Heal and shield stacking needs to go away in PvP. The players know it and zos has to know it by now. Tack it on to Battlespirit and all of those issues are gone. The only ones that would have a problem with this are the ones exploiting that design flaw.

Theist_VII wrote: »

Estin wrote: »

Theist_VII wrote: »

Estin wrote: »

Stafford197 wrote: »

Taril wrote: »

The fundamental problem with healing is that there are only 2 base stats.

Max Resource - Which scales Damage and Healing
Max Health - Which scales health and some self sustain options (Notably "Tank" skills)

Ergo, no matter what you do, Healing is always going to end up being broken. If it scales of Max Resource, then DPS who stack it for damage get to also do lots of healing. If it scales off Max Health then healers get to be unkillable tanks.

So maybe we say, that healing only scales off a secondary stat similar to Weapon/Spell Damage... But then we a similar problem to now where DPS stack Max Health to become tanky because they don't care about Max Resource and can stack Max Health as a base stat while having W/S Damage as a secondary stat. Having Heals as a secondary stat would lead to again unkillable tank healers who stack Max Health.

Meaning on a fundamental level, they either have to kill diversity and make ONE resource for all Damage and ONE resource for all healing, or create a new base attribute that specifically scales healing.

Meanwhile, they'd need to tone down (Or remove) W/S Damage and put more emphasis on Max Resource (Also, remove the arbitrary facet of Sorc's shield that allows it to scale off Max Magicka for some reason) to reduce the prevalence of Health Stacking DPS who get tons of damage anyway because of secondary stats.

All of which would be a massive undertaking, with revisions to basically every single set that exists in the game on top of tons of rebalancing.

The issue is easy to solve…. remove Weapon/Spell Damage from our stats. Replace it across the game with %Buffs to specific stats (Physical Damage, Frost Damage, Healing Done, etc) which we can use to increase our power instead of having us stack what is essentially a generic “increase all damage and healing done” stat.

Magicka and Stamina will then remain as the only stats which determine baseline damage and healing before %buffs. This increases their importance, simplifies the character stats/calculations, and makes it harder to stack Health/tankiness unless willing to suffer a big loss of effectiveness.

Maybe easy to solve on paper, but would be incredibly hard to implement. I don't know why people keep saying Massive Game Change is an easy thing to do because it sounds simple on paper.

Making your Max Resources predominately scale your healing would provide the least harm, and is such an easy solution.

You change two % variables in the code. While it might be difficult for someone without years of experience coding, a group of developers could trace the code after repeated trial and error (assuming they don’t have it in a file already documented) and adjust it within a weekend of work. Then they could begin playtesting.

If the code is so tangled that a weekend for your whole team would be an insufficient time frame to isolate two variables, there truly is no hope.

My belief in where the difficulty truly resides, would be getting the several extremely difficult to obtain “Okay” answers from the gatekeepers of positive change within the game. Anyone who’s worked for a company with as many layers as Zenimax Online Studios can attest to how difficult enacting change truly is.

Estin wrote: »

Stafford197 wrote: »

Taril wrote: »

The fundamental problem with healing is that there are only 2 base stats.

Max Resource - Which scales Damage and Healing
Max Health - Which scales health and some self sustain options (Notably "Tank" skills)

Ergo, no matter what you do, Healing is always going to end up being broken. If it scales of Max Resource, then DPS who stack it for damage get to also do lots of healing. If it scales off Max Health then healers get to be unkillable tanks.

So maybe we say, that healing only scales off a secondary stat similar to Weapon/Spell Damage... But then we a similar problem to now where DPS stack Max Health to become tanky because they don't care about Max Resource and can stack Max Health as a base stat while having W/S Damage as a secondary stat. Having Heals as a secondary stat would lead to again unkillable tank healers who stack Max Health.

Meaning on a fundamental level, they either have to kill diversity and make ONE resource for all Damage and ONE resource for all healing, or create a new base attribute that specifically scales healing.

Meanwhile, they'd need to tone down (Or remove) W/S Damage and put more emphasis on Max Resource (Also, remove the arbitrary facet of Sorc's shield that allows it to scale off Max Magicka for some reason) to reduce the prevalence of Health Stacking DPS who get tons of damage anyway because of secondary stats.

