ( excluding the original target ) where it runs for half the duration again. Once that one finishes it jumps one last time to all nearby targets for again half the duration ( if you and your friend are close together and both have the HoT then his will jump to you and yours to him. If only you have it then yours will jump to him but you won't receive anything. )
How about a short duration HoT which heals for a small amount and when it finishes it will heal for a very large direct heal, but only if the target is below 25% ( when it finishes. ) High mana cost, instant cast, medium cooldown.
What about a phantom heal? Heals for a large amount on a short cast time and low cost but in the 10 seconds after that the target loses 75% ( or even 100% ) of the healed amount again.
How about a weakening HoT? Medium duration and a large heal amount but for every hitpoint that's actually healed a limited double damage taken debuff is applied. So if the HoT heals 100 hp then the next 100 damage taken by the target is doubled.
What about a healing class that only has melee ranged heals and PBAoE heals ( and HoTs and all the other variations above but all at melee range. ) along with heavier armor and various charge/intercept type of skills to get around the battlefield? He could even have a rage-like resource which builds whenever allies ( including himself ) nearby ( double/triple melee range or something ) are damaged instead of traditional mana. It would give an amount of "healing rage" based on how much health that ally lost with a multiplier on how much health that ally has left. So losing 100 hp at full health would grant 5 "healing rage". Losing 100 hp at 10% health would grant 15 "healing rage". An ally that has 25% hp left and loses all that in a single hit while this healer is standing next to him would fill the "healing rage" bar right up. But an ally going from full to dead 20m away wouldn't give this healer any "healing rage" at all.
What about a dynamic HoT? At each tick the healing amount would be determined by how much HP the ally has left. So an ally with nearly full HP wouldn't get much healing at all while an ally near death would get a lot of healing. Hight cost, low cast time and high cooldown.
What about a HoT that builds charges whenever it overheals ( HoT ticks for 100, target has lost 50 hp, target is healed 50 hp and 50 charges are added. ) at the end of the HoT the target's entire party is healed for twice the amount of charges built. Small healing amount, medium duration, high cost and high cooldown.
Maybe a directional heal. High healing amount, fast cast time, medium cooldown but it only works if your target is facing you ( and you facing your target. ) A healing gaze skill basically which only works with eye contact.
What about a link buff, links your defensive target to your offensive target. Everytime the offensive target is healed the defensive target is healed for half of that. Buff lasts a medium duration or until a certain amount of healing has been done. High mana cost, instant cast, high cooldown.
How about a martyr buff? For say 10 seconds every point of damage you receive the rest of your party ( or nearby allies ) excluding yourself gets healed for 25% of that. Possibly ends after a certain amount of healing has been done. Low cost, instant cast, very high cooldown.
Maybe a regret buff. Lasts for about 5-10 seconds. Low cost, instant cast, very high cooldown. If the target dies while this buff is active the healer receives a very large amount of mana or whatever resource they use.
What about a desperation heal? Instant cast with a high cooldown. Heals the target to 100% hp no matter how much health they've lost but the cost is determined by the amount healed at a horrible ratio to mana or whatever resource. If the healer doesn't have enough mana for the full amount then the target is only healed for the amount the healer does have mana for ( leaving the healer at 0 mana. )
How about a perfection heal? Heals a huge amount at a longish cast time with great efficiency but if it doesn't overheal then the healer takes a large hit to their own mana or health.
Or maybe a gamble of souls skill. Can only be cast on allies above 25% health and lasts 5 seconds. If the target dies in those 5 seconds he's immediatly resurrected at 100% health and mana ( or other resource ). If he doesn't die in those 5 seconds then the healer that cast it dies once the buff runs out. High cost, very high cooldown and instant cast.
What about a medium damage shield that roots all nearby enemies when it runs out. Root duration based on how long the shield lasted. Shield lasts 10 second, root duration is half the amount of time left on the shield. So if it runs out 2 seconds after casting then a 4 second root. If it runs out after 9 seconds then half a second root. If it doesn't run out then no root. Instant cast, high cost and highish cooldown.
How about a very strong damage shield at a medium cost for a medium duration that immediatly shatters on a critical hit. So if your target doesn't receive any crits then it absorbs a huge amount of damage. If the first hit after casting is a crit then no damage is absorbed at all and the shield ends. Instant cast and highish cooldown.
