Sage/Sorc healing hybrids in solo ranked arenas, and the issues they create

[Twithep]

I only said that if people feel pressured too much into one direction, they will go and try to find a way to relieve that pressure.

 

And the pressure in this case is : The Sorc being the far favourite target of EVERYONE, it's like a bad habit.

 

And if people have the feeling that they are not able to defend themselves as a pure healer - for example - then they are looking for ways to make them pay.

 

Then i think we agree, i still don't like the spec though.

Edited March 8, 2014 by Twithep

[KalElc]

Serious Post:

 

Hybrids, As far as I can remember, BioWare stated themselves that they do not intend to be or shall not be viable specs for it in the game if I recall. Season 1 has been and still be a nightmare thanks to Hybrids / Skank’s, we had our fair share of Hybrid Tanks like PT/Vanguards (good that has been fix as it turned out to be Op in Solo rank and Group Rank) but for me it did take too damn long before a fix happened, Pt/Vanguard hybrids that been terrorizes too long from the beginning of season 1. Now, we face new Danger, Hybrid Sorcerer/Sages. Same as Pt’s the hybrid spec has been viable / discovered even before the arena hit live only now it start to blossomed and make disaster’s

 

As it has been stated in the thread / post a bow There is Advantages and Disadvantage and both can ruin yours and other group, it sure has on my mercenary past these days, a horde of sages has fallen to the dark side by going this Off heal spec for the fun or for the race to easy mode 1500 T1. All do I don’t believe they will make it to the end anyway as the faction balance in our server as probably rest is so poor as it is.

 

What I expect from BioWare that has fairly good job at the moment and am glad they taking a lot of action for class balance in the game and that’s a good path they chosen and they have seem to learn + also starts to listen to our community more makes me happy. What I hope is that u Guys (developers) can learn from Season 1 and make Season 2 better and try to anticipate all potential hybrid specs in the game and BRAKE them before Season 2 starts and matters, to save a lot off people suffering from the madness.

There are 2 ways to fix this by still keeping the talent tree.

 

1 For Sorceress u have to move innervate somewhere higher all do that will ruin for people that starts to lvl with the sorc as healer and makes it pointless

2. As I see as best option to all spec. I believe the cap that determine the roll for arena is probably around 25+ points in one tree depend on the Advance class like Jugs and Sorcerer for example as healer or tank if u put points in Immortal (tank) and Corruption (healer) right? One simple fix is that u lower it to 21+ Points that determent the roll of the class u play instead. I don’t know if this is a possible way change but I believe this will brake Hybrids and especially Solo Rank and help the Match making system to make it slightly more better experience for all who plays it next Season.

 

With that they will be tagged as The roll they supposed to be and if they do **** then so be it because they’re not supposed to be viable with the spec at all. The problem isn’t the spec itself but the matchmaking that says that they are tagged as dps when they are off healing spec or off tanking spec for example.

On paper this should work if u implement something or make small adjustment without doing much but I don’t know how the system work.

 

Anyway short summary from my post, In overall, Make sure u do something with match making system tag the damn Hybrids healers /Tank to a real healer / tank roll in the matchmaking to kill the hybrids seems to be a short term fix and stay alert for any incoming hybrids specs in the future to save you guys time of pain and complains in the future. I’m not going to deny it’s a good support spec the Off healing one but this hurts the game and letting it continue like this will hurt it even more. I already suffer from enough for not having as much great and fear matches tats makes it fun but it’s out of my reach tanks to hybrids.

 

I’m hoping for a small response that u actually paying attention to this issue that’s all I’m asking for and hoping for to calm my nerves and mind, this post is not only a complain but a suggestion that can make fix the problem as well but that up 2 u guys to decide.

[Ghost_Spectre]

So, basically, if a spec is bad one should resort to abusing the system and playing specs like the hybrid?

 

Wait, wait, wait...playing a hybrid is abusing the system? Who says, you or BioWare? As it was mentioned earlier, us Sorcerer/Sage players were forced to look for a better way to improve our survivability. Playing a Healer/DPS hybrid is one of them. And now, based on 3 very awful piss-poor skill trees, you want BioWare to stop the players for looking out for themselves to survive? How very destructive you are towards these two classes.

