Idea for the Zealot - The HEALTAP

[Vervayne]

We've already been told that the Zealot will have some sort of healing abilities. Some would like that tied to morale, which I've already explained in another thread that I didn't it would work. I've played a healer in a lot of MMOs and I can tell you the most annoying thing is not having control of heals. You need them when you need them, otherwise why even bother.

I've come up with an idea of how to put some 'conditions' on the healing of the Zealot, and yet still keep it within the player's control. It involves DPS, since we want all characters in the fight.

The Healtap-
Those birdies that come down on their big totem... they could be used to attack the enemy with a Damage over Time type spell (maybe even a pbaoe one) that also functioned as a Healtap, building up a sort of healing pool for the Zealot and damaging the enemy at the same time. Now to keep the Zealot from being overpowered, there'd have to be some kind of time limit on this Healing Pool. It would have to expire fairly quickly, so that the Zealot didn't run around with a huge healing pool, beat the snot out of her enemy while keeping herself healed at the same time (overpowered support classes ftw). It would be designed so that in each fight the Zealot would need to build the pool up again. Buffs could also work off of the pool, creating certain protections for her group during a fight.

What do you think?

[Commentaris]

sounds too contrived and over-designed.

give them a few direct healing spells. case solved. nothing fancy needed imo

[Hyrus]

give them a few direct healing spells. case solved. nothing fancy needed imo

I disagree here. A while back, we had a massive thread about healers, healing, and sosuch. If WAR is to not have a dedicated healing class, the only way to design it is around heals that cannot be used whenever you want. That way, your class won't be a dedicated healer, but will still have healing power as a secondary draw to that specific class. For instance, I suggested that the warrior-priest have an instant cast regen buff that lasts a few minutes (can't have more than one regen effect per target, so you can't "spam"), and might get one moderate, fast-cast heal spell to cast with a cooldown of several (15-25) seconds. That way, you're still a class that heals, but you have to dedicate your time between casting your buff and cooldown heal to things like bashing skulls. And as you're bashing skulls, you have to watch your cooldown timer, pace your energy consumption, then decide who's going to benifit most from your heal spell.

We're riding the assumption that WAR will have high hp players with lower damage than in past games, so quick, spamable healing wouldn't be such a deal breaker. Along with other minor ways for classes to negate damage or heal themselves, suddenly everyone has a decent amount of survivability and classes aren't so interdependent on eachother to be able to do anything.

The Healtap

With that said, I don't like this idea. This, essentially sounds like a more complicated lifesteal/transfer effect, to create a mechanic that mimics the goblin shaman identically. There should be some sort of conditional effect that unlocks the power to heal someone, but at this point we have too little to go off of to start speculating with remote precision. We've got scarecrows and birds... and that could mean just about anything.

You need them when you need them, otherwise why even bother.

Because when you heal your enemy's target by 40%, they get pissed off. Unfortunately, healing in past mmo's is often "all or nothing" due to how quickly players die off in pvp.

[Commentaris]

i going on the assumption that no matter how they design it there will be dedicated healing classes. meaning that there will be classes who's primary job it is to heal, for the simple reason that they can heal whereas other classes cant (no, selfheals through moral dont count).

with simpel direct heals i dont exactly mean spammable heals though. i was commenting more on the overly complex mechanic of the OP's idea.

a select few simple heals that cost x amount of action points will do just fine. these might wel have a cooldown, take the form of relatively weak regen spells, reactive proc heals, or something else.

[Vervayne]

Because when you heal your enemy's target by 40%, they get pissed off. Unfortunately, healing in past mmo's is often "all or nothing" due to how quickly players die off in pvp.

Heals aren't in the game to 'piss off' the enemy. They are there to serve a useful function to the healer and his allies. They cannot serve a useful function if they are not available when they are needed. I'm not saying make heals 'all of nothing', its already basically been said that healing will be watered down and that all classes will be doing damage. But any healing that IS in the game needs to be available when needed.

[Hyrus]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRgZo7ezNVQ&mode=related&search=

At about 2 minutes in.

a select few simple heals that cost x amount of action points will do just fine. these might wel have a cooldown, take the form of relatively weak regen spells, reactive proc heals, or something else.

That sounds fine, but the class needs to be, primarily, doing something other than healing. My discribed warrior-priest is a mid-close range character who'll bash some folks, step back a few, blast a heal, run back in and continue the face smashing. It's a secondary trait that adds color to a class that seems awful middle-ground between the witch hunter and knight. Goblin shaman might be a similar way. Throw a few nukes to build Waaagh!, spend Waaagh! on temporary combat buffs or moderate healing effects. Either way, the shaman cannot be focused on healing as it's primary trait. It's a color, but everyone's in on the action of killing other people, not just fueling other people's ability to kill. As WoW's classes demonstrated, even if you're a capable damage dealer with heals, you're going to be healing so long as you can over and over again. Unless, of course, you can't be constantly doing heals. But you can still design a class with heals without them doing nothing but healing.

