is healing really that bad in this game?

[borghe]

nah, healing is actually much harder in this game than wow circa-WOTLK and later. healing here is more like pre-BC or right when BC hit.

 

Threat generation is super low for tanks.. and thus much much higher for healers and DPS. Especially if you are in a group with a crummy tank you have to watch that you aren't spamming heals enough to pull threat (or vanishing if you do).

 

incoming damage is way way higher than WOTLK and later, thanks to less mitigation for the tank and more damage spread around due to threat.

 

add in new non-mana mechanics for two of the classes (heat for trooper/BH, energy for smuggler/agent), and you are finding that you have to manage your resource more than a mana healer from wow.

 

I love it.. but it's definitely a huge change just in this stuff alone coming from wow.. then add to the fact that most wow raid healers the last 3-4 years have been used to mouseover healing, Grids, DBM and Omen, etc... it could be a pretty serious adjustment.

[Omyz]

Always play a healer in my MMO's. It is a trust issue for me, if I roll a dps or tank and do not know the healer personally, I babysit my health bars, afraid the healer wont heal if things get ookey. Yes I know, it is a stupid reason. (It's just a self guilt trip for daring to dps )

 

So I avoid the self pressure and do what I really love to do...heal.

 

I like UI addons, the type that change the design/layout of the UI. I would prefer a UI Layout / Display customizable out of the box though. I used to be a addon aholic until I got tired of Patch day nightmares. Now I just make do with what the game devs supply.

 

Those who use/depend on them know what I mean (and sometimes forget) the nail biting which occurs when the servers go live and the mad rush to the addon websites for updates.

 

Ever set your Raid nights to be anything but patch day?

 

Addons of all kinds become so pervasive, when they fail players cannot perform (or forget how to) perform with the vanilla interface. So they refuse to play (and ruin it for the folks who do not use addons who are ready to raid/pvp the moment the patch is applied and the servers are up) because they will not heal/tank/dps without their third party toys.

 

So in Summary, Addons are cool tools until patch day or the mod developer abandons it.

 

On topic - healing in this game is fun and no more strenuous than healing in various other MMO's.

[Sabster]

Playing a commando - and I haven't read the whole thread - but I do want to say that healing is a bit too hectic. I think the best fix is to bump up healing a bit.

[kilomax]

Well for all those that enjoy healing:

 

I agree it's suffice, but it lacks alot in both PVP/PVE sometimes. Mainly due to being very weak with some skills and not the best UI yet to target HP bars.

 

As a Seer I find the basic Rejuvenate skill very weak and only really use it for the procs as it doesn't seem to scale very well at all! I'm still doing about the same HoT ps at level 39 as it was back at 21 and my gear is x10 better than back then.

[Maxvla]

This.

I hate seeing healers complain in this game because they're without their addons.

Bust out the raid frames and do it old fashioned, you pampered baddies.

 

I would use only the raid UI if I could, but currently with it bugged I can't rely on it to show me accurate information.

[DrekorSilverfang]

The problem is a lack of dual spec. You can solo with a tank a little slower than with a DPS but soloing as a heal is just painful thanks to your no mitigation and no damage boosts. If given a dual spec you'll see a lot of sorc's go lightning / corr specs. Or ops take a healing / dps, same with mercs etc etc.

What?

 

Solo as a healer is the EASIEST way to level. It may not be the fastest but it is very very easy. You grab a companion(tank companions are actually the worst ones to take, DPS are ideal) and just heal them and help out with DPS and even Heroic 2+ are easy pickings for you. Heroic 4's are soloable with some good play as well.

 

Companions honestly solve any issues with leveling as a healer. If you are finding it painful then you must be doing something very very wrong.

[qqemokitty]

No it's not that bad. I'm enjoying myself, actually.

 

Yes the UI could use improvement. Dead horse. Dev is aware. In the mean time, I will do the best with what I have - which is pretty damn good. (Really miss target of target though. Really. Dead horse. I know.)

 

There will always be groups LF healer or LF tank because there are always more people playing dps. The majority of players like playing as dps more than healing because it's more "fun" in general, I guess.

 

For me personally, I don't ever want to do anything but heal. Dps is boring. Healing in this game, and every other mmo I've played. Not gonna stop now.

[qqemokitty]

Companions honestly solve any issues with leveling as a healer. If you are finding it painful then you must be doing something very very wrong.

 

So much this. Who needs dual spec (if I wanted to play DPS, I would!) when I can just play as a healer full time and let my companion dps for me?

 

 

I know I'm the minority in this though. Maybe I just secretly don't want dual spec because people would make me DPS sometimes.

[Choomba]

I think you have to look at this two ways...

 

Pve. To be honest you have the tools you need to get the job done pve healing can be entertaining.

