PvP Thought Experiment: Remove PvP Group Healing?

SHOW

NOTE: This is NOT a real proposal, just a thought experiment for discussion, please keep it civil

Could this help with, not only lag, but with the health of the game?

Details:
Groups (both large and small) could still use their Superior Teamwork to communicate / move / focus / ulti dump offensively.

Healing-wise everyone is self sufficient. This is equal across all groups both large and small which:

1) Imagine the reduction in lag if there weren't 10 hots ticking on everyone every second!

2) Let's be honest, 10 hots passivly ticking on everyone is a bit silly in a read and react game of skill... More of a "who can stack more hots" game... not very deep gameplay.

3) The part I struggle with here is the burst healing, as that IS a Read and React skillful play, thoughts?
(excluding, of course, mindless breath of life spamming for example) ...Maybe limit group healing to just burst heal ultimates which need to be used more selectively? (i.e. more skill, less lag)

Reminder:
I know people will take offense to this thought, especially those with ultra specialized builds, so please keep the discussion fair, and focused on the long term health of this game we know and love

Thanks in advance for your ideas!

VaranisArano

With the latest healing nerf, we're seeing that builds with less healing struggle in comparison to those with more. Making everyone self-sufficient would lessen group diversity a fair bit. Most players would compensate by building tanky with heal-heavy classes, just to survive.

Its not exactly the same as "well, I can be self sufficient in a dungeon, so healers aren't needed." In Cyrodiil, you've got many situations where enormous amounts of damage are pouring in - sieging down walls, oiling attackers, trying to push into a heavily defended keep or trying to defend against a group with Volundrung, for example. Those are the sorts of battles where groups with healers show their worth while the would-be self-sufficient players are usually hanging back hoping someone else does the hard work of breaking into the objective so they can get AP.

This is an decent change for solo and small scale players who operate with very little support roles and who don't care about objective-based play where they have to cooperate with other players to capture or defend keeps. Unfortunately, Cyrodiil is designed around objective-based PVP, which makes this a poor change for the zone as a whole.

SHOW

I agree that it is nice to have dedicated healers to facetank through siege....but that is not the only way.

Opening other walls to divide and conquer, fake pushes to burn their ulti, choosing the correct moment to self shield/heal and push...

lots of other methods other than face tanking it through.

and that's kind of my point, face tanking things really shouldn't be a thing...

a skilled read and react system should. Like well timed block, dodge, shield, heal... instead we just preemptively keep our shields and heals up at all times hoping that's enough to face tank whatever is coming.

Further, hots and pocket healers enable us to just face tank a bit much, no need to have to kill someone's healthbar 10 times every fight just to get them down once, just adds to the lag.

and probably most importantly, reduced LAG and server calculations without all of those cross heals, imagine the gameplay!!

Taleof2Cities

You’re effectively ending the healer role in PvP, @SHOW.

This will be a difficult topic to “keep it civil” ... even if you consider the discussion “experimental”.

SHOW

Not if we are ALL healers (self anyway)

But yea, I understand your point, which is why I tried to frame it that way.

Just wanted to look at alternative ways to reduce lag instead of the aoe cool down proposed.

Maybe just disallowing multiple stacks of the same hot might help a bit...

Thanks for your thoughts guys

Daviiid_ESO

Best way to reduce lag is to reduce group size to 12, and allow AOE healing and buffs to stay only in the group. That's a lot less server calculations. The server doesn't have to process and go through 80 people for that one healing spring a random casted.

WacArnold

I think a few skills could go to self only. I really wish rapid was self only. At least one morph of it.

In any situation if zos does determine aoes are causing the problem im sure most damage skills will be reworked into single target. I think you could leave ulti aoes those are not spammed.

Healing idk most skills could be single and others a healer should have to manually cast on a target instead of throwing down aoes that passively heal.
Like bol already is that way just change it so healing allies is x amount stronger than healing yourself to make up for loss of aoe.

In theory i feel you this game could accomplish things like that keeping the same overall amount of healing with out having to throw down alot of aoes that required calculations when 10 people step in and out of the circle.

This would make healer more important and i think you would see a rise in skilled healers.

mikikatze

Since I am a main healer and don't have much interest in actually fighting in Cyrodiil, I say: NO.

Goregrinder

Make non direct heals group only. Restrict group size so aoe heals can only heal yourself or those in your group, and no one else. Problem solved. Healers will be more valuable to have in groups, and ball groups can't benefit from 30 people healing each other.

Fawn4287

The ‘make buffs and heals go to your group only’ is probably the worst idea possible, so the groups already causing the problems are the only ones who can heal each other? This is actually the biggest single possible buff to large group gameplay that a could be implemented. I don’t know why ZOS walks on eggshells when it comes to dealing with zergs and ballgroups who are literally the root cause of absolutely every PvP problem (and are unaffected by nearly every change) but are happy to shaft small scalers and solos time and time again.

exeeter702

Fawn4287 wrote: »

The ‘make buffs and heals go to your group only’ is probably the worst idea possible, so the groups already causing the problems are the only ones who can heal each other? This is actually the biggest single possible buff to large group gameplay that a could be implemented. I don’t know why ZOS walks on eggshells when it comes to dealing with zergs and ballgroups who are literally the root cause of absolutely every PvP problem (and are unaffected by nearly every change) but are happy to shaft small scalers and solos time and time again.

No, it would be a nerf to unorganized groups and would incentivize group forming in cyrodil. This would not only force participation, but it may even help the server control clusters of players/information more categorically.

