Is being a Healer in groups too hard?

Lunerdog

Running an Argonion healer at the moment, if you group with good players who block and dodge and play smart then it's ok.

Problem arises when folk in the group think that because they have a healer they can go toe to toe with the enemy and that the healer has infinite range, infinite magicka and can constantly keep them at full health.

I find playing a healer is most rewarding while running solo as you invariably come across folk with a sliver of life left while scrapping with something and a quick heal saves their arses, the amount of "thank you's" I get each night make it worthwhile.

k9mouse

Other (please comment)

@JaJaLuka
Your poll is pointless -- where the options for those are us that think healer is OK? I am no problem with the healing role in dungeons. When one makes polls, they need both positive and negative replies otherwise the poll is just a waste of time.

Jimm_ay

Other (please comment)

Healing in this game is, for the most part location based. To do effective healing the group needs to stay in the area - once you start chasing people to heal you become a bad healer. 100% agree with crislevin -

More to the point - the tank needs to herd and take agro
DPS needs to stay close and do dmg
I need to watch everyone else's health bar they only need to watch mine.

When all things work the green flows like water...when things go bad well..

I have quit pug dolmen teams because no one listened and I did't want to eat 20 soul gems..i can live with a random thinking I suck as a healer.

Francescolg

Healing is good but sometimes very stationary. I chose to spec the templar with a focus on "mobile healing" and max. mana-efficieny. So I can stand in a healing spot to heal casters+the other healers but, nonetheless, I have a 900 crit single heal (up to 1600 crit) from which I get 60-75% magicka back over time to heal targets that are not standing in the heal spot.
In PvP you have to spot-heal + to heal from distance, to keep everyone alive. If you do not wanna play in sticky-zerg raids, where ppl stand together like a sheep flock, you can still have fun as a healer and be very effective. The combination makes PvP entertaining, just spot-healing is only repetitive.

Jimm_ay

Other (please comment)

what single target heal?

sevcik.miroslaveb17_ESO

Other (please comment)

Healing is awsome in ESO, yet I miss little bit option to cast heal on specific person. Sometimes the one with lowest HPs is not the one in grave danger.

But in overall I love it. PvE and PvP alike. Yet PvP in current state is very limited if you are non vet. You have very low mana to work with.

Hiply

Biased poll, poorly designed.

I think healing's fine, I heal, it works, people don't die. At VR2 I was healing Craglorn 4-man instances effectively. As a Templar my magicka management is a serious challenge and I miss targeted healing, but I've learned to live with those constraints and get my job done.

Luisen

Other (please comment)

I enjoy as a helaer in dungeons. It's OK for me.
Sometimes it's even easy with a good communication

Vis

Other (please comment)

No.

Woolenthreads

Other (please comment)

If there are only a few healers, maybe it has something to do with leveling from 1 to 50. I think most people who make their way through 1p content will do it the easiest way possible, which I think generally tends to focus on leveling attacks rather than heals. I'm pretty sure group healers need at least a little practice and, IMO, 1p content tends more to solo combat.

I haven't taken any characters to Cyrodil so I don't know how much practice one could get there, nor do I personally know how many healers are available. That is why I start my comment with the word "If".

Chuggernaut

Other (please comment)

The inability to target specific players is weird, and sometimes annoying especially when your heal misses the entire group you're in and hits some random dude in range.

kewl

Other (please comment)

I think it's a combo of 1 & 2.
I've seen a fair amount of healers put dps above healing. Others go OOM because they play reactively instead of layering healz proactively.

On the other side, I know all Tanks and DPS have done some stupid s**t in dungeons. DPS: stay out of red circles, kill adds ASAP and don’t drift too far from the healer. The Tank gets a few hall passes, but the minimum requirements are: taunt, 13 seconds of block, rinse and repeat.

Having said all that, I really enjoy healing in ESO. Never experienced rage from a pug group while I was healing, in fact, it’s the opposite.

The game is new so most of us don’t know what to expect when we enter a dungeon. Everybody just needs to communicate and be patient with one another. Remember, it’s a game.

ArRashid

Other (please comment)

Resto staff is as OP as it gets.. if a group is having problems, it's usually not on healer's side.. if they don't block and avoid AoEs and just stand there and spam some abilities like stupid.. well, they are not worth saving..

I honestly never died if I had a designated healer, without it being totally my (or tank's) fault (usually when noob tank is too busy tanking the weakest mob in a room and let's me, a guy in pyjamas, tank a boss.. and I take 50%+ HP damage even through block).

FrauPerchta

Biased poll is biased!

Healing is fine, perhaps even a little too good as all classes can heal. Temps should be the best healers.

The problem I see with healers in dungeons when I am not the healer is that the healers just doesn't seem to want or know how to just heal and only attack when forced to by a mob attacking them. Which of course brings up another problem for healers, group members don't seem to pay much attention to the healer when s/he is acquired tons of aggro and is getting beat to death.

My Temp is a good healing character, but then I've played healers (temp/clerics) in every MMO that had the classes. In dungeons that I have healed I have only ever had one group member die. And he died multiple times because he was an idiot that tried to constantly get out front and play the group dungeon as if he was doing it solo.

If you want to heal then learn how to be a healer don't grumble because you can't figure out how to do it in ESO.

