Healing - the worst imbalance in PVP history, in it's current form

[Darth_Ricky]

If heal debuff was 25% thered be ppl saying 'WE ALRDY GOT 25% DEBUFF ITS FINE"

 

If it was 20%.. Same thing

 

They put 30% debuff cos they saw overheal can be a problem for pvp...

 

That dosent mean they got it just rite w/ 30% tho.. U got some ppl sayin basicaly it needs to be more then 30%. Nobodys rly sayin it needs to be less then 30%. From what ive seen in wz's, good hlr will mostly have more heal than top dps got dmg.

 

Hmmmmmm...

 

I say take it to 33.33% debuff and see how it go's

[astrocanis]

I'm sure this will cheese off a lot of people who play healing classes. I'm well aware of the arguments that healing classes are weak, easily killed or otherwise countered.

 

Hogwash.

 

There is one inarguable fact regarding pvp healing. That is maximum potential health.

 

When you boil down PvP it becomes, at it's core, an issue of scaling.

Who does more damage. Who does more damage in a shorter period of time. Who has better gear. Who has a better build. Who has more health.

I might be able to put out 20k damage in 5 seconds. You might be able to put out 22k. I might have 23k mitigated health. You might have 19k mitigated health.

So we evaluate our battles, you decide to trade some stat or build choice over another to achieve 23k worth of damage in order to beat me. I then change my decisions somehow.

 

DPS and health are very relative numbers. They live in the same realm. You might get 2k crits, you might get 4k crits. You might have 15k health, you might have 20k health.

 

Where does healing factor into all of this? It doesn't factor in any sensible way. The reason it doesn't is because heals can achieve numbers in the hundreds of thousands of health over time.

 

To illuminate this point, lets look at PvP another way. Imagine we are in a foot race to see who is faster. A very common and rudimentary bit of human competition.

I declare to you than I can run 30 yards faster than you can run 25 yards, because I am naturally faster. Or we make a straight up equal distance challenge.

Perhaps another competition might be that I can run a further distance than you in 1 minute, or 10 minutes.

We can all agree that these are reasonable challenges that can and are made in the normal course of life.

 

A challenges which is never made however; is that I challenge that we see who can run farthest in a minute's time, with the exception that I am allowed to pause, reset or simply give myself more time on the clock than you have. So that when your minute is up, I can continue to keep running as I give myself extra seconds for however long as I wish, indefinitely.

 

While that competition would be ludicrous, it is exactly the competition that healing in PvP gives us. Now of course there are the responses such as: "this is what interrupts are for", "out-dps the healing", "focus down the healer", ect. Yes, or course these are valid tactics. These responses do not answer the real issue at all however, which is that healing is indefinite. It is like saying we will have our footrace where I can manipulate my clock, but you are allowed to try and steal my clock during the race. Sure that is a solution to the ridiculous nature of the race, but it still remains that I have the potential for unlimited time and can achieve it. Why even have such a rule in the first place?

 

To answer why is not difficult and goes to the history of the current MMO. The current MMO design of course stems from a PvE model. (Yes the early MMO's like UO had a far different design including pvp, swtor doesn't follow that model, it follows the PvE-centric model). In a PvE-centric MMO model, healing is used to keep tanks alive in boss fights. These fights last periods of time where the health of a tank is replaced numerous times by the healers. You can have a boss with hundreds of thousands of HP put out hundreds of thousands of damage. While a DPS'er might put out 200k in damage into a boss, a healer might put 200k of health into a tank. Healing generally has no limit over time and conceivably you could keep a tank alive indefinitely if it were not for things like enrage timers or regen limitations of energy. That is all well and good and easily understood by any MMO player.

 

Where things go incredibly awry however is when this design is then taken over into the PVP world. Players do not have the health of PVE bosses. The ability of a DPS'er to put out 200k of damage over time is meaningless when players only have 15k worth of health. This is our footrace of limited dimensions. Yet while a DPS's damage output ends when my healthbar reaches zero, a healers heal output is still unlimited, it never ends.

 

Yes, it can be countered. Yes, it can be balanced out with both sides healing. This isn't the point. The point is that you have one side of the equation which is unlimited.

 

To put the argument in another light. Take a great pvp game design like DOTA, HON or League or Legends. These games are actually quite similar to an MMO's pvp in that there are levels and gear for the players. Characters in these games can heal, but no character can heal for any length of time. In most cases, healing is limited to one, two or three heals during any fight. In other terms, any given character only has a potential of two to maybe three times his max health; and twice their health is a stretch. In SWTOR, if you heal someone for 100k and they never die, they are achieving 5-8 times their health.

 

So after all this analysis of the bad philosophy of the problem, what is my suggestion towards the solution?

