Healers and the queue.

jcm2606

It's no secret that a dedicated healer is a tremendous advantage to a team. Even a bunch of half competent players who know how to stick with their healer can perform similarly to a full premade without one, as they all take minimal damage, receive huge amounts of healing, receive sustain through skills like shards, and receive minor buffs to damage. A premade running a dedicated healer is on a whole new level, and can completely dominate a BG. Typically they all sit directly on top of the healer, and protect them like there's no tomorrow.

Now, personally, I don't think that strength should go away. Maybe toned down a bit, but it shouldn't be nerfed into the ground. Instead, I think the queue should attempt to balance teams with healers, to avoid situations where one or two teams are running a dedicated healer, and hence have an incredibly unfair advantage over other teams. The queue could borrow from the group finder, using the roles.

There is a problem with something like this, though, and it's that this could slow down matchmaking considerably, especially if the healer population is low. Not 100% sure how to account for this, maybe someone has an idea, but my proposal would be to only attempt to match with healers if a healer happens to work its way into the match. That way the hit to matchmaking speed only applies if there is a healer in the match.

oxygen_thief

No, please specify why you disagree in comments.

jcm2606 wrote: »

Typically they all sit directly on top of the healer, and protect them like there's no tomorrow.

typicaly no one cares about you, everyone runs away from you, your team spreads allover the arena to avoid you healing and to feed your enemies if you are playing in a pug. like youve mentioned you become a number one target for others at the same time. ive tried to play as a healer and got only frustration. this role is for premade only.

jcm2606

Yes.

oxygen_thief wrote: »

jcm2606 wrote: »

Typically they all sit directly on top of the healer, and protect them like there's no tomorrow.

typicaly no one cares about you, everyone runs away from you, your team spreads allover the arena to avoid you healing and to feed your enemies if you are playing in a pug. like youve mentioned you become a number one target for others at the same time. ive tried to play as a healer and got only frustration. this role is for premade only.

And that exact that you quoted was specifically for premades. Premades running dedicated healers do typically sit on top of the healer, and protect them like there's no tomorrow. How do I know? Been matched against them the whole day when queuing with a friend. They all sit on top of their healer, and if you try to focus their healer, they all focus you hard.

VaranisArano

Its almost like ESO PVP favors organized groups. My healer tends to be worse than useless with a PUG team, so I dont often PUG with a dedicated healer anymore. Organized groups will always get better use out of support roles than disorganized groups.

CatchMeTrolling

Healers are usually only an issue with premades. If you’re solo you’re lucky if your team decides to stick with you instead of trying to run marathons around the map getting themselves killed.

And it’s nothing wrong with people protecting their healer , that’s what you should do. Doesn’t matter if I’m pugging I’m going to attempt to kill you if you’re trying to kill the healer.

jcm2606

Yes.

CatchMeTrolling wrote: »

And it’s nothing wrong with people protecting their healer , that’s what you should do. Doesn’t matter if I’m pugging I’m going to attempt to kill you if you’re trying to kill the healer.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that having a dedicated healer allows premades to completely dominate a match. Can't kill the team with the healer up, can't kill the healer with the rest of the team gunning for you. This allows premades to literally dominate a match, where they go 500/60/40 or something along the lines. Seen it happen, happened to me all day.

Navras

Other, please specify your alternative in comments.

well, I've played as healplar almost all the current week and I can't say to disagree with you because with a healer, IF (big IF) the party act as a TEAM it has a quite big advantage.

Half of the people (actually more but I feel positive today) don't even realize they have a healer in the party, they often go alone to nowhere and finish with sub-par score and damage. I just ended a domination match where I had 200k damage, 500k~ healing and 2 of my dps finished with 30k and 35k damage respectively.

In a perfect world, it would be awesome to have a queue with 1 healer 3 dps teams. But pugs are at the "do whatever the *** you want and press something" level right now. Unfortunately.

Darkmage1337

Moral of the story: something, something, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives...

Gitgud, group up. Organized groups > unorganized groups. It's as simple as that.

CatchMeTrolling

jcm2606 wrote: »

CatchMeTrolling wrote: »

And it’s nothing wrong with people protecting their healer , that’s what you should do. Doesn’t matter if I’m pugging I’m going to attempt to kill you if you’re trying to kill the healer.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that having a dedicated healer allows premades to completely dominate a match. Can't kill the team with the healer up, can't kill the healer with the rest of the team gunning for you. This allows premades to literally dominate a match, where they go 500/60/40 or something along the lines. Seen it happen, happened to me all day.

That’s how it is in pretty much every pvp game that allows healers, the premade will always take advantage of having a healer. That’s why support and healers are usually the most sought after in any pvp game.

Messing with matchmaking will just make the system even more tedious.

The real issue is not having a solo and a group queue.

VaranisArano

jcm2606 wrote: »

CatchMeTrolling wrote: »

And it’s nothing wrong with people protecting their healer , that’s what you should do. Doesn’t matter if I’m pugging I’m going to attempt to kill you if you’re trying to kill the healer.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that having a dedicated healer allows premades to completely dominate a match. Can't kill the team with the healer up, can't kill the healer with the rest of the team gunning for you. This allows premades to literally dominate a match, where they go 500/60/40 or something along the lines. Seen it happen, happened to me all day.

Having a dedicated healer might well allow a PUG to dominate the match if the PUG could figure out what to do when they have a dedicated healer...

But healers tend to be either amazing or useless depending on whether the group knows what to do or not.

I mean, what's the end goal here? If the problem is premades, all you are asking for is the same "ZOS, you need to fix premades fighting randoms!" problem everyone keeps bugging ZOS about. If you nerf healers, the organized groups are still going to dominate disorganized groups, only now youve disadvantaged PUG healers even more.

Jeezye

Definatly agree healers have a huge impact on team performance - and they should. I just rerolled my magblade to a saptankish healer and coulnd't believe my eyes how much my team benefits from my utility, and I can't remember the last time I lost a deathmatch. It gets quite frustrating though when you soloqueue and noone gives a damn about the team and just does their own thing.

I think a queue with selected roles, much like the pve queue, could be interesting. Doesn't mean every time needs to have a tank , 2 DDs and a heal, but in order to balance out teams it would make sense to match the composition accordingly.

Minno

Jeezye wrote: »

Definatly agree healers have a huge impact on team performance - and they should. I just rerolled my magblade to a saptankish healer and coulnd't believe my eyes how much my team benefits from my utility, and I can't remember the last time I lost a deathmatch. It gets quite frustrating though when you soloqueue and noone gives a damn about the team and just does their own thing.

I think a queue with selected roles, much like the pve queue, could be interesting. Doesn't mean every time needs to have a tank , 2 DDs and a heal, but in order to balance out teams it would make sense to match the composition accordingly.

This reminds me, I was in a BG and one player thought it was the sole purpose of the templar to heal the team not try to engage players on objectives (I was a stamplar in that match lol).

He proceeded to spam the group chat how useless we were, and then forced himself onto lava while counting down the deaths to lava.

Moral of the story? Separate the ques into "group" and "solo"; if players want a templar healer, let them find a friend to group que with lol.