 

Pvp this is an absolute train wreck. Yes people can put up big number but...you do not feel involved like you do in flash points. The ui does not support pvp well , cast times and player animations work against you...bioware has ALOT of work if they want to keep a pvpcrowd

[Inune]

I play in a top 50 US guild in WoW (currently ranked US 39th). That means that the people I play with are, at the very least, intelligent enough to have moderate success raiding hardcore doing heroic raids in WoW. Tonight before raid, I asked our collective healing core the following question:

 

"If you had to take your character right now and strip it of every healing addon, mod, macro, mouseover, whatever, would you still continue healing?"

 

 

The six responses I got were as follows:

 

1)No.

2)**** No, why the **** are you asking this?

3)Probably, but I'd hate every minute of it.

4)What #3 said

5)It'd be like healing in Vanilla, that **** sucked, but we had to do it.

6)I'd respec DPS immediately

 

(Note: the two main objections to the situation in question were first, no debuff tracking, and second, no mouseovers)

 

 

And there you have it. Half of them would stop healing immediately, the other half would keep healing, but admit that it would suck extremely hard compared to the current state of healing in WoW.

 

I think that appropriately answers the question of healing in TOR. Is it doable? Sure it is. Is it an effective, well-designed, and non-frustrating system? Hell no.

[Bionixx]

You won't see more healers until TOR gets mouse over macros or addons. It's doable now, but its too damn clunky and not as fun.

 

I healed for 7 years in WoW, clearing all heroic content while it was relevant in US top 30 guild without using mouseover macros or clique(well technically I did but only for dispel). All a healer needs is a Grid like interface and the standard UI has it.

[Chris_G]

Its really not hard to heal in this game. I don't need macros or mouseovers to heal well. My only complaint is that I do think the UI needs some bug fixing, improved targeting options and just general polishing.

[Kernunno]

I have healed in WoW thought ICC (at 80) and even BWD and BoT (pre nerf) and the only addon I wouldn't want to miss is decursive (I can even do without DBM). Anything else I can do without (well since the new raid UI that is... before that I used Grid a LOT; on all my characters but even that I can miss realy). I just want to know what the boss is doing (focus target helps a lot there) and what people's health bars look like.

I am very picky on my UI in general though. I don't want my vision obscured by anything which means I don't want to look at buttons I have keybound anyway (I tend to memorise finger movements instead of little pictures anyway) and i want the rest as small as possible and concentrated on one place. Currently though the UI is just to damn big.

[borghe]

(Note: the two main objections to the situation in question were first, no debuff tracking, and second, no mouseovers)

I think the mouseover argument is TOTALLY a quality of life thing.. if people stopped healing with no mouseovers... then honestly they aren't terribly interested in (or good at) being a healer anyway. yes it's nice, but in now way can I ever see that making or breaking healing in a game. and this is coming from a raid healer, not a MT or OT healer.

 

in regards to debuff tracking, not quite sure what you mean. you mean dispelable debuffs? If so, WoW has that in the vanilla UI right now. Very nice and I DO wish SWTOR had it.. not really because I need the big thick bold white lines to tell me to dispel in swtor, but because the ops UI frames are so freaking small that you can't see squat what's on your party. But that is beyond dispelable.. I can't even see for instance if I have my SRMP up at all, let alone two stacks.

 

anyway, we are beating a dead horse on the UI at this point. The devs know it. It's probably the loudest feature complaint they hear day to day.. I just don't get the people who complain that PVE healing is broken in swtor.. it's easier in wow, but that doesn't mean it's more frustrating here (aside from the raid frame size)

[Soazak]

Healing in this game is a lot of fun, but personally, as pointed out earlier, a fair few healers don't like pugs. Addons I can live without, played healers in way too many games to rely on them

 

The problems that are there, are not so much the healing, but game customisation/ui...

 

Health bars don't always update instantly, sometimes you click a party member and it doesn't register, you must click their picture rather than their health bar, frames can't be moved, your own health bar isn't included in the party frame (this annoys me a lot, but tbh I've not properly checked the options to see if it's there ).

 

Operation bars help some of this, although you can't see party members companion health and seems to update slow sometimes which isn't ideal.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Soazak

[borghe]

just so you know, a number of issues you mentioned are fixed by using operations frames, which IMHO should be mandatory for a healer. specifically:

 

your frame included in party frame

clicking on the frame

health bar updates (better than party frames)

moving the frames on the screen

 

with operation frames you do lose your other party member's companion's health though.. but I just fix that by asking to use my companion in a DPS stance.

Edited December 29, 2011 by borghe

[qqemokitty]

I think you have to look at this two ways...

 

Pve. To be honest you have the tools you need to get the job done pve healing can be entertaining.

