The Biggest Problem in Balancing PVP and PVE Together is Healing Formula

GrumpyDuckling

The healing formula in this game is mostly determined by Weapon/Spell Damage + Max Stat.

This formula design works great for PVE, especially in a game mode like Veteran Maelstrom Arena where damage dealing and healing your own character at the same time is essential, but in PVP this healing formula is awful. In PVP players who hit the hardest are among those who can heal themselves the best. How does this make any sense in PVP? The more damage I stack, the better I heal? Where is the tradeoff?

Wouldn't balance be much better in PVP if we had to choose between damage, healing, and tanking? Unless they are pursuing the tanking route, what incentives do players have NOT to stack Weapon/Spell Damage + Max Stat?

Betsararie

how does this contribute to a balance issue, if this applies to all players?

Healing scales off max magicka and spell damage for everyone, so this is an advantage available to all mag players.

Vigor scales off stamina and weapon damage for all stam classes.

In other words, this advantage is available to all players, and is therefore balanced.

GrumpyDuckling

Blanco wrote: »

how does this contribute to a balance issue, if this applies to all players?

Healing scales off max magicka and spell damage for everyone, so this is an advantage available to all mag players.

Vigor scales off stamina and weapon damage for all stam classes.

In other words, this advantage is available to all players, and is therefore balanced.

Build variety.

If a player wants to stack full-on damage, then they wouldn't be able to heal themselves well - meaning that they need to either go full-on glass cannon, or balance their build more.

As a result, time to kill isn't as fast, we move further away from burst/cooldown phases, encourage smarter team grouping, and actually have some decisions to make on builds.

Merkabeh

I like the concept of trade offs of damage vs healing vs tankiness...so I agree with this.

You can't have high damage and high tankiness.
You can't have high damage and high healing.
You can't have high tankiness and high healing.

In this game though, with only stamina and magicka (and spellpower and weapon damage), healing and damage are stuck together. There would meed to be some other stat that dictates strength of healing. The tradeoff for tankiness is already in the game.

Then again, I'm also not a fan of resource size dictating healing/damage strength either, but with only 3 stats, there would be no sense of character improvement (through stat allocation) while leveling without this mechanic...because stats are dumbed down in this game.

hmsdragonfly

GrumpyDuckling wrote: »

Blanco wrote: »

how does this contribute to a balance issue, if this applies to all players?

Healing scales off max magicka and spell damage for everyone, so this is an advantage available to all mag players.

Vigor scales off stamina and weapon damage for all stam classes.

In other words, this advantage is available to all players, and is therefore balanced.

Build variety.

If a player wants to stack full-on damage, then they wouldn't be able to heal themselves well - meaning that they need to either go full-on glass cannon, or balance their build more.

As a result, time to kill isn't as fast, we move further away from burst/cooldown phases, encourage smarter team grouping, and actually have some decisions to make on builds.

I think it's more about if a person stacks full on damage, he won't be able to sustain it. So, it's a balance between damage and sustain.

If people have to balance out between damage and healing, it will encourage the zergy playstyle and it will absolutely kill off all kinds of solo plays.

Betsararie

GrumpyDuckling wrote: »

Blanco wrote: »

how does this contribute to a balance issue, if this applies to all players?

Healing scales off max magicka and spell damage for everyone, so this is an advantage available to all mag players.

Vigor scales off stamina and weapon damage for all stam classes.

In other words, this advantage is available to all players, and is therefore balanced.

Build variety.

If a player wants to stack full-on damage, then they wouldn't be able to heal themselves well - meaning that they need to either go full-on glass cannon, or balance their build more.

As a result, time to kill isn't as fast, we move further away from burst/cooldown phases, encourage smarter team grouping, and actually have some decisions to make on builds.

An interesting viewpoint.

Few things to mention on this:

- Players are hard enough to kill as it is. Every class has their own form of defense, that frankly, is effective. Most players have very effective heals slotted. Very tanky players are flat-out impossible to kill in some scenarios. Players do go down quick, but only in scenarios where their buffs aren't up or they were taken off guard.

- Glass-cannon types may have effective healing, or in the case of NBs, cloak, but their defenses are also low as a result. Mag players running light armor are incredibly squishy, but have shields or other means of keeping themselves alive.

- Tanky players generally deal next to no damage.

So, I would say there is a fair amount of balance between the different roles. IMO balance issues stem from specific broken mechanics, item sets, etc.

As a player who prefers small scale PvP and 1v1 scenarios, if players were any harder to kill, fights would never end. If there was no ability to heal yourself in a significant way, there would be little incentive to take on one or more players by yourself, which is the only real test of your ability in PvP.

Nothing skillful about running around with the zerg or taking a player 10v1.