How to Balance the Tank/Heal Dynamic

[foxmob]

It's a friggen I win button. Whoever you cast it on almost always dies unless they have the *** healed out of them or they are a sin and can shroud it off..

 

not even remotely true. electro net's value is that it prevents healers from pressing their own HA HA buttons, such as barrier or combat stealth. same for sins and shroud, snipers and entrench. it only works if it's applied at the right time, just before the target is going to barrier or w/e. it's also an escape mechanism for all commandos. but it's on a 1.5m cd. it's literally impossible to abuse. and that's good. but it's only an iwin button if you're 1v1ing some moron who keeps chasing you.

[JackNader]

Rubbish. I shroud electronet's damage component off all the time. Electronet's usefulness is in offering the target 2 choices.

1)Keep moving and take absurd amounts of damage from electronet.

2)Stand still and take absurd amounts of damage from player abilities.

 

This is why it almost always ends in a kill and exactly the reason it is an "I win" button. It's garbage. As other classes, I hate having that **** cast on me. As a merc, I feel dirty as **** using it.

Edited July 22, 2013 by JackNader

[Schwartz]

That's the thing isn't it? It's a skill match between the tank trying to stay with the healer and the enemy trying. Adding a I WIN button just takes one of the main coordination tests out of ranked, and this game doesn't need to be dumbed down further. Now I will give you that 2.0s perma stalemates are too far but that's entirely due to healing. Yes if healing goes back to 1.7 standards there will still be stalemates, but those will be because the teams are equal skill and are countering each other not because of heal/tanks

 

Exactly

 

The problem is that OP healing/guarding produces stasis. Death, on the other hand, creates a constantly changing dynamic. That is what makes the warzones fun and competitive. Healers are not there to keep the entire team alive indefinitely. That is not their intended design purpose. They are there to balance the rate of change. OP healing means no change and so you get either frustrating or fun facerolls or endless stalemates. This causes the underlying dynamic range which is inherent in each warzone design to be eroded and narrowed. It's is a huge problem and if I were a developer I would be very concerned.

Edited July 22, 2013 by Schwartz

[foxmob]

Rubbish. I shroud electronet's damage component off all the time. Electronet's usefulness is in offering the target 2 choices.

1)Keep moving and take absurd amounts of damage from electronet.

2)Stand still and take absurd amounts of damage from player abilities.

 

This is why it almost always ends in a kill and exactly the reason it is an "I win" button. It's garbage. As other classes, I hate having that **** cast on me. As a merc, I feel dirty as **** using it.

 

if you shroud it off, then why are you standing still like a dunce? and how many commandos do you run into that you're constantly netted? and if they're only netting you, a freaking sin/shadow, then guess what they're not doing? using their net effectively on a healer. I really....ugh. I'm done. I don't even know how to respond to this w/o getting nasty. good day, sir.

Edited July 22, 2013 by foxmob

[JackNader]

Did I say I was standing still like a dunce? Why are you so focused on my assassin toon anyway. If you actually read what I initially posted you would notice that I mentioned shroud because its one of the only ways to counter electronet's damage component. I play every class so I see the ability used from all directions. I get netted a lot. Unsurprisingly, people tend to cast it on the biggest threat. I don't really care if they are wasting the ability on me or not. Quite frankly, if I was in their shoes I'd be casting it on me as well. A dead player is of ZERO use to the team so if that's what they need to use to survive, so be it. Edited July 22, 2013 by JackNader

[foxmob]

Rubbish. I shroud electronet's damage component off all the time. Electronet's usefulness is in offering the target 2 choices.

1)Keep moving and take absurd amounts of damage from electronet.

2)Stand still and take absurd amounts of damage from player abilities..

 

Did I say I was standing still like a dunce?

 

the one class you reference. just sayin.

 

I wreck mandos on my VG (assault) and PT (AP) all the time. I get netted A LOT. I very rarely die to it because they just throw it on me w/o any strategy. in which case it's a 1.5m escape ability. when I do die, it's usually because I've made a conscious decision to sell out for an objective (e.g., interrupting a cap while the rest of team is in spawn). ok. you can live. I won't come after you this time. if you get netted with little health, by a 1.5m cd, then you just got out-played. he set you up or, as mandos do (dps) caught you focused on something else.

 

it's a chess game. can you figure out when I"m going to apply net and pop shroud first? or will I throw my net on you too early. yeah. it's terribly op. lookout for all those killer mandos flooding WZs with their big bad nets. oye.

[Raansu]

electro net is fine...if I were to change it the only thing I would do is remove the dot and lower the CD to 45s that could be talented down to 30s.

