Target Center Screen Change, terrible for healers

[Thuggery]

I highlighted this on the test server forums, and it looks like it totally got ignored.

 

For me this is a game breaker. Tab targetting is woeful in this game, grid healing less than sub par in pvp.

 

Target center was a really useful option when I could target friendlies. Now it only targets enemies. Healers have to resort to either

 

1. Click player in front of you about to die (too slow and can miss click)

2. Read player name and then find that player in the grid and click (good luck with the stupidly long pre and post titles)

3. Use target friendly (good luck with it actually targetting the player you want)

4. Revert to sub standard healer using only the raid frame.

 

Sadden by this as I play mostly healers. Cancelling sub for now and will let it run out.

 

Cannot understand why they didnt just add a new feature for target center enemy, rather than remove a feature some of us were happily using.

 

And really bioware you need to be reading your test server forums. No point having feedback being totally ignored.

[XtremJedi]

Wow... I'm very surprised that they've reduced targeting options for healers even further. It's not like ToR had any really good targeting options before - and focus targeting is still deeply buggy afaik.

 

It does make you wonder what they're thinking of, doesn't it?

 

X

[Aurojiin]

I've never bothered with anything but the raid frames for serious healing, but I can understand the annoyance (especially in PVP). They could at least give an option as to what player types it will target. Edited June 26, 2012 by Aurojiin

[RuQu]

Wow... I'm very surprised that they've reduced targeting options for healers even further. It's not like ToR had any really good targeting options before - and focus targeting is still deeply buggy afaik.

 

It does make you wonder what they're thinking of, doesn't it?

 

X

 

I'm pretty sure this is in line with what their standard thinking:

 

Look! A healer! Kill it!

 

I think our PvP DPS based Dev team has forgotten that they should only be trying to kill healers in WZs, and not literally make them extinct in the game....

[Tobradex]

I'm pretty sure this is in line with what their standard thinking:

 

 

 

I think our PvP DPS based Dev team has forgotten that they should only be trying to kill healers in WZs, and not literally make them extinct in the game....

 

 

RuQu you have completely missed the greatest threat to all things in SWTOR. This threat is devastating SWTOR, and yet the devs have yet to do enough to stop the problem.

 

Roving bands of stun-locking Operatives are unstealthing and stun-locking players, procing an unsub debuf all throughout SWTOR. The player base in dwindling and servers had to be merged because of these roving bands. I know that you always like to see evidence. You MUST read through this thread in the forums addressing this problem in detail:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=459212

 

Bioware, please nerf dps operatives a fourth time to end this scourge of stun-locking operatives.

[RuQu]

When they nerf Operatives again, just know that you brought it on yourselves...

 

and then cry because it was more fun to troll the Devs than to play...

[Tobradex]

When they nerf Operatives again, just know that you brought it on yourselves...

 

and then cry because it was more fun to troll the Devs than to play...

 

 

You are probably right. Was just hoping you might get some entertainment reading the thread I linked. I belly-laughed my way through it. Thanks for all your insight, theory crafting, and support of operatives pre-1.2.

 

To the OP, sorry to derail your thread.

[Thuggery]

To get back on track...

 

Played several more warzones as healer. Got frustrated everytime someone standing near me died, because I was too slow using all the random ways of targetting them.. gonna take some serious practice.

 

But what frustrated me the most was I'm just like other healers in pvp now. The on screen action is something that goes on outside my game as I have to spend so much time "monitoring the raid frame" which is boring as hell.

 

I'm totally disconnected from the game playing like this, before I targetted by looking around at who was low, getting them in my field of vision and then targetting them, perhaps swinging away to look for the next heal target at the same time. It flowed, it felt great. Now it feels clumsy again.

[Graziell]

Now it only targets enemies.

 

good thing, easier to get away from all these pesky maros/jugger beating on my sawbone.

 

also raid frame > 180° view in most cases. As long as you have line-of-sight (which also applies to your back apparently) you can heal people behind you which you wouldn't have seen otherwise while still keeping an eye on the objective and running away from that dd on your heels.

Have you resized your raidframe btw?

Edited June 29, 2012 by Graziell

[Thuggery]

good thing, easier to get away from all these pesky maros/jugger beating on my sawbone.

 

also raid frame > 180° view in most cases. As long as you have line-of-sight (which also applies to your back apparently) you can heal people behind you which you wouldn't have seen otherwise while still keeping an eye on the objective and running away from that dd on your heels.

Have you resized your raidframe btw?

 

Yeah its resized, I just find it irritating to spend most of my pvp time staring at the raid bars rather than playing the game.

 

Meh with this and the lack of any decent resolve system I'm slowly going off the game. I spend so much time not looking at whats going on on screen now I might as well be playing a text based adventure. I like healing but if we are just going to be continually sidelined (and lets be honest, any full time healer in pvp, knows how rubbish it is when trying to heal) I won't be resubbing. They should just drop the healing classes altogether and give us a free respec. Drop the healing trees and just admit they had no intention for healing classes to be healers.