Amsel_McKay

Other (please comment)

Healing is too simple... I miss target healing. and I am getting real tired of healing NPCs and objects over the tank... HOTs should hit Tanks before going into battle...

kewl

Other (please comment)

Amsel_McKay wrote: »

NPCs and objects over the tank... HOTs should hit Tanks before going into battle...

ZOS does need to improve how smart heals work. A Sorc's summons or NPC should not take priority over group members.

My decision to take Breath of Life over Honor the Dead was largely based on averting this faulty mechanic.

Moiskormoimi

Other (please comment)

No. Most healing abilities are aoe in design and makes it fairly easy to manage magicka and skills.

kitsinni

Other (please comment)

You see a lot of people saying "People need to learn to stand near me as a healer" .. "People need to dodge roll and stay out of AoE" .. in a lot of fights these can't both happen. Healers can't expect people to stay out of AoE and always be near them it just doesn't work that way.

Fuzzylumpkins

Other (please comment)

Glad you added an "other" option. The healing design in game sucks ducks. Not being able to heal specific targets along with dodgy mechanics and clipping make it all that much more irritating.

I had felt healing could become a little boring in previous games but OMG int his one it is just spam crap until oom and keep begging your group to clump up for the most effective heals. Which in and of itself is self defeating in Cyrodil as it then makes your group vulnerable to the running impulse spam zergs.

Any how- poor design and leaves everything to be desired. Healers also need out of group benefit from other players around them exactly like those players get out of group heals from healers. I.E. Ap for healing- Honestly, why invite a healer to group to suffer their lag if I can get the same heals not inviting them.

NerfEverything

Healing is fine. Groups can be bad. Don't stand in the red. Use block. Don't run away when you get aggro.

TRIP233

Other (please comment)

There is nothing wrong with healing.

Saltypretzels

Other (please comment)

No; and this is a terrible poll.

mjkvanbeekeb17_ESO

Other (please comment)

It's pretty easy

Nukeyak

Other (please comment)

Overall, I totally love healing in this game. It takes positioning, situational awareness, even DPS to build up magicka for more healing. It's not whack mole or UI focussed.

It's getting tougher in vet dungeons, but I like the challenge.

nevermore1990_ESO

Other (please comment)

Yeah... Yes/no question should have yes/no option. This was confusing. Anyway... My main is a healer and I love it, as long as I'm running with a group that knows how to play well. It often seems like too many players just want to hack&slash their way through all the content instead of paying attention to the actions of the enemies. It can be very frustrating when your entire party insists on standing directly in damage zones, most of which are clearly marked with glowing red AoE indicators on the ground. It's also annoying when a tank equips a shield for the taunt but doesn't actually use it to block attacks, or when a light-armor wearing character rushes into melee range to use ranged attacks. If everyone would just put a little more thought into their actions, there would be less stress all around.

Kulrig

Other (please comment)

Nukeyak wrote: »

It's not whack mole or UI focussed.

Probably my favorite aspect of healing in this game, along with the ability to regenerate mana at a fairly decent rate. Having everyone's health bar above their head lets me focus on where they're at and what's hitting them, rather than hoping against hope that the bar I'm refilling isn't standing in fire.

Much better than, say...

ArRashid

Other (please comment)

What a terrible pile of addons!
Man, you need to learn to use Blizzard's own UI..
Deadly Boss Mod (for awareness) and Bartender4 (for skill bars) are the only addons anyone in WoW needs. Even healer - I know, I was one till Blizzard found it funny to bombard my class with about 14 waves of nerfs.. and then a rework to most heals, destroying all hopes of synergies, leaving you with generic heals and a few unique ones on 30+ second CDs.. oh well, ZOS is doing the same to DK now, just not to heals.

The rest (damage meters, loot tables, minimap addons, chat addons and everything else) is just there to make things prettier.. which, honestly, totally failed in your case.

Aeaeren

Other (please comment)

Like everything else in this game it's the team responsibility to be where they are supposed to be at the right times. If you die as DPS while not in healing circle the question should be is it my job to save him or his job to get in the freakin circle! If the tank missus a block is it my fault or his? Healing in this game is WAY different then any other MMO I have played. It's not harder just very different and anyone with a restro staff can heal, I do both DPS and healing, just depends on what the team needs at that time.

Kulrig

Other (please comment)

@ArRashid That was a random screenshot pulled from a google search of "healing in WoW", not one from a raid I was in. I used the stock UI myself when I healed back in Wrath, and even then I played Disc so I was just a tank healer (and the occasional 5 man). When I tried my hand at raid healing, having an extra 20 bars to worry about made it so that I had no time to look at the action, just constantly scanning the health bars. It was even worse when I tried AV or IoC, fourty bars clogging up my screen and typically only a quarter of those were in range.

Then along came Cata, and yeah... I gave up on Blizz allowing healers to be anything more than a glorified soft enrage timer. Haven't tried healing recently, partly because they want to change how healers work every expansion without thinking about how to make it fun.

UrQuan

Other players are too hard to heal

kitsinni wrote: »

You see a lot of people saying "People need to learn to stand near me as a healer" .. "People need to dodge roll and stay out of AoE" .. in a lot of fights these can't both happen. Healers can't expect people to stay out of AoE and always be near them it just doesn't work that way.

That's true. People need to be aware of the AOEs and when to block and when to keep close to the healer, but you can't necessarily do all of those things all of the time. It's all about situational awareness and figuring out what your priorities have to be in any given situation to keep yourself alive and allow the healer to help keep you alive.