[alexsamma]

In the current state of ranked pvp an unguarded target, hard-switched to by multiple dps equals a dead target (unless they burn god mode dcds).

 

Ranked matches are fine in regards to healing/tanking, both are strong and both require a good player to execute successfully; if you do not believe me feel free to watch a few matches were the teams are not dead even in skill/class comp and see how fast people die, in matches were two "even" teams are pitted against each other things seem to move slow, but that's what happens when two equal forces collide.

 

In normals matches you have games that are lopsided due to the random nature of pugging; it is possible to go from a game that seems to be stalemated to a game where everyone spends the majority of their time in the penalty box.

 

I realize that Operative/scoundrel healers are bit overtuned at the moment, but even a small nerf could literally break the class ; sorcs are ok, and mercs are actually good on a good team when they are being played by a good player.

 

If you want to truly balance the game you need to create pvp were the difference between having a healer and not having a healer is not so dramatic, so let's start by adjust pvp so that non-healer teams are not getting killed in 2-3 hits, then let's look at adjusting tanking/healing, then finally adjust an individual healer's output (or we could start be implementing proper mach-making, which would adress 99% of all QQ).

 

Disclaimer, I have a sage/sorc that I heal on, but I spend more time dpsing on my assassin, mara, guardian,and gunslinger - including doing rated pvp on my mara much more than my sorc; I also run in groups a lot, and solo queue a lot, so I feel like I have a wide perspective from which to analyze this issue and while I feel that healing/tanking is very strong, it is actually weaker than dps (though it is more challenging to coordinate dps than tanking healing).

Edited July 22, 2013 by alexsamma

[wwkingms]

I almost fell out of my chair. I don't know how to dignify this.

 

ikno. they probably feel ops and marauders should just stay the god classes so they dont have to reroll and level to 55 again

[mulzii]

What about:

 

1. give conceal ops and decep sins a skill (top tier) that removes HoTs.

2. give anni marauders and veng juggs a top tier skill (to keep away from smashers) that negates/removes guard

3. Give pyro BHs and carnage marauders a top tier skill that lets them not be affected by taunts when used.

[JackNader]

Allow guard to grant immunity to interrupt and pushback on all heals.

The guarded target is given a trauma debuff which lingers even when guard is disabled. The trauma debuff slashes healing output given to other players by 20 or 30% to make up for the fact that the target's heals cannot be interrupted. Heals that they do on themselves would be unaffected. This would give healers extreme tankiness when guard is up and force players to attack the tank.

Re balance all 3 healing classes, particularly scoundrel/operative, so that they are more dependent on casted heals.

 

What this does is

a) weakens the healers ability to heal properly while being focused without a guard.

b) With a guard, all healers will be able to free cast in the same manor as they do in PvE. This will make refining and balancing healing a piece of cake because its no-longer 2 entirely different mechanics.

c)players will now be forced to attack the tank instead of the healer as they are now what is keeping their team alive.

d)once the tank is dead, healers will go down like a sack of **** because they will "need" to get off their casted heals to keep themselves up, which they will not be able to do provided people actually press their interrupt buttons.

Edited July 22, 2013 by JackNader

[AlrikFassbauer]

In PvP, this doesn't work because the PRIMARY target is the healer. Healers are essentially tanking the fight.

 

Cynical point of view, but yeah, right.

 

ENemies will ALWAYS go after the healers - and especially against those squishy ones (like low level Sages ( LIGHT armor ! ) ).

Edited July 22, 2013 by AlrikFassbauer

[AlrikFassbauer]

I'm mostly a Concealment Operative, but I do heal on rare occasions and excel at it. The one thing that needs to be looked at for the Operative healer is the way Tactical Advantage (TA) procs, in its current state, and pre2.0, an Opscound healer could have an endless proc of TA by putting a Kolto Probe on EVERY teammate, this HoT will help support the ENTIRE team, as well as INCREASE our chance to get a Surgical Probe (which can crit for over 4K for me [Min/Maxed Op]). I admit, it's a little unfair that one healer can support an entire team like that. I've done it multiple times in Warzones since I am the only healer every once in a while. It is ridiculous, but it's the truth at the moment. This TA proc will then let me Surgical probe teammates as they take damage, not to mention flipping from teammate to teammate who is below 30% and keeping them up. It's definitely not a nerf that we need, but a complete relook at the way TA procs, imo. I don't want to see my class nerfed, but I admit it is extremely effective right now.

 

Thanks for this first-hand experience report (which everyone else seems to ignore here).