The best way to balance any PvP system is to balance against maximum potential health. I.E. the limited footrace: we will only judge competition at a max distance of so many yards or so many minutes. The quite simple math to it would be that a character could only receive twice their max health in a 3 minute period. To even out the lower DPS potential that healers have, they might have that limitation reduced by their comparative healing or lack of dps. Hence a healer might be able to achieve 3 or 4 times their health in a 3 minute period.

 

This would mean that healing would still be able to save lives. It could still be just as powerful. But it would not be unlimited.

 

A very simple scenario to illustrate all of this is a duel. Yes, duel's are not entirely representative of group pvp. That argument is beside the point for this illustration of the philosophies involved.

 

DPS vs Healer. Healer has 15k health.

How does the DPS win? We all know. He must do enough damage, fast enough and counter the heals.

DPS does 14k worth of damage.

At this point 2 outcomes are possible.

1) The healer prevents his death and heals himself. Say he stuns the DPS and casts a 2k heal, then a 3k heal, then a couple 1k heals. At this point the DPS has lost the battle and can never recover. While his health continues to decline over time, the healers continues to increase over time. He can now never win.

2) The healer fails to overtake the DPS and eventually dies.

 

A better scenario is that at 14k worth of damage

1) the healer manages to prevent his death and heals himself up to his max potential health, giving himself a new 16k worth of life. That's the highest potential he can reach. Now the DPS must kill him all over again, but once he completes 16k worth of damage before his own death, he wins.

The healer can win, but so can the DPS.

2) The healer fails to overtake the DPS and dies at 15k health loss.

 

In the second scenario the healer has still prolonged his life. He has still healed, and healed for a lot. He has basically given himself a second life. The DPS cannot heal himself and has his same original health pool. You could argue over who has the advantage or disadvantage but the meaningful component to the balance of the equation is that the healers health pool is not potentially unlimited, it is instead very grounded and in sight of his enemy.

 

The implicit assumption is that the healer can do roughly 50% of the damage that the true damage dealer can. I have not found this to be true (other than the occasional Inq).

 

All you want is a brute force game in which a healer inevitably loses to a single DPS. I don't want that - even when I am not playing my healer. Why? Because "whackumwidmystick" got boring for me when I was 5.

[Torcer]

The OP’s problem is that it implicitly assumes DPS should be the preeminent mode of PvP. As others have pointed out, in a 1v1, a similarly geared DPS can take down a Healer. A healer that’s self healing is giving up a HUGE amount of DPS.

 

What’s really odd about the OP and the Healer meme is that this Nerf really benefited PvP Tanks more than Healers, and Tanks needed some love against DPS Surge stacking. Speaking of Tanks, a properly specced Vanguard/Powertek can SHUT DOWN a healer with his 6 second interrupt. That’s a non DPS solution to the so-called healer problem in the OP, which requires a bit more tactics than just spamming DPS. Suffice it to say, in a 1v1, Healers get demolished by VG/PTs, lose to DPS, and are basically the weakest class in the game 1v1 – healers all but REQUIRE groups to shine.

 

The OP reads like Sour Grapes over the Surge nerf. Here’s the thing – Surge stacked too well and over powered DPS. Now, you’re in balance with other abilities and need to adapt to it taking a bit longer to DPS someone down, but DPS classes still have significantly more burst damage than Healers and Tanks.

[astrocanis]

The OP’s problem is that it implicitly assumes DPS should be the preeminent mode of PvP. As others have pointed out, in a 1v1, a similarly geared DPS can take down a Healer. A healer that’s self healing is giving up a HUGE amount of DPS.

 

What’s really odd about the OP and the Healer meme is that this Nerf really benefited PvP Tanks more than Healers, and Tanks needed some love against DPS Surge stacking. Speaking of Tanks, a properly specced Vanguard/Powertek can SHUT DOWN a healer with his 6 second interrupt. That’s a non DPS solution to the so-called healer problem in the OP, which requires a bit more tactics than just spamming DPS. Suffice it to say, in a 1v1, Healers get demolished by VG/PTs, lose to DPS, and are basically the weakest class in the game 1v1 – healers all but REQUIRE groups to shine.

 

The OP reads like Sour Grapes over the Surge nerf. Here’s the thing – Surge stacked too well and over powered DPS. Now, you’re in balance with other abilities and need to adapt to it taking a bit longer to DPS someone down, but DPS classes still have significantly more burst damage than Healers and Tanks.

 

Precisely.

[Astarica]

Against Force-based healers I've definitely got them out of Force before.

