This rant is coming from a perspective where healers and their respective premade groups are optimized for healing and are coordinated for ult dumps.
Healers are a problem and offer too much group utility in Dragonhold/pvp in general. In the last few patches, you could pick off healers within a premade with well-timed stamina bursts or attrition via damage.
However, in Dragonhold - the defensive skill ceiling has been lowered via lowering key burst damage like dizzy swing/ult cast times and overall damage, via dots - so healers that are well-built but not necessarily good players, now have a much easier time staying alive (slower reaction time required to block/break free and given how much less damage players do now).
Premades/Ball groups are overperforming
There just isn't sufficient damage to kill premades with decently built healers without coordinated ult dumps (ideally with a colossus). Some recent unwarranted changes to popular classes like magsorcs with matriarchs/power surge are compounding this healing problem. Additionally, existing things like healing monster sets like Bogdan/Chokethorn/Earthgore add to the advantage that premade ballgroups already have.
Solution : Experiment with a Battle Spirit healing debuff, where healing from 3rd parties have diminishing returns. Something more needs to be implemented to incentivize groups to NOT stick together while stacking heals.
Healing monster are overperforming in PvPs
There's a need for healing in PvE but when it comes to PvP, healing sets in ballgroups overperform. For example, Chokethorn heals someone for 20k hp over 4 seconds every 10 seconds - that hps is far more than the dps from damage sets such as Valkyn/Selene/Grothdarr because it isn't mitigated by resists/blocking/shields. Yes, you can bash it but by the time you do that, your main target is likely at full hp because you have to waste one global cooldown and walk towards the chokethorn. Additionally, the utility from the burst heal from Earthgore/Chokethorn on top of healing skills is derived from the ability to quickly pull someone out of execution range/outheal ult dumps.
Solution : Implement the Battle Spirit healing debuff or tone down the healing/utility from these sets : for example, reducing Chokethorn's insane range - I think it's currently 20m+.
Bursting healers is harder than ever
With the nerf to healer counters aka stamina dizzy burst/overall dps/fast break requirement cc's like dizzy, healers now have an easier time staying alive because their natural predators are now nerfed. Healing outperforms almost everything except colossus ults.
Solution : Reimplement dizzy stun
Implement Solo Queue/Group Queue
Given all the above mentioned issues with healing, premades compound that issue against solo queuers because there is little chance/margin to solo burst down their healer with the normalization/nerfs to stamina burst/overall damage. So what usually ends up happening is, the premade survives/tanks damage from pug groups before they coordinate ult dumps. In previous patches, solo queuers had the ability to pick off their healers but now they don't.
tl;dr - this meta REALLY rewards the worst things about bgs : healers/premades/magsorcs/tankier builds. In the previous meta, dots were unbalanced but the game was much faster and fun, damage actually felt meaningful. Nowadays, just throwing on a sufficiently tanky build and running with a competent healer guarantees survival, which wasn't the case in any of the previous patches.
A meaningful solution would be to reduce the heals from 3rd parties because self sufficiency/proper resource management should be rewarded - not relying on a tanky healbot/voice comms.
Edited by SoixanteNeuf on November 15, 2019 5:12AM