About healing AoEs in Cyrodiil

BardInSolitude · June 2021

It is a well-established fact that all healing AoEs, both HoT and direct as well as skills like Purge, can target a maximum of 6 allied players. This is something that has been long discovered through testing and is not explained by the game at any point, which is why the vast majority of players that I've met (even those that have healed for quite a while) are not aware of this very important game mechanic.

Besides the fact that the game has done a poor job at explaining healing targeting caps, the cap in itself is a problematic mechanic because it is not yet known (at least to myself and other fellow theorycrafters I've conversed with) what the targeting criteria are when more than 6 allied players exist within the area of a healing AoE. This means that we can't reliably apply set buffs dependent on healing and that we can't even guarantee who does and doesn't get our heals.

Now, what are some solutions to this problem? Here's my first idea: explicity state any targeting caps existing in every healing AoE and streamline targeting criteria so that players can account for them. The advantage of this is that it does not change game mechanics but merely makes existing mechanics clear to players. The disadvantage is that these game mechanics are problematic because healers can't target all their group allies at once in Cyrodiil, since the cap is at 6 but group size is 12.

So here's another idea: do what I said above, but on top of that increase the healing cap to 12 players. The advantage is that now there is no mystery as to who gets healed by whom in a group. The disadvantage is that group healing becomes doubly strong at no cost.

So here's a further idea: remove cross-group healing and on top of that implement a mechanic whereby healing AoE skills do progressively less healing starting from 7 players and reaching 12. More specifically, if a healing AoE heals for 10k when it targets 6 group members, at 12 group members it should heal 5k to account for the fact that double the amount of players is doubled. This has the advantage that it keep group healing as a whole the same, since two group healers will be healing twice as many people for half as much, but now healing is fully deterministic instead of (seemingly) random.

Applying the same principle to Cleanse, its healing can be likewise be progressively nerfed, but there is a complication with the number of effects purged because it is odd (3). I think it absolutely fine to reduce purged effects to 2 when 7-12 players are targeted, though that would not be as neat of a scaling.

I'm eager to hear other people's ideas on this. Perhaps there are further implications of my ideas that I haven't considered or, hopefully, even better suggestions!

Edit: The removal of cross-healing is not necessary, as long as there exists a system that prioritises group members at all times (even if nearby non-group members are lower on health). That way healing inside a group is still deterministic while solo/zerg healing is not affected, which gives us the best of both worlds; better mechanics for groups and no disruption of the small-scale and solo playstyles.

FantasticFreddie · June 2021

No.
No to all of them except clarifying the tooltips

Joy_Division · June 2021

You want to revisit no cross healing even though that was an incredibly divisive mechanic? Easy for people who run in groups to say that mechanic was great because it gives them even more of a rules advantage. No thanks.

Also as a healer, I would prefer the system in place, even if its exact mechanics are a mystery. From what I can gather "smart" healing at least attempts to select the six players who most need the heal. If the actual targets aren't always perfect, they generally do need healing and more importantly, I'd want the players I am healing to get as much healing as possible rather than diluting it across everyone as your regressive proposal has it. If I use something like the NB heal tether and have 4 group members really low, under your system, those 4 will receive only half what is on Live. Also, as much as it is frustrating for PuGs to "steal" heals, sometimes that is desirable because many of them are walking VD fodder.

BardInSolitude · June 2021

Thanks for the response. Here are my thoughts:

Joy_Division wrote: »

You want to revisit no cross healing even though that was an incredibly divisive mechanic? Easy for people who run in groups to say that mechanic was great because it gives them even more of a rules advantage. No thanks.

Cross-healing or otherwise, this idea was just food for thought mostly. The current system is really problematic and something needs to be done, be it what I suggested or something else. At the very least group members should be prioritised if they already aren't and it should be explicitely stated how "smart healing" works, if it even does exist.

Joy_Division wrote: »

From what I can gather "smart" healing at least attempts to select the six players who most need the heal.

