Extensive Feedback: Healing in The Feast (4v4 Solo)

[FreeKingStefan]

Hello,

I would like to take some time to give extensive feedback on the state of healing (and jobs that fall under the “healer” role) in The Feast. This feedback has been in the works for quite some time, but I was holding off on posting it until after Season 3, as I was anticipating some balance changes that never came. For those that don’t know, my name is Stefan, and I am one of the more accomplished healers on Aether data center. I do not claim to know everything, but I like to think I have a very good understand of not only healing, but PVP as a whole, and so I hope you will agree that there is some credibility to my opinions. I’ll start off with my “thesis” of sorts. The TL;DR:

Healing in The Feast 4v4 is not in a good place and should be changed to sustain a healthy population of healers.

I will give some very specific examples of why I believe this and what I wish would change in the following paragraphs, however, I have reached this conclusion for one general reason: There are too many situations in The Feast where it is simply not possible to heal through damage. This creates poor gameplay, and is one of the major flaws of the mode at high levels of play. These situations are caused by a few key things:

1) Melee limit break.
2) Damage amplifying or assistance cool downs (CDs) being more plentiful in addition to having shorter timers than healing amplifying or assistance CDs.
3) Un-Purifiable crowd control (CC) chains which cause windows of several seconds where healing is impossible and no (or so little that it becomes negligible) opportunity for counterplay is provided.
4) The systems within the game mode creating damage numbers which are mathematically impossible to heal through, even in the event where the healer is (unlikely) free casting without interruption.




1: Melee Limit Break.


“MLB,” as it will be referred to in the rest of this post, can only be described in one word: broken. MLB saw a nerf back at the start of season 2, but it was not enough. MLB is often the deciding factor on whether or not a game is won/lost, as the carry potential of essentially getting a free kill multiple times a match is nothing less than absurd. What does this have to do with healing? Well, the counters to Melee LB are few, and due to the nature of the ability, are very difficult (or impossible) to pull off. If a melee LB is combined with CC and just a smidgen of support from another dps, the target is absolutely dead no matter what. Even if you do survive MLB, it is because you have spent one or several healing CDs to live (Spells like attunement come to mind). However, the healer LB does not counter MLB, which causes the following imbalance: Healing CDs are spent to survive an MLB, which then leaves the healer wide open to the dps’ actual damage from their individual abilities. Not only that, but in a situation where the enemy team has control of the adrenaline box...MLB will be up again BEFORE spells like attunement.


A large issue with MLB is that it is not counterable in many situations, either, due to the snapshot nature of the ability. Abilities like Testudo, Tank LB, or other damage reduction abilities, must be used a second or two prior to the MLB being casted, or else the reduction in damage does not apply. This gives an advantage to the MLB user, as they have the ability to spot those buffs and choose not to MLB until after they’ve expired. Side note: For some reason, MLB has a unique snapshot of its damage, where even if you create a very far distance or line of sight (LOS) between you and the caster, the spell still goes off. It’s an odd behavior considering moving out of a ranged LB, for example, is much more forgiving.


Suggested change: While I am admittedly an extremist and wish for LB/Adrenaline to be removed from The Feast entirely, I can agree on one of two changes that may fix MLB to make it less of a deciding factor of wins and losses.


Lengthen the cast time of MLB by 1 second, to make it easier to interrupt and/or get away from, and/or attunement in to.
Lower the damage and make it do a % of a player's maximum HP. This specific change would do good measure in fixing the issues created by heavy medal. Nobody enjoys losing in the last 30-10 seconds of a match because the opposing melee uses MLB on your tank and 1 shots them, winning the game they had otherwise been losing up until that point. If MLB instead always did (70)% of a player’s maximum HP, my opinion is that it would be in a better place.




2: Cooldowns are too weak(or are too few) for healers.


Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Sacred prism is OP!” Well yes, it is. However, the fact of the matter is that damage is SO high, that it is very possible(and not to difficult) to kill someone through the 40% physical vuln up with something akin to a WAR/DRG/BRD if the healer does not pair other CDs with it. You have to blow several of your own CDs to heal through several of the enemies CDs, which seems fair, right? Except...Theirs come up again before yours. Large PVP healing CDs have a whopping 3 minute CD, while most DPS CDs are 1-2 minutes (or even less.) These leads to large windows where healers have absolutely nothing to defend themselves, and are open to dying with little to no counterplay on their part. Now, this is where the assistance of a tank or other party member might come in, but DRK and WAR are barely equipped with any tools to assist in helping a healer, and you cannot always depend on having a PLD in your match. Side note: This issue is almost completely nullified when pairing a PLD with a healer, since PLD has insane control abilities and a wide variety of defensive utility.
Suggested change: Instead of nerfing damage across the board, which would likely be ill-received, I propose adjusting and adding some abilities to the toolkit of every healer to make their job less hellish.

