Let's face it: The problem is not only sorc healers.

[Cretinus]

Irreversible fact: The community (including sorc healers!) has finally accepted that the current sorc healer design doesn't make any sense at PvP.

This is great news, because it will finally allow us to bypass the ludicrous "assistance"-line by sorc healers that goes:

"@DPS omg it's so easy; just premade with 4-6 others; go TS; practice for 4 months; L2P and then you'll have a chance to beat 1 single mediocre on an undergeared sorc healer".

 

Now, let's think ahead. Tank and heal in general. These metas are an old agreement for playing PvE. Here you need to beat dragons as strong as armies, monsters with the fire-power of atomic bombs, defensive mechs with the shielding capacities of aircraft carriers and mixes of all this.

 

But at PvP? What the heck?! You're fighting other toons here! What's the point of having cartoon-like fortresses and fantasy-medics, all designed to fight dragons, super-mechs and atomic submarines? Why would it make sense to have a tank who can survive 4 nuke bombs if all that he's fighting are other toons? Why would it make sense at PvP to have a healer who can heal a fortress tank against nuke-like damage, while the fortress tank can redirect nearly the same damage away from that healer, but none in the other team is actually able to produce that damage? Are DPS supposed to be fighting invincible super novae at PvP? Or the gravity of black holes? Or the powers of the universe?

 

What this EXTREMELY humble Gand is trying to say is that the heal & tank metas were designed to fight Godzilla, his pals and the powers of the galaxy. Hence, they don't make any sense in a PvP environment against mortal toons. As long as nobody gives a thought to this and removes (or at least completely readapts) heal & tank to the reality of PvP, we won't see any balance.

Edited December 19, 2015 by Cretinus

[alexsamma]

Why are you attempting to totally alter the design of a trinity based combat system instead of opting to play one of the multiple games that do not use a trinity based game design?

 

If you don't want to deal with tanks then go play Wow, there are no tanks there, though most classes have stronger dcds and less rotational burst.

 

If you dislike both healers and tanks go play Guild Wars 2, Blade and Soul or any MOBA.

 

If you truly want to play a pure skill based dps only game there are tons of first person shooters to choose from.

 

I respect your right to voice your opinion, but why try to move a mountain when you can simply fly over it?

[Cretinus]

Why are you attempting to totally alter the design of a trinity based combat system instead of opting to play one of the multiple games that do not use a trinity based game design?

 

If you don't want to deal with tanks then go play Wow, there are no tanks there, though most classes have stronger dcds and less rotational burst.

 

If you dislike both healers and tanks go play Guild Wars 2, Blade and Soul or any MOBA.

 

If you truly want to play a pure skill based dps only game there are tons of first person shooters to choose from.

 

I respect your right to voice your opinion, but why try to move a mountain when you can simply fly over it?

 

The trinity system has been designed for PvE. What I'm trying to say is that it shouldn't be implemented into PvP without substantial modification. A tank & heal combo that was designed with PvE bosses in mind is as difficult to beat as the PvE bosses themselves. This is not what PvP is about.

Edited December 20, 2015 by Cretinus

[Avicii]

The trinity system has been designed for PvE. What I'm trying to say is that it shouldn't be implemented into PvP without substantial modification. A tank & heal combo that was designed with PvE bosses in mind is as difficult to beat as the PvE bosses themselves. This is not what PvP is about.

 

That's not what PvP is about to you. Changing tanks what would you propose? A lot of players that play tanks and classes with tanking trees are because they enjoy the ability to guard and/or taunt. This is a unique feature to SWTOR PvP. Competent tank + healer has always been a tough battle, the fact they are now so powerful is in direct correlation to the strength of DPS and Heals - in particular Sorcs.

 

I do not think changing what makes Tank classes unique is a good approach if you have other ideas that dont remove the uniqueness that SWTOR offers for tank classes suggest them but lately your multiple posts come across more as one continues stream of qq.

[foxmob]

Why are you attempting to totally alter the design of a trinity based combat system instead of opting to play one of the multiple games that do not use a trinity based game design?

 

to be fair, and I'm not saying his suggestions are what I'd do, but the trinity system in this game is completely broken for 2/3 formats, and I would feel safe in saying it's broken in more than 90% of instanced PVP. that's an incredible amount of instanced PVP where the healer : tank : dps ratio is just wonky or non-existent. and I'm not saying it needs to be perfect, but if you're going to create "balance" around a trinity system, I'd say you should have at least half the instanced pvp pop with some relative role balance, no?