This is a problem because when you're prebuffing with Regen or Echoing Vigor on your group sometimes the same targets are selected simply because they are not at max health, so you end up wasting GCDs casting the Regen more than 4 times and Echoing Vigor more than twice - or you simply can't evenly cover the entire group. "Smart heal" needs to be smarter by avoiding to target allies who may be low on health but who already have a Regen or Vigor running on them by the given healer - but that's a somewhat different topic.

Joy_Division wrote: »

If I use something like the NB heal tether and have 4 group members really low, under your system, those 4 will receive only half what is on Live.

I personally don't see that as a problem. I personally think Tether is inferior to Barrier, but even then with two Tethers you'd cover the entire raid the same way you'd do half the raid with one Tether. It is a gameplay change, but I personally think it's worth it in order to remove uncertainty and apparent 'randomness' from the current game mechanic.

Joy_Division wrote: »

If I use something like the NB heal tether and have 4 group members really low, under your system, those 4 will receive only half what is on Live.

VD fodder PuGs will be fodder due to their low max HP and resistances, with or without loose heals.

YandereGirlfriend · June 2021

I would agree with these changes.

However, even if one disagrees with the specifics, one aspect that should have universal agreement is the call to actually publicize the heal/buff target cap so that more than the theorycrafting Illuminati in end-game PvP/E are aware of it.

In addition, I would also like to see shielding sets/abilities behave in a "smart" fashion, e.g. to prioritize group members without an instance of that particular shield on them.

Finally, even if the healing cap is not increased, I would also like to see sets that provide buffs or debuffs that are not tied directly to a healing event have the target cap lifted entirely. As it is, it serves no purpose other than to annoy those few players who even know about the strict limitation that's placed on many of their sets.

DTStormfox · June 2021

Seems like to me you just want to buff ball groups. I oppose that idea.

Kartalin · June 2021

OP, remind me which guild you’re in, is it Rough Riders or Army of the Covenant, just curious mainly.

Clarifying tooltips would be nice.

BardInSolitude · June 2021

DTStormfox wrote: »

Seems like to me you just want to buff ball groups. I oppose that idea.

I would sincerely appreciate folks that either agree or disagree with my propositions to contribute to the conversation by supporting their views rather than merely stating them. My point about diminishing returns was exactly to prevent groups of 7-12 players to benefit from the change I suggested.

Kartalin wrote: »

OP, remind me which guild you’re in, is it Rough Riders or Army of the Covenant, just curious mainly.

My allegiance lies with the Covenant.

Soul_Demon · June 2021

Personally I feel the healing changes should be focused on simply making all HOT's not stack on player with 100% health.

If a healer casts a heal and it hits a player who is at 100% health it should not do a single thing---no waiting for any time-frame on them for damage to happen, just do absolutely nothing to make heals need to be cast when actual damage to health has happened. Healing a group should not be pre emptive, it should be reacting to what is happening.

At least until there is a mechanic to 'pre stack damage' on a group exists, we should not be allowing the 'pre stacking of heals'

Joy_Division · June 2021

I would agree that heals should prioritize people actually in your own group. Though if people find that their heals are constantly going to PuGs, that just tells me that that person is zerging and stacking themselves in a blob of Pugs. I've mained a templar since launch and know 100% the deal with this.

BardInSolitude wrote: »

This is a problem because when you're prebuffing with Regen or Echoing Vigor on your group sometimes the same targets are selected simply because they are not at max health, so you end up wasting GCDs casting the Regen more than 4 times and Echoing Vigor more than twice - or you simply can't evenly cover the entire group. "Smart heal" needs to be smarter by avoiding to target allies who may be low on health but who already have a Regen or Vigor running on them by the given healer - but that's a somewhat different topic.

Gonna be honest here, I have zero sympathy that a group finds it awkward to efficiently stack 4 Radiating Regens on every member. Not being able to further abuse this powerful easy skill is not something I consider a problem.