Existing ability/spell changes:

Equanimity - I would like to see equanimity changed so that for its duration, the user is immune to silence and displacement effects. The spell feels cheapened by the fact that you are still able to be silenced, knockedback, holmganged etc. while it is active. This would allow healers to safely use this ability when they know they are on stun/sleep DR without being interrupted by the OTHER CC. Side Note: And alternative thought I had would be to make Fetter Ward a baseline PVP ability, but I believe my former idea to be the better change.

Attunement - Attunement should be able to be used while under the effects of CC. Having to pair Purify with Attunement just for the chance at nullifying lethal damage is nothing short of bad gameplay (since often damage will still register for the full amounts a second or two after the attunement buff is applied to the caster.)

Aura Blast - Currently/Arguably the worst unique PVP ability for healers. I believe Aura Blast should be buffed to have the added effect of “Pushback”, so that all that are caught in the blast are stunned for 2 seconds upon being knocked back utilizing the unique “Pushback stun” which does not share diminishing returns (DR) with regular stuns. This will help slightly with Scholars lack of CC when compared to both AST and WHM. Side note: I believe Sacred Prism and Retrogradation are in a good place.’

Surecast - Similar to Equanimity, but a bit more. The spell that is cast using surecast shouldn't be be able to be interrupted, even with stuns and silences. Increase CD to 60s up from 30s. BLM gets it traited at 30s.




3:Unstoppable disruption, as we’ll call it, is rampant in The Feast as of now and again, is at fault for creating frustrating healer gameplay. I’ll start by listing each of the offenders, then break them down in turn: Critical hits, Silence, Knockback.

Critical Hits = Perhaps the most frustrating as they are the most random, having a spell cast disrupted by a lucky critical hit from an attack that would have otherwise not disrupted the cast (if it had not crit) is, again, poor gameplay. Over the thousands of matches I’ve played, I’ve seen it all: heavy shot, heavy thrust, feint, even auto attacks under certain conditions. These weak attacks “should not” be able to interrupt casting.


Suggested Change: Allow specific abilities to interrupt casts based off of base potencies. Fell Cleave, Full Thrust, Empyreal Arrow, etc. This nullifies the random interruptions of crits, while not taking away from the main appeal of landing a crit (the added damage.)


b) Silence: This feedback will be short and to the point...Silence should have a 1 minute DR just like all other forms of CC. Getting chained > Spirits within > Blunt Arrow > Ilm Wind, etc. is frustrating, and NOTHING in a healers arsenal can counter it. What’s more? Monks can SPAM arm of the destroyer for several seconds, completely shutting down a healer while the monk is still able to burst them with OGCDs. Side note: Ilm Wind should always silence for 3 seconds, regardless of if it is the 1st or 3rd silence in a DR window, but should not silence if the player is already on full DR.


c) Knockback: This will be redundant after reading my proposed changes to certain spells, but my only proposed change for knockbacks is for them to not work on players who are under the effects of Surecast or Equanimity. Sidenote: I humored the idea of having knockbacks on a traditional DR, but most knockback spells are long-ish CDs and can rarely be chained with other knockbacks. (The only nerf regarding knockbacks that I would like to see is making Blank a 1 minute CD as opposed to the current 30 seconds.)




4: The Feast hates living.


My point here may seem basic, but I will try to explain it in detail: the game systems within The Feast prevent a healer from truly being able to carry a match. This is due to things like: Culling Time, Heavy Medal, Adrenaline, and Offense Kits.


Culling Time - Perhaps the worst mechanic in the feast, culling time is the absolution that prevents great healers from being able to carry a match. If both healers are doing well, the game essentially FORCES someone to die, as the damage becomes unhealable in addition to a healers likely-dry mana pool preventing them from outputting large amounts of healing for long. Suggested fix: Remove Culling time. MP costs solve this issue themselves.

Heavy Medal - In the running for “Worst mechanic in PVP ever.” My introduction is surely overdramatic, but I cannot stress enough how harshly this mechanic negatively affects the competitive nature of the mode. I am of the believe that there should never be a mechanic in the game which punishes players for winning. Even at a single stack on a dps or healer, heavy medal nigh impossible to heal through, and is a huge factor in large match swings that often happen towards the end of long games. Suggested fix: Decrease the amount of damage amplification at a single stack of heavy medal by half, and do not have damage caused by Limit Breaks/Adrenaline factor in the amplification caused by heavy medal.

