Real Solutions to PvP problems

[Vivi_Bushido]

What if we just turned Healers into DPS for PVP, strip them of all shields and heals aside from weak heals such as Cure 1, Physic, Benefic, and make them identical to Vercure? That way healers are equal to all the jobs and the other jobs have a fighting chance to take a healer down, and stacking healers wouldn't be such an annoyance to take out? Any thoughts?

[Wintersandman]

What if we just turned Healers into DPS for PVP, strip them of all shields and heals aside from weak heals such as Cure 1, Physic, Benefic, and make them identical to Vercure? That way healers are equal to all the jobs and the other jobs have a fighting chance to take a healer down, and stacking healers wouldn't be such an annoyance to take out? Any thoughts?

If we do that then we need to add a cure spell to tanks and one to all DPS. The only DPS that has a cure is Redmage, in which we should strip away dual casting vercure on Redmage. We should also make all potencies the same for all classes so that way there is a fighting chance.

[Zojha]

If we do that then we need to add a cure spell to tanks and one to all DPS.

We don't actually.
We only need to balance the cure spells against the damage spells tanks and DPS have or vice versa. Which we could also do right now with the given kit, but healers don't like that idea either.

You do not need to give everyone the same abilities to create balance, nor does every ability need to have the same potency: What matters is the bottom line, how effective is the kit as a whole?

It's not really different than balancing in PvE - All DPS need to have the same raid contribution for balance to happen. How they achieve that raid contribution is entirely open, what matters is the bottom line. On principle, it is no different in PvP. Every job needs to contribute equally, whether it be via healing, CC, damage, AoEs, buffs... whatever. You can do that for a 4-man group, for an 8-man group, solo etc, that doesn't change the weight of raw throughput much, but it will drastically change the weight of supportive abilities and AoE. A stun is worth a lot more in a group than when balancing for solo, so the job with the stun would have to be nerfed harder to compensate for it if you're balancing for a group. Same with vuln up etc.

The issue with healers is that the devs are simply not balancing the roles at all. They only balance within the roles and even that they do badly. As a consequence, roles have vastly different group contribution.

You don't really 'need' to address that on the design level, that's something that can be fixed with numbers if you really want to. Other games have done that successfully multiple times. But when a healer in a trinity game only contributes as much as a DPS and therefore is only as valuable as one, they cry foul. I can understand why they do, what I fail to understand is why it often isn't an issue in non-trinity games. I'd just go without healers entirely to be on the safe side as dev, but that's done and over with.

Since we're stuck with the role hard-coded in, I'd give their PvP version DPS spells on the GCD and fill the rest with a couple of balanced healing and utility spells on longer cooldowns and/or tied to their job mechanics, much like tanks have a couple mitigation/disruption abilities next to their DPS toolkit.

Alternately, we could go full course on the "screw DPS players, trinity roles rule!" design and give tanks aggro abilities, then force people to only attack the target with the most aggro like any random mob. I'm not a fan of trinity design in PvP in general, but hey, might as well - It can't get much worse (And fun fact: Other games did not just manage to pull balanced healers off, they also managed to pull balanced taunts off).

[Wintersandman]

You do not need to give everyone the same abilities to create balance, nor does every ability need to have the same potency: What matters is the bottom line, how effective is the kit as a whole? .

3.0...

/10char

[RiyahArp]

We don't actually.
We only need to balance the cure spells against the damage spells tanks and DPS have or vice versa. Which we could also do right now with the given kit, but healers don't like that idea either.

I don't think healers would mind that. It's actually not fun trying to tank people in this game as a healer. What I'm against with all the 3.0 nostalgia is going back to something that was even more unfun, trying to tank people while CC'd half the time.

And tbh, there really aren't that many healers that do pvp overall. RW only has them due to it being OP; for most of the game, you barely could muster 2 healers per 8 man party. I don't think much would be lost if they radically revised them.

[Wintersandman]

I don't think healers would mind that. I don't think much would be lost if they radically revised them.

As someone who plays healer in everything but RW I would be against this.

[Synestra]

If we do that then we need to add a cure spell to tanks and one to all DPS.

Pfft why only one cure when WAR used to have PB/Venge+BB, 2 Thrills, IB, Equilibrium, Second Wind and Mercy Stroke, it was not uncommon to see 80-100k healing done at the end of match sometimes doing more than actual healers if they slacked.

I just want muh monster back ;_____;

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Pfft why only one cure when WAR used to have PB/Venge+BB, 2 Thrills, IB, Equilibrium, Second Wind and Mercy Stroke, it was not uncommon to see 80-100k healing done at the end of match sometimes doing more than actual healers if they slacked.

I just want muh monster back ;_____;

Ah. . . back when WARs actually made ME hesitant to face them. Oh, those were the days.

Imagine the Push Back laughs on an Astragalos bridge!

[Synestra]

Ah. . . back when WARs actually made ME hesitant to face them. Oh, those were the days.

Imagine the Push Back laughs on an Astragalos bridge!

It's kinda funny that nobody screamed nerfs for WAR ever in HW when it simply was THE most OP job in PvP back then(SE even buffed them by giving Weapon Throw to all tanks), for some reason SMN took all the heat while WAR was literally 1-2 shotting even healers and other tanks. WAR was ultimate solo job when it came to PvP and it was nearly unkillable when one simple zerg buffed Equilibrium crit restored around 70% HP and if you got Second Wind crit after that it was 100%, if there was 3-5 physical jobs against you all you had to do was pop PB+Venge+BB and if they weren't smart they literally kept you at full HP and then you went AoE mode with Decimate, felt like doing dungeons where you AoE'd players like trash mobs... oh and those Decimate crits also healed you A LOT on top of everything else D:

If only WAR had Onslaught back then it would have been PERFECT! THE SUPREMEOVERGOD!

I still remember one MNK from Wolf Pier who yelled that he would pay 1mil for each loss to him in duel and while i was semi-afk waiting in que he whispered if i would give a try and i said sure why not, well he lost about 12 times in a row but i was being nice and never took any Gil as it would have been unfair

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Dsn5rZShls Nice there was actually a small teaser in YT of this former GOD job and it should give you the idea what it was capable of back then :P