I personally don't see that as a problem. I personally think Tether is inferior to Barrier, but even then with two Tethers you'd cover the entire raid the same way you'd do half the raid with one Tether. It is a gameplay change, but I personally think it's worth it in order to remove uncertainty and apparent 'randomness' from the current game mechanic.

I can only cast one heal tether. I don't want it diluted to people who don't need the healing.

BardInSolitude · June 2021

Joy_Division wrote: »

I would agree that heals should prioritize people actually in your own group. Though if people find that their heals are constantly going to PuGs, that just tells me that that person is zerging and stacking themselves in a blob of Pugs. I've mained a templar since launch and know 100% the deal with this.

Joy_Division wrote: »

Gonna be honest here, I have zero sympathy that a group finds it awkward to efficiently stack 4 Radiating Regens on every member. Not being able to further abuse this powerful easy skill is not something I consider a problem.

There are two issues posed in my original post:

1. Player caps in AoE healing and cleansing abilites should not exist because they are unintuitive (and here I should add that the other issue is that no such cap exists for offensive AoE abilities)
2. One solution to this problem would be my aforementioned suggestion.

So if you don't agree with (1) then there's not even a reason to discuss (2). But for folks that do agree with (1) it'd be useful to discuss potential solutions, be it what I suggested or a variety of other things that I might have not even considered.

To be perfectly clear, I started this thread because I see this as a matter of principle above else. I've long found ways to go around the apparent stochasticity of AoE healing and purging but this does not detract from the fact that I believe it to be an inherent issue with the game.

ResidentContrarian · June 2021

I don't know of a single healer that wants cross-healing gone again, but even if it were to happen, it won't just buff your ball group and would be a massive mistake.

Cross-healing also provides a nerf mechanic for some builds that can stack a massive amount of healing on themselves and allies in a smaller group.

With the balance of the game being heavily tilted to offense, the "buffs" you are talking about will make certain groups (even smaller ones) invincible.

That's not exactly healthy for the game, and will definitely lead to healing nerfs that will give ball groups even more of an advantage than you suggestion already will.

As for caps on AoE healing in PvP, as a healer I never cared. Then again, I actually track every players health and use more than one skill: exactly what healing is supposed to be in the game. I seriously doubt ZOS or anyone else wants to buff one-button playstyles.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · June 2021

Soul_Demon wrote: »

Personally I feel the healing changes should be focused on simply making all HOT's not stack on player with 100% health.

If a healer casts a heal and it hits a player who is at 100% health it should not do a single thing---no waiting for any time-frame on them for damage to happen, just do absolutely nothing to make heals need to be cast when actual damage to health has happened. Healing a group should not be pre emptive, it should be reacting to what is happening.

At least until there is a mechanic to 'pre stack damage' on a group exists, we should not be allowing the 'pre stacking of heals'

There is a mechanic to pre-stack damage a lot of skills do this, its what all players who time burst windows use to do so. Skills such as proxy det are a perfect example of pre-stacked damage but there are many others such as Vate 2h. It's actually one of the reasons why over healing is such an important mechanic in ESO (and has been since launch in 2014).

Now on the healing side I don't think we should increase the healing cap higher but I would like a change to HoT's ideally to target first those without the HoT and then those who's effect has the least remaining duration.

Personally I'd also be happy with group only healing active for those in a group. What I mean by this is that if you are in a group (whatever the size) you can only be healed by those also in your group. Players outside your group can't heal you and you can't heal them. Solo players could still heal solo players.
This could potentially expand to players in small groups being able to heal each other too so you could have multiple 4m groups if you really wanted to and still heal each other but I don't really feel strongly about this.
If they do implement this it must be mentioned in battle spirit / some buff or debuff on your character, maybe they can do it like the pale order ring i.e. the more players in your group the less healing you can receive from those outside your group and likewise the less effect your heals have on them (i would prefer the heal simply not being able to target them though).