All of which would be a massive undertaking, with revisions to basically every single set that exists in the game on top of tons of rebalancing.

The issue is easy to solve…. remove Weapon/Spell Damage from our stats. Replace it across the game with %Buffs to specific stats (Physical Damage, Frost Damage, Healing Done, etc) which we can use to increase our power instead of having us stack what is essentially a generic “increase all damage and healing done” stat.

Magicka and Stamina will then remain as the only stats which determine baseline damage and healing before %buffs. This increases their importance, simplifies the character stats/calculations, and makes it harder to stack Health/tankiness unless willing to suffer a big loss of effectiveness.

Address heal stacking too and the chances of players being immortal through crosshealing drops drastically.

Also want to add, yes, cross-heals need to not stack, but replace/refresh each other when you have two of the same one. That is it’s own problem.

Ok, great. If it's so easy, go work for zos then. Go through every item set in the game and replace anything that gives weapon and spell damage with this new resource. Go through every item set in the game and modify any proc set that scales off of weapon and spell damage so it works with the new resource. Modify every single skill, passive, and CP that affects or is affected by weapon and spell damage. Do the same for every status effect. Make sure you don't forget enemy NPCs because they also have weapon and spell damage applied to their attacks as well. Don't forget about critical heals either. Is this still sounding like an easy weekend project?

To someone unknowing of dependent code, this must seem like a massive undertaking. I get it.

Every line of code that does a specific action is tied to another, finding the root multiplier that was assigned for damage and then the one for healing, and then changing the assigned values, would cause an echo of mathematical corrections to each of the following “problems” you’ve named.

Now, that’s assuming the code is unraveled and clean. If random values have different inherent multipliers, then you would have a mess to solve.

ZOS boast that they took a year of performance, and that they’ve cleaned up their code.

Changing the value of X-X1(0%) and X-X2(100%) should be nothing to a professional under those circumstances, they would just need the approval from leadership.

Yeah it probably would just require changing a few variables and the approval of leadership, but I hope they wont get the approval of the leadership because I and most other players do not want to change healing to scale only from maximum mag/stam. You discuss if and how this this change can be implemented ignoring that mist are against implementing it. This change would not solve any issues but create many new ones.

Theist_VII wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Theist_VII wrote: »

Explain how moving from Tarnished Nightmare to Bone Pirate would devolve your experience

No, I'd be moving from my 64 hp DK brawler into a Sorc or NB that actually benefits from a max stat pool meta. And so would a lot of other minmax tryhards. Forcing solo brawlers into inferior max stat pool builds, that are now strained for density by another stat, accomplishes what exactly? Ball groups don't lose a thing. If you think ball groups can't minmax around this restriction with ease, then you vastly underestimate them, and should talk to more ball group players.

Yes they do, clearly at that.

Every ball group has 12 Regens and 12 Vigors up at all times, when those ticks are no longer 2k each, and instead 250-500 each, from 35k health tanks, you immediately see those groups start to get picked off from high sustained pressure that cannot be helped. Those groups will die irregardless of how skillfully they play.

Then they adapt, and have most of their group switch to Max Magicka or Max Stamina for better cross-healing and become susceptible to burst damage and have to actually react to combat.

With the proposed change, all bases are covered.

Except that the ticks of selfhealing get reduced the same making other playstiles also die irregardless of how skillfully they play.

Ballgroups would have to switch only their healers to Max magicka/stamina who do not need wpn dmg anyway as they dont deal dmg while their DDs could continue stacking wpn dmg without worrying about healing as it comes from healers.
Sometimes they already do that for healing procs.

Taril wrote: »

peacenote wrote: »

Seriously, why are so many people out to get healers?

Mostly because Healers often end up being major sources of PvP imbalance.

Typically because in order for their spot on a limited team to be justified, they have to output enough healing to make up for the loss of an extra damage dealer. Which often results in them outhealing 2 dedicated DD's (Which creates frustration where you need a significant numbers advantage to counter 1 healer)

PvP players tend to like it when fight outcomes are determined based on who utilizes their attacks better, rather than who has the better pocket healer.