[alexsamma]

The trinity system has been designed for PvE. What I'm trying to say is that it shouldn't be implemented into PvP without substantial modification. A tank & heal combo that was designed with PvE bosses in mind is as difficult to beat as the PvE bosses themselves. This is not what PvP is about.

 

Tanks work differently in pvp than they do in pve, have you ever played a tank before?

 

Guard in pve does not redirect damage to the tank, it lowers threat generation and reduces damage taken by 5%, in pve you rarely guard healers because good dps are the players you worry about stealing agro (generally during a burst phase).

 

I actually enjoy the tank/healer system in this game, it encourages team work and forces you to use strategy to win instead of derp cleaving; I also enjoyed the tank-free arena play in wow, but in WOW los is much stronger and burst dps comes from cooldwon usage instead of rotationally.

 

I do not particulary find any of the roles or specs in this game challenging to play, the only challenging/interesting aspect of this game is the group play vs group play,

 

I do recognize that this system can be very frustrating for solo queuers or inexperienced pvpers because guard + tuants allows experienced teams to completely ignore proper positioning (double carb also allows teams to recover from poor positioning, which is one of the reasons I dislike the comp), but at higher levels positioning is extremely important and teams have to work together because most burst classes can kill someone every 10-15 seconds unless you have an anti-focus dcd available or are guarded.

 

I honestly do not think BW could rework the system and keep tanks relevant in pvp, and without tanks both healers and dps would need substantial buffs to their dcds, or burst would need to be more predictable and not up as often (or a combination of both).

[alexsamma]

to be fair, and I'm not saying his suggestions are what I'd do, but the trinity system in this game is completely broken for 2/3 formats, and I would feel safe in saying it's broken in more than 90% of instanced PVP. that's an incredible amount of instanced PVP where the healer : tank : dps ratio is just wonky or non-existent. and I'm not saying it needs to be perfect, but if you're going to create "balance" around a trinity system, I'd say you should have at least half the instanced pvp pop with some relative role balance, no?

 

Tanks and healers are not broken in regs, the lack of matchmaking is the issue in regs.

 

Let's say that you totally remove tanks and healer from regs, but you do not implement matchmaking, then one evening you have sixteen players in queue:

 

7 Ranked caliber dps (can easily pull 3.5-4+ dps)

5 decent/good dps (2-3k dps)

4 scrubs, the guys/girls who can't pull 500 dps in healer heavy games

 

All of them queue up and when the queue pops you end up with

 

Team 1: 6 ranked dps and 2 decent/good dps

Team 2: 1 Ranked dps, 3 average dps, and 4 scrubs.

 

Team 1 will decimate team 2 9.9 out of 10 games, and it's going to be worse than the games we have now because the 8 dps on team 1 are going to be able to spawn cap team 2.

 

Without matchmaking regs will never be balanced, and without healers and tanks most regs will turn into a respawn *****how.

 

I won't argue with you about solo ranked, I detest format for multiple reasons, but in my experience if you have 4 good players on both teams with a healer/tank setup you rarely go to acid, but that is merely my personal experience.

[CellPerfect]

I honestly love the fact that tanks are useful in PvP in ToR. In most games PvP tanks are really only good for not dying. In addition to this, in ToR they generally have good control and can help to keep people alive as well which is a play style that some love. Just the fact that classes can taunt and it's useful in PvP is pretty cool and original. Taking that away seems rather silly. Are there some fixes needed? Sure, but killing certain specs so that they have no viability in PvP at all just doesn't seem like a good call.

[foxmob]

Tanks and healers are not broken in regs, the lack of matchmaking is the issue in regs.

 

yeah. that's been apparent for a 2 or 3 years now. but the only way to really address that issue is to slow down the queue pops for better team comps. it's just not gonna happen. they even switched FPs to all those tacticals because they weren't able to get fast enough pops for the number of ppl in queue. iunno. I'd wait longer for a little better matchmaking. even something like solo where if one team is all dps then the other team is as well. it's not trinity but...

 

anyway, you'd really need x-faction and x-server before you mess around with that sort of stuff because of what it would do to the pop rate. and they've already said a "hard no" there. so... /shrug

[alexsamma]

yeah. that's been apparent for a 2 or 3 years now. but the only way to really address that issue is to slow down the queue pops for better team comps. it's just not gonna happen. they even switched FPs to all those tacticals because they weren't able to get fast enough pops for the number of ppl in queue. iunno. I'd wait longer for a little better matchmaking. even something like solo where if one team is all dps then the other team is as well. it's not trinity but...