Also increasing the amount of debuffs purged by skills is just going to cause more upset in the community, despite this not actually being a real issue. I would fix this in other ways.

xylena_lazarow · June 2021

Group combat should be about killing the enemy, not indefinitely stalling the fight by running around the walls or towers of a hopelessly failed objective in a blob of heal purge spam. Even mediocre groups that can't consistently kill pugs can still do this much, demanding lag-inducing numbers to actually get rid of them. Very tedious.

Joy_Division · June 2021

BardInSolitude wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

I would agree that heals should prioritize people actually in your own group. Though if people find that their heals are constantly going to PuGs, that just tells me that that person is zerging and stacking themselves in a blob of Pugs. I've mained a templar since launch and know 100% the deal with this.

Joy_Division wrote: »

Gonna be honest here, I have zero sympathy that a group finds it awkward to efficiently stack 4 Radiating Regens on every member. Not being able to further abuse this powerful easy skill is not something I consider a problem.

There are two issues posed in my original post:

1. Player caps in AoE healing and cleansing abilites should not exist because they are unintuitive (and here I should add that the other issue is that no such cap exists for offensive AoE abilities)
2. One solution to this problem would be my aforementioned suggestion.

So if you don't agree with (1) then there's not even a reason to discuss (2). But for folks that do agree with (1) it'd be useful to discuss potential solutions, be it what I suggested or a variety of other things that I might have not even considered.

To be perfectly clear, I started this thread because I see this as a matter of principle above else. I've long found ways to go around the apparent stochasticity of AoE healing and purging but this does not detract from the fact that I believe it to be an inherent issue with the game.

My guess is that those caps are in there because in the development of the game, the devs recognized groups would otherwise not die (in both PvE and PvP). If that is the case, it is an inelegant solution, but it does work to the objective so I don;t have a huge problem with it even if it is unintuitive.

What has been one of the most common complaints on these forums for a while now is healing in general and specifically how potent it is in organized groups. So, the original thinking of the devs was correct: just imagine how unkillable these groups would be without that cap of 6. I think the game calculates healing before damage, which is why the breath of life spamming templar doesn;t die when an offensive player spam execute. In every fantasy game I have ever played, healing is considerably more expensive resource-wise and even still less potent than corresponding offensive skills. All of this (and more) makes healing especially potent in ESO, which is probably why the original devs felt the need to put the cap at 6, and I think it was wise for them to do so.

I don't see the damage AoE cap as comparable because that mechanic was not necessary from the beginning and did give certain groups an advantageous ruleset to play by (whereas removing the healing cap would benefit organized groups). When a group of 24 stacked on crown, only 6 of them took damage when hit by meteors, spin-to-wins, impulses, etc., and gave the tighter running groups a ton of artificial survivability. Some group members countered by claiming that actually the AoE caps more so helped the disorganized PuGs, but even if that were the case (doubtful) AoE caps were still dumb because they give someone an advantageous ruleset.

I can see the point about being unintuitive. But I value practicality and results more than intuition and principle. Rapid Regen and other HoTs are already super strong, healing is already (and always has been) really high, until those are no longer the case then the devs original reasoning still applies.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · June 2021

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Group combat should be about killing the enemy, not indefinitely stalling the fight by running around the walls or towers of a hopelessly failed objective in a blob of heal purge spam. Even mediocre groups that can't consistently kill pugs can still do this much, demanding lag-inducing numbers to actually get rid of them. Very tedious.

So is it fine to fight inside a keep provided you can eventually flip the flags?

xylena_lazarow · June 2021

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

So is it fine to fight inside a keep provided you can eventually flip the flags?

Let's make a deal. You can stay inside unflagged keeps, if I can once again grab scrolls after the gates close.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · June 2021

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

So is it fine to fight inside a keep provided you can eventually flip the flags?

Let's make a deal. You can stay inside unflagged keeps, if I can once again grab scrolls after the gates close.

I would be fine with this

YandereGirlfriend · June 2021

Anyone NOT wanting to see tooltips clarified to include information about target caps is engaging is obvious Obscurantism and gate-keeping against more casual players.