 

The problem I see here is, after reading your rumination and prognostication on the subject, you want to see the Sorcerer/Sages neutered again so you can have your free kills, farm metals, and thump your chest on how big and powerful you are for destroying the weakest class in the game. How generous of you!

 

If BioWare does that, because you QQ about this special spec, you may well see a majority of these players leave the game (as what happened with the great emasculation of 1.2). Which would mean hardly any of these in any Warzone. That's what your crying for a nerf (which is exactly what you are asking for) will do. BTW, these very same Dev's told the Sorcerer/Sages to L2P, H2F, and make them pay. The net results? Using a hybrid to do what was needed to help us survive and function. Now you want to take it away. Shame on you.

[KalElc]

Wait, wait, wait...playing a hybrid is abusing the system? Who says, you or BioWare? As it was mentioned earlier, us Sorcerer/Sage players were forced to look for a better way to improve our survivability. Playing a Healer/DPS hybrid is one of them. And now, based on 3 very awful piss-poor skill trees, you want BioWare to stop the players for looking out for themselves to survive? How very destructive you are towards these two classes.

 

The problem I see here is, after reading your rumination and prognostication on the subject, you want to see the Sorcerer/Sages neutered again so you can have your free kills, farm metals, and thump your chest on how big and powerful you are for destroying the weakest class in the game. How generous of you!

 

If BioWare does that, because you QQ about this special spec, you may well see a majority of these players leave the game (as what happened with the great emasculation of 1.2). Which would mean hardly any of these in any Warzone. That's what your crying for a nerf (which is exactly what you are asking for) will do. BTW, these very same Dev's told the Sorcerer/Sages to L2P, H2F, and make them pay. The net results? Using a hybrid to do what was needed to help us survive and function. Now you want to take it away. Shame on you.

 

 

We talk about Season 2 here not now Seasons 2 should be a plenty of time for bioware to fix the sorc class yes?

we all know that is to late to change them before the season ends.

Edited March 8, 2014 by KalElc

[Twithep]

Wait, wait, wait...playing a hybrid is abusing the system? Who says, you or BioWare? As it was mentioned earlier, us Sorcerer/Sage players were forced to look for a better way to improve our survivability. Playing a Healer/DPS hybrid is one of them. And now, based on 3 very awful piss-poor skill trees, you want BioWare to stop the players for looking out for themselves to survive? How very destructive you are towards these two classes.

 

The problem I see here is, after reading your rumination and prognostication on the subject, you want to see the Sorcerer/Sages neutered again so you can have your free kills, farm metals, and thump your chest on how big and powerful you are for destroying the weakest class in the game. How generous of you!

 

If BioWare does that, because you QQ about this special spec, you may well see a majority of these players leave the game (as what happened with the great emasculation of 1.2). Which would mean hardly any of these in any Warzone. That's what your crying for a nerf (which is exactly what you are asking for) will do. BTW, these very same Dev's told the Sorcerer/Sages to L2P, H2F, and make them pay. The net results? Using a hybrid to do what was needed to help us survive and function. Now you want to take it away. Shame on you.

 

Another stupid reply, are you willing to even read what i write? I've made reasoned complaints, if you have an actual reason for why these are wrong please write it, but all you are doing is screaming "QQ" . I'm asking for bioware to nerf the spec, not the class, i main a sorc myself. As i've already written, the best solution would be to make the full specs viable (or 0/30/16, i have nothing against hybrids when they are reasonably balanced, and preferably not cross-role). At the moment i'd say the full healing spec is close to viable, but suffering under this wave of hybrids because two sorcerers on the same team is bad, especially if two of them are healers.

 

The line of reasoning for why that particular spec is abusing the system, is that they queue as dps while intending to heal. If they had actually queued as healers it would have been fine, but if you queue as dps you should be a dps. I've written a lot about this in the op, and given (what i think is) fairly good reasons for why it is unbalanced.

