Add rewards to encourage healers in PVP?

All too often, we see alliances with no healers, which of course puts the whole team at quite a disadvantage.

I'm sure if there was some kind of mount or minion reward, say for healing 200+ rounds*, this would encourage more PVP-ers to switch to that role!

(*Need to make sure they heal for the majority of the match duration, and not get credit for switching right before the end!)

For me it was the ADS mount back when I was working on getting it- not healer specific obviously, but when I wanted to be sure to win and there weren't enough healers that made swap. Also when I'm on DPS I try and remind the alliance to commend the healers on their team (which I don't ask for obviously when I'm on a healer role, that's tacky, I only ask for that on behalf of others). Someone who's solo healing for their team and doing an effective job of it should be getting 6 commendations and faster progess towards the associated rewards... even if a team member had battle fever and got 30 kills... because they never could have done that without a healer keeping them up obviously.

Some healers are terrible and screw over their team by casting weak non-CS DPS abilities and they're the worst... if I'm a DPS with battle high I'd be safer with another DPS by my side than a healer who isn't healing me (this one idiot WHM who had me at 10% Hp while I had battle fever and was running back and forth next to them waving while they cast aero 3). But other work their ass off, like this one SCH the other day stone skinning everyone in sight while defending a node, or the one in the alliance who miraculously kept me alive when I hit some weird lag and every one of my abilities failed while I had 3+ people on me I couldn't defend against.

I joined a game yesterday as WHM where there were three healers in my party and 0 in another. It's not that three healers queued together as I queued alone. Why didn't the duty finder swap me into the healer-less party? Surely the other party would not be pre-formed choosing no healer?

By the way I'm a total scrub at healing frontlines (first 2 matches last night) and I felt completely useless. A big incentive to not switch to dps would be some healing pointers:

• My party seemed to be all over the map, and I was darting around trying to find where the dying party members were. Is there any indication on the map as to which blue dots in particular are your dying party members (or even alliance members).
• Is it better to stay with a flag, or move in with the party?
• What to do when focused on by dps
• Any other advice welcome, including basic strategy on how team wins more points.

Is there anything useful to be taken from the leaderboard at the end regarding your performance / improvement. Obviously dps will check dps, but healing done surely should depend on healing required. The order seems completely random too on that leaderboard rather than in order of best performance?

I'd say a healers responsibility for healing party members doesn't extend much father than your healing radius, if you're traveling with the group and there are people who go out of range. I'd focus on being in the right place at the right time, and healing party/alliance members who are there as well. Those far off from the group are on their own.

As for knowing where to be, especially while new to PVP and Siege mode, I'd ask the party up front if someone can take the lead on where to go, and then you can make sure to travel with them vs. worry about checking the map and coordinates to get to. Preferably a player who has good cc abilities to help keep you alive like a tank, since healers usually get attacked first which makes healing yourself a priority over a party members when you're both under attack because while you're alive party members can benefit from AOE healing and such but if you die healing another party member while under attack, there's no one to heal the rest of the team (if you're a solo healer). If you have a cohealer with you, heal each other while one is under attack and use AOE heals on your party members, and when not under attack you can heal people directly better.

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Originally Posted by Buff_Archer

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The only thing worse than having no healers in your alliance is when you get a healer, breathe a sigh of relief, only to find out that the healer sucks and can't/won't keep anyone alive. I usually play as DRK (only other option atm is PLD), and, with a solid healer, I can cut lose and hold down nodes almost solo, or go on a rampage. Solid heals in my immediate party have landed me 7+ kills to ZERO deaths, so I get really disappointed when the healer is absent or just not up to snuff.

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Originally Posted by Velo_Vandore

I joined a game yesterday as WHM where there were three healers in my party and 0 in another. It's not that three healers queued together as I queued alone. Why didn't the duty finder swap me into the healer-less party? Surely the other party would not be pre-formed choosing no healer?

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This is actually another problem that people have found with frontlines. There is no DF requirements, so the party placement is random. I've seen groups where there were five healers in one party, one in another, and zero in the third. Some people think there should be some kind of check, or party trade mech, that allows players to balance out the team in those first two precious minutes that, as of right now, only serve to annoy people.

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Originally Posted by Februs

The only thing worse than having no healers in your alliance is when you get a healer, breathe a sigh of relief, only to find out that the healer sucks and can't/won't keep anyone alive. I usually play as DRK (only other option atm is PLD), and, with a solid healer, I can cut lose and hold down nodes almost solo, or go on a rampage. Solid heals in my immediate party have landed me 7+ kills to ZERO deaths, so I get really disappointed when the healer is absent or just not up to snuff.