[DimeStax]

There is constant discussion about how overpowered scoundrel/operative healers are, especially with a competent tank guarding them. There is also a lot of discussion about field respec being removed to prevent classes from switching to tank/heals once an objective has been met (2 nodes on civil war, defending on voidstar, etc.)

 

I have never been a fan of nerfing classes only to buff them later. The best way to combat this appearance of overpoweredness is to create a soft/hard counter to healing and guarding. As many people have mentioned, some ways to counter this is too pull the guarded target out of guard range, cc other healers, have amazing focus. The reality is that, in theory these are great ideas, but in practice hardly ever work.

 

A. HOT Purge Ability

 

So this is secretly a buff Commando thread. I see what u did thurr.

What really gives the scoundrel an edge over other healers is the spammable slow-release medpack. Instead of nerfing the scoundrel, give other classes the ability to purge this ability.

 

Imagine field aid (the commando cleanse of two negative physical/tech effects on a friendly) being adapted to remove 1-2 heals over time on an enemy target. This allows skilled players to counter the OP factor of slow release medpack which allows scoundrels to heal their entire team while even stunned. I firmly believe that this would even the playing field among scoundrel healers while also giving the Commando a much needed Utility buff. This could also be used by the sage on their cleanse.

 

I suggest the Sage and Commando because the Sentinel and Gunslinger already have trauma reducing heals received. Sage and Commando are arguably the weakest classes in ranked atm, and this gives them some added utility in pvp situations.

 

B. Guard Debuff

 

A guarded target redirects 50% of all dmg to the tank, whereby it can be mitigated by the tank's stats. This means that to kill a scoundrel with 30k hp, you need to inflict 60k dmg. This alone creates situations in ranked where guarded targets are impossible to kill. Additionally, with how mobile guardian tanks are (force leap/guardian leap) it is unlikely that you can effectively pull the tank out of range of the guard. This is why I suggest the following.

 

The premise is to change Electro net so that it not only stops movement abilities/stealth but prevents a target from being guarded. With this change, BW could justify the obscenely long cool down on electro net (1 minute and 30 seconds). In a 1v1 duel, this changes nothing. In PvE, this changes nothing. In PvP, it gives Commandos a much needed Utility buff and nerfs the OP factor of healers/tank stacking in ranked warzones. This is an easy change, on a preexisting ability. I know others have said that this would make electro net OP. Just keep in mind, THE COOLDOWN ON ELECTRO NET IS 1 MINUTE AND 30 SECONDS. In a ranked, you will still need to rely on your team to focus the target down and this change will not guarantee a kill.

 

So this is secretly a buff Commando thread. I see what u did thurr.

[Skylancewalker]

So, because how the current situation is with the Scoundrel/Operative healers are you want to put the screws to Sage and Sorcerer healers because they are guarded by a competent tank? Because that is what will happen with your "suggestion to balance tank/healing."

 

I guess everyone is really put out that they cannot farm medals fast enough from the cloth wearing healers or healers in general as they were before 2.0. Now you want to put things in place so you can resume your slaughter of these healers because you are unable to kill a Scoundrel or Operative healer on your own.

 

It seems to me that the problem lies not with the classes in question, but with the player’s inability to adapt or find a way to counter the Scoundrel/Operative healers. Therefore, your answer is: nerf their guarding protection and allow their healing abilities to be purged. Good job. L2P is the real issue here, not overpowered healing, or competent tank players guarding healers.

 

Lol one of these guys! I find it ever more funny when one of these people throw the L2P issue when they play on a PVE server. Clap clap to you sir.

[foxmob]

I realize that Operative/scoundrel healers are bit overtuned at the moment, but even a small nerf could literally break the class ; sorcs are ok, and mercs are actually good on a good team when they are being played by a good player..

the requisite skill for comparable performance/output on a mando is considerably higher than than of scoundrel/sage. I'm not sure that is reason enough to change the classes, but I'd say it's an indisputable fact. I do not see the same discrepancy in the most popular dps specs for each AC.

[SpaniardInfinity]

Allow guard to grant immunity to interrupt and pushback on all heals.

The guarded target is given a trauma debuff which lingers even when guard is disabled. The trauma debuff slashes healing output given to other players by 20 or 30% to make up for the fact that the target's heals cannot be interrupted. Heals that they do on themselves would be unaffected. This would give healers extreme tankiness when guard is up and force players to attack the tank.

Re balance all 3 healing classes, particularly scoundrel/operative, so that they are more dependent on casted heals.