 

I understand that you feel very cool when using big words, but where exactly did i prognosticate? As for rumination, the reason i haven't gone too much into fixes for the issue, is that before you can fix an issue, you have to acknowledge it. On top of that, fixing the issue is not that big a deal, there is a multitude of fixes. One could be to add a kind of stance to sorcerers, another could be to change the class recognition system so that if you have 21 or more points in either a healing tree, or a tank tree, one would be counted as that (for classes without stances, for those with, the best would be to lock cylinders/stances/whatever when they queued, to prevent dps guarding in tank gear). A third possibility is simple moving innervate/healing trance further up the tree. None of those are perfect ways to solve it, but i am fairly sure they'd help more than they would hurt (changing the skill tree is probably going over the top, i'd rather have the queuing system changed, the system is after all the main issue here).

 

I might want to emphasise, again, that i main a sorc.

 

Did i mention that i main a sorc?

Edited March 8, 2014 by Twithep

[Jyzai]

How about they just remove the tags and let everyone guess who is doing what. At least this way it add to the challenge. You don`t see these tags in warzone why arena.

[Tankqull]

Another stupid reply, are you willing to even read what i write? I've made reasoned complaints, if you have an actual reason for why these are wrong please write it, but all you are doing is screaming "QQ" . I'm asking for bioware to nerf the spec, not the class, i main a sorc myself. As i've already written, the best solution would be to make the full specs viable (or 0/30/16, i have nothing against hybrids when they are reasonably balanced, and preferably not cross-role). At the moment i'd say the full healing spec is close to viable, but suffering under this wave of hybrids because two sorcerers on the same team is bad, especially if two of them are healers.

 

The line of reasoning for why that particular spec is abusing the system, is that they queue as dps while intending to heal. If they had actually queued as healers it would have been fine, but if you queue as dps you should be a dps. I've written a lot about this in the op, and given (what i think is) fairly good reasons for why it is unbalanced.

I understand that you feel very cool when using big words, but where exactly did i prognosticate? As for rumination, the reason i haven't gone too much into fixes for the issue, is that before you can fix an issue, you have to acknowledge it. On top of that, fixing the issue is not that big a deal, there is a multitude of fixes. One could be to add a kind of stance to sorcerers, another could be to change the class recognition system so that if you have 21 or more points in either a healing tree, or a tank tree, one would be counted as that (for classes without stances, for those with, the best would be to lock cylinders/stances/whatever when they queued, to prevent dps guarding in tank gear). A third possibility is simple moving innervate/healing trance further up the tree. None of those are perfect ways to solve it, but i am fairly sure they'd help more than they would hurt (changing the skill tree is probably going over the top, i'd rather have the queuing system changed, the system is after all the main issue here).

 

I might want to emphasise, again, that i main a sorc.

 

Did i mention that i main a sorc?

 

and thats the problem i myself play a healer if i want to have SR game i have to play a DD listed heal-hybrid[in my case scoundrel] as the healer queue normally takes longer than an hour on my server while dds have instant ranked popups.

Edited March 8, 2014 by Tankqull

[Ghost_Spectre]

Another stupid reply,

 

Didn't bother reading any further...You're one insulting SoB.

 

Did i mention that i main a sorc?

 

Yes which makes your ************, whining, and screaming the sky is falling even worse. You're an idiot.

[AlrikFassbauer]

Yes which makes your ************, whining, and screaming the sky is falling even worse. You're an idiot.

 

So, what about everyone else who complains about his main class ?

[Exsqeeze]

I have recently been experimenting as a hybrid operative. My win rate has gone up.

Whilst I agree with all the balancing and 'fairness' arguments, it simple gets tiresome after a while to play Operative DPS as you get burned down very quickly and easily (similar to the Sage's problems).

 

This leaves my main with 4 options:

 

1) Reroll.

2) Keep Dying.

3) Roll a hybrid (which is incredibly fun to play and takes a lot of focus).

4)Change to heals (where I will be waiting 40 mins a queue pop over 5)

[Raansu]

There are so many problems with solo ranked its not even funny.

 

If you don't have 36 points in one tree you shouldn't be allowed to queue for solo ranked. (Even WoW did something similar to this before they redesigned their talent system.)

 

If you're marked as dps then tank stance should be greyed out.

 

There needs to be a gear check. I'm tired of 25k players popping in thinking they can walts to 1500 before 2.7 for the damn mount.

 

Solo rating needs to be individual contribution. Lost 8 matches in a row yesterday and yet still did better than everyone on both teams, but because I had to deal with either unbalanced teams due to hybrids or just derps on my team I get to lose 15+ rating per game...joy.