P.s. "Don't like it, don't play it" doesn't work when your gameplay is impacted by other people playing healers.

Well, I wasn't just talking PvP. I feel like we're getting it from all sides, including things like the rollout of the Pale Order Ring, such that one player can wear something that actively makes another player's role null and void. In my opinion, ESO has always been a bit special where being a healer was more satisfying and had extra magic to it than I've seen in other games, and I would hate for that to be lost completely. But anyway.

The primary way I've always enjoyed playing PvP is in non-organized, non-competitive groups as a healer. I've been in ESO a long time but I've done this not just in ESO. I get what you are saying with regards to an organized team but there is nothing more satisfying to me than, say, running up to a battle and healing up an ally who is manning siege. Being un-grouped and arriving on the scene and helping turn the tide. Most of my setups are heals and buffs or heals and some damage -- I've never made one of those crazy PvP tanks; I don't think it's fun. <shrug> My understanding (which could be wrong) of a lot of the complaints in PvP re: healing is how self heals are too high (hearkening back to the days when ball groups slapped on Earthgore) and, as someone who enjoys healing, I always feel obligated to jump in and join the conversation pointing out that healing as a role is enjoyed by many and I'd like to see people remember that when we talk about how healing as a mechanism might be unbalanced. I'd like to see healing as a mechanism be adjusted in such a way that does not kill healing as a role.

Taril wrote: »

peacenote wrote: »

Not an acceptable trade-off, especially not in this case when we are talking about one of the three tenants of an MMO (healer, tank, DPS)

Yeah, but this is PvP we're talking about. Which generally transcends the typical "Holy Trinity" notably by the fact that Tanks are typically not part of PvP (And usually only exist to cheese certain game modes). With Tanks only becoming meta when they get broken and start being DPS themselves...

On a side note; I personally think it's long past time that the Holy Trinity is updated from Tank/Healer/DPS to Tank/Support/DPS with the Healer role adjusted from being pure healing output, to more of a varied and utile Support with focus on buffs, debuffs, control with a bit of healing to top people up. (Even more so when modern Tank and DPS designs are featuring self sustain options. In some cases Tanks are actually putting out more HPS than healers themselves, I recall many a Raid in WoW where my DK Tank had higher HPS and overall Healing done than my entire Raids collection of healers combined)

My point there was mainly that it's much more disruptive to say "get rid of the healer role" than when ZOS accidentally or on purpose eliminates the effectiveness of a build that only works on a werewolf Breton NB with a certain set of gear. I could have worded it better, to simply say that eliminating support roles because the DPS are unhappy I feel is unacceptable.

I definitely think that what you're talking about could be fun and personally have no problem with that kind of idea. My issue is when people start saying "eliminate cross-healing" or "eliminate heals outside of your group" because of the ball groups when that would literally kill any of the fun in Cyro or IC with regards to dynamically joining the fight as a heal/support. Unless maybe - maybe - it was paired with some kind of dynamic group merge like Rift had, such that you can be "solo" and still have your heals hit your allies. Obviously, this is not so much an issue with BG's, where the conversation has to do with whether a team has a healer on their team or not. I would say I would want to retain enough healing power to "save" people as opposed to just "top them off" since that is what I find most enjoyable about playing a support. I can buff and debuff all you want but it won't give me the feel of turning the tide of battle. Players need to be able to see that their actions are helping for it to be fun.

Taril wrote: »

Which is ironically the crux of the "Healer" hate. People need to see that their damage actually sticks to a target and isn't just healed up infinitely.

I think it really comes down to the fact that in PvP, people are supposed to die.... and for most, being in a 10+ minute fight because sustain is so out the window that no one dies just isn't good gameplay. I mean, sure.... the healers might feel pretty good being immortal and able to put a close to indefinite hold on the outcome of a match, but chances are everyone else just wants it to end.

And it's not just healers themselves; I can't even tell you the amount of times I've just ignored a random enemy player because I knew there was no way I could kill them and no way they could kill me-- just a big waste of everyone's time. That doesn't happen in any other game.... and yeah, it's not a good thing.
I even do heal in other games, just not ESO since I don't find the smart heals and ability to spam my abilities engaging when it comes to the role.... and I think it makes sense that I can be killed or unable to save my teammates through the most ridiculous damage, I wouldn't want it any other way.