Heals aren't in the game to 'piss off' the enemy. They are there to serve a useful function to the healer and his allies.

But they do. What, you've never been fighting an enemy, got them down to 10% health and then their hp rockets to 60% and then to 100% within seconds? You use all of your cooldowns and special moves to try to win just to have a character class run up and undo all your hard work and sacrifice with so much ease? You can't dodge a heal, or resist a heal, and typically they heal more than damage is put out with greater speed and efficiency on top of it. Heals are typically above and beyond a "useful function" and are normally a nessesity. A group with a healer will always win against a group without, and a group looking to do a dungeon absolutely must have a healer class, or they can't do it. That's dependancy, that's an essential power, and that is rather inconvenient when fewer people enjoy healing over something else a character role can offer.

But any healing that IS in the game needs to be available when needed.

So, what, so you can always win? If you're using a big heal with a cooldown, you chose whether or not to use it now and let the cooldown tick off, or save it when you might need it more. It's a choice. If your friend has 10 hitpoints and is in a mad dash to the center of the enemy raid and your heal spell is on cooldown, tough luck. You've already made your healing contribution towards someone else's butt and you can't be everyone's savior.

Watered down healing doesn't nessisarily have to be raw values, but simply healing over time. If you cast a heal for 50 hitpoints every 1 second, you make a contribution of 500 hitpoints over 10 seconds. If you have an instant heal that heals for 300 hitpoints, but has a 10 second cooldown, both heals are exactly the same, except one plays off burst effect and allows you to be doing something else while the spell is on cooldown, making up for that missing 200 points of healing. On the scale of things, an enemy might be doing 100 damage every 1 second, but your healing and face smashing is still making a solid contribution to the group effort without being an overwhelming and nessisary aspect to have in any group situation.

[Jamz]

Another way was to make him able to transfer his life to others, this would make him a primary target in pvp. Then maybe he could take life from others but only from party members.

Or maybe his birds can feed on the corpses of the dead giving life to people in his party.

[Lord Semaj]

Your idea is an overcomplicated use of the Morale system already in place. As I stated in the other thread, healers are welcome to a few inefficient heals as basic abilities with absurd costs. But their BEST heals, not all of them, would be tied to Morale. Healers would actually be encouraged rather than forbidden to attack the enemy to build up morale for the big heals, and you can easily conserve morale for when you need it. GOOD healers will develop a tempo to maximize healing and damage output while BAD healers will be spamming their basic crap heals and be out of action in moments. WAR simply needs to go the route of more health and less damage to support healers as they intend them. Having tanks that get two-shot by wizards just doesn't work without heal spamming.

[Vervayne]

Your idea is an overcomplicated use of the Morale system already in place. As I stated in the other thread, healers are welcome to a few inefficient heals as basic abilities with absurd costs. But their BEST heals, not all of them, would be tied to Morale.

Hmm ok, I see your point. According to what you're saying, perhaps my understanding of the Morale system is somewhat incorrect. For some reason I didn't think Morale was an individual pool based on damage done to the enemy, which is basically what you're suggesting. I thought it was more of a group effort type thing. I guess I need to go dig up more info on Morale to understand better how it works.

EDIT:
According to the FAQ, the definition of Morale is:
Morale skills are learned as characters advance according to their career. Once a fight has started a character's Morale meter starts to fill up if they are fighting well or if their group is fighting well. Morale can also decrease for losing fights. Morale skills have five ability levels, with each level providing an ability of increasing power. As the morale meter fills up, players can choose to use their lower level morale abilities (which resets the meter), or wait for the meter to increase further so that the more powerful abilities can be used.

So basically if you're losing a fight your morale decreases. You want the best healing spells to be available only when a group is already winning a fight, probably when they don't even NEED them, giving no opportunities for comebacks, and no chances for big heals when a group is dying and really could use 'em?

If a healer is going to have a pool, like morale, to draw from for big heal spells, it needs to be a pool that doesn't decrease when a group starts losing. That completely goes against the whole point of the heals. No, I will stick with the opinion that heals should NOT be tied to Morale.

[Lord Semaj]

Define losing fights. You can't. Mythic hasn't informed us what it means. Perhaps it refers to people dying in your group. If your healer is that lousy, surely having high morale is the least of your worries. A good group that is doing WELL will have high morale and be dealing out high damage, high tanking, high everything. High heals are no exception. As for what constitutes doing well? While we can't be sure, it must be a measurable mathematical statistic. Slaying enemies, for example, or dealing out damage. Even abilities cast by allies may boost morale while having allies drop dead can decrease it. Pure and simple, the team working well together deserves to live, to get the biggest damaging hits, the heaviest defenses, and the highest heals. The team that sucks does not.