 

Against energy/heat/ammo healers, people need to realize that if you're below the equivalent of 60%, your regen goes from 5/s to 3/s, so basically the healer loses 40% of your healing. Given he is presumably healing himself to keep up against your DPSl, he will lose if he stays in this stage for any prolonged period of time. There are talents to restore energy but they're all on relatively long cooldown. You don't see most non-Force healer dip below 60% for long because they're going to be dead if they stay below 60% since they only have 60% of their regen at that point.

Edited February 15, 2012 by Astarica

[DiabloMuerto]

Wait, you can get his health pretty low, but are complaining about his resources being high. If you kill him, it doesn't matter if he has a full energy bar or not. The thing is, no class runs out of resources if played correctly. Except that if you actually output any decent pressure with dps/cc/interrupts a healer must utilize their resources.

 

I'm not sure what you are arguing, as I said in the post I originally made I don't think healers are really OP, simply the balance of the groups make them so. Which is to say when you get 2 or 3 heals on one team when the other has none or 1 and the healers group up, makes thing almost impossible. I can tell you right now there is no single dps that would ever kill me unless he could perma CC if we're talking gear level that are roughly equal. Aside from my healing I can easily evade far enough to heal. Any healer with any skill is not going to lose to a dps the large majority of the time.

[YanksfanJP]

The reason it doesn't is because heals can achieve numbers in the hundreds of thousands of health over time.

 

Your whole thesis is based on this statement, but it's completely ignoring two facts:

1) Healing is only potentially unlimited if there's damage being done on the person being healed.

2) Damage can be just as unlimited as healing if the person being damaged is also getting healed.

 

To say that Damage is limited because health is limited and also try to argue that healing is not limited is asinine. Your thesis assumes there is no healing in the damage example, but that there is damage in the healing example. Therefore, your comparison is flawed as you're comparing apples and oranges in the scenario you use.

 

They go hand in hand. If a healer is healing someone who's being damaged, then it's just a matter of it the healing can overcome the damage or if the damage can overcome the healing. Both are limited by which side the scale tips towards, and if the scale is even, then they're both unlimited.

 

As a result, your entire thesis is rubbish.

Edited February 15, 2012 by YanksfanJP

[endikux]

Your whole thesis is based on this statement, but it's completely ignoring two facts:

1) Healing is only potentially unlimited if there's damage being done on the person being healed.

2) Damage can be just as unlimited as healing if the person being damaged is also getting healed.

 

.....

 

As a result, your entire thesis is rubbish.

 

Let me deconstruct your statements.

 

On the first count: "Healing is only potentially unlimited if there's damage being done on the person being healed."

 

Quite true. Healing is only potentially unlimited if there is damage being done. However if there is no damage being done then we have no combat transpiring at all, which means any calculation of anything is pointless.

In any case healing can in fact be done when there is no damage involved. You still see green numbers popping up, they just don't go into anything.

 

On the second point: "Damage can be just as unlimited as healing if the person being damaged is also getting healed."

 

Quite true again. However again this only makes my entire case. It doesn't disprove it.

 

A more true statement is "Damage can ONLY be just as unlimited as healing, IF the person being damaged is also getting healed.

 

The key factor being that damage has an end point, death. Only healing changes this. And only because healing is unlimited is damage unlimited.

 

To say that healing being unlimited is fine, because damage is also unlimited; when the entire predication of damage being unlimited is directly caused by healing being unlimited; is a completely circular argument worthy of the Hatfields and McCoys.

It would be like saying someone traveled back in time to tell themselves to build a time machine to travel back in time with so they could tell themselves to travel back in time.

 

It is made even more clear with an illustration. Imagine a gallon of water in a plastic container. The plastic container represents your potential health pool and the water is your actual health. The container can only hold a maximum volume of 1 gallon. This is obviously your maximum potential health.

 

On the other end we have the damage dealing mechanic. This is represented by a 1/4 and 1/3 gallon size cup. My limitation is that I can only scoop water out at 1 cup a second. This means it will take 3-4 seconds to scoop out all the water.

 

So far we are dealing with some very obvious limited quantities.

 

No we introduce healing, which in its current form would be visualized as a hose that you insert into the plastic gallon container, turn on, and it never stops filling. Excess water simply flows over the top, but that causes no penalty or problem of any kind. The rate at which it fills can fluctuate but the source of water is limitless. I might scoop out faster, I might not.

 

My entire argument is that this little visual game would be far more interesting and balanced, if instead of a hose connected to a unlimited supply of water it was instead connected to one very limited container which only had another gallon or couple of gallons of water.

 

Or better yet. That for every 1 container full of water representing health, there sat next to it an identical sized empty container. And that someone starts to scoop water out of the primary container, water can then start to be filled into the second container. So that if the second container is filled fast enough then the scooper must now scoop out of the second container as well. But there is no extra unlimited availability of empty containers after that.