 

anyway, you'd really need x-faction and x-server before you mess around with that sort of stuff because of what it would do to the pop rate. and they've already said a "hard no" there. so... /shrug

 

I agree with you, I guess I'm just pointing out that taking out tanks and healers won't fix regs.

 

Game is what it is, I try to accept it and have what fun I can, if starts to annoy me I just log off and play something else; frankly, the moment another game comes out that has pvp that I enjoy and that I can get enough of my friends to play is the moment I unsub and uninstall this game for good.

[Brutal]

Irreversible fact: The community (including sorc healers!) has finally accepted that the current sorc healer design doesn't make any sense at PvP.

This is great news, because it will finally allow us to bypass the ludicrous "assistance"-line by sorc healers that goes:

"@DPS omg it's so easy; just premade with 4-6 others; go TS; practice for 4 months; L2P and then you'll have a chance to beat 1 single mediocre on an undergeared sorc healer".

 

Now, let's think ahead. Tank and heal in general. These metas are an old agreement for playing PvE. Here you need to beat dragons as strong as armies, monsters with the fire-power of atomic bombs, defensive mechs with the shielding capacities of aircraft carriers and mixes of all this.

 

But at PvP? What the heck?! You're fighting other toons here! What's the point of having cartoon-like fortresses and fantasy-medics, all designed to fight dragons, super-mechs and atomic submarines? Why would it make sense to have a tank who can survive 4 nuke bombs if all that he's fighting are other toons? Why would it make sense at PvP to have a healer who can heal a fortress tank against nuke-like damage, while the fortress tank can redirect nearly the same damage away from that healer, but none in the other team is actually able to produce that damage? Are DPS supposed to be fighting invincible super novae at PvP? Or the gravity of black holes? Or the powers of the universe?

 

What this EXTREMELY humble Gand is trying to say is that the heal & tank metas were designed to fight Godzilla, his pals and the powers of the galaxy. Hence, they don't make any sense in a PvP environment against mortal toons. As long as nobody gives a thought to this and removes (or at least completely readapts) heal & tank to the reality of PvP, we won't see any balance.

 

\the most fun i have in pvp when im on operative heal and my bro team up with me on his jug tanky as for use of tanks and heals in pvp they are valuable team members and all have its use for example draging silly people that are just after kill from objective

[James_Mcturney]

i only see ppl afraid that their classes will get nerfs and not true star wars fans in here =/////// no other mmo has lightsabers, go pvp there, i'm staying. xD

[Cretinus]

I agree with you, I guess I'm just pointing out that taking out tanks and healers won't fix regs.

 

I've never said that tanks and healers should be taken out for good. I've said that they should at least be adapted to PvP because the way they currently synergize with each other makes them feel like world bosses for everyone else.

 

For example:

Add debuffs that make it impossible for a guarded healer to heal the tank who's guarding him.

The background of this: A healer who assists a tank (or a tank who assists a healer) when the latter is in trouble is like adding the energy of both to save the one who's being focussed. That's fine. But a healer who assists a tank who himself is assisting the healer while both are in trouble, this is producing energy out of nothing. It's a vicious circle, or a perpetum mobile. It needs to go.

 

Another example (should be added to the first one):

Add a debuff that prevents a guarded healer to heal the guarding tank for 5 secs after guard has gone; and add a debuff that prevents a tank from guarding a healer for 5 secs after receiving heals from that healer. This way brainless guard spamming and hopping could be prevented and tanks & healers would need to set priorities.

 

Another example (and this one is actually mandatory):

Make guard exclusive for tank speccs. Take it away from DPS speccs. The line "we don't use it anyway" by DPS is hypocritical: If they don't use it, then why do they wanna have it?

 

I'm sure there are many other things that would help to bring the trinity back in line with PvP. But one's for sure: Something needs to be done.

Edited December 20, 2015 by Cretinus

[Rantank]

Dude, the only thing that is perpetual is you moaning about healers in one form or another. If you want to play a game without tanks and healers, go do that... somewhere else. This game has tanks and healers in it.

[Selout]

The sad truth is, he is right. It's not just sorc heals. It's sorc heals + tanks. Anyone with 1/2 a brain and a little perspective can see that. If healing debuff is 20%, guard should be 20% too. It's a zero sum proposition. This isn't rocket science here. Just because some mechanic has been this way since SWTOR's inception, doesn't mean it is still a good idea. By that logic, conceal operatives should still be 3-shotting people like in 1.0.x. The game has moved on. Guard is an antequated SWTOR PvP mechanic that really doesn't add complexity to the games PvP in its current form.

 

Now if guard had a duration and cool down associated with it, then you are adding skillful gameplay to the tank archetype. As it stands right now, tanks are doing far too much dmg while brining far too much group surv to the table all while being the easiest archetype to play. I don't know what the best possible solution would be but it's clear guard plays a major role in SWTOR PvP dysfunction. They don't pay me to fix their game for them. Heh.

 

I have railed against sorc/ sage heals mainly because the masses here in SWTOR don't seem to understand what really plagues this games PvP. Tank functionality in PvP seems to be the third rail of this community. It seems more logical to complain about one class rather than an entire game mechanic that spans 3 ac's when in fact tanks are half responsible for the lackluster PvP attraction of SWTOR and lackluster group gameplay in PvP. Without guard, PvP is fun. Sorc heals aren't op at all. Merc/Mando and Op/Scound heals could then be buffed up to the sorc level without causing imbalance. As it stands now, in PvP with the current guard mechanic, Op/Scound heals are about right while the other two need tuning with this absurd 50% damage sharing.

 

/shrug. Too many close-minded people hiding out in SWTOR PvP to have any perspective. Its a shame too. This game has so much potential to be a great PvP game but is squandered.

Edited December 20, 2015 by Selout

[foxmob]

I actually think tanking is the hardest role in the game, but I also have less experience doing that than any other. I do think t should be noted that the tank who perpetually sticks his guard on the same healer all the time is either a terrible tank or the opponents are terrible opponents for focusing the guarded target all the time (making the tank swap guard is key). and yes, I realize getting pugs to do that efficiently can be very difficult and at times impossible. my point is more along the lines of the first sentence; tanking is actually the more difficult thing to do well, imo. no need to remove it. besides, it's not like there are too many tanks in WZs. it's the influx of healers that has things so wonky in my experience. especially on pub side for my server. not sure why.

[Selout]

Removing tanks is not the answer IMO. Changing the functionality of guard is needed. I don't mean to belittle your experience by saying tanking in PvP is easy. That is an observation of not only myself, but others as well. It is not hard at the higher skill levels to function as a tank. Swapping guard is pretty much a baseline skill for all people who play tanks at even a semi-competent level.

 

It is true, it is easy to circumvent guard as well (in an arena setting). The idea of cross cc was around long before SWTOR and is fairly simple to pull off. I am coming at it from the fun aspect. It's just not fun to play, play with or against. Some people may find it fun, however the low numbers of people playing SWTOR PvP would suggest that SWTOR PvP is lacking in some way.

Edited December 20, 2015 by Selout

[Cretinus]

God, this is so ridiculous! Just had another Civil War WZ. A sorc healer and a jugg tank were guarding a node. Every effort to cap this node even with 3-5 people was pointless. The two don't die, you can't separate them for longer than 1 GCD, they jump around with HP bars always at 100% .... The healer is permanently guarded, the tank gets endless heals, resources are infinite, guard costs none anyway... Meanwhile I quit when stuff like this happens and many other people quit too. SWTOR's current sorc-healer + tank combos provide the most boring PvP experience I ever had in games like this. Edited December 20, 2015 by Cretinus

[Selout]

God, this is so ridiculous! Just had another Civil War WZ. A sorc healer and a jugg tank were guarding a node. Every effort to cap this node even with 3-5 people was pointless. The two don't die, you can't separate them for longer than 1 GCD, they jump around with HP bars always at 100%, they have endless resources .... Meanwhile I quit when stuff like this happens and many other people quit too. SWTOR's current sorc-healer + tank combos provide the most boring PvP experience I ever had in games like this.

 

Your sentiments are echoed by many many PvP-minded people in the MMO genre. People who are pretty accomplished in their respective games and are no strangers to what high-level PvP entails.

 

It should be noted this is all intellectual ************. BW won't change what needs to be changed to keep this game fresh and exciting. The "elite" club of players or "Apex" title-holders are also some of the worst ambassadors for SWTOR PvP in all of Nerddom. They are either silent or have massive inferiority complex's. Well, I guess they have good reason for it. They main SWTOR for PvP which is clearly an inferior game to the other options out there, but I digress. 😜 This is still a fun game as a secondary gaming interest only.

