The Healer Problem in PVP

[Mantrus]

There are a lot of opinions out there about the recent PVP patch notes, but this isn't one of them. This is about an indisputable problem and fact that the patch notes did not address.

Healers occupy a majority of Top 10 spots in every data center, most of the time with incomparably high win rates compared to other roles.

This isn't an opinion; this is an observation, and in itself it is a problem for the PVP system. If a single role is consistently getting high win percentages in every data center, it is not a good thing.

The main problem is that the patch notes did nothing to address this problem. Healers actually got the most minor touches compared to every other role, and if anything, healers are more prominent since damage was lowered.

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If you dislike reading then you can stop here as that's the biggest point I wanted to make. The next part will be my own opinion as to why this healer problem exists. These contributions to the problem, if true, further describe why this problem is very severe to the health of PVP.

Top healers have high win rates because of two intertwined problem factors:

1.) The skill ceiling of healers is much higher than the ceiling of every other role, both because healing is difficult and because the other roles were simplified.

2.) Healers have the most influence over a match by far, like if you have a bad healer you have no chance of winning the match outside of cheesing kills at the end. This problem actually has a lot of smaller problems that cause it.

The current healer win rate problem wouldn't exist with just one of these contributing factors. Even if healers have high influence, if both healers are basically the same then the match comes down to the other roles; and no matter how skilled a healer can be it doesn't mean anything if the role doesn't have the influence on the match.

A healer's influence is probably the bigger problem of the two. A single good healer requires more than just a single good DPS or tank to take down, which conflicts with how the current matchmaking tries to match ranks regardless of role. Overpowering good healers requires teamwork, but getting good teamwork requires more effort and effectiveness on the DPS' part than the healer simply being good.

I'd say this problem isn't in the highest level of play (premades) because at a certain threshold of coordination, burst damage will be uncounterable. But you won't get that level of coordination in solo queuing, let alone English servers. Balancing around a rarely if never achieved ideal level and ignoring this insane symptom plaguing the most active PVPers is ignorant. This is a problem, and that is a fact.


I'll be straightforward and say I have no idea how to solve this problem. Healers even in PVE are the most fundamental role to success. But I want SE to recognize that this is a problem, that they are aware of it, and that they are looking for a solution. If they truly do care about PVP and its most committed community, they must address this issue.

[Marveth]

I could not agree more. This is a fact shown by the leaderboards. The only way I see that can alleviate this is if tanks had an even more defensive role and larger influence on the survivability of your teammates.
Basically if the DPS shared responsibility of getting kills and the Tank and Healer shared equal responsibility of survival then all your hopes would not be put on one person to carry such an important burden like keeping the team alive.

[Cynric]

Feast, AKA Healer VS Healer,
Patch 4.06a - Healer VS Healer - Part II The end of melee.


And it's like this in high level games too man, It's gonna be worse now with the melee nerfs.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Feast: Either main a healer or lose every other match.

Now with weaker burst from melee and more ranged HP so 5 min matches with no one dying (unless you play perfectly balanced AST) begins now!

[PotatoGirl]

The only solution is to make WHM and SCH as garbage as AST.

Or stop nerfing burst damage.

Boy I cant wait to play full length matches with the only deaths occurring during culling time. (Unless the other team has an AST. Cause I know I wont be caught dead playing AST even though it's my favorite job)

[Cynric]

The only solution is to make WHM and SCH as garbage as AST.

Or stop nerfing burst damage.

Boy I cant wait to play full length matches with the only deaths occurring during culling time. (Unless the other team has an AST. Cause I know I wont be caught dead playing AST even though it's my favorite job)

I hope no one plays AST now. Otherwise I'll just facepalm at that match.

[PotatoGirl]

I hope no one plays AST now. Otherwise I'll just facepalm at that match.

just give us something
SE pls
make it like
RNG shield or regen aspected benefic or something

anything

pls

;;

[Cynric]

just give us something
SE pls
make it like
RNG shield or regen aspected benefic or something

anything

pls

;;

Square Enix : AS YOU WISH.

Aspected Regen : 2000 MP

Muse effectiveness on AST reduced.

Man I should apply to the dev team. Thats some square level balance right there.

[Mantrus]

Simple healer nerfs aren't the answer. The thing is that healers are on both sides of the match, so the only result would be more kills on both teams and a resulting s***show. And the end result would be because of the skill cap, the good healer would have less deaths on their side and could climb from that.

[Rufalus]

I suggested once to make healers less effective and make everyone tankier so you'll still survive a while but can't be saved so easily through healing. To be honest I've always been kind of annoyed that healers exist at all. They make the game more annoying and they are forever the role with a disproportionate amount of responsibility and, for a lot of people, stress. Oh and they cause queue times to be longer for other roles waiting on a heal to join, while in unrated and frontlines matches it's not uncommon for there to be no healers and somebody having to reluctantly switch because we'd all just rather... fight, be fighters. I'd prefer no dedicated healer role, faster respawns to enter the fray, more respawn points closer to where the action is, fast paced matches with more KOs but lower penalty for being KOd, lower medal loss like only drop 20% of medals instead of 50% to maintain a good match length with no dedicated heals. But yeah, wrong game.