It's like Jack Nicholson's character saying, "You can't handle the truth!" at Tom Cruise. The casuals can handle the truth and the game isn't doing anyone any favors by shielding them from it, as ugly as it is.

ResidentContrarian wrote: »

I don't know of a single healer that wants cross-healing gone again, but even if it were to happen, it won't just buff your ball group and would be a massive mistake.

Cross-healing also provides a nerf mechanic for some builds that can stack a massive amount of healing on themselves and allies in a smaller group.

With the balance of the game being heavily tilted to offense, the "buffs" you are talking about will make certain groups (even smaller ones) invincible.

That's not exactly healthy for the game, and will definitely lead to healing nerfs that will give ball groups even more of an advantage than you suggestion already will.

As for caps on AoE healing in PvP, as a healer I never cared. Then again, I actually track every players health and use more than one skill: exactly what healing is supposed to be in the game. I seriously doubt ZOS or anyone else wants to buff one-button playstyles.

The target cap isn't only in PvP it's in ALL content types and it affects more than just healing. That's why you need two healers in trials because one Illustrious Healing tick will only cover half of a group. Having two healers in a trial means that the entire group can be healed within one GCD when stacked and taking damage from a boss.

Fun fact but many sets and abilities that apply de-buffs are also capped at 6 targets (yes, even player abilities). And, of course, this holds true for buff sets as well.

As a general rule, it should be your expectation that everything that you use to buff or de-buff is capped at 6 targets unless you explicitly see its text say otherwise.

Most people go through the game thinking that they are much more useful to their group than they really are because they are blissfully unaware of this fact.

Durham · June 2021

DAOC healing took crazy talent. Healers were the most respected part of the group and the most important by far. The healers and CCers were the best players in the group. This game with smart healing healing is just a joke comparted to grandfather of PVP in this game DAOC. Its 10 times easier to pull off, I'm not a big fan of the healing and I also think its a big contributor of latency issues in this game (smart side of it).

BardInSolitude · June 2021

Durham wrote: »

DAOC healing took crazy talent. Healers were the most respected part of the group and the most important by far. The healers and CCers were the best players in the group. This game with smart healing healing is just a joke comparted to grandfather of PVP in this game DAOC. Its 10 times easier to pull off, I'm not a big fan of the healing and I also think its a big contributor of latency issues in this game (smart side of it).

Never played or even heard of this game, so I can't make a direct comparison, but healing in ESO certainly isn't easy. It's not incredibly difficult either, but it must have some degree of difficulty since good and reliable PvP healers are hard to come by - and it's easy to see the difference between good and bad healers not just in healing numbers but also in uptimes of crucial buffs, debuffs and proc sets.

Besides, I didn't start the thread because I wanted to make healing easier, but because I wanted to make it more transparent. There are few of us who actually know how healing works and that's a problem. As for how to solve that problem, I just gave one possible suggestion.

ResidentContrarian wrote: »

Then again, I actually track every players health and use more than one skill: exactly what healing is supposed to be in the game. I seriously doubt ZOS or anyone else wants to buff one-button playstyles.

Not sure where you got the idea that I'm advocating a one-button playstyle. Honestly, I often find myself not having enough slots for all the skills I want to include in my group healer builds. Healing is by far the most CPM-demanding role in PvP, so...

Crown · June 2021

Regarding healing priorities, my suggestion is while the healer is in a group, multiple target heals will prioritize the players in group missing the most health. Only if nobody in group is missing health will it heal out of group prioritizing the players missing the most health.

Example, I'm in group with three other people and I cast an area heal that can heal six players in range.

In my group are:
Player 1 missing 12k health
Player 2 missing 3k health
Player 3 missing 100 health
Me at full health

Outside my group in range of the heal are:
Pug 1 missing 25k health
Pug 2 missing 15k health
Pug 3 missing 10k health
Solo 1 missing 20k health
Solo 2 missing 5k health
Solo 3 missing 5k health

The area heal would hit:
Players 1, 2 and 3 due to them being in my group and missing any health.
Pugs 1, 2, and Solo 1 due to them being the ones missing the most health from the available non-group slots of healing.