 

I've said it before, but I have zero issues with hybrids in group play. 8v8/4v4/FP/OPs, go at it with the hybrids. But in an environment where matchmaking exists, hybrids and stance swapping seriously skews with the matchmaking system.

Edited March 8, 2014 by Raansu

[Chrisweaver]

So, what about everyone else who complains about his main class ?

 

They need to reroll.

 

This derp spec is only tough to face for you guys because you not used to facing them. These sorcs are going just high enough to reach innervate and the rest into the dps trees. They are crippling themselves. Get used to interrupting innervate. I've had people tell me " but it heals while channeled I can't interrupt it!" You can interrupt it. Watch the enemy. When you feel he is going to need to heal interrupt him. If he only gets 1 tick off he has wasted force. He does have a time limit. He will run out of force. He is not a healer so innervate does not tick faster and it will not be used to help consumption a force regen.

 

He will also not have access to all the moves he needs to succeed as a dps. Because he wasted so many points getting to innervate he has reduced himself to a broken healer.

 

I understand keeping an eye on the enemy cast bar can be troublesome for some people. My suggestion, place the enemy cast bar in a place you can see clearly. Also change the size in the UI so it will be more noticeable.

 

When facing a team with a tank and heals you are going to focus the sorc until gaurd it switched. At that point you switch to the healer. This does not mean you stop looking at the sorc. He will pop innervate as soon as you switch.

Have a teammate interrupt him (tank). Again he will run out of force. Switch to targets without gaurd. This is where tank skill comes in. Whoever has the better skill in this scenario will when the match.

 

Changing corruption tree to nerf this spec is not the option. ATM the full heal tree and the full middle tree and not viable in ranked arenas there is no reason to make it any worse. I would love if we could have stances as a sorc that would potentially kill off hybrids.

 

And no one in this thread invented this spec. This spec was discovered since 2.0 and found not viable.

[Twithep]

They need to reroll.

 

This derp spec is only tough to face for you guys because you not used to facing them. These sorcs are going just high enough to reach innervate and the rest into the dps trees. They are crippling themselves. Get used to interrupting innervate. I've had people tell me " but it heals while channeled I can't interrupt it!" You can interrupt it. Watch the enemy. When you feel he is going to need to heal interrupt him. If he only gets 1 tick off he has wasted force. He does have a time limit. He will run out of force. He is not a healer so innervate does not tick faster and it will not be used to help consumption a force regen.

 

He will also not have access to all the moves he needs to succeed as a dps. Because he wasted so many points getting to innervate he has reduced himself to a broken healer.

 

I understand keeping an eye on the enemy cast bar can be troublesome for some people. My suggestion, place the enemy cast bar in a place you can see clearly. Also change the size in the UI so it will be more noticeable.

 

When facing a team with a tank and heals you are going to focus the sorc until gaurd it switched. At that point you switch to the healer. This does not mean you stop looking at the sorc. He will pop innervate as soon as you switch.

Have a teammate interrupt him (tank). Again he will run out of force. Switch to targets without gaurd. This is where tank skill comes in. Whoever has the better skill in this scenario will when the match.

 

Changing corruption tree to nerf this spec is not the option. ATM the full heal tree and the full middle tree and not viable in ranked arenas there is no reason to make it any worse. I would love if we could have stances as a sorc that would potentially kill off hybrids.

 

And no one in this thread invented this spec. This spec was discovered since 2.0 and found not viable.

 

I've had several matches today on ToFN where 3/3 dps were healers queued as dps, at least once there was a full tank, most of the others there was a dps that switched stance and provided guard, i am not saying these matches are unwinnable, but they are fairly close to it.

 

You are saying "get used to interrupting innvervate", which is really not the issue here. The issue is that you have to interrupt it, there are no other dps you have to follow closely and interrupt for there to be any chance of winning.

If you read my op i brought up many of the same points, but i also had reasons for why the spec is overperforming. For instance it takes more focus and more damage to kill a hybrid healer than other dps, therefore an equally good team will do more damage (as in kill more people/leave you in a worse state) to your team by the time the hybrid healer is dead.