 

Pvp this is an absolute train wreck. Yes people can put up big number but...you do not feel involved like you do in flash points. The ui does not support pvp well , cast times and player animations work against you...bioware has ALOT of work if they want to keep a pvpcrowd

 

I'd agree with this. I'm not by any means a competitive (or even mildly competent ) PvP player but I do enjoy going into warzones for funzies. Healing in them is challenging to the point of being unfun.

 

PvE healing is doable and enjoyable for me so far.

 

But like I said, not having a ToT frame is killing me (literally?! ), in PvE and PvP. I also miss macros a lot and hope that kind of system gets added. I can of course, play without macros. But I miss them. specifically, an interrupt focus macro and harm/help macros which were great for reducing hot key clutter. *mourn*

[Brightglade]

Click? Use the F2-F4 buttons. Takes some getting used to the order (on the sidebar, they're displayed top-to-bottom in the order F4, F3, F2), but it really is much faster.

 

Naga mouse with 12 buttons on the thumb side that can be used in conjunction with modifiers such as SHIFT, ALT and Control. You can have 36 actions assigned to that one mouse.

 

Warned you guys way back in mid-beta that if the UI didn't improve in terms of functionality there would be a big-tme shortage of healers in this game. People scoffed. I know I don't run a healer because I don't feel like fighting with this UI once I hit actual challenging content.

 

And now people are wondering where all the healers are.

 

No one is wondering where the healers are; we know where they are. Healers are less popular than flashy dps classes. This isn't new or unique to this game.

 

You have no clue what you're talking about and have obviously never healed a scratch in any sort of challenging content.

 

I started back in UO days as a healer. Went into EQ as a beta test and later joined a guild that went from 7th to a three way tie for the servers top guild. I have healed in pvp matches in GW, healed in WOW as part of two different top 50 guilds, healed in COH, FFXI, and RIFT. MouseOver is a nice QOL element but not a necessity.

 

One of the many flaws of the "Holy Trinity." There is absolutely no reason why a game should depend on healing, or tanking, or DPS, let alone all three.

 

That phrase started in EQ with a Warrior, Cleric and Enchanter. You didn't need dps when the enchanter could keep anything perma-stunned for little to no mana.

 

The way you are using it here makes no sense. Without tanking, healing and dps, whats left ? Games that have a heal check, or dps check or tank check do so because they have content later in the raid that has higher requirements.

[Shadlicious]

All I can say is healers are generally always the abuse getters along with tanks. The problem goes to the blame game. Tanks/Healers are generally the lower/lowest number in a run or raid etc so they tend to be the focus of grief. It's harder to point a finger at the 500 DPS people in a group. Healing and Tanking are a lot more pivotal.

 

I personally like to heal but in this game for once I like to DPS. Being a Ex-WoW Priest who did all raid content from release to after downing the Lich King it doesn't change from MMO to MMO. Its just how it is. People who heal or who actually understand are the ones who will not grief you. Generally once a guild gets to know you (in my personal experience) they tend not to just jump on the healer just because.

[Yancey]

That's sort of sad to see so many people flat out refusing to heal until you get mouse over macros and other customizations. Ever heard of sucking it up? Besides, isn't half the challenge...the challenge of it? I know I don't play this game, or any game for that matter, to sit idly by and have the computer do most the work for me. I enjoy the challenge of adapting to whatever system is in place and making the most of it. Just my two cents.

[Shadlicious]

Odd I would not refuse, I used to heal sans hot keys and mouse over heals. There are probably third party things out there already. I will do some digging and if I find anything I will let people know.

 

I just use a gaming mouse now with 5 buttons and set the secondary on my quickbar to Mouse 5/4/3 etc and then SHIFT + Mouse 5/4/3 and then ALT + Mouse 5/4/3 and so on and so forth.

 

Works fine but it can be smother, I don't remember WoW having a stand alone proper healer cursor over click feature. There will be mods/UI addons if there are not already. The additions help but its not a deal breaker.

 

I know it says no addons but I don't see that lasting forever.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Shadlicious

[kaelesto]

That's sort of sad to see so many people flat out refusing to heal until you get mouse over macros and other customizations. Ever heard of sucking it up?

It's a game and I play it to have fun. There are other parts of the game (grinding quests, crafting) where I'll 'suck it up,' but when it comes to actually playing my role in a group, that ought to be fun, or nothing is and there's no reason for me to play.

 

Besides, isn't half the challenge...the challenge of it?