 

You might disagree with the parameters. You might think the unlimited hose is just fine given enough tools to deal with it. I say just do away with the hose so you don't have to "deal" with it. But the contention that the hose must be there, that it is a fundamental mechanic that is inherent to the system is completely flawed. That is simply continuing with something for the sake of continuing with it and no other reason.

Edited February 21, 2012 by endikux

[bamsmacked]

I agree with the assessment that healers can pretty much heal constantly due to their huge pool of resource.

 

Not sure how this applies to Smugs, Commandos and their healer counterparts on Empire but I know Sage/Sorcs can basically heal constantly with out ever exhausting their force pool.

 

I do agree that's a problem, I mean DPS classes can't run around constantly spamming their attacks because THEY run out of resource and healers do not.

 

In 1v1 scenarios against good healers I can NOT kill them. Either I run out of resources, and have to build that up again which gives them time to blow off more heals, or two I get them close to death and all my interrupts are on cool down and then I get stunned or take some form of CC and they heal back up to 60% or more health and it's by this point I'm completely out of gas and they can usually proceed to finish off what's left of me.

 

They say this is suppose to be a team based PvP game. But it's the complete opposite of "team" when squishier healers can take on DPS classes 1 v 1 and survive.

 

In a real team based design the TEAM needs to defend it's healer because the healers typically can't take much hate and their heals are so critical to success in PvP that they are needed alive.

 

To me a good healer needs to be a skilled player but in this game there is literally no negative consequences for throwing out big, small heals or just healing at the wrong times. In other games if you make the wrong choice on a heal it could cost your life.

 

I also agree with the assessment that the PvE design of healing is present in PvP and can pretty much give a player an endless life which is not a good thing.

 

Ilum is a perfect example of endless lives, and is why Bioware has to bandaid the planet up breaking it more in the process. PvE mechanics and PvP mechanics should not intertwine.

[VallorFleetfoot]

To say that healing being unlimited is fine, because damage is also unlimited; when the entire predication of damage being unlimited is directly caused by healing being unlimited; is a completely circular argument worthy of the Hatfields and McCoys.

 

And yet that is exactly the case yet you continue to ignore this fact pretending it doesn't have any impact and hoping no one notices that you've left it out of your theorycrafting.

 

Unlimited damage must have a counter to retain balance. And in this case the developers have chosen to use unlimited healing as the counter. In your theorycrafting you assume the perfect situation for the healer:

 

1) They only have to cast enough heals that they are able to maintain the optimal expend:regeneration rate (i.e. "Infinite healing")

2) No one is harassing the healer or utilizing any counter abilities so healers are essentially immortal.

 

Well put the DPS in the same situation:

 

1) Are able to create a neutral expend:regeration rate (i.e. infinite DPS)

2) No one is harassing them or utilizing counters so DPSers are essentially immortal.

 

The exact argument you are making can easily be applied to DPS.

 

My entire argument is that this little visual game would be far more interesting and balanced, if instead of a hose connected to a unlimited supply of water it was instead connected to one very limited container which only had another gallon or couple of gallons of water.

 

No it wouldn't, the foregone conclusion to every combat would be DPS wins by virtue of their ability to deal unlimited damage that continues after the resources of the healer have been depleted.

 

In addition, once every combat becomes a race to zero there is no reason to "waste" party slots on healers or tanks. They are the losers in the race to zero and therefore worthless.

 

If you limit healing you also have to cap damage in the same way. As long as damage can remain unlimited then healing must be able to counter-act that.

 

To carry on with your example, the best case scenario you have a situation of a cylinder with two chambers with equal force on each side canceling each other (like a shuttle valve). If you remove the hose and constant/balancing pressure from one of the chambers then the other chamber now has the infinite ability to start pushing the water out of the other chamber and "wins".

 

Even against two people, a healer and a tank, the DPS would destroy both thanks to their unlimited damage. The DPS can overcome the DPS of the tank and therefore have survivability, and a slightly larger health bar due to healing doesn't counter the burst damage enough to allow the tanks durability/endurance to come into the equation.

 

Assuming the healer spent their resources healing the tank when the DPS is done with the tank the healer is as vunerable as a day old kitten as they've expended all their resources trying to keep the tank up.

 

Besides, your entire premise is theorycrafting and is very unlikly to happen in practice.

 

1) A healer only has infinite resources in your sealed chamber of your theorycrafting. In practice, during combat, a pure healer expends far more of their resources using their ability than they can possibly regenerate. Several classes even destroy their regeneration ability when they drop below a certain threshhold.

 

2) Healers healing themselves or others are not outputting DPS. Not only can they not suffer the lost of a GCD to execute the DPS ability but they will incur a defect of health during that time their healing cannot fill.