How about a medium duration weak damage shield that does decent PBAoE damage while active? Instant cast, high cooldown and high cost.
Maybe a medium fast casting direct heal on a longish cooldown that damages all nearby enemies based on the amount of health your target is still missing after the heal. Say 10% of the amount missing. So if after casting this heal on an ally he's still missing 1k hp then all enemies around that ally take 100 damage.
We are the bunny.
Resistance is futile.
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Comments
Wow, maybe next time give fewer ideas, I didn't make it to the end after 2 tries, sorry.
Here is my thought.
If your warrior can "auto target" a foe and just keep attacking, while sometimes using special skills, why can't my cleric target a warrior and auto heal? I have a healing wand or book, and every 2 seconds (or whatever) I do that amount of healing. However, I am free to use special skills that are not always healing, which makes it fun. I lose the most boring part of combat (the auto bash for damage) in exchange for my auto heal, which requires no effort on my part (unless I need to change targets).
I think this actually frees the cleric (or other healer class) to have more non-healing abilities, and you could have a lot of fun with that. Yes, you probably need an "emergency heal" and a "group heal," But you could also have a "sanctify ground," which gives a damage/healing bonus to your friends, and a damage/healing penalty to foes. You could have a "energy surge" that makes all the healing you have done since you last used it into a targeted damage affect (doing 33% of the damage healed as damage dealt). You could have a "guard" spell that makes a friend invisible to foes until they attack, breaking targeting.
Given the choice between a standard healer in a Tank/DPS/Healer party, or the one I described (with the tank as my standard target), I'd rather play my version. IMHO, that means I am on the right track, but maybe it is overpowered or something?
BTW, I really hate not attacking and sitting on the sidelines until I can heal, which is what my Disc priests spent half their time doing in WOW.
Yeah, got a bit excited after the first few ideas and kept coming up with more stuff :P. But as I said, those ideas aren't really what this topic is about.
More about just brainstorming about healing mechanics and hopefully getting people ( and just maybe an actual game dev ) thinking about healing in MMOs.
But I like your auto-heal idea. Would really up the game for more interesting abilities as you've got your basics covered by that.
We are the bunny.
Resistance is futile.
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I've always wanted a healer that worked on a charged (or combo I guess) system. You cast spells that give combo points then finishing spells that do something amazing if you're fully charged. Like heal, heal, heal, heal, heal, then HoT with 25% (5% per point) dodge increase for 10 seconds. or damage mitigation, or parry, or critical hit, etc.
I guess if I would want any improvement on the healer class I would just want it to be more versatile. In many games the healer can do two things, heal and buff. A lot of the time they don't even have the best buffs though. In my opinion if you gave healers too many abilities it would end up hurting or eliminating the dedicated buffing classes. For me though I just avoid playing dedicated healers, I like to play a hybrid, buff/debuff/backupheal if it's an option. If the game mechanics allowed me to buff, debuff, and main heal effectively without losing my hair I would love that too. Problem is when that is tried you usually end up just main healing and forgoe buffing, debuffing, or both.
On a side note, having more options for healing would be cool but I don't know what that would be. I did like the ability dancer had in ffxi, being able to give other party members a drain effect on their melee damage. So for every hit they got a certain percentage of their damage done back in health.
Well, you certainly do have a lot of ideas here, but I fear that many of them don't address the main problem that healers basically watch heal bars and can safely ignore everything else. While a few of your ideas are somewhat situational or reactive, for the most part the only benefit you get is increased mana efficiency or your enemies die faster. If you want a smarter healing class, I think you need to go closer to the source: When a healer sees that someone has taken damage, they should think "I could heal that person, but I won't because _____". If that's an interesting choice to have to make, then you have an interesting new kind of healer.