The reason small scale gets hit is simply by virtue of cyrodil being the type of zone that it is. If you know a ball group is running around, you group up and the entire exchange becomes more focused.

Goregrinder

That's the thing, what we have right now isn't "Group Healing" it's "Everybody Healing". You don't even need to be grouped. They should make it actual "Group Healing" where your aoe heals only hit people in your group, and if you want to heal anyone not in your group then you'd have to use targeted heals. Then restrict group size to like 12 and now 30 people can sit there and aoe heal each other indefinitely.

the1andonlyskwex

Let's turn this around. What if they removed all self-healing? That would certainly solve ridiculously tanky builds and 1vX monsters.

Dr_Ganknstein

That would suck because some people enjoy playing a healer. I used to have a lot of fun keeping my teammates alive.

MurderMostFoul

Guild Wars 2 says hi.

Interesting idea tho. It would obviously suck for dedicated pvp healers (pvp only via battle spirit), but we would see far fewer ball groups and less AOE spam. Maybe it's a Cyrodiil performance issues silver bullet?

ZOS would need to remove the group heal function/calculations of cross healing skills tho, not just reduce the healing numbers to zero in order to really benefit performance.

Major_Lag

Cross healing is far from the only problem with large groups. Purge is also a major offender.

OP, while you are at it, how about reducing the effects of Purge (and morphs) on allies. For example: removes up to 3 negative effects from the user, and up to 2 negative effects from 3 other targets.
Of course the numbers could be tweaked for optimal balance. For example, maybe remove 4 effects from the user and 1 from 3 others?

Of course this would have to be done through Battle Spirit, as not to affect endgame PvE content.

katorga

Fun. Turn massively multiplayer pvp into dueling.

Greasytengu

Major_Lag wrote: »

Cross healing is far from the only problem with large groups. Purge is also a major offender.

OP, while you are at it, how about reducing the effects of Purge (and morphs) on allies. For example: removes up to 3 negative effects from the user, and up to 2 negative effects from 3 other targets.
Of course the numbers could be tweaked for optimal balance. For example, maybe remove 4 effects from the user and 1 from 3 others?

Of course this would have to be done through Battle Spirit, as not to affect endgame PvE content.

If they reduce the amount of effects that purge removes then people will have to spam it more, possibly contributing to higher levels of lag. Right now, it is basically impossible to remove all the negative effects applied to your group during a large fight. Most of the purging is done to remove CC effects, and even with someone in group literally spamming purge, you still spend more time CCed than not.

Perhaps some sort of limit to the amount of negative effects that can be applied to a target would benefit server performance more. Like only 1-2 forms of CC, 5 different DOTs (possibly with stronger DOTs overwriting the lesser ones), 3 different 'minor' debuffs (like minor cowardice for example), 1 'major' debuff, ect (obviously not those exact numbers, but something along those lines) Siege should remain uncapped.

Such changes would reduce the need for excessive purging, the reduction in DOT calculations might lessen lag, and possibly help even the playing field between larger groups and smaller groups.

Major_Lag

Greasytengu wrote: »

Major_Lag wrote: »

Cross healing is far from the only problem with large groups. Purge is also a major offender.

OP, while you are at it, how about reducing the effects of Purge (and morphs) on allies. For example: removes up to 3 negative effects from the user, and up to 2 negative effects from 3 other targets.
Of course the numbers could be tweaked for optimal balance. For example, maybe remove 4 effects from the user and 1 from 3 others?

Of course this would have to be done through Battle Spirit, as not to affect endgame PvE content.

If they reduce the amount of effects that purge removes then people will have to spam it more, possibly contributing to higher levels of lag. Right now, it is basically impossible to remove all the negative effects applied to your group during a large fight. Most of the purging is done to remove CC effects, and even with someone in group literally spamming purge, you still spend more time CCed than not.

Define "large fight".
When I was in such a group, the only time we had any significant amounts of negative effects on us (ie. more than 1 per player) for any amount of time was during pushes into very heavily defended keep inners (multiple oils and meatbags on flags).
At all other times, everyone's debuff counter was consistently being reset to 0 every GCD, or even more frequently.

You can't simply "spam more purge", because it's one of the most expensive abilities in the game.
Efficient Purge is slightly cheaper - but it's quite bad (no heal), so Cleanse is the preferred morph even though it's more expensive.

If you wanted to really discourage Purge spam, a stacking cost increase a'la Streak could also work well, hopefully encouraging strategic usage instead of brainless spam.

PhoenixGrey

Why experiment? . This should be permanently disabled in PVP. Being in a group is advantageous enough.

ZOS can buff classes accordingly.

Pauwer

Make healing powers seperate from spell damage and spell critical. So that if you want play heals, you should have some different stats maxed. This would remove the radiating regen and stuff from ball groups, it would heal a blister on a toe if used from dd toon.

Goregrinder

Dr_Ganknstein wrote: »

That would suck because some people enjoy playing a healer. I used to have a lot of fun keeping my teammates alive.

Then join their group so you can heal them.....it's like 2 clicks of a button and you never have to talk to them if you're anti-social.

the1andonlyskwex

Goregrinder wrote: »

Dr_Ganknstein wrote: »

That would suck because some people enjoy playing a healer. I used to have a lot of fun keeping my teammates alive.

Then join their group so you can heal them.....it's like 2 clicks of a button and you never have to talk to them if you're anti-social.

But the proposal Dr_Ganknstein replied to was to get rid of group healing, not to get rid of non-group healing. In other words, the only heals remaining would be self-only.

It's a terrible idea precisely because it totally eliminates the healