A different kidn of question: What do you think a Healer, in MMO/Trinity terms, is?

[Renathras]

Everquest is 24 years old now, which is ancient in gaming years. Is there any example of an MMO that features healers that are not capable of DPSing that has been made within the last 5 years at least?

Who said "not capable of DPSing"?

[ty_taurus]

Who said "not capable of DPSing"?

I just mean that Everquest is a very old game, and modern games don't operate by the same standards. Therefore, I was asking if there was a more modern example of an MMO that featured healers that play the same way.

[Renathras]

I just mean that Everquest is a very old game, and modern games don't operate by the same standards. Therefore, I was asking if there was a more modern example of an MMO that featured healers that play the same way.

More or less. Classic WoW (being like Vanilla) plays the same way in theory, Pantheon is aiming to play the same way as well. In Eve Online, if you build a pure healer ("Logistics/Logi pilot") and ship, you function this way (only heals with the option in SOME but not ALL cases for some EWAR/Counter EWAR or some VERY minor DPS if you equip DPS Drones).

The main evolution is that now, instead of Wanding, you Glarespam. Which is slightly more active than right clicking the enemy with a Wand equipped in your ranged slot in WoW was.

[Shurrikhan]

More or less. Classic WoW (being like Vanilla) plays the same way in theory, Pantheon is aiming to play the same way as well.

Unless MP was a significant concern or one was built out as an Agility-stacked Disc Priest, etc., you also used active spells while healing in Vanilla WoW (and again in Classic).

And while some may prefer the pace and coordination of Classic, no one is switching from Retail to Classic specifically for the gutting of their agency and playflow as healers. It's not a preferable model. It's just the one that exists in the more nostalgic setting. Yes, I say that even as someone who made that swap.

[Sebazy]

Yarr, I'll be the first to admit my Titan tanking escapades were really down to SE not having things particularly well sussed out at the time. I actually had more HP than the Warrior as is and there was potential for more if needed but I'd have had to roll on Coil tank accessories which wouldn't have made me terribly popular

The last one really does highlight just how low tank damage typically is now though. I farmed up 100 tokens for a friend and scraped more than a few DPS through the tank buster cone in particular. Pretty sure even I managed to survive one on WHM as well. It's a strange design trend as overall, the fight's damage isn't actually particularly low, it's just all AoEs and insanely infrequent.

[fulminating]

I wonder if the assumption was that the spinning mechanic would be harder, so everyone would have a few vuln stacks. Maybe it’s just in line with some of the other extreme trials this expansion, ex3 seemed oddly incomplete too.

[DougPersian]

Being old school I'd say the healer's focus should be on keeping the party alive through heals and decursives.

The thing in this game, though, is they seem to want you to heal by taking away your dps abilities, while those two things are wholly unrelated. You heal when there is something to heal, not because you don't have anything else to do. You could give someone a 100 dps buttons... if the party is dying you are healing. It really is that simple.

So I don't understand their hate towards healers by making them boring to play for 90% of their game. And then making them more and more boring to play in instances too by not giving anything to heal. AND the jobs are all the same now.

When I read the forums I get a taste of what the jobs were supposed to be like and it sounds harder, but also way more fun. I wish I'd experienced scholar in its haydays.

So for SE: HEALING and DPS BUTTONS are UNRELATED. If you want a PURE healer you need to make sure they are HEALING incoming damage/debuffs. If there is none they will do anything else. It really is that simple.
And if the job gets too boring they will play anything else.

That doesn't mean that, at the moment, everything about them is bad, of course. However seeing the way things are pruned it seems the devs want something from the playerbase (pure healer) but going about it all wrong. You have a great game, let healers enjoy it too.

[Shurrikhan]

In a "Trinity" game that'd actually try to sell said "trinity" as a pivotal feature?

Primarily, having a discrete Trinity-style "healer" designed into one's game way to reduce the breadth of optimizations or responsibilities required of the other "roles". (Much like a Trinity tank exists in order to remove threat management, relegate baiting and kiting to discretely cued mechanics, etc., rather than someone simply taking the lead on that duty; this in turn tends to degrade tanking, the act, instead to just dpsing while wearing a different role badge, with former gameplay now handled instead by hitting Button A for Mechanic A

Secondarily, a Trinity "healer" is simply a site for those who either dislike more complex rotations, positioning mobs, using timely CC, etc., as might be expected of the other roles. It's a way to have a narrow and, unless tuned as to be increasingly less accessible, minimal engagement while still feeling needed so long as healing is left sufficiently exclusive to that role. In short, it's a way to have an especially easy option that still gets decent credit... at least until the other options likewise demand equal ease of play and everything gets equally easy.




Outside of "Trinity" games? (Or, in those that have a sort of Trinity but don't use those roles as a basis for reducing the actual complexity of tanking into the likes of "Blue DPS," healing into "DPS but with a cluster of discrete healing abilities to be used on top" and instead simply has some roles better able to perform otherwise shared responsibilities still felt by the other roles?)

There, a "healer" --at least, as usefully designed-- is any class, job, profession, hero, etc. that tends to have...

• a lower ceiling than a Damage-dealer in terms of internal complexity (in rotation, etc.) and judging the risk and reward of "greed-ing",
  
  
• a slightly lower ceiling than a Tank in regard to preempting or thwarting mechanics which can be manipulated or mitigated through the enemy units themselves and predicting incoming interceptible single-target damage, and
  
  
• the highest ceiling of all roles in regard to predicting incoming broader or unavoidable damage and knowing what your fellow players can put out, how they are likely to behave (beyond melee positioning, which is still more in the domain of melee and co-melee), how to manipulate that behavior in terms of encouragement (e.g., having speedy but unpanicked responses to greeding vs. spending no resources on that unless absolutely necessary, and anything in between), and in balancing capped (e.g., healing) vs. uncapped (e.g., damage) resources.

In neither case should a healer be solely about healing. That'd be an utter waste, since there is always a finite amount of healing to be done (short of wonkiness that would, no more interestingly, leave healers just trickle-healing constantly like some sort of water pump).

The main difference between the two models, though, is simply that the second still considers healing as part of a larger economy of resource, where an opportunity taken to heal is an opportunity lost to do something else that in some cases may actually better fit the purposes for which that healing would be done (like, not dying), and a tank's turtling a blow when especially stacked has a rDPS reward in turn from the would-be healing spared, etc., while the first tends to devolve instead into 3 flavors of chugging out uncapped resource while hitting some extra buttons that don't have to consider the larger economy of resource between roles because the game has set thick and often arbitrary barriers between each role anyways.