 

What this does is

a) weakens the healers ability to heal properly while being focused without a guard.

b) With a guard, all healers will be able to free cast in the same manor as they do in PvE. This will make refining and balancing healing a piece of cake because its no-longer 2 entirely different mechanics.

c)players will now be forced to attack the tank instead of the healer as they are now what is keeping their team alive.

d)once the tank is dead, healers will go down like a sack of **** because they will "need" to get off their casted heals to keep themselves up, which they will not be able to do provided people actually press their interrupt buttons.

 

Wait a second, didn't you say this on the first page?

 

is there a reason why you want commandos to be the god class?

 

Do you know how powerful this change would be if you slapped it on a Gunnery Commando (or even the Sage casted DPS tree, I forget the name)? No interruptions on any of their abilities. No pushback on any of their abilities. Free to cast Grav Round, Charged Bolts, and Full Auto to their heart's content. The healing penalty is irrelevant because it doesn't affect self-heals.

 

And if the immunity is only for heals thus mostly benefiting Combat Medics, even better. Medical Probe, which can hit as high as 10k, is still doing plenty of healing on allies with the healing reduction. And with a Guard, you are not going to kill a Combat Medic. Or their tank, or their co-healers. Not when they can never be interrupted.

 

And apparently I was the one trying to make Commando the god class...

 

Ranked is NOT the yardstick to measure anything. Virtually nobody plays it and for good reason. It has always been a massive exploitation fest. People do whatever they can to win and that ALWAYS means you bring the most lame of the lame simply because it works. If the devs take your god awful idea and run with it, you'll see ranked warzones fill up with mercs and it will be a ranged tracer missile electronet ****fest and people will have something new to QQ about.

 

Stop looking for quick fixes. The entire issue stems from the fact that this game is a PVE game. It is built around Tanks taking the agro and healers free casting. This doesn't happen in PvP. Healers are the tanking class. They are the primary target. If they make them squishy, people will stop playing healers. If they make them tanky, nobody dies. The solution is to find a way to ensure that healers are NOT the primary target.

 

But to be less facetious, the problem I see with this is you are moving the focus fire to the tank. Makes sense in theory. But its going to enable the healers to free-cast even more. Said another way, you're going to make PVP even more like PVE.

 

Without pressure on the healers, you're still not going to make a dent in them. And if you go after one of the healers, the healer is going to at least put one heal on themselves that cannot be pushed back or interrupted. They will do less healing to others, but that doesn't apply to self-heals. You'd also be surprised to see how long you can keep yourself alive when you can never be interrupted, even when under pressure. And once that Trauma debuff falls off, you can get right back to it assuming it cannot be cleansed.

 

Since you said it yourself that we shouldn't be balancing around ranked, it is a very tall order to ask players in a regular warzone to pressure both healers, then swap to one to force the Guard on him, swap to the other healer so the tank swaps the Guard again such that both healers are now doing reduced healing, and then burn down the tank during whatever window of opportunity the debuff creates (say 5 seconds or so). If you can't even burn down a Guarded healer, I highly doubt they are going to be able to pull off something that complex. Remember, this is the game that had Resolve made more forgiving because people couldn't coordinate CC properly.

Edited July 22, 2013 by SpaniardInfinity

[JackNader]

Pretty sure you mis-interpretted what I said.

 

For starters the pushback/immunity to interupt would be on heals only. It would not function on DPS abilities. Nobody cares if a DPS casts a heal. It heals for paltry amounts anyway.

 

For PvP to be balanced the core mechanics have to function more like PvE. It's just not possible to balance for PvE and for PvP unless the mechanics are similar. You have tanks built from the ground up to take focused fire in PvE. In PvP this doesn't apply. Nobody is attacking the tank because the healers need to die first. This leads to a situation where healers "need" to have ludicrous amounts of healing and self heal bonuses just to keep themselves alive. That's the crux of the problem right there. Healers should be augmenting peoples health, not extending them indefinitely. They can't augment peoples health if they are being "forced" to tank. The mechanics have to change... there's no way around it.

 

The only viable way I can see to "force" people into attacking the tank is via altering the guard mechanic. A healer under guard needs to fill the "augment" roll. Immunity to interrupts and being given the ability to self heal at full amounts forces other players to attack the tank. The devs can then cut the guarded targets capacity to heal others by any amount to meet TTK.

 

A healer without guard needs to be able to heal themselves and only themselves when focused by one or more players. This is why I suggested more of a reliance on casted abilities. Currently all the healing classes do too good a job of it which is entirely due to the spill over effect of having to tank.

 

On a third note I would really love to see taunts restricted to tanking stances only. I would also like to see cross taunts between tanks have no effect on each other. This one will upset a lot of people however, if people really want a balanced game, it needs to happen.