Adrenaline - My issues with adrenaline can be read in more detail in my first point of this post. To recap: Adrenaline results in more MLB’s which in turn create an insane amount of extra damage/kills for no trade off and often becomes the sole decider on whether or not a game is won or lost.

Offense Kits - There is already a disadvantage for any healer when there are 3 dps to 1 healer, as the combined total of potencies is far out of the healers favor. To add to this, the Offense Kits only amplify the damage of the opposing team (assuming your team does not get them.) This creates even more situations where damage is simply un-healable, even when able to cast freely without disruptions. Suggested Fix: I have not thought of a healthy alternative to offense kits other than removing Kits completely from competitive modes (Including Offense, Defense, Adrenaline.)


Some of my points were more on the meta, which I am currently writing feedback on in a separate article, but overall I would like this feedback to be seen as healer-centric. My goal in providing this feedback is that it may provoke some thought amongst the developers and the community, as many will agree that healing the The Feast 4v4 is in a rough state. I hope that with these changes, it will allow skilled healer to carry their games better, and ease newer players into the role. If you have any thoughts that you agree with, disagree with, or wish to build on, please post them here.

[Wetel]

(i agree with almost everything in the OP so i will try not to replicate too much)
I think the vast majority of people agree that melee lb is a mistake in any form of pvp in any game on any planet in any universe, so moving on. I myself started healing in feast this season because we literally do not have any healers on the Chaos DC and i'm beginning to understand why, the game-play as healer is... clunky at best to put it nicely, the major issues being, in my opinion, is:
1. the delay on heals (from the time the cast finishes to the player the heal was being cast on actually gets his hp bar up) is unacceptably long (and that goes for bene, lustrate and essential too) when i finish casting a heal i dont want to see my dps die 1sec later because the server lagg / animation is too long and the heal never made it through in time, it works in pve but it absolutely doesnt work in pvp.
2. Animation delay on crucial abilities such as purify and attunement, OP covered part of it, but the animation delay on purify is surprisingly long for an ability of that nature, it should be INSTANT, not a "it will happen in 1 second" ability because then it might just be too late, same goes for attunement.
3. the damage and healing is, generally, too high, there are many ways to fix it, certain class nerfs, we all know which candidates that might be, flat healing and damage reduction, it has been tested in some other games, it works wonders.

[Maxwell]

Good feedback.

Mechanics like limit break, culling time and heavy medal must be evaluated from a higher game mechanic standpoint. While flawed, they serve as stalemate resolution tools (stalemate resolution button anyone ? ) against unpleasant, dragged on matches or lack of participation/fowl play during matches. These mechanics can and should be improved, but cannot simply be removed without being replaced by something else. A real world analogy would be Judo where you are penalized for passivity or preventing progress in the match.

I'm sympathetic to the difficulty of balancing healers without bringing back what caused significant stalemates and discontent such as medica stacking and AST shield spamming. I think any changes should match SE's current short term "modus operandi" to bring more player into PvP by easing anything that feels like a brick wall (looking at you queue times ).

I quite like the idea of involving more cool downs for healers.

[FreeKingStefan]

Good feedback.

Mechanics like limit break, culling time and heavy medal must be evaluated from a higher game mechanic standpoint. While flawed, they serve as stalemate resolution tools (stalemate resolution button anyone ? ) against unpleasant, dragged on matches or lack of participation/fowl play during matches. These mechanics can and should be improved, but cannot simply be removed without being replaced by something else. A real world analogy would be Judo where you are penalized for passivity or preventing progress in the match.

I definitely understand what you're saying, and I've put much thought into it. The problem, however, with things like Culling Time and Adrenaline, is that they were put in for "bad" players (those that cannot get a kill without the aid of these mechanics) and are abused by skilled players. At high levels of player, there is an absurd power spike creating these unhealable numbers.

[Zojha]

I think any changes should match SE's current short term "modus operandi" to bring more player into PvP by easing anything that feels like a brick wall (looking at you queue times ).

I have my doubts enforcing the burst or bust meta that's already in place is going to ease anything truth be told. It only makes coordinated burst and CC that much more important and raises the skill floor dramatically, which makes PvP a lot less enjoyable for those without the necessary skill (which is everyone just starting out, so the people you're trying to get into PvP).

The main issue is that the healer role as such exists to undo progress in the game, to undo damage that has been done, to undo plays of the enemy - to create a stalemate. That's the entire point and purpose of the healer role. It goes so far that 4 healers vs 4 healers would break the mode (because all participants are working against the mode by design), whereas the same does not hold true for 4vs4 DPS or 4vs4 Tanks, those would just have an increased pace.

That wouldn't be so bad, if healers weren't powerful. They are. Nearly every strategy right now seems to revolve around preventing the healer to act, either by preventing them from acting via CC, Line of Sight, bleeding them dry from pressure, bursting someone before they can act or a combination of the four - the metagame seems pretty much warped around them. But I've never been a high feast player - maybe tactics are fundamentally different up there and disrupting a healer becomes a low priority. Who knows? The way I see it, their design and power forces mechanics into the game that are just as bad as healers themselves - what the quoted person nicely called "Stalemate resolution tools".
Be that as it may, this healer centric gameplay (at least at lower levels) makes healing not particularly enjoyable because frankly, they're the kid that gets bullied, one way or the other. And rightfully so. That's not going to stop if you remove the stalemate breakers.

Honestly, I don't think the issue can really be resolved. The OP's suggestions boils down to:"We have too few healers, please make healers OP to incentivize people to play them." On the one hand, yes, that might work. On the other hand, it's not exactly healthy game design. The better solution would be to balance the option of having a healer on the team against the option of having another DPS/Tank on the team and then remove the necessity of having a healer for the queue to pop once the two are roughly equally efficient. This is in line with the solution to remove GC restrictions for frontlines, rather than try to incentivize people to switch. But in the framework of a game where an AST can solo-heal an endgame raid during progression, that could prove a little difficult, unrealistic even.

I don't see any solutions to the issue that are both good and realistic to implement, only lots of foul compromises.

[Koltik]

Fluid Aura + Repose is broken. WHM having access to not one, but two huge CC abilities that do not share a DR with most other classes is a huge disadvantage to SCH and AST in higher level play. Give SCH and AST something similar, or change their effects for WHM in PvP.

[FreeKingStefan]

Fluid Aura + Repose is broken. WHM having access to not one, but two huge CC abilities that do not share a DR with most other classes is a huge disadvantage to SCH and AST in higher level play. Give SCH and AST something similar, or change their effects for WHM in PvP.

Without either of these, you would see zero white mage players. That is the staple of their role in PVP (the control), as their healing is much more difficult to maintain and survive with compared to AST or SCH.

[Koltik]

Without either of these, you would see zero white mage players. That is the staple of their role in PVP (the control), as their healing is much more difficult to maintain and survive with compared to AST or SCH.

No, their staple is healing. Divine Seal. Tetra. Benediction. Asylum. Sacred Prism. POM. Their role is healing, not control. Just like AST and SCH. There is 0 reason for them to get a knock back + bind that has 0 risk for the WHM and can be abused to counter other healers who have 0 defense against it, and 0 counter.

[FreeKingStefan]

No, their staple is healing. Divine Seal. Tetra. Benediction. Asylum. Sacred Prism. POM. Their role is healing, not control. Just like AST and SCH. There is 0 reason for them to get a knock back + bind that has 0 risk for the WHM and can be abused to counter other healers who have 0 defense against it, and 0 counter.

There are several counters to Fluid Aura and Repose...

Push Back, Fetter Ward, Purify x4, Tempered Will, Warden's Paen, Esuna/Leeches/Exalted...

Have you played WHM before, Koltik? They are nothing without their CC. You will never have the opportunity to get a cast off without self-peel.

[Koltik]

There are several counters to Fluid Aura and Repose...

Push Back, Fetter Ward, Tempered Will, Warden's Paen, Esuna/Leeches/Exalted...

Have you played WHM before, Koltik? They are nothing without their CC. You will never have the opportunity to get a cast off without self-peel.

I'm sorry, but what? Other healers get access to absolutely none of these while they are slept.

Regarding purify, sure I'll waste it on a sleep so that I can get stun locked and killed. That makes a ton of sense.

Sleep isn't even the main issue. Being able to fluid to guarantee a heal interrupt, and possibly bind behind a wall with 0 risk to the WHM in question is the problem. It wouldn't be if other healers had a counter, or if they could do the same, but that is not the case. Hence the imbalance. All healers can heal. Only WHM can interrupt via KB + a potential bind out of LoS every 45s oGCD, only WHM can sleep. If Prism is up then it's a sure thing the WHM has time to sleep.

What do you call Astro by the way? They get casts off without fluid and sleep, why can't WHM? Don't even say they can spam AB, because we all know that is worthless against good DPS. The only reason to AB is to get a buffer if noct, or regen up if diurn. Anything else is a waste of a GCD and will set you up to not being able to keep up with heals vs good DPS , which is what you get as a top rank. Hence my post, saying this is especially a problem at high-level play.