 

3) Even if they are attempting to damage their attacker pure healer DPS is weak to mediocore at best and in the race to 0 the DPS will win every time if the healer even attempts to DPS.

 

The only way an equally geared healer survives for any amount of time against their equally geared attacker is by focusing 100% of their healing ability on themselves while the DPS is focusing 100% of their ability on killing the healer.

 

4) Given equal gear, a good DPSer always wins againt a pure healer already, regardless fo what your theorycrafting says, though the fight is likely to be drawn out.

 

Nearly all heals cost resources to use where not all DPS abilities cost resources to use. You could argue that those DPS abilities are weak, but the fact is that they are FREE damage that a healer can't counteract and add to the healing deficet. At the same time the DPSer is regenerating their resource for their big hit which is what the healer hopes to counteract. Each "white" hit leads further to the demise of the healer.

 

5) In the case where there are two people (a healer and a tank) shouldn't a 2+ person team beable to defeat a single character?

 

To advocate that a DPS should be able to take down a healer and a tank is lunacy and exposes the desire to have a game breaking imbalance always in favor of the DPS.

Edited February 23, 2012 by VallorFleetfoot

[Forthehonor]

This isnt the nerd-rage thread your looking for, move along.

 

/thread

 

p. s. healing is balanced in general that's all.

[Zekeiele]

As a healer I don't understand why every DPS thinks they should be able to kill me....If we are in Voidstsar or alderaan and 1DPS locks me down so I can't throw any heals out other than to stay alive you have done your job and your partners need to win their 1V1s...if the DPS isnt strong enough I can still throw out enough Healing to tip the scales but good ones can lock me down and great ones can finish the deal...working as intended imo.

[Xsorus]

When i'm playing DPS, if I get on a healer he has two options, either he spams heals on himself with the possibility of living, or he has someone come get me off of him.. Cause he's not going to be able to heal anyone else and live, I will absolutely win that fight if he tries.. He's also not going to be able to DPS me, cause the second he does that, I've already won the fight.

 

Now I know why people complain about healers in this game, Because I simply look at the scoreboard at the end of every match and see countless bad players in this game with good gear or bad gear, it frankly doesn't matter, just do pitiful damage... It is honestly the player to, Because I know who the "good" dps players are on my server.. and there is one for every single class trust me.. But for every good player doing DPS, you have a treasure trove of absolute baddies who then come to the forum to whine they can't take a healer on..

[Forthehonor]

As a healer I don't understand why every DPS thinks they should be able to kill me....If we are in Voidstsar or alderaan and 1DPS locks me down so I can't throw any heals out other than to stay alive you have done your job and your partners need to win their 1V1s...if the DPS isnt strong enough I can still throw out enough Healing to tip the scales but good ones can lock me down and great ones can finish the deal...working as intended imo.

 

This, the problem is that most dps's cant think out of their little 1v1 spectrum, they think youre still healing your teammates and yourself, whilst your out healing their dps in the 1v1. Also for some reason they rage at not being able to kill a healer 1v1, i don't know why, i guess its just cause they want to feel like the king of the world beating everybody.

 

I always find healers easy to kill in lvel 50 warzones, simply type in ops chat "<insert name(s)>is healer burst this dude asap." what happens? about 2-3 dps understand and then we together have no problem bursting said healer(s).

Edited February 23, 2012 by Forthehonor

[onefoursteve]

Your argument is that healing is unlimited. This is not the case. Healers have cool downs and power for their abilities just like very one else. Healers will run out of power and cool downs can be out DPS'd.

[VallorFleetfoot]

Not sure how this applies to Smugs, Commandos and their healer counterparts on Empire but I know Sage/Sorcs can basically heal constantly with out ever exhausting their force pool.

 

A Sage has 500 base force. Force regenerates at 8 force a second. Their most efficient heal costs 45 force with a 2.5 second cast time.

 

If you factor in regeneration that means the during the course of the cast the Sage will regenerate 16 force (really only 16 since with a tick to 24 on the 3rd second) leaving a defecit of 29 force for each cast.

 

If the sage is spamming their ability they get a potential of ~17 casts in a perfect world where they are left completely alone.

 

In the real world you have to add in pushback, stuns, burst damage, and focused fire which impacts their number of potential heals. Add in the necessity of using less efficient heals and the number is further impacted. Bubble is another variable that is tough to account for. It is nearly as expensive as the efficient heal, but has the timer.

 

Eitherway SPAMMING their ability to keep themselves up will exaust their force pool; this nonsense of an infinite supply of force needs to stop.