Darth_LucSky wrote: »

Haven't scrolled through all the posts of this thread, but why do no one mentions anti-healing sets/builds, like Jerall Mountains Warchief and the Werewolf Claws of Anguish, for example? This combination, on max stacks, reduces healing received by 59%. I have a 4v4 team where 2 people are werewolves and run JMW. It is very noticeable how weaker the enemy heals get. I know it's not a perfect solution to the healing problem in BGs and PvP in general (and I agree it is a problem), but at least it's an easy workaround to dedicated healers in BGs, at least.

The problem with Jerall is two-fold.

1) Unless you have multiple people running the set, you'll almost never hit max stacks on a target, while sitting at max stacks yourself. This is because the cooldown is per user, not per target, so the stacks just kind of spread around and fall of of targets relatively easily.

2) It does nothing against shields. Shields are honestly the biggest problem right now. The best groups you'll come across in BGs are getting most of their "Healing" from shields, and Jerall will do nothing to stop that.

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Darth_LucSky wrote: »

Haven't scrolled through all the posts of this thread, but why do no one mentions anti-healing sets/builds, like Jerall Mountains Warchief and the Werewolf Claws of Anguish, for example? This combination, on max stacks, reduces healing received by 59%. I have a 4v4 team where 2 people are werewolves and run JMW. It is very noticeable how weaker the enemy heals get. I know it's not a perfect solution to the healing problem in BGs and PvP in general (and I agree it is a problem), but at least it's an easy workaround to dedicated healers in BGs, at least.

The problem with Jerall is two-fold.

1) Unless you have multiple people running the set, you'll almost never hit max stacks on a target, while sitting at max stacks yourself. This is because the cooldown is per user, not per target, so the stacks just kind of spread around and fall of of targets relatively easily.

2) It does nothing against shields. Shields are honestly the biggest problem right now. The best groups you'll come across in BGs are getting most of their "Healing" from shields, and Jerall will do nothing to stop that.

This.

Also, remember, ZOS nerfed defile with the justification that it would now affect shields, only to introduce an exponential increase in shielding abilities that anyone can use and their sizes are way bigger than they used to be.

Defile didn't need the nerf. It actually needed a buff. Spreadsheet balancing for the lose again.

Here are 2 major issues that I've encountered since the update 44 launch:

1. too many healers are just “raw” healers, which means they barely provide any group buffs besides their raw heals, causing a lot of endless fights in combat
2. the burst heals of sorcerers and wardens are too strong, especially in 4v4s, as they heal a second target.

I'll talk more about the second point because it really is a killer for the 4v4s.
I've talked about this issue quite a few times on the forums and still no change from the devs to these two burst heals.

- Everyone knows that Polarwind is the strongest burst heal in the game (if you have enough HP, so around 40k) because not only is it a burst heal, but it also provides a HoT and heals a second target with full strength.
- The Matriarch is the second strongest burst heal in the game as it can heal 2 targets. While it may be inconvenient to be “forced” to double bar the skill, it's 100% worth it because she it heals 2 targets... it doesn't have to be the player themselves either.
- Both skills need a hard nerf, meaning they should be reduced to one target and “Polar Wind” should no longer be a HoT since no other burst heal that affects another player is.

As many of us have assumed these 2 classes are literally the “killers” of 4v4s.... I'm a dedicated healer myself and have met many “healers” in BGs over the years and it amuses me to see how few of them actually use buff sets and skills for their group, since that's the “real” job of a healer .... Raw heals can be nice, especially in bigger fights, but you know what ... you can still throw out a lot of heals with buff sets and skills ... there's literally no reason for a healer in BGs to wear two selfish sets just to get the highest healing score. It looks great on paper, but you're pretty much “useless” to your group.

To conclude again ... ZoS really needs to nerf those 2 burst heals for better balance in the game, but at the same time we need a rework of the battle spirit because increasing the healing received reduction from it would fix so many issues.