[TKofSweden]

I am really interested in learning which game you used to play, healing the way you are. No matter how hard you try you can't convince me that only seeing the health bars of the players in front of you then manually selecting them is better than using a properly configured and POSITIONED Ops frame.

 

I get kind of worried and really hope that you do not drive a motor vehicle, with what sounds like a really flawed peripheral view. (Sorry if this comes on strong and offensive, just a genuine concern for your fellow travelers)

[Thuggery]

I am really interested in learning which game you used to play, healing the way you are. No matter how hard you try you can't convince me that only seeing the health bars of the players in front of you then manually selecting them is better than using a properly configured and POSITIONED Ops frame.

 

I get kind of worried and really hope that you do not drive a motor vehicle, with what sounds like a really flawed peripheral view. (Sorry if this comes on strong and offensive, just a genuine concern for your fellow travelers)

 

Once you learn to use target center (not possible anymore for healers) and actually preempt the gameplay and stop relying on just the crutch that is the Raid Frames you will become a better healer. Until then I won't be able to convince you.

 

Please tell me how the raid frames help you in huttball when the ball carrier is at full health? Or perhaps at full health and rooted on a fire grate and about to get toasted. How does the raid frames help you then? Sadly it doesn't its more of a hinderance in these situations. When everyone is grouped together then perhaps the raid frame is a better solution and you dont need to look at whats actually happening. But don't worry you always have target friendly... oh *** it selected him, no he's not nearest to me. I know tab through friendlies.. ah crap he's dead.

 

Don't think and don't assume that I only used it as my only target option. It wasn't, however it was very much one of my main options and I liked it the way it was (both friendly and enemies on one keybind) and freindlies targetted center of screen (far more accurate and quick than any other targetting option once you get used to it)

 

Sadly I think we need to be concerned about you. Seeing as you have a very limited view of how a healer can be played (perhaps you only do PVE where all you need is the raid frame and to stare at your feet to check your not about to be toast). But its ok if everyone is topped off your a great healer. You keep playing that way and I'll keep preempting the damage by sticking a hot on a person about to get toasted, or a bubble on a person stuck in the fire. Or perhaps a little cleanse to get them over the line or out of the fire.

[TKofSweden]

My point was that if you position and configure the ops frame so you can monitor it WHILE looking at what is going on. For me the Ops screen is positioned At the feet and lower body of my character.

 

I mainly do PVP, and I am Able to both monitor what's going on and who is about to take dmg while using the Ops frame to heal them. Something that is usefull for me is to use the 2 waiting minutes to go through all players names so I know what their character looks like, hence making it possible to target them quicker. The Ops frame is also nice to show whom is within range, only thing is it that you have to check your LOS yourself.

 

A tip that might be helpfull for you and your plastyle is to do change to the none-default tabbing option, where it works relatively to your screen. You seems to be changing our camera angle a lot, looking around, so I do not think it will be to hard for you to gt used to position yor camera so the person you want to heal is furthest to to the left on the screen. Then you can just do the friendly targeting and you should have your guy selected.

 

But if this change in how the tabbing works is making you cancel your sub, you prolly wasnt enjoying the game to begin with and are just looking for an excuse to leave.

[Thuggery]

Quiet evidently you haven't read anything of what I had said. This has nothing to do with tabbing. Its the taking away of a feature of targetting (that did not use the terrible tab targetting) which I used a lot and was very useful. Most healers didn't use or understand it and still don't.

 

I do already have the raid frames very visible and do use them to their full extent (albeit the LOS is next to useless on them) I do have next and nearest friendly bound and do use them. But I have lost my most useful bind "Target Center Friendly" which once you understand that will make it obvious why.

 

Its not a single reason to unsub, its compounded by the fact I bothered to roll on PTS to check stuff and found out and posted a highlight to it and nothing was done. It was still rolled out.

[Rassuro]

Especially on my Operative healer in PVP this change really screwed up my play style.

 

One of the reasons why being able to use target center screen was so useful to me is that then I was able to keep right mouse button pressed, running around while targeting people to place Kolto Probe and Surgical Probe. With the change, my ability to target people while running is now more limited.

 

The other main reason of course is that a lot of times just healing whoever is low on health on the ops frame is not enough, you have to both anticipate and prioritize. Finding the persons name, which is hidden somewhere between their title and legacy name, then finding them on the ops frame, is sometimes too slow.

 

 

However, I don't know if you guys have tried this, but it seems as though target nearest now works differently than what it used to before the patch. It seems to be kind of like a mix between target center screen and how I remember target nearest to have worked before the patch.

 

If you guys haven't tried it, I definitely recommend that you do. I've changed my targeting in 1.3 to use target center center screen for enemies, and target nearest for allies.

It's not as good as simple having options for separate keybindings for target center screen enemy, ally, and all, but to me target nearest seems like the best option available at the time.