 

Troopers/BH and Smugs/Ops have similar regeneration rates at full resources, their problem is the variable regneration rates which means they have to husband their resources a little more. However, when spamming, they'll get off 10-12 heals before running fully out of resources. That said they all also have a stopgap heal that costs no resources to use (it isn't a gamechanging but it is free to use while they regenerate).

 

EDIT: I will admit that there are more efficient healing strategies that can come along with deep speccing in the heal trees, but healers WILL run out of resources, their spec just determines how long that takes... and shouldn't that be the case?

Edited February 23, 2012 by VallorFleetfoot

[kweassa]

This whole thread is basically a 20 page whine about how somebody wants to kill a healer 1vs1, but the fight takes too long because *gasp* the healer "heals" himself, and then the healer's friends come in, and you die.

 

Nothing to see here folks. Move along.

[Zekeiele]

This, the problem is that most dps's cant think out of their little 1v1 spectrum, they think youre still healing your teammates and yourself, whilst your out healing their dps in the 1v1. Also for some reason they rage at not being able to kill a healer 1v1, i don't know why, i guess its just cause they want to feel like the king of the world beating everybody.

 

I always find healers easy to kill in lvel 50 warzones, simply type in ops chat "<insert name(s)>is healer burst this dude asap." what happens? about 2-3 dps understand and then we together have no problem bursting said healer(s).

When I am pugging I can tell the exact moment a group has singled me out and 9 times out of ten that's pretty much it for me....a soon as I'm spotted the all drop target and retarget me and unless there is another descent healer in the group I spend a lot of time running from the spawn point haha.

[HBninjaX]

the main issue I have is that stacking healers and spamming heals is easy, overcoming that tactic is much, much more difficult in comparison

 

one problem I see is that many people simply not lucid enough to understand what is happening and how to combat it in pick up groups. I see this time and time again from supposed 'pro skill' folks that think they can just awesome their way to victory

[Forthehonor]

the main issue I have is that stacking healers and spamming heals is easy, overcoming that tactic is much, much more difficult in comparison

 

one problem I see is that many people simply not lucid enough to understand what is happening and how to combat it in pick up groups. I see this time and time again from supposed 'pro skill' folks that think they can just awesome their way to victory

 

Wait what, are we talking premades here or pugs, cause it certainly isn't often you see more than 1 or 2 healers in a pug, and premades...well their premades lol, their only purpose is to annoy the **** out of normal casual pugers, cause they can never win a match against premades.

 

Also do as i said earlier, say in ops chat "these dudes are healers kill them"

If nothing happens ramp it up "Guys if you want to win, the healers have to die, kill <insert names> if nothing still happens, well then you've just been unlucky to get noob team mates(question is are you one of them?)

Edited February 24, 2012 by Forthehonor

[kweassa]

...one problem I see is that many people simply not lucid enough to understand what is happening and how to combat it in pick up groups. I see this time and time again from supposed 'pro skill' folks that think they can just awesome their way to victory.

 

Gee... ya think?

 

...and here I thought the vast amounts of threads coming up this forum daily, containing ignorant whiney remarks and tantrums would have been a hint. LOL

[Aidank]

None of the people who are arguing with the op actually read the post...

 

 

He's not necessarily saying that healers are overpowered, or invincible or whatever, he's saying that the infinite resources are a problem.

Edited February 24, 2012 by Aidank

[Aidank]

A Sage has 500 base force. Force regenerates at 8 force a second. Their most efficient heal costs 45 force with a 2.5 second cast time.

 

If you factor in regeneration that means the during the course of the cast the Sage will regenerate 16 force (really only 16 since with a tick to 24 on the 3rd second) leaving a defecit of 29 force for each cast.

 

If the sage is spamming their ability they get a potential of ~17 casts in a perfect world where they are left completely alone.

 

In the real world you have to add in pushback, stuns, burst damage, and focused fire which impacts their number of potential heals. Add in the necessity of using less efficient heals and the number is further impacted. Bubble is another variable that is tough to account for. It is nearly as expensive as the efficient heal, but has the timer.

 

Eitherway SPAMMING their ability to keep themselves up will exaust their force pool; this nonsense of an infinite supply of force needs to stop.

 

Troopers/BH and Smugs/Ops have similar regeneration rates at full resources, their problem is the variable regneration rates which means they have to husband their resources a little more. However, when spamming, they'll get off 10-12 heals before running fully out of resources. That said they all also have a stopgap heal that costs no resources to use (it isn't a gamechanging but it is free to use while they regenerate).

 

EDIT: I will admit that there are more efficient healing strategies that can come along with deep speccing in the heal trees, but healers WILL run out of resources, their spec just determines how long that takes... and shouldn't that be the case?

 

 

Except they get free consumption procs, and realistically should never run out of force.