[Vervayne]

Define losing fights. You can't. Mythic hasn't informed us what it means. Perhaps it refers to people dying in your group. If your healer is that lousy, surely having high morale is the least of your worries. A good group that is doing WELL will have high morale and be dealing out high damage, high tanking, high everything. High heals are no exception. As for what constitutes doing well? While we can't be sure, it must be a measurable mathematical statistic. Slaying enemies, for example, or dealing out damage. Even abilities cast by allies may boost morale while having allies drop dead can decrease it. Pure and simple, the team working well together deserves to live, to get the biggest damaging hits, the heaviest defenses, and the highest heals. The team that sucks does not.

The thing is, you can have 2 really good groups fighting each other. Maybe neither of them suck. Maybe both of them work together well, but one is winning and one is losing. Maybe even the better group is losing because the other team got the jump on them, but their morale is decreasing and they are not able to make a comeback because all of their decent healing spells are tied to something that has spun out of their control. We might as well end the fight at that point.

Do we really want Morale being the determining factor of every battle? Because if good healing spells are tied to it that's exactly what you're doing. The goal of each fight will be to build up morale and decrease the opponent's morale. You're putting the entire focus of every fight on this one thing.

[Lord Semaj]

It already is the entire focus of every battle. As the devs have made clear, the big abilities are on Morale. Whichever side is getting the best Morale flow is going to be the side that gets the highest damaging abilities. It's going to be the side that wins. I'm not suggesting anything beyond what we know is already the case. Whether you want battles to hinge on it or not, we may not have a choice as it is. Classes will be focused on getting their morale as high as possible to unleash their best attacks by whatever means morale gain is acquired. If you honestly think Mythic is going to create a system that favors the winning side every time, then you have little faith in the developers here. However the morale system works, I doubt it will be as black and white as you make it seem. Undeniably, though, it will be the focus of each player to fill that bar, making it the center of combat.

[Vervayne]

It already is the entire focus of every battle. As the devs have made clear, the big abilities are on Morale. Whichever side is getting the best Morale flow is going to be the side that gets the highest damaging abilities. It's going to be the side that wins. I'm not suggesting anything beyond what we know is already the case. Whether you want battles to hinge on it or not, we may not have a choice as it is. Classes will be focused on getting their morale as high as possible to unleash their best attacks by whatever means morale gain is acquired. If you honestly think Mythic is going to create a system that favors the winning side every time, then you have little faith in the developers here. However the morale system works, I doubt it will be as black and white as you make it seem. Undeniably, though, it will be the focus of each player to fill that bar, making it the center of combat.

I have every faith in Mythic to design a solid system. What I don't have faith in is your insistence that good healing spells be tied to Morale. That is the discussion here, not damage being tied to Morale, which we already know that it is. Mythic has NOT stated that good healing spells will depend upon Morale. I agree that classes will be focused on getting their morale up so they can unleash their DPS. Which is what they should do. Nothing unbalanced there. Lumping healing in with the same factor that unleashes the big dps is the problem imo.

[Lord Semaj]

Of course Mythic hasn't stated healing being tied to morale. It was my suggestion, had it been fact, I wouldn't have needed to suggest it. The reason the suggestion came up is due to Mythic's anti-healer stance.

Given Morale, you have two options for healers. Link to Heals or link to Damage. Combat as we know is centered around this Morale system, getting access to the big bad nukes to destroy your enemy. The healers wouldn't be much different in this, also having Morale abilities they may use and perhaps are focused on acquiring. Perhaps healing allies even raises Morale, allowing access to the higher powers. If those higher powers be damage, the focus of the healer shifts to a heal spammer who unleashes the rare bomb. This is completely contrary to what Mythic has established the healer as and much more the part of the medic in the back going "and I heal, and I heal, and I heal" till one side dies.

Linking Morale abilities to heals works to the opposite effect. The best heals are tied to Morale now, so the healer may spend the majority of the time actually FIGHTING. This is inline with what Mythic has told us about healers in this game and far from the pansies of other games. The healer spends the majority of his time in the fray while still unleashing powerful heals RARELY between shots. Now, as I said, he'd still require basic inefficent heals. Couldn't he simply spam heals and then use Morale heals anyway, creating a super healer? No. The method before when damage was tied to Morale meant the basic heals needed to be cost effective. This method, where Morale is the biggest heal booster, means basic heals need not be efficent. They can be serious energy hogs designed solely for emergency use. Regular, effective healing is reserved to the tempo created by healers to replenish their morale bar before they need their next heal. With this method, that means actually getting to fight rather than sitting in the back like a braindead surgeon spamming the same button over and over.