The obvious edge case where we would sometime prefer something different is when a random non-grouped player is missing a lot of health and standing on top of your group who is only missing a little bit (like standing in caltrops). The random non-grouped player is VD fodder that you can't heal.

Starshadw · June 2021

Durham wrote: »

DAOC healing took crazy talent. Healers were the most respected part of the group and the most important by far. The healers and CCers were the best players in the group. This game with smart healing healing is just a joke comparted to grandfather of PVP in this game DAOC. Its 10 times easier to pull off, I'm not a big fan of the healing and I also think its a big contributor of latency issues in this game (smart side of it).

As someone who mains a templar healer in ESO and who has played a healer in other games, the fact that the devs keep winnowing away at the smart healing in ESO is aggravating because the way the game is designed necessitates it.

Tab-targeting does not work well in ESO, particularly in PvP, and you can double that when it comes to trying to target a specific friendly individual. The game simply has no mechanics allowing you to do so. Quickly switching between targets is also difficult. The dynamic movement and combat adds to this, as unlike other MMOs where combat is much more static, it's near impossible to follow the movements and location of everyone in your group. In other MMOs, healers tend to watch health bars, and click-and-heal as needed, and throw out the AOE heal when they see massive damage hitting the entire group - that simply doesn't work here in ESO.

Just removing the 360 degree aspect of smart healing in ESO (which happened years ago now) has caused aggravations that persist - no matter how many times I remind folks that if they are behind me, they aren't getting heals, in the heat of PvP combat, people aren't paying attention. So I am constantly on the move, attempting to offer heals to the group I'm in, while also dealing with being cced and attacked myself.

Are AOEs adding to the performance issues (and that doesn't just include healing, that includes damage and cc)? We went through months of testing, and the devs said time and again they didn't spot any noticeable improvement when AOEs were limited in various ways. *shrug* That's why they re-implemented cross-healing - because after testing, they didn't see any significant improvement in performance.

ResidentContrarian · June 2021

Starshadw wrote: »

Are AOEs adding to the performance issues (and that doesn't just include healing, that includes damage and cc)? We went through months of testing, and the devs said time and again they didn't spot any noticeable improvement when AOEs were limited in various ways. *shrug* That's why they re-implemented cross-healing - because after testing, they didn't see any significant improvement in performance.

I'll bet the real performance issue lies with the "queue" system that seems to exist on skills themselves. Skills themselves have priority in this game. The absolute proof of it, is that you almost never see two players kill each other. Ever wonder why that is?

I've played on the same exact connection with my brother and we've only double KO'd in a duel less than 5 times over the last 5 years.

That's only possible because something in the game is deciding what skill does damage, when it does it, how often, and when there are two pieces of damage (or healing and damage at the same time), which goes first.

This system, whether intentional or not, is even more noticeable the more it lags. Certain skills you should never slot because they aren't going to work in lag, and most of those skills happen to be skills that have a lot of checks and perform worse than their counterparts or get you killed vs. anyone using the counterpart when it's lagging (see flurry v. jabs. there's a reason why you see streamers dropping jabs when its laggy and it's not because flurry is the best skill on Nirn). Other comparisions: uppercut v. DK whip, stonefist v. flame clench, rapid regen v. ash cloud v. healing springs (though healing seems to always be prioritized these days which they changed sometime back to be the case, compounding the ball group advantage...).

The game does not operate in real-time. What it seems like is that it works somewhat behind real-time with a queue system determining skill priority. If such a system is in place it explains everything about lag, skills not firing, etc.

And if such as system is in place, I would rather damage be prioritized or there be no queue or priority at all.

But such a change would have a massive effect on players in Cyro, esp. ones that are benefit from lag or overpowered defense mechanics like ball of lightning and cloak. Stam might also become even more OP...