The Healer Problem in PVP

I want them to acknowledge that this is a problem and that they are trying to fix it. There is a fix to it somewhere but I'm not a game designer and this is an issue with many interrelated and complex variables. I'm not going to pretend I know the answer. But it is possible because DPS had high win rates on the previous seasons, though that system wasn't perfect either.

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Originally Posted by Takatsuki

Ya and what do you want them to do? Nerf healers so healers cant carry anymore?

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I think what is so amusing is that dps, which is almost always the most dominant role, is feeling the weight of actually being dependent on some one other than their self and that is bothersome ...as well as the other paragraphs of concerns expressed. But what is crazy to me is the amount of amazing healers that are out there and that are BY far the better healer( especially the PC ones who may be quicker than some of us ps4 users at that) have stories about no matter how much they healed their team , dps was either spread out, fighting behind a wall or lower level or focused on the wrong target and stillll managed to lose...(HELLO HELLO HELLO NICE JOB NICE JOB *puts red sign on healer*) Not because They were 1k short from Healing 900k damage away from their team compared to the healer on the other team who only managed to heal 200k ...but because dps can have the tendency to do things (insert silly things some dps do here) that make things real taxing on that healer and sadly the better healer doesn't always win the match.

What probably should happen is we wait for the promised replacement and addition skills to these classes and leave Healers out of these types of discussions...Cause then what happens after you nerf the heals/potency ...? more stress on the healers up keeping these dps still going to try and carry by themselves ... and now we have less heals for everyone. The only maybe random monkey wrench I can throw in to start another riot is keep the healing potency the same but let all the healers have a negative boon that make self heals on their self like 10 - 20 percent less!

There is no solution in a pvp system with 11 abilitys that completely lack depth, this was doomed from the beginning, even if they nerf healers then healers just become obsolete and everybody will cry about that.

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Originally Posted by Takatsuki

There is no solution in a pvp system with 11 abilitys that completely lack depth, this was doomed from the beginning, even if they nerf healers then healers just become obsolete and everybody will cry about that.

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FIRST OF ALL !!!! im just realizing you're a lalafell so ayee * secret lalafell hand shake into a chest bump then booty bump*. Secondly. I can understand that resolve... but it seems like they want to work with us as a PvP community...AND I know we are not seeing the immediate things we want LIKE for myself i want skill lag gone, the fact that kiting is none existent because you can look really far on my screen but your really close to me on yours and then i want more skills/utility. But all this in time.

Maybe a solution would be to only rate individual performance, and rate according to class/job (like PotD). This would not fix the playgame issue with healers, but you wouldn't be doomed with no points if you got healer that sucks.

But I don't think the playerbase is big enough for this. I dunno...

i think the inside is much darker than the outside of nowhere.

olive rack bar, olive rack bar, olive rack bar.

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Originally Posted by Keelyah

I think what is so amusing is that dps, which is almost always the most dominant role, is feeling the weight of actually being dependent on some one other than their self and that is bothersome ...

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I agree. See, I recall the past season(s?) where what kept getting thrown around was "go play melee dps if you want to carry." Now that this stereotype has shifted to healers (who in my opinion always had the most stressful responsibilities), its suddenly a bigger issue and gets thrown around like some sort of joke or something. And while yes, healers do have a lot of power in the flow of the match- if the other 3 teammates can neither focus/burst targets correctly nor stay in reasonable range/sights of their healer, then that healer can't do anything more than prolong the inevitable.

Also, I'm a little tickled that players asked for more incentives to play healers in PvP and now that the incentive is "carry potential" in some ways, people are lashing-out about it. I don't even know anymore.

Hmmmm just started pvp again after not touching it for years. Good to know I'll have fun on my whm main.

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Originally Posted by Cidel

And while yes, healers do have a lot of power in the flow of the match- if the other 3 teammates can neither focus/burst targets correctly nor stay in reasonable range/sights of their healer, then that healer can't do anything more than prolong the inevitable.

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Technically, even if a healer would regen everyone on the field for five billion HP every millisecond, they'd still be unable to create wins by that, only stalemates, as the other healer would do the same. It's in their design to not win, but prevent loss, that's what a healer does by design. Their power is stopping power, not advancing power - only damage advances the match, healing reverses damage and thus match progress. That fact bears little relevance to the actual amount of power however. I just gave you an example of an unquestionably OP healer that still would be unable to do more than prolong the match.

The amount of power a healer has is balanced against the damaging power of the entire enemy team, making them roughly 3 times as powerful as any other role and half the power of the entire team. That's why "focus and burst" and separating from the healer are a thing in the first place - trying anything else is futile, as healers are too powerful. It's not like in League of Legends where poke and disengage, hard engage/deathball, burst, protect the Kog and split comps all have avenues to be viable, it's either burst or bust in this game, because anything but concentrated burst is gonna be erased via healing with ease - Hence why vulnerability debuffs were introduced to counteract that.

Put short, what you are describing as limitation of healing power is the power of the enemy healer. Try again against a team without a healer and you suddenly realize just how powerful healers actually are. A 4vs4 match in which one side has a healer and the other none with the current balance is equal to a 6vs4 in a world where everyone was equally powerful. It takes a lot of skill discrepancy between the teams to surmount such odds.
And truly, the very fact DPS and tanks need to coordinate to overcome a healer where the healer has little such need the other way around further speaks of a considerable imbalance.

Finally, now that you know that you as healer are essentially half the team all on your own, have a rough guess why your job is so much more stressful than that of the others. Every failure of yours weighs three times as heavily as that of another role. And on top of that, everyone and their mother is going out of their way to counter you and you in particular, because you are the MVP. It's just another symptom of healer power. And it's not innate to healing - there were times where certain champs in LoL got similar babysitting treatment - it's innate to power.


It simply doesn't matter how you spin the story - Healers are OP. Stating anything else is just denial. And arguing that the other 3 people in the match might be unable to overcome the enemy healer isn't helping the point in the slightest. At this point, the only argument in the line of bad arguments missing is that the healer role as such has a perfect 50% winrate over all ranked matches and therefore is balanced.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

At this point, the only argument in the line of bad arguments missing is that the healer role as such has a perfect 50% winrate over all ranked matches and therefore is balanced.

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Let's hope no one tries to pass that type of idea off. The #1 player on the Primal DC is a healer with an almost 80% win rate. Holy moly.

the guy has an alt on chaos also he mains scholar and has like 70% winrate, scholar is op as hell just saying ;)

He mains WHM tho, he only plays SCH on chaos
Also any healer is op against you

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Originally Posted by snipski

the guy has an alt on chaos also he mains scholar and has like 70% winrate, scholar is op as hell just saying ;)

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SCH and WHM are similar strength but they have very different weaknesses. Attacking SCH like it's a WHM is a good way to lose games, as is attacking WHM like it's a SCH.

A big problem i've seen is people attacking S5 SCH like it's HW White Mage - focusing damage on one target, trying to use CC for burst rather than just putting the SCH behind, etc. Scholar was and still is vulnerable to split pressure, but people refuse to do it and instead just play into SCH's strong single-target sustaind healing.

There is a reason why some SCH have 70-80% winrates, but it has a lot more to do with carry potential than the class itself.

Since healers is such a difficult class to master (you are either good or garbage, no in between) it has caused many players to stop queuing as healers for pvp. Currently queue times are through the roof for ranked pvp (at least for platinum) unless you are a healer. This also has caused the problem where once you are done with you 20-30 minute queue and you see your team and see a random healer and on the other side you see a top 30 (always the same people) you know you lost and there's nothing to do about it.
SE really destroyed pvp this season, they tried to "balance" things out but they created a problem worst than what they initially wanted to fix.
I don't understand why they had to "simplify" things to this point. I know the hotbars were a mess with so many skills but they didn't have to resort to this, and they clearly didn't make much research on the consequences either because now we have the healers problem.
This season shall forever be known as the "Be a good healer or don't even try it" season.

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Originally Posted by Mantrus

I want them to acknowledge that this is a problem and that they are trying to fix it. There is a fix to it somewhere but I'm not a game designer and this is an issue with many interrelated and complex variables. I'm not going to pretend I know the answer. But it is possible because DPS had high win rates on the previous seasons, though that system wasn't perfect either.

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I don't think there's a way to fix this without reworking the whole damn pvp again, which would mean giving more skills and self sustain to the other classes, giving more CC options and etc. which would mean making pvp the way it used to be. They will never admit this problem and they won't fix it for at least another 2 years until the new expansion arrives. What you will see is a patch here and there trying to make things even for other classes but the problem is so deep rooted that not much can be done by just patching.

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Originally Posted by -IronWolf-

I don't think there's a way to fix this without reworking the whole damn pvp again, which would mean giving more skills...

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Some other pvp had only 8 buttons to press and were not trivial at all. Maybe maps have to be reworked a little, at least put more walls for break line of sight tactics, too much maps giving the ranged the upper hand, but this is another topic.

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

Some other pvp had only 8 buttons to press and were not trivial at all. Maybe maps have to be reworked a little, at least put more walls for break line of sight tactics, too much maps giving the ranged the upper hand, but this is another topic.

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I don't think maps are the problem at all here, it is a matter of unbalance between classes. The problem isn't even the fact that they oversimplified things, it is the fact that they didn't make enough research and testing to realize that the entire mode depends on healers and nothing more.

They just need to tune down Scholar and Whm abit, Drk also because it's fucking strong if you think about it shield on party, healing down debuff, stun, silence, pull-in move and trick attack with soul survivor.
Make fluid aura longer cd or make diminish returns on the knockback.
Scholar just add heavy or something to broil other then free aetherflow stack.

Top 10 players on chaos are either Healers or Drks atm i know some ppl who werent even good at pvp before who is in the top 10 now playing DRK just showing how strong that class is.

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Originally Posted by snipski

They just need to tune down Scholar and Whm abit, Drk also because it's fucking strong if you think about it shield on party, healing down debuff, stun, silence, pull-in move and trick attack with soul survivor.
Make fluid aura longer cd or make diminish returns on the knockback.
Scholar just add heavy or something to broil other then free aetherflow stack.

Top 10 players on chaos are either Healers or Drks atm i know some ppl who werent even good at pvp before who is in the top 10 now playing DRK just showing how strong that class is.

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The other 2 tanks have the 10% damage increase with their regular combos, dark knight has it in a really long cooldown, I don't see a problem with that specific skill.

The trouble is that healers have more HPS than what the DPS of the opposing team, unless they can coordinate their burst. Healers also have too much sustain and resources behind the HPS they put out.

There are many ways they can rebalance this:

- Reduce DPS / increase HP and drastically reduce HPS and put more strategy on sustain (makes poking a valid strategy but might make ranged even more powerful than melee as a side effect)
- Put diminishing returns on healing in some form. Either a stacking debuff on the healed target (something that lasts only 3-5 seconds) or decrease healing potency when casters MP gets low. This allows opposing teams to dive on someone who gets out of position.
- Give DPS more tools (like I dunno, unrestricted communication) to perform burst and coordinate burst

There are many examples of PvP and how healing works in them, and you can look beyond MMOs. Look at MOBAs like Dota or League, or even Overwatch. Not in any of those games can you have the entire team wailing on someone and the target being kept alive by nothing more than raw HPS. It takes coordination, peeling, and other support abilities like absorption shields or short invulnerability shields. I think a big part of the problem is that healing is just dumbed down to keeping line of sight and dumping large heals on whoever is being targeted.

Can you stop comparing MMORPG pvp to FPS and moba games? lmao
Have you played 3v3 in wow, if you dont cc chain healers there or drain the healer nothing dies either.
This is getting ridiculous, most people crying here are just looking for excuses as to why they are hardstuck in trash elo

People should play healers themselves to see it from the healers PoV rather than try to balance a role they don't touch.

Healers were ridiculously weak in preseason, and they patched it up for a reason.

The healer skill gap isn't even really a product of healer balance - it's a side effect of both CC and burst DPS being imbalanced right now. Healing through burst at current health levels is much harder than executing it up until a certain point, and you can't even tell if your healers are improving at it until they stop dying.

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Originally Posted by Korihu

People should play healers themselves to see it from the healers PoV rather than try to balance a role they don't touch.

Healers were ridiculously weak in preseason, and they patched it up for a reason.

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You don't seem to understand the problem here.

It is true that healing is hard to learn and master, THAT'S the problem here. When a game mode depends 100% on one class that requires the player to be extremely skilled with it, you have a problem. The current state of pvp healers are either extremely good or extremely bad, there is no in between. This causes people to stop playing healer and queue times to go up. Also makes the game extremely infuriating for those who don't play healer and are at the mercy of RNG to get one of the usual top 20 healers in the leaderboard in their team. There are more ways than just straight out nerfing healers, boosting other classes to have more impact in the game could be a start.
Everything is a mess.

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Originally Posted by Takatsuki

Can you stop comparing MMORPG pvp to FPS and moba games? lmao
Have you played 3v3 in wow, if you dont cc chain healers there or drain the healer nothing dies either.
This is getting ridiculous, most people crying here are just looking for excuses as to why they are hardstuck in trash elo

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No one was complaining about this in previous seasons. Is it really that hard to understand that when a game mode depends 100% on ONE class there is a huge balance problem?

I dont know if you are trolling right now, but I sure hope you are.

god bless

I can't follow your logic there Takstsuki. I agree he shouldn't be using FPS games as a comparison, but this game's PvP balance is very out of whack at the moment. Healers can make or break a match nearly 99% of the time.

I can't communicate to my team, and the most powerful classes, currently, get to sit in the back and be threats while being nearly impossible to threaten, and the melee classes, which used to be threats, are more like kite machines and annoyances.

I'm not very good at playing healers, so I can't very well just "play healer and carry my way to the top", but I also think that shouldn't be the be-all-end-all argument for this. The fact that the Devs threw out those patches notes "based on player feedback" just shows that they really do not read or care for our feedback. The medal system is garbage, the Feast class balance is garbage, and it needs to be looked at or they'll be truly killing PvP and their pipe dream of this becoming an E-sport.

Don't think this new system is garbage:

• Without medal system the whole match will be just a "farm the noob";
• Without gear system, the match outcome is determined by the better geared. Someone can say it was ok because all the time and dedication made for the gear, but gear has been removed from the equation (making everyone able to join pvp from day 1) and we need deal with it;
• Much more people came to pvp after the changes;

Will agree the system is pretty new and surely needs refining, but telling it have trashed because not perfect from day 1, will not agree.

As I said plenty of times, the whole system is flawed, people are barking at the wrong tree.
Healer balance is where it should be, a good healer can carry games and bad healers get punished for being bad.
If they dont put any depth into the any of the classes kits then people get frustrated because they feel like they lack impact, that's the problem at hand.
You cant give people 9 buttons which all do jack in the grand scheme of things.
If you people desperatly want to blame something for you being unable to get to a decent winrate blame the lack of skills that distinguish good DPS players from bad DPS players.
The whole new feast design is a mess, everythings garbage, but you can still easily climb on any role if you are outperforming others, instead of blaming heals for being broken, blame this utterly disgusting mess of a pvp system, that should have never left development in this state.

But I do outperform my opponent's melee role. I do more damage than them, I focus heavy medal targets, but I don't win. Because I can't kill anything without the support of my ranged DPS and the help of a tank to interrupt the...wait for it...healer! DPS roles just can't climb unless the entire team outperforms, not just the single role. Other people can hit their 3 buttons just as much as I can, the game doesn't show me that I'm hitting mine better unless "Victory" is on my screen.

The only two roles I see that can climb easily by outperforming are tanks and healers. That's kinda why the top 100 are nearly all tanks and healers. You're right on the money about the lack of skillful execution, and the overall PvP design. I agree with you there 100%.

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

• Without medal system the whole match will be just a "farm the noob";
• Without gear system, the match outcome is determined by the better geared. Someone can say it was ok because all the time and dedication made for the gear, but gear has been removed from the equation (making everyone able to join pvp from day 1) and we need deal with it;
• Much more people came to pvp after the changes;

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1) It's already farm the noob even with medals.

2) Normalization of stats is fine, making gear a nonissue is fine, removing all aspects of skillful play and dumbing down roles this heavily, however, is not.

3) Again, I feel the changes just arrived during a prime time since they added Experience to all forms of PvP, the Garo event with unique mounts and minions to earn, and when the servers were crapping themselves PvP was our only option for viable Exp.

Healers have a large majority of the 70%+ win rates, while even some of the best players from past seasons struggle to get close to that in other roles. If that's not indicative of something being broken, I don't know what is. It also doesn't make sense that 2-3 good players are required to overcome 1 good healer when matchmaking pairs skill 1 to 1.

Maybe healers aren't broken, but then DPS really need a higher skill ceiling and more power with some CCs or smarter skills or something; no, ninja doesn't count because the CC sacrifices their burst and their damage is lower overall to compensate.

I'm not advocating going back to the previous systems with broken melee DPS because that was also broken. But the win rates for the past seasons seem more balanced than the ones now. I'm also not advocating just nerfing healing because that'd just turn feast into death match with the better healers still coming on top. And I'm not complaining because I'm in trash ELO if you look at the ladder.

If I were to recommend a change, I'd say make tanks play a larger role in keeping people alive, weaken healing to compensate, and move some damage from tanks to DPS. That way damage vs healing isn't just 3v1.5. Healers have less individual responsibility to keep everyone alive and DPS don't need 3 competent team members to take down one.

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Originally Posted by Mantrus

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I think I can agree with these. It would be nice for us to have at least one CC, with the new CC system we can't lock down a player forever anyway. Though I think a part of the issue doesn't seem to be as harsh (heal/dps wise) until you're up against The Blackest Night + healing/other shielding.

I feel like each tank could have a skill like TBN and healing be reduced just fine. But I also feel the CD on that kind of skill is too short.

While I would like to see some damage be moved, I feel like its very doubtful it will happen. The changes they make seem to be heavily influenced by JP feedback, and they've only recently realized the issue involving healing.

The bigger issue is, now that they've realized the issue it's going to be months before they implement anything to help fix it.

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Originally Posted by -IronWolf-

Is it really that hard to understand that when a game mode depends 100% on ONE class there is a huge balance problem?

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100% depends on healer? Wait what?

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Originally Posted by Mirch

100% depends on healer? Wait what?

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Anybody who says that definitely never hit Platinum. As main Heal it is true that I easily carried myself into Platinum. But ever since I hit Platinum the matches against other healers were so even that u could tell who will win from the start by looking at the names of the dps. I know at least 2 monk mains who destroy everything they touch. Having them in your team is an easy win and healing on against them feels impossible. So there is obviously a way to carry as Dps otherwise those players wouldnt be in the top 100 with 66% win.

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Originally Posted by Daiwii

I know at least 2 monk mains who destroy everything they touch. Having them in your team is an easy win and healing on against them feels impossible. So there is obviously a way to carry as Dps otherwise those players wouldnt be in the top 100 with 66% win.

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Living that sub 90 ping life. I can't play any melees with my 150+ ping, stuff just moonwalks through me during animations and cancels them all :(. At least Bard is faceroll, I guess.

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Originally Posted by Daiwii

snip.

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I disagree that matches 100% rely on healers. That's a dumb claim, but I do think that percent reliance is higher than any other role. Other roles can carry to some degree, but none carry harder than healer. 66% win rate on a DPS here or there doesn't compare to the numerous healers with the same or higher win rate.

If you think healers are even at the platinum level that's a misunderstanding. Healers aren't even at even the top 10 level, at least for Aether. Even if both healers keep teams alive, the more skilled healer can overwhelm the lesser by inducing Culling until the lesser cannot handle it.

Healers are the most important for winning, but having the best healer doesn\\'t always result in a win.

Had a great match yesterday with 2 evenly matched groups. We finished with 2 deaths and lost, the other team finished with 1 death. Our dps was slightly behind the other team and thats why we lost.

I've seen plenty of times where poor dps is the reason for losing, especially with casters.

Its not always the healers fault and when you get into higher ranked matches, it seems to come down to individual matchups.

The lack of communication is the biggest killer of ranked play and is what leads most groups to losing. The teams that win more often seem to be on the same page with everyone else. For example, dps not bursting at proper times. Tanks stunning or silencing healers too early when dps aren\\'t even half health yet.

The higher tier players communicate a lot more and mark targets/ yell out and mark players to pick up medals, etc.