So again I repeat, this suggestion was brought up in the other thread to begin with simply because the alternative is too close to what Paul specifically mocked regarding healers. Tying healing to Morale is one (of my two) possible solutions to prevent healers from just being healers and make healing a more tactical and combative role as opposed to virtually every other MMO out there, which your "heals on demand" method is only going to result in recreating. When healers are able to sit there and spam the same stuff over and over from the back row, you are going to have groups that will allow nothing but that. This is what Mythic has clearly stated they wish to avoid, yet I cannot determine why you desire it so badly. Perhaps you played a healer in other games and cannot feel comfortable with this new take on healing, but either way, the intent is to diminish the focus of the Healing in the Healer. Even calling him a healer is a misnomer at this point, better suited to Combat Medic.

[Ethandril]

Shaman Specialty
Greenskins live for battle, and fighting provides the strange and twisted power that fuels their magic. By participating in battle – calling down the wrath of Gork and Mork, or just being up in the fight with the lads – the Shaman taps into the collective frenzy to gain Waaagh! power. This gathered Waaagh! energy drives the strength of his supporting magic to new heights. With Waaagh! power blazing in his eyes, his spells can heal more wounds or empower his allies to achieve feats of unbelievable destruction.

Moral and Healing will be connected, like the Waaagh! power of the Greenskins, it's just an example.

Since every class will be unique in the way how they fight or in this case, heal, we have to wait,
till we get more information about the Zealot.

[Ken]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Careers - Goblin Shaman
Shaman Specialty
Greenskins live for battle, and fighting provides the strange and twisted power that fuels their magic. By participating in battle – calling down the wrath of Gork and Mork, or just being up in the fight with the lads – the Shaman taps into the collective frenzy to gain Waaagh! power. This gathered Waaagh! energy drives the strength of his supporting magic to new heights. With Waaagh! power blazing in his eyes, his spells can heal more wounds or empower his allies to achieve feats of unbelievable destruction.

Moral and Healing will be connected, like the Waaagh! power of the Greenskins, it's just an example.

Since every class will be unique in the way how they fight or in this case, heal, we have to wait,
till we get more information about the Zealot.

Yea I agree morale, or waagh or whatever, will be linked to healing for the "healer" careers. But not limited to. I think it'll all depend on the healing abilities tied to morale, and the ones that aren't, and how it all fits together when playing the career.

Personally, I like it that way. Still having heal and damage spells outside of morale, but you can learn morale abilities (whether they be damage or healing, not necessarily stronger or weaker but at the very least "icing on the cake". Thick icing) through your career advancements. And you'll still get your base healing/damage morale abilities just through a trainer (or whatever means they have of getting your basic career abilities)

But that's assuming what I have in mind is the way it's being done :)
So far I've only seen everyone only really having 3 morale abilities...but that's just alpha. And to be fair, they've only really said "LEVEL 1, 2 and 3" morale abilities. Not restricted to 3 total.

If anyone else has anymore info on that...whether I'm wrong or more happened since I last saw. Please tell me! The whole morale idea is awesome to me. If you own. You're gonna own harder. The end.

[Vail]

I think we will see alot of high % HOTS in this game.
The OPs orginal idea is conceptually solid with some tweaking.
I am hoping the days of hard core heal spikes are more distant, maybe high moral or WAAGH required for a mega save.

[Ruinx]

I think we will see alot of high % HOTS in this game.
The OPs orginal idea is conceptually solid with some tweaking.
I am hoping the days of hard core heal spikes are more distant, maybe high moral or WAAGH required for a mega save.

I think Vail here said what I was planning to, only using approximately 100x less words.

[Vervayne]

Ok, its not exactly what I proposed, but the new description of the zealot does involve tapping the enemy to provide benefits to the allies. \o/

[Noli me Tangere]

A mechanic as simple as (and this likely wouldn't be best for the Zealot, possibly for another class) an effect that allowed you to heal allies around you for a small portion of the damage you inflict on your enemies added onto your regular abilities to damage, buff, debuff, and heal would be a useful mechanic.

[Lord Semaj]

JOSH: Being a "pure" healer will be an inefficient play-style based on how our careers are designed. The Warrior Priest, for example, builds Righteous Fury by dealing melee damage. That Fury pool gates some of his support abilities and augments others. If the WP hangs back and just tries to use his baseline, non-fury abilities to act as a pure healer, he will suck like a diesel-fueled vacuum cleaner.

It will be impossible to "focus" on healing rather than damage, so players won't be able to ignore combat healers in favor of "pure" healers because pure healers won't exist.

STEVE: Right. The point I was making is that there is no class that is more effective "just" healing.

http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/community/grabBag/grabBag_feb2007.php


Told ya so.