[Aega]

This is why MMO pvp sucks atm. Its clear everyone is talking about a different experience than I have been receiving through multiple pug groups day in and day out.

 

10-49 and 50 pvp must be completely different now and the reason it is explains why pvp sucks so much. Gear. I wish I could go back in time and knock the hell out of the person who thought up continuing the stats increase after leveling stopped. And go eliminate the idea of adding PVE carrots in PVP.

 

PVP should have remained objective based and once you hit 50, you have your max abilities/stats until a level increase. The only difference between a fresh 50 and a veteran should be non-advantageous rewards (and there could be many).

 

The OP doesn't like the healing class period. I read his whole thread. OP, you like the idea of at best, a hybrid, no true healers. Either you are getting frustrated losing to hybrids (I can only imagine it has to be a sorc/sage) or your trying to kill a healer who has a friend.

 

My personal lower bracket experience with heals is that it completely sucks. Granted, I'm not a sage/sorc. If I get 1 dps on me, O N E, the only outcome is my death in a true 1v1.

[Sylvarine]

I'm sure this will cheese off a lot of people who play healing classes. I'm well aware of the arguments that healing classes are weak, easily killed or otherwise countered.

 

Hogwash.

 

There is one inarguable fact regarding pvp healing. That is maximum potential health.

 

When you boil down PvP it becomes, at it's core, an issue of scaling.

Who does more damage. Who does more damage in a shorter period of time. Who has better gear. Who has a better build. Who has more health.

I might be able to put out 20k damage in 5 seconds. You might be able to put out 22k. I might have 23k mitigated health. You might have 19k mitigated health.

So we evaluate our battles, you decide to trade some stat or build choice over another to achieve 23k worth of damage in order to beat me. I then change my decisions somehow.

 

DPS and health are very relative numbers. They live in the same realm. You might get 2k crits, you might get 4k crits. You might have 15k health, you might have 20k health.

 

Where does healing factor into all of this? It doesn't factor in any sensible way. The reason it doesn't is because heals can achieve numbers in the hundreds of thousands of health over time.

 

To illuminate this point, lets look at PvP another way. Imagine we are in a foot race to see who is faster. A very common and rudimentary bit of human competition.

I declare to you than I can run 30 yards faster than you can run 25 yards, because I am naturally faster. Or we make a straight up equal distance challenge.

Perhaps another competition might be that I can run a further distance than you in 1 minute, or 10 minutes.

We can all agree that these are reasonable challenges that can and are made in the normal course of life.

 

A challenges which is never made however; is that I challenge that we see who can run farthest in a minute's time, with the exception that I am allowed to pause, reset or simply give myself more time on the clock than you have. So that when your minute is up, I can continue to keep running as I give myself extra seconds for however long as I wish, indefinitely.

 

While that competition would be ludicrous, it is exactly the competition that healing in PvP gives us. Now of course there are the responses such as: "this is what interrupts are for", "out-dps the healing", "focus down the healer", ect. Yes, or course these are valid tactics. These responses do not answer the real issue at all however, which is that healing is indefinite. It is like saying we will have our footrace where I can manipulate my clock, but you are allowed to try and steal my clock during the race. Sure that is a solution to the ridiculous nature of the race, but it still remains that I have the potential for unlimited time and can achieve it. Why even have such a rule in the first place?

 

To answer why is not difficult and goes to the history of the current MMO. The current MMO design of course stems from a PvE model. (Yes the early MMO's like UO had a far different design including pvp, swtor doesn't follow that model, it follows the PvE-centric model). In a PvE-centric MMO model, healing is used to keep tanks alive in boss fights. These fights last periods of time where the health of a tank is replaced numerous times by the healers. You can have a boss with hundreds of thousands of HP put out hundreds of thousands of damage. While a DPS'er might put out 200k in damage into a boss, a healer might put 200k of health into a tank. Healing generally has no limit over time and conceivably you could keep a tank alive indefinitely if it were not for things like enrage timers or regen limitations of energy. That is all well and good and easily understood by any MMO player.

 

Where things go incredibly awry however is when this design is then taken over into the PVP world. Players do not have the health of PVE bosses. The ability of a DPS'er to put out 200k of damage over time is meaningless when players only have 15k worth of health. This is our footrace of limited dimensions. Yet while a DPS's damage output ends when my healthbar reaches zero, a healers heal output is still unlimited, it never ends.

 

Yes, it can be countered. Yes, it can be balanced out with both sides healing. This isn't the point. The point is that you have one side of the equation which is unlimited.