Edited December 20, 2015 by Selout

[Avicii]

Without guard, PvP is fun. Sorc heals aren't op at all. Merc/Mando and Op/Scound heals could then be buffed up to the sorc level without causing imbalance. As it stands now, in PvP, Op/Scound heals are about right while the other two need tuning with this absurd 50% damage sharing.

 

/shrug. Too many close-minded people hiding out in SWTOR PvP to have any perspective. Its a shame too. This game has so much potential to be a great PvP game but is squandered.

 

There are clearly issues with PvP however belittling people who dont agree with you devalues your post and gives you the appearance of being dismissive of those that dont share the same opinion.

 

The first thing to consider is what are we trying to balance for? Who are we balancing around? From all the OPs posts about healing essentially every other day he is coming from Regs which lets be honest you cannot really balance around random 8 people when there is no role balancing or match making. Given that it appears group ranked is what they are balancing around? (Really who knows what they are doing outside of using their metrics to decide changes)

 

BW appears to consider group 4s the top line of PvP. From that point I've always been of the mind you have to balance around the top 10% of the players. Coming from there, is guard a problem in 4s with competent players?

If not then lets look at other solutions that do not impact group ranked. (Which in itself is a bit off since the number of people that play group ranked versus Regs however there has to be some balance target that is quantifiable)

 

The issue is most other solutions come down to having cross server with a larger player pool to draw from allowing for better match making. Having role slots in the queue system so multiple tanks an healers arent stacked on one side ect.

How did this become a huge problem in 4.0? How have people dealt with tanks in the past? If i is such an issue now how did it become this way? What changed? Is it a sum of HP increase, plus mobility changes, plus burst nerfs? Or what exactly is causing the issue you are very vague in your conclusion of why guard is a problem.

 

The main issue in regs with Guard plus Heals is it takes teamwork to kill or subdue them in addition to no match making or taking roles into account. You cant burn through them unless they are bad players solo. It takes coordination and CC this seems to be the crux for people and given the OPs history of waiting a DPS vs DPS only game people do not agree with this and respond accordingly, there is that underlying context when addressing his posts.

 

That said, do you really believe what I think, you think or others think and type in this thread is going to change anything? We are not, BW will not make any changes based on this thread, they will do whatever they think based on their metrics not giving 1 **** what's said here. Blaming the player base for what you think is the games potential is silly.

[Selout]

If 10% is literally 20 people (probably less due to the 4v4 metric used to frame this scenario), that is a horrible way to balance. Consider how little 4v4 is actually played. Then consider what do the vast majority of people do? Regs and soloq. Why dismiss what most people do in the game? Consider why the 4v4 SWTOR PvP scene is so anemic compared to even the likes of Tera arena. Could it be people are turned off by the limited amount of PvP they have experienced prior to finding three other people to queue with?

 

Balancing around the elite is a luxury a game can enjoy when it has a thriving player-base. LoL, CS:GO, Dota2... even WoW can do that. When you have to schedule 4v4 matches or fight the same team over and over and over on even Harb, there is no such thing as elite. Those players aren't elite in any sense of the word. Some of them click and skey all over, on top of facing no competition.

 

You are right though. Nothing will be done. Partly Bioware's fault and partly due to the apathy that permeates this community. I'm not dismissive of inventive ideas or facts. I do dismiss weak arguments or statements based on logical fallacies or nostalgia.

Edited December 20, 2015 by Selout

[Cretinus]

I'm coming more and more to the conclusion that BW completely messed up things with the last patch.

Till then, we only had to deal with invincible sorc healers. But now we also have to deal with an increasing influx of jugg tanks. They come in DPS gear and are now able to produce nearly as much damage as a DPS while still being as tanky as ever. They hardly ever die. That's why everybody and his mum is now on a jugg tank.

As a logical consequence of this, there is now also a huge influx of guard. It has become extremely rare to fight a toon who isn't guarded. And the cherry on top of the cake is the nerf to DPS burst, meaning that not to play a sorc healer or a cross-dressed jugg tank is pure masochism.

 

To be very honest, 8x8s have become unplayable. As simple as that.

Edited December 20, 2015 by Cretinus

[ace_boogie]

Sorc healers never die. http://i.imgur.com/O7BKBa8.png Edited December 20, 2015 by ace_boogie

[Kunda]

Sorc healers never die. http://i.imgur.com/O7BKBa8.png

 

I don't think three coordinated DPS sitting on a healer without guard is the issue folks are talking about.

[ace_boogie]

I don't think three coordinated DPS sitting on a healer without guard is the issue folks are talking about.

 

Except OP has made multiple threads saying just that