Edited July 22, 2013 by JackNader

[ManiacDavis]

This is pvp. PvP does not and should not equal PvE. The day it does, bioware can say good bye to their pvp community.

[JackNader]

This is pvp. PvP does not and should not equal PvE. The day it does, bioware can say good bye to their pvp community.

 

Dude.. this is a PvE game. It has always been a PvE game. Why do you think it takes so long for Bioware to do any PvP related balancing? No amount of sticking your head in the sand is going to change that. The only way you are ever going to see any meaningful changes to PvP is if they conform to PvE first.

[frankiejo]

I think they should give stealth DPS the ability to break guard and a debuff to reduce healing cast. In affect it would give concealment operatives and deception sins a "role" at mid and you'd have to have at least one for each rated team. the more niche you go with the AC's the more variety you see in top-tier games.

[SpaniardInfinity]

A healer without guard needs to be able to heal themselves and only themselves when focused by one or more players. This is why I suggested more of a reliance on casted abilities. Currently all the healing classes do too good a job of it which is entirely due to the spill over effect of having to tank.

 

On a third note I would really love to see taunts restricted to tanking stances only. I would also like to see cross taunts between tanks have no effect on each other. This one will upset a lot of people however, if people really want a balanced game, it needs to happen.

 

I agree about the taunt change. But as for making the healers more reliant on casts, that really translates to "make Scoundrels more reliant on casts". Sages and Commandos are very cast dependent as is and still heal the group unless under solid focus fire, so it wouldn't accomplish anything in that department. Scoundrels on the other hand would be impacted as you suggest, but it would also be at the collateral cost of tank effectiveness. It would be interesting to see how Scoundrel would do under those conditions, but considering that their best advantage is being able to stay on the move, I think planting them in one place may make them too weak.

[JediMasterSLC]

Allow guard to grant immunity to interrupt and pushback on all heals.

The guarded target is given a trauma debuff which lingers even when guard is disabled. The trauma debuff slashes healing output given to other players by 20 or 30% to make up for the fact that the target's heals cannot be interrupted. Heals that they do on themselves would be unaffected. This would give healers extreme tankiness when guard is up and force players to attack the tank.

Re balance all 3 healing classes, particularly scoundrel/operative, so that they are more dependent on casted heals.

 

What this does is

a) weakens the healers ability to heal properly while being focused without a guard.

b) With a guard, all healers will be able to free cast in the same manor as they do in PvE. This will make refining and balancing healing a piece of cake because its no-longer 2 entirely different mechanics.

c)players will now be forced to attack the tank instead of the healer as they are now what is keeping their team alive.

d)once the tank is dead, healers will go down like a sack of **** because they will "need" to get off their casted heals to keep themselves up, which they will not be able to do provided people actually press their interrupt buttons.

 

Good thoughts, but it wouldn't work. It would screw over reg wz teams without a tank.

 

It would mean you might be encouraged to run either only 1 healer in the main fight, or 2 tanks. If healers really would be that dependent on a guard. Lol, 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 3 DPS in main fight. 3 DPS trying to kill a tank that's being healed by 2 healers, while being taunted for by the another tank and any guardian/shadow/vanguard DPS on their team. GL

 

Also, turning the main fight into a contest of who can kill the other team's tank first would be boring. Even debuffed heals would/should be enough to keep a tank alive if the tank's only job is to guard someone, then stay alive. Speaking of which, tanks would get little prot numbers under this system because you want to incentivize everyone hitting them.

 

It would lower the skill cap on healing.

 

And yeah, the main fight would just be boring as hell. DPS numbers would go down from hitting a tank all day, prot numbers go way down, and potential HPS goes down because of the heal debuff, so everyone would be unhappy.

Edited July 22, 2013 by JediMasterSLC

[JediMasterSLC]

Dude.. this is a PvE game. It has always been a PvE game. Why do you think it takes so long for Bioware to do any PvP related balancing? No amount of sticking your head in the sand is going to change that. The only way you are ever going to see any meaningful changes to PvP is if they conform to PvE first.

 

Just no.

[JackNader]

*I agree. It definitely lowers the skill cap on healing.

*I don't see it changing pug games at all where it's borderline impossible to get any kind of focused fire going anyway.

*Yes, it would definitely screw tanks out of a lot of medals for sure. Personally I don't care about medals myself if it means better gameplay.

*Your point on the race to beat down the opposing tank isn't valid. It's currently a race to beat down the opposing teams healers first. The only difference is that the tank will actually die in my scenario unlike the current model where nobody dies.