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Yes, that, or how about when you use all your offensive cooldowns and get slept and watch your timers all count down to 0 while a healer next to you is hard casting DPS spells. We have purify sure but what a waste of something you might need later to survive. Of course if a healer is slept they can't do much so I've used my purify on them when mine was on cooldown, but only want to do that with a healer who you know will u sleep you next time. Had a slaughter match where we took a node down to get the offensive party buff and remounted but the healer was under attack, I dismounted and cast a bind on them all and got slept. The healer however was missed by the sleep AOE and they, along with the rest of the party, got on their mounts and left me standing there slept. I could have easily gotten away with them, but I stood there slept while the binds expired, and then the 4-5 people killed me and I lost my damage boost. All because they couldn't be bothered to cast an esuna/leeches on me. One of the times I think I used a lot of obscenities in alliance chat.

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Originally Posted by Velo_Vandore

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Part of this is the responsibility of the team. Parties split up, especially for first nodes, but they should ALWAYS regroup. If they're not, they have no one to blame but themselves when they die.
I'd say always stick with the group. Your map is your best friend in Frontlines. Use it frequently to find out where your team/enemy is, and keep yourself in the best position for healing while staying hidden from the enemy. Your next best friend is the party/alliance list. This could be an issue if you're playing on Ps4, since targeting is awful on controller, but you can at least use the bar to identify dying members quickly.
There's a thread for survival tactics for healers.
Total points healed is your column, but, just keeping people alive is fine. Each death is -5 points. So every life you save helps the team, and keeping people hp caped allows them to cut lose and get some killing done without fear of dying.

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Originally Posted by Buff_Archer

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YES!!! Similar situations have happened to me several times. I especially find it an issue for Drks, now.
Dark arts is an amazing dmg boost on two of my attacks and can completely devastate gimpy targets, but it consts me a HUGE chunk of my mp; so, I get INFURIATED when I pop the buff and have no choice but to sit and watch the timer tick down, unused, especially when my target is stunned and just waiting for the death blow. I absolutely DON'T want to use purity, either, because DRK's can use it to purify the walking dead status. So, if I had to hold down a node and pop living dead, and get pushed into walking dead status, IF I can get away from my attackers, I can save myself with purify. Can't do that if I had to waste it because the healer RIGHT NEXT TO ME was too busy picking his nose to cast esuna.

Thanks for the tips. Look forward to getting some practice in later.

Yes, party trade in first 2 mins, or for the duty finder to at least attempt to evenly distribute whatever classes queued would be good.

Granted, SE themselves sort of killed the drive for healers to enter PvP when they took away the ability for WHMs to go into Cleric Stance. Or was it that they could no longer use Holy? I can't remember, but I do remember their restriction making me switch classes immediately.

But yes, there really should be an incentive for healers to go into PvP. Trouble is, other roles would demand the same incentive. Perhaps they could just add a bonus, similar to the roulettes, depending on what's in need?

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Originally Posted by Amiaze

Granted, SE themselves sort of killed the drive for healers to enter PvP when they took away the ability for WHMs to go into Cleric Stance. Or was it that they could no longer use Holy? I can't remember, but I do remember their restriction making me switch classes immediately.

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Personally, I don't really care that much about cleric. Holy's fun, but I can live without it in pvp. What kills it for me is melee having a one-shot-kill-a-healer button (yeah I know, fending accessories help) and just that generally... tanks are useless (except as high-survivability DPS). Only PLDs can protect you a little bit, and only for a few seconds every 3 minutes.

Meanwhile healers are everyone's #1 target. The sort of players that like healing probably don't like this sudden popularity and everyone doing their best to gank you. And generally succeeding unless you get the rare party that stays organized.

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Originally Posted by Amiaze

there really should be an incentive for healers to go into PvP. Trouble is, other roles would demand the same incentive. Perhaps they could just add a bonus, similar to the roulettes, depending on what's in need?

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I don't think it would be a problem to offer incentives for other classes to enter PvP. Honestly, one of the biggest issues with pvp is that, after a few months of the new content, people simply stop playing it. SE needs to do something to give pvp some stopping power, so people will actually stick around. Incentives all around would be great.
As it is now, DF just sorts people in the first available match, which is great for que times, but doesn't always make for balanced teams. I'm not sure how they could fix that without hurting que times. I'm thinking the best option would probably be additional incentives for healers. The simplest thing to do would be to offer in match rewards for playing well. That way it would be fair.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

tanks are useless (except as high-survivability DPS). Only PLDs can protect you a little bit, and only for a few seconds every 3 minutes.

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The problem is that people tend to misunderstand the tank's role in pvp. Tanks serve as the bait or distraction. They can either stall the enemy by doing a sac run, or they can dip in and dip out, stun whatever dps is dumb enough to try and chase them for the kill, and punish that player with a gank spank.
Defending the healers is tough, though. Only pally and war have two efficient means of keeping healers safe. For pally, stun locks and cover. For war, holmgang. Between the two, PLD's should have no trouble, assuming the dps aren't blind and do their jobs.

Probably because people complained about healers being "OP" to the point where they took away the healers ability to defend themselves if they get into a 1 vs 1. That and really..I didn't know OP was being able to easily have your abilities interrupted. Not only that, but sometimes it's a huge pain, you have your partying scattering all over the map leaving you with little to no protection.

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Originally Posted by Februs

I don't think it would be a problem to offer incentives for other classes to enter PvP. Honestly, one of the biggest issues with pvp is that, after a few months of the new content, people simply stop playing it. SE needs to do something to give pvp some stopping power, so people will actually stick around. Incentives all around would be great.

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Sorry, what I meant by that was that offering fair incentives to everyone (and not just healers) wouldn't actually help get healers into PvP. They might just queue as something else, especially if they prefer the incentive for a tank or DPS. Unless it's just a bonus similar to the "role in need" in roulettes, anyway.

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Originally Posted by Februs

Honestly, one of the biggest issues with pvp is that, after a few months of the new content, people simply stop playing it. SE needs to do something to give pvp some stopping power, so people will actually stick around. Incentives all around would be great.

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I couldn't agree more. This might be a bit off-topic, but better gear designs (no offense to whoever created them) might help some. I originally leveled up in The Wolves' Den and the like because I liked the gear and wanted to glamour it. I really don't like that MCH shares gear with BRD -- they're just recolors of the same pieces.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

Meanwhile healers are everyone's #1 target. The sort of players that like healing probably don't like this sudden popularity and everyone doing their best to gank you. And generally succeeding unless you get the rare party that stays organized.

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Agreed. That's actually why I started using Cleric Stance, at least back in Borderlands Secure and Slaughter. I found that very few people (at least, when I played) were interested in protecting their healers, so I was often just fending for myself. Party members would run around like ants and end up far outside of my healing range, and I couldn't get that close to the enemy team without being slaughtered on the spot. More often than not, I found myself standing there attempting to heal people, but knowing that I could not do so without somebody defending me.


EDIT: Has anyone told SE that their 1000 character limit sucks? Because it really, really does.

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Originally Posted by Amiaze

Sorry, what I meant by that was that offering fair incentives to everyone (and not just healers) wouldn't actually help get healers into PvP. They might just queue as something else, especially if they prefer the incentive for a tank or DPS. Unless it's just a bonus similar to the "role in need" in roulettes, anyway.

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Oh, I know what you meant. I was just unclear. I think pvp should offer in match exp bonuses for playing well, say, for example, fighting within range of the nodes (within the big circles that appear on the map) or scaling exp to your final score, would provably work for an "everyone" incentive.
For healers, though, there should be specific achievements. Maybe a mount for rezing X number of times or healing X number of points. Something healer specific to get them in the game.
I'm on the same page as you, but I'm also concerned with keeping the lobbies active.

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I couldn't agree more. This might be a bit off-topic, but better gear designs (no offense to whoever created them) might help some. I originally leveled up in The Wolves' Den and the like because I liked the gear and wanted to glamour it. I really don't like that MCH shares gear with BRD -- they're just recolors of the same pieces.

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I also think that the wolfs mark system needs to be overhauled. I've said it before somewhere else, but I really think the wolfs marks should have greater utility. 1. They should consider including PvE sets that can be purchased with wolfs marks, for the sake of variety. Those of us who play pvp have to split our time in PvE, and I don't think we should be punished for that. 2. Add PvP specific housing items, minions, or mounts, to the wolfs mark vendors, because... why not!? Honestly,once you cap your PvP rank and get all your gear, your marks just kind of sit there. Give us something to use them on, and, thereby, a reason to keep playing to get more. Lastly, why is there no armour set between 110-180? There should be. Right now, majority of PvP'ers are not optimizing their stats and just using PvE equipment, because, until lvl 50, there is no other options that are better for PvP.

It doesn't matter what incentives you offer if the healers can't get in to the game. The big problem is that there's no Jon requirements in DF. If it was like every other 8 man team then things would be great, but it's not.

You can be sitting in game after game berating a lack of a healer while me, a SCH, is hissing venom at the DF over the never ending queues. I could be there helping but the system doesn't prioritise "in need" jobs for PVP.