 

To put the argument in another light. Take a great pvp game design like DOTA, HON or League or Legends. These games are actually quite similar to an MMO's pvp in that there are levels and gear for the players. Characters in these games can heal, but no character can heal for any length of time. In most cases, healing is limited to one, two or three heals during any fight. In other terms, any given character only has a potential of two to maybe three times his max health; and twice their health is a stretch. In SWTOR, if you heal someone for 100k and they never die, they are achieving 5-8 times their health.

 

So after all this analysis of the bad philosophy of the problem, what is my suggestion towards the solution?

The best way to balance any PvP system is to balance against maximum potential health. I.E. the limited footrace: we will only judge competition at a max distance of so many yards or so many minutes. The quite simple math to it would be that a character could only receive twice their max health in a 3 minute period. To even out the lower DPS potential that healers have, they might have that limitation reduced by their comparative healing or lack of dps. Hence a healer might be able to achieve 3 or 4 times their health in a 3 minute period.

 

This would mean that healing would still be able to save lives. It could still be just as powerful. But it would not be unlimited.

 

A very simple scenario to illustrate all of this is a duel. Yes, duel's are not entirely representative of group pvp. That argument is beside the point for this illustration of the philosophies involved.

 

DPS vs Healer. Healer has 15k health.

How does the DPS win? We all know. He must do enough damage, fast enough and counter the heals.

DPS does 14k worth of damage.

At this point 2 outcomes are possible.

1) The healer prevents his death and heals himself. Say he stuns the DPS and casts a 2k heal, then a 3k heal, then a couple 1k heals. At this point the DPS has lost the battle and can never recover. While his health continues to decline over time, the healers continues to increase over time. He can now never win.

2) The healer fails to overtake the DPS and eventually dies.

 

A better scenario is that at 14k worth of damage

1) the healer manages to prevent his death and heals himself up to his max potential health, giving himself a new 16k worth of life. That's the highest potential he can reach. Now the DPS must kill him all over again, but once he completes 16k worth of damage before his own death, he wins.

The healer can win, but so can the DPS.

2) The healer fails to overtake the DPS and dies at 15k health loss.

 

In the second scenario the healer has still prolonged his life. He has still healed, and healed for a lot. He has basically given himself a second life. The DPS cannot heal himself and has his same original health pool. You could argue over who has the advantage or disadvantage but the meaningful component to the balance of the equation is that the healers health pool is not potentially unlimited, it is instead very grounded and in sight of his enemy.

 

 

I stopped reading after the first sentence. Just another qq post of some dps that couldn't kill a healer. With all the qq's going on about healers, you may as well just get rid of healing all together in this game. That's basically all dps want. Better yet, why not roll a healer and see what it's actually like to play one in warzones. Any competent team makes your life hell to the point of just wanting to say f#$k this game with the retarded resolve system that doesn't work and over the top cc.

 

You wanna dumb healers down, the only balance to it is to dumb the **** outta melee. Let's see you guys go around with a 30% debuff to dmg. Hope about we make there be raid frames that pop up showing the opposing team and the only way you can dps them is by targeting the raid frames and using your abilities.

 

No healer will EVER win against any competent dps that has the same gear as them unless that dps is just a complete f#$king scrub. Which based on the few tid bits from your post, that's exactly what you are.

 

 

 

DPS vs Healer. Healer has 15k health.

How does the DPS win? We all know. He must do enough damage, fast enough and counter the heals.

DPS does 14k worth of damage.

At this point 2 outcomes are possible.

1) The healer prevents his death and heals himself. Say he stuns the DPS and casts a 2k heal, then a 3k heal, then a couple 1k heals. At this point the DPS has lost the battle and can never recover. While his health continues to decline over time, the healers continues to increase over time. He can now never win.

 

DPS uses his trinket cc breaker, game over for the healer.. healers have a 4 sec stun.. no healer will EVER EVER get off 4 heals even with a dps even if they are stunned for 4 seconds.

 

 

2) The healer fails to overtake the DPS and eventually dies.

 

lol at a healer over-taking a dps...all your little scenarios just scream the dps blows. Why don't you learn healing mechanics and what a interupt is and when to use them and healers can be literally a complete non issue in a warzone. Just one good dpser focusing on a healer < and even if they cannot kill them > will take that healer outta the picture almost entirely as it forces them to have to heal them-selves and not their team-mates.

 

 

I guess while we are at it as well, we may as well make all bosses in the pve environment have insane abilities.. but all these abillities do one dmg. Cause damn, they heal for 2 hp's, that's op'd and obviously not balanced. If that boss cannot kill that fully geared tank in 30 secs, the game isn't balanced.

 

At the end of the day, the healers ARE FAR from the problem in this game. IF you wanna talk just about sorcs for eg, it's the HYBRID specs that are the problem. I've played using it before and yes, it is OP as **** and those two trees need to be reworked big time.

Edited February 24, 2012 by Sylvarine