Edited March 8, 2014 by Twithep

[honkymonkey]

Anyway short summary from my post, In overall, Make sure u do something with match making system tag the damn Hybrids healers /Tank to a real healer / tank roll in the matchmaking to kill the hybrids seems to be a short term fix and stay alert for any incoming hybrids specs in the future to save you guys time of pain and complains in the future. I’m not going to deny it’s a good support spec the Off healing one but this hurts the game and letting it continue like this will hurt it even more. I already suffer from enough for not having as much great and fear matches tats makes it fun but it’s out of my reach tanks to hybrids. .

 

If you want a fair fight, que for 4v4. With the way guard, taunts, heals etc work in this game you will never be able to create a fair solo Q. It's random, most games are decided before they start due to classes (not specs). Arenas are in my opinion great fun, but people need to realize that even if you destroy (read remove) hybrids, being able to switch stance, changing gear, we will still not have a que system that's fair. Some classes are stronger in a deathmatch scenario, some classes and specs stack together really well or not at all.

 

Your skill is important, in the long run, over enough games. But come on people, it will never be fair or on equal terms. And when it comes to sorcs and sages in particular, give them a viable dps spec and most of them will play something they actually enjoy.

[honkymonkey]

others there was a dps that switched stance and provided guard

And why isn't this as much of a problem in terms of creating fair matchmaking?

 

You are saying "get used to interrupting innvervate", which is really not the issue here. The issue is that you have to interrupt it, there are no other dps you have to follow closely and interrupt for there to be any chance of winning.If you read my op i brought up many of the same points, but i also had reasons for why the spec is overperforming. For instance it takes more focus and more damage to kill a hybrid healer than other dps, therefore an equally good team will do more damage (as in kill more people/leave you in a worse state) to your team by the time the hybrid healer is dead.

 

Not true, any hybrid heal going into lightning/tk (and most of them are for some wierd reason) will do no dmg what so ever with people on him, he will run away, get an innervate off, and that's it. The fight will be 4 dps vs 3 dps and someone who's a bit more difficult to kill. You could just put a cc on said sorc and use the fact that your team will out dps your opponents. But hey, that requires more than a run and gun tactic. Chasing someone or something with 4 dps is not, nor will it ever be, a viable option against a team that's on the right side of decent.

[Twithep]

And why isn't this as much of a problem in terms of creating fair matchmaking?

It's absolutely an issue, i was just more angry at this hybrid healing spec at the moment, and therefore made a thread about it

 

 

 

Not true, any hybrid heal going into lightning/tk (and most of them are for some wierd reason) will do no dmg what so ever with people on him, he will run away, get an innervate off, and that's it. The fight will be 4 dps vs 3 dps and someone who's a bit more difficult to kill. You could just put a cc on said sorc and use the fact that your team will out dps your opponents. But hey, that requires more than a run and gun tactic. Chasing someone or something with 4 dps is not, nor will it ever be, a viable option against a team that's on the right side of decent.

It's not that simple, good ones will never open a match in the middle of your team, they will send their dps at you, and then stay at range while line of sighting until they find their best opening. You will also have issues with their bubblestun if you're not very careful (break one and if you're unlucky they'll just put up another), they also have static barriers absorb, unnatural preservation, and two casted heals on top of innervate, you can't keep them stunlocked forever to prevent their heals. A decent one will usually do 80k heals at the least when shut down, through static barriers, their selfheal, possibly heal on knockback, hots from static barrier, los+casts etc.

 

Also with the huge amount of them queuing, very many matches have multiple ones on the same team, which leads to a setup that is difficult to counter if their other two dps is decent.

Edited March 8, 2014 by Twithep

[Chrisweaver]

And why isn't this as much of a problem in terms of creating fair matchmaking?

 

 

Not true, any hybrid heal going into lightning/tk (and most of them are for some wierd reason) will do no dmg what so ever with people on him, he will run away, get an innervate off, and that's it. The fight will be 4 dps vs 3 dps and someone who's a bit more difficult to kill. You could just put a cc on said sorc and use the fact that your team will out dps your opponents. But hey, that requires more than a run and gun tactic. Chasing someone or something with 4 dps is not, nor will it ever be, a viable option against a team that's on the right side of decent.