Sure! Challenge me! Challenge me to make smart decisions on the fly. Challenge me to remain situationally-aware while demanding lightning-fast reactions to changes in my party's health. Challenge me to play offensively, weaving interrupts and CC and offensive dispels in among my heals. Challenge me with a complex priority system and a wide variety of mutually-interacting spells, random procs, and even encounter effects that modify my spell and target choice. Add a level of human complexity by challenging other players and tasking me to respond to their unpredictable behaviour.

 

But don't 'challenge' me with the user interface. That's just poor (and lazy) design that actually interferes with implementing those other challenges.

 

I know I don't play this game, or any game for that matter, to sit idly by and have the computer do most the work for me. I enjoy the challenge of adapting to whatever system is in place and making the most of it. Just my two cents.

If you think a mouseover healer is 'sitting idly by and having the computer do most of the work for them,' you've got some serious misconceptions about what mouseover healing is and how it works.

[ShaftyMcShaft]

That's sort of sad to see so many people flat out refusing to heal until you get mouse over macros and other customizations. Ever heard of sucking it up? Besides, isn't half the challenge...the challenge of it? I know I don't play this game, or any game for that matter, to sit idly by and have the computer do most the work for me. I enjoy the challenge of adapting to whatever system is in place and making the most of it. Just my two cents.

 

The problem is the frustration that healers have to make pretty much twice as many clicks/button presses as DPSers. Since you have to click on each different player you want to heal, and then press the hotkey for the heal...that's two actions to cast one ability.

 

If as a DPS every time you fired a shot the game deselected your target and you had to reclick on it before you could fire your next shot...I'm pretty sure the DPS players would be up in arms and screaming for a fix. I wouldn't think they should "suck it up" any more than healers should. BW should just fix the problem.

[qqemokitty]

The problem is the frustration that healers have to make pretty much twice as many clicks/button presses as DPSers. Since you have to click on each different player you want to heal, and then press the hotkey for the heal...that's two actions to cast one ability.

 

If as a DPS every time you fired a shot the game deselected your target and you had to reclick on it before you could fire your next shot...I'm pretty sure the DPS players would be up in arms and screaming for a fix. I wouldn't think they should "suck it up" any more than healers should. BW should just fix the problem.

 

Lol I can't believe this is serious logic. Really.

 

Healing works exactly the same in this game as it does in ever other. You select a heal target and you push the button to heal.

 

Dps works the same too. You select a target and you push a button to damage.

 

The fact that healers have more targets most of the time (but not all the time) does not make a healer's job harder. It makes it different.

 

90% of the time, a DPS player is focusing on one target. 10% they focus on several.

90% of the time, a healer is focusing on several targets. 10% they focus on one (tank).

 

I seriously can't even wrap my brain around people thinking that having to target someone to perform an action is something that needs to be "fixed." It's not broken.

 

Seriously I am in awe of this mentality. Never have I heard this before - and I used to spend time on the addon forums in WoW!

[ShaftyMcShaft]

I'm not refusing to heal. I am healing. I'm leveling as a healer. I'm asking for this one, tiny quality of life change that will make my gameplay experience way more fun.

 

Are you opposed to having this option? I mean, if they implemented a checkbox for "cast heals at friendly player mouse is over instead of selected target" would you turn it off? Do you actually prefer having to click the mouse in addition to the hotkey for 90% of the heals you want to cast? If so, no problem...just don't click that box.

 

I recommended this as a 'quick fix' because it doesn't require the inclusion of an entire customizable UI or macro system. This seems like a far more simple way to improve the gameplay experience of a lot of players.

 

"Broken" might not be quite the right word, but "unnecessarily and bizarrely inefficient" is apt. What is a UI? It's a USER INTERFACE. The entire idea is to provide a system that quickly and accurately makes what the user wants happen in the system (within the confines of the system rules, obviously). Like the perfect UI for a car would be one that could read your thoughts, "Drive me to work" and then the car drives itself safely and efficiently to your place of work. Extra steps between what the user wants and what happens are less optimal. We accept we have to drive the car and turn the wheel to make it steer left and right because we don't have the technology for a car to read our minds and drive itself (yet).

 

The current car-driving UI is workable. But what if your car made you press another pedal in order to allow you to turn the steering wheel? You want to turn the wheel left by....turning it left. But you can't!! First you have to engage a pedal that unlocks the steering wheel, allowing you to turn it left or right. And for no particular reason. It just...is that way. Provides no benefit. Just puts an extra step between you and making the car turn. Would that be a good user interface for the car? Would the car be more enjoyable to drive? Should anyone who doesn't like it just "suck it up?"

 

And I don't care how things work in other games. Other games that require extra mouse clicks for no reason are bad, too. And worse if they don't provide any way around it! I care about how THIS GAME works because it's the one I'm playing now.

 

tl;dr mouseover option is better; don't use it if you don't like it.

Edited December 30, 2011 by ShaftyMcShaft