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Originally Posted by Seoulstar

Probably because people complained about healers being "OP" to the point where they took away the healers ability to defend themselves if they get into a 1 vs 1.

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Wait, what? No.

Healers are like the tankiest thing to fight in 1 vs 1 scenarios. There are so many options for any of the 3 healers to stay alive against 1 opponent. Sounds like you are mistaking "ability to defend themselves" with "ability to kill someone" which is not the point of coming as a healer. Heck, provided that you are retreating into your teammates, SCH and AST have the ability to defend themselves from several enemies.

Cidel, I think that was slightly out of context. I'd quote but I'm on my phone :P they werestating tha healers have a hard time putting out dps w/o cleric for the purpose of racking up kills for achievements, while I kinda disagree, I only heal PvP as SCH, and they have quite a few tricks thatlet them dps well, gosh I can think of many times when my best move was to stand my ground and DoT that silly dps to the floor. However you just mentioned holding off three attackers, while the post you were quoting wanted kills not to survive, which brings us back to the op, healers needtheir own achievement, I loled when I saw the Slaughterhouse achievement 1k or even the 3k as healer that would be something

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Originally Posted by distant-cubix

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No, I wasn't taking the text I quoted out of context. The person I quoted claimed healers lost the ability to defend themselves in 1v1, and I disagreed with it.

Ahh I see, so we agree :p

God i love healers that are agressive and sprints next to me while we push like a madman, that way i can pop cover and soak all shit he/she gets from enemy. Tho this also requires agressive melees depending how much resistance there is ahead, but usually all melees and healers are total pussies and stays miles behind even when we are supposed to do some heavy pushing >_>

I know it can be annoying to be a target number 1 but when you master you job in pvp settings you become a game changer that will determine if your team will win or not, and when that happens i will happily cover your arses and peel all pesky melees off :3

That's why I main healer in Frontlines. If there's no other healers, at least there's me :')
I've been queuing with another healer lately, and that seems to be working well. 2 healers is always good, one healer to heal the other when stun/silenced etc.

on pushing madman healer must folow, and even dps when the group clearly make the enemy to fall back, off course don't forget to heal if it's needed. don't be afraid from enemy running away XD

I would like to ask one thing, why would people need a reward to motivate them to play the job? Its quite simple, You wanna win? Play the job that is needed. i often get stuck as healer due to this, yet my team has atleast 2 others who could step up and either heal with me or just let me play as the job i queued up originally. Thats just my opinion though.

what is the point of q'ing as a healer when the q time is the same regardless

square's q system sucks badly

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Originally Posted by Blitzace

I would like to ask one thing, why would people need a reward to motivate them to play the job? Its quite simple, You wanna win? Play the job that is needed. i often get stuck as healer due to this, yet my team has atleast 2 others who could step up and either heal with me or just let me play as the job i queued up originally. Thats just my opinion though.

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The problem is that since Secure and expecially Slaughet there was an healers lack in the parties (after CS removal), and as all we know if you have no healers or just one healer you will have trouble.
Also when slaughter came and CS was removed they introduced the Kill Achievment, another thing who make an already loved role to be more attractive.

And now my personal reply x)
I like to heal in FL, but honestly I love to DPS too, expecially because I can get that achievment and also the Kills give you a power up during the game (high/fever) that is very attractive for me, healers have nothing compared to it, also they got nerfed in their DPSing abilities :/

Honestly if they will give back something similar to CS or introduce a new mechanic like an healing high/fever, I really would mind to switch healer more often instead to "feel forced" any time that the party have 0 or 1 healer (and sometimes it happens for an entire day...)

I screenshot every end-game result because of these threads, I have a fear of people hating the healers and I need to justify myself... -_-

Healing in PVP is probably the hardest role to play.
We're tanks, we're healers, we're objective achievers. We stun, we sleep, we also do deeps.
Yet... We're the first to be blamed for any form of death.

I personally don't care about achievements. Who cares if I've killed 1,000 people.

But to keep this thread on topic, how about we speed up the rate at which healers can cap nodes?

If we have healers able to cap 20% faster than any other class, it gives us an objective, it gives us purpose. Sure DPS can still cap, just like healers can still kill, but it balances your achievement squabbles. :)

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Originally Posted by UlricCraft

But to keep this thread on topic, how about we speed up the rate at which healers can cap nodes?

If we have healers able to cap 20% faster than any other class, it gives us an objective, it gives us purpose. Sure DPS can still cap, just like healers can still kill, but it balances your achievement squabbles. :)

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Nice suggestion in my opinion, even because it creates a new (tiny) mechanics for healers.

Haven't read the thread, but I'm in favor of some rewards or bonuses for healers.