 

 

This right here.

[foxmob]

There are so many problems with solo ranked its not even funny.

 

If you don't have 36 points in one tree you shouldn't be allowed to queue for solo ranked. (Even WoW did something similar to this before they redesigned their talent system.)

agree.

 

If you're marked as dps then tank stance should be greyed out.

don't care but agree (but ap/tactics was anomaly that had nothing really to do with this. pft should always have been tied to cell.)

 

There needs to be a gear check. I'm tired of 25k players popping in thinking they can walts to 1500 before 2.7 for the damn mount.

wow. yes yes yes. (agree )

 

Solo rating needs to be individual contribution. Lost 8 matches in a row yesterday and yet still did better than everyone on both teams, but because I had to deal with either unbalanced teams due to hybrids or just derps on my team I get to lose 15+ rating per game...joy.

disagree. ppl complain about other people who feel it's unreasonable to deal with grps vs pugs. well...the pro-grp response to this is generally, "suck it up. this is an MMO." regardless of what side you fall on in the premade back and forth, the same response works well here: "suck it up. this is an MMO. you're on a team. the team wins or loses. you can have relatively meaningless valor or comms for...iunno what. medals in an arena. but at the end of the day: it's an MMO. you're in solo Q. you aren't supposed to control who's on your team." I'm running out of ways to say this, but it's perfectly logical. don't wanna take the chance of a poor pug? form a grp on your own. /shrug.

 

I've said it before, but I have zero issues with hybrids in group play. 8v8/4v4/FP/OPs, go at it with the hybrids. But in an environment where matchmaking exists, hybrids and stance swapping seriously skews with the matchmaking system.

sometimes for good. sometimes for bad (for their own team), hybrids certainly do screw up the system as it was designed. and it doesn't take rocket science to fix this. but then again...operatives: 'more survivability please' bw: 'ok. here's a dmg increase'

[KalElc]

If you want a fair fight, que for 4v4. With the way guard, taunts, heals etc work in this game you will never be able to create a fair solo Q. It's random, most games are decided before they start due to classes (not specs). Arenas are in my opinion great fun, but people need to realize that even if you destroy (read remove) hybrids, being able to switch stance, changing gear, we will still not have a que system that's fair. Some classes are stronger in a deathmatch scenario, some classes and specs stack together really well or not at all.

 

Your skill is important, in the long run, over enough games. But come on people, it will never be fair or on equal terms. And when it comes to sorcs and sages in particular, give them a viable dps spec and most of them will play something they actually enjoy.

 

I actually meant More "Chance" to have. Ofc, its impossible to have it constant this is Yolo Queue we are talking about here.

[AngusFTW]

I had a game a while back where both teams had a hybrid healer (though one was a scoundrel ;_: ) and a full healer. It was so fun.. not xD We did win though..

[CaptainApop]

I had a game a while back where both teams had a hybrid healer (though one was a scoundrel ;_: ) and a full healer. It was so fun.. not xD We did win though..

 

Scoundrel skank heals is just derp around until the acid puts one team out of it's misery basically

 

Least the sorc one can kill stuff theoretically in a game with heals or tanks in it.

Edited March 9, 2014 by CaptainApop

[KalElc]

o well.

[DanNV]

The simple fix for hybrids (so it won't ever be implemented, simple isn't something most programmers seem to like ) would be to limit it so you can get tier 1 and 2 in any skill tree, but only one tree can go to 3 or higher. Simple, easy logic to code, solves the problems with hybrids and doesn't screw too badly with the progression of people leveling.

[whitroc]

Its never a good idea to invest too much in hybrid specs. this game especially. I used to run bubble stun spec on my sages/sorcs pre 2.0. when 2.0 came out I had no idea how to use the full tree. just food for thought.

[Zadtro]

I have no idea why BW haven't fixed this yet. You can't queue up as dps and then do more healing then the healer in the group. It is f***ing ridiculous. Also all it takes is 1 tank or someone who isnt a tank to go tank stance and guard and it is a tank and healer vs 4 dps which is basically an instant win in solo queues because you can't choose your team. I have had constant trouble with this in solo queues and it needs to be fixed or ranked is going to die which is a shame because it seems to be picking up again.