Three ways I think this can happen:
Limited mana, huh! Good God, y'all, what is it good for? Actually it used to serve a very specific purpose. Back in most older MMOs, healers had to rest up in order to regain MP. In the earliest days of EQ1, priests and mages sat down and literally* opened up a book that blocked their view of the world if they needed to regen mana. This meant that efficiency was a healer's most important trait, so that the party could spend as little time as possible resting between fights. It also meant that other party members had to do a good job so that the healer wouldn't be forced to waste extra mana. FFXI took this a step farther by making the mana regen rate slow at first but gradually greater the longer you continued to rest. The most efficient healers planned their rest time with the party, so that they might be able to take a long rest straight through an easier fight while a backup healer took over. "I could heal that person, but I won't because I need to conserve mana." This is one way of making healers interesting again: take away the massive out-of-combat mana regen and return the MP bar to its original purpose. Force healers to rest, so that groups with inefficient healers (and other bad members) are punished with longer downtime. Unfortunately, forced downtime leaves a bad taste in players' mouths nowadays, so this might not go over well. It's typical for parties to spend very little time resting compared to how much time they spend fighting. Diverting from the status quo by adding downtime wouldn't be well received.
Another option is to give healers something else to do... something that the party needs and that only they can do. One idea I've had for a while is the notion of making all hits stall the global cooldown timer. We've already seen spells that take longer if you're getting beaten on; just expand the idea to hinder all classes instead of just those who cast spells. You could then give the healing classes a damage-absorbing shield spell that also prevents the GCD from being stalled until it is broken. "I could heal that person, but I won't because I need to cast a different spell right now." Depending on how efficient the shield is, how extreme the GCD penalty is, and which party member is currently being hit, the decision of whether to shield or heal could become an interesting one. Healers would have to be proactive to use the shield well, and they would need to have a deeper knowledge of all classes' combat potential in order to fully understand the consequences of choosing to let someone take some unshielded hits.
And a third option is to just make combat less controlled in general. Force parties to always fight several mobs at a time (in waves if possible) and make tanks much much less effective at keeping aggro. Give healers more ways to heal but all with longer cooldowns, so that the decision of who to heal and how to heal them is less obvious than target tank, spam [1]. "I could heal that person, but I won't because I have 3 other people to heal first." A frantic healer is an entertained healer. Of course, the big downside of this one is that you make the party's survival even MORE dependent upon the healer. There are consequences to going in that direction.
*tee hee
I guess... that point is obsolete when you -for the first time in MMOhistory- be able to heal, no mather what class you are, in GW2.
I'm very curious how this will turn out
I'd like to see a healer buff that just greatly increases out-of-combat regen rates. Something that would help bring the raid back up to readiness after an engagement. How many times have you finished a fight, and then stood around after everyones topped off waiting for the healers to get their mana/focus/etc. back? Dps get done with a fight they bandage/drink/rest and their ready in no time but the healers have to top everyone off first before recovery. I could see this being abused by certain classes who can drop combat, but it would be a simple matter to have the buff only engage when everyone in the players party/raid was out of combat.
Warhammer fanatic since '85.
One question about that, do you feel DPS/Tank/Whatever classes also make that choice?
As a DPS/Tank I've never really thought "I could damage that person, but I won't because _____" or "I could tank that mob, but I won't because _____". And the situational or reactive benefits to skills most of the time are also simply increased efficiency or damage.
That being said I do think you're right. My most fun and interesting moments as a healer have definitely been when I've had to do real Triage. Two people at 25%, which one do I save? One person at 10% but my mana is horribly low, do I use my last mana? One team member is getting focus fired, do I use a very long cooldown to save him or hope he can kite away himself?
So introducing a system where it's sometimes a better option to not heal ( or tank/DPS ) for whatever reason ( lose a battle, but win the war. ) would go a long way to making more interesting and engaging gameplay.
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I also feel that Developers have dropped the ball in regards to making the Healer class more exciting to play. I'm kinda courious to see how Tera handles the healing duties of the priest & mystic because there approach is a little different. Not only will healers have to aim some of there heals they also gave all the classes the ability to mitigate all damage. So if the healer is in a party that knows what they are doing then the healer can spend less time healing and spend more time DPSing, buffing, and debuffing.
A listing of Priest & mystic skills can be found here (up to lv50): http://www.nightside.fr/en/guides.html
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I'm a huge fan of healing classes with the EQ cleric and VG bloodmage being two of my favorites. I loved the older healing classes because they actually required much more preplanning and mana management than the spamfests of healing you find today. The bloodmage didn't have the 10 second casts times like the cleric, but finally having a class that required you to keep your DPS up, react to chained abilities, manage your agro as well as mana, and pay attention to health bars was simply amazing.
Removing the healing classes in GW2 is a great idea...for those who hate healing. For the rest of the mmo community it's just another reason not to play GW2. I'm curious to see how it works out and maybe other companies will try something similar if it ends up being popular. Maybe GW3 will finally do away with those annoying DPS classes that we all hate.
I like how AoC implements healing ... Isn't totally wack a mole.
Darkfall (and probably some other skill-based games) lets you heal no matter what class you are..but it really just sort of waters down character definition.
When I talk about normal MMORPG characters I'm like "Yeah I have a warrior." and you get a sense for exactly what that is.
Whereas my Darkfall character I'm like, "I knew melee and healing and buffs and archery and.." and you respond, "Oh...so the same exact indistinct character that everyone is in Darkfall?" to which I reply, "Yup!"
Hopefully in removing healing as a distinct role GW2 has introduced other strong roles in the process of designing their systems.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
There you mentioned one of the few MMOs I've never played. But to be honest I can't really imagine how this be when everybody is able to heal.
everybody can heal the same amounts? got the same spells? or do actual "priest"-classes can heal even better?
doesn't get into my mind yet
In swg, (i know you guys love hearing about swg), you could take novice healer and heal yourself good enough. Or you could master the doctor or combat medic professions and be healers and buffers and crafters of med supplies.
Most people just had novice healer. So GW2 isnt the first to allow everyone to heal. Niether is DF. Maybe the first to force it?
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How about more health bars? Didn't swg do that with mind?
Another thing that could be cool is for damage to be more than "I'm at 50% hp."
Imagine broken bones, concussions, amputations, etc. This is difficult in table top rpgs, but in computer ones it would be pretty easy. Clerics would have to keep up what damage people had taken, and cast the right spell for the condition?
Just a thought, I can see how it could suck, or be very cool, totally depending on implementation!
I like it, although a head shot or decapitation would be hard to heal.
For any game situation where you can run away, or any game where you have an emergency button with a long cooldown, everyone of every class gets a chance to make a critical choice when things start to go from bad to worse. There are also a lot of games where an add comes in, and the party needs to decide whether to have the tank jump on it or let an off-tank taunt it or have a ranged guy kite/root it. Aside from those examples, there's the whole combat system of FFXI.
Well, here I go singing the praises of FFXI again. (Disclaimer: It's been a while since I played it. I know there've been changes since I left, so what I'm about to say is based off of the game as it was around 2005.) As I briefly mentioned, FFXI combat was based around downtime, and you could rarely get rid of it but the best parties made the best use of it. Fights were long, and you got an increasing bonus for killing multiple creatures in succession. The second enemy would get you an Exp Chain 1 bonus, then the next would give you Exp Chain 2, and so on with shorter time limits. In a good party, if you cared about getting the chain bonus, you'd try to kill progressively faster until you managed Chain 5 or 6, then rest to full. I made it sound as though healers governed when the party had to rest, but in actuality the readiness of all classes was relevant to getting to Exp Chain 5. Physical DPS classes gained TP in combat and then could use it as a standalone special attack or in coordination with other DPS to deal bonus damage and weaken the enemy to a particular element.
Squeezing in an extra 10% exp per hour meant needing to know when the Black Mage should say "I could damage this mob, but we're going to kill it in time so I'll start resting now instead and be at full MP for mob #3," or when the Samurai should say "I could signal for the party to do the chain of TP attacks, but the BLM sat down to rest so I will use my TP alone and let the others save up for the next fight."
So, I think that DPS and tanks can absolutely have those same interesting choices if the system is built to allow for them to happen.
The most recent healer class in video games that impressed me was the Medic from Team Fortress 2 or from Global Agenda (which GA is about the same thing, but with various PBAoE heals that can buff your allies).
Essentially what impresses me is the Tank + Healer bond found in these games is a little more apparent than say a Priest and Warrior in WoW. The reason why is because the healer stands WITH the tank, at his backside. Not at max healing range hiding behind a bush somewhere hoping no one spots you. Or LoSing behind pillars.
The idea I think of the healers in these games is instead of making the game about healing EVERYBODY, make the game more important for the healer to keep the tank alive. If anybody else gets a heal it's mostly from that they had some breathing room to do so. Of course, this means the game becomes easier for your damage dealers to slack off in a group with a good tank and healer, but that's probably the tradeoff you have to be willing to take in order to make the game a little different from most RPGs these days.
A small MMO I played, RoE ( Rubies of Eventide, dead now ) had a total of 4 bars.
You had health, blood, mana and soul ( atleast that's what I remember. ) if either soul or blood got to 0 you died. If health was at 0 then any damage to your health would instead damage blood. If mana was at 0 then any damage to that would damage soul instead.
Mana was also still used for spells. Blunt weapons did almost pure health damage but quite a lot of it. Swords and axes did a mix while daggers did purely blood damage ( but less of it ). Some spells could damage mana and eventually even soul. You couldn't use soul to cast spells though, so at 0 mana you were out of spells.
It was quite an interesting system. With diffirent heals for diffirent bars. But in the end it did still suffer from the party screen and whack-a-mole problems.
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How were the different health bars healed? Did Blood/Mana naturally have a lot of regen?
It seems the wack-a-mole issue mainly has to do with easily manageable battles. Maybe changing how mobs work (aggro/stances/behavior) would be a better way to go about it. Like if a group mob that has a high chance to get enraged whenever healing is done if its HP is below 50%. When it is enranged, each heal draws immeadiate aggro and buffs his damage 25%.
Hi I just want to put this out there cause I am sure many people are missing this.
GW2 has no Trinity!
Which means, the pve will use Zerg Tactics. Healing in Zerg Tactics doesnt work. Which is why Healing is less impoortant in this game.
The trade off for this system, is the fact you wont have Scripted Boss fights like in games with the Trinity.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
GW2 does not have a strict holy trinity where people are in one role of tank, healer or dps and that is the only thing they can do. GW2 will still have what they call control skills that try to stop a mob from damaging players, damaging skills, and support skills to either heal damage or proactively try to prevent it before it happens. People will play multiple roles and/or be able to switch them on the fly to adjust to the current situation. Just because each person has a heal on their bar does not mean that the only viable tactic is to zerg. If anything, kiting is more likely due to everyone having access to control skills (knockdowns, snares, roots, blinds) and the ability to dodge attacks.
I have no idea what this has to do with scripted boss fights. There are boss fights in the open world where they gain more abilities depending on the number of people fighting them. There are dungeon bosses as well. Not much is known about them, but here is one quote.
* some dungeons will be familiar to Gw1 players.... At around level thirty you'll be able to enter the Ascalon catacombs. The spirits there are restless, so a Charr comander and Rytlock lead you in to lay them to rest. You might recognise some of the more powerful spirits in this dungeon as the profession trainers from GW1!! ''Master Ranger Nente can teleport and shoot waves of arrows that cover part of the room, forcing you to hide behind objects in the environment.''
*''Warmaster Grast smashes players and the environment with his oversized, half-ghost hammer, and you can grab the chunks of rubble he knocks out to throw them back.''
Sounds scripted to me.
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Healing was actually kinda rare because of how much hassle landing Heal Other was (FPS-aiming + trying to hit a moving target who's trying to dodge his opponent + "friendly fire" heals capable of healing enemies = ...uh yeah, please stop healing the enemy.)
Ive heard it's used more in larger scale battles (where healers basically sit in one corner of the battlefield and injured players stand in front of them.) But for the most part everyone just pops their 100% reliable self-heals.
In general, DF is a perfect storm of reasons why skill-based games fail to be fun.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I think the main problem with healers is that devs always make it a seperate class. If they just left it within the mage class and gave players a choice to go one way or the other (maybe a mix) it would alleviate most problems. Whack-a-mole has nothing to do with healers, and is about the aggro meter. Who came up with the " play the screen " statement. I wouldn't chalk " playing the screen " as a must for healers, but a choice that the party makes, since if they were attacking easier mobs there would be less HP issues.
I always wondered how fun a healer class would be if it was less active healing players and more about pulling the wounded to safety. The skills that effected players would be more limited and would require healing to take place away from the action. Healers could still take part in the middle of battle, but they would have skills that would protect them, the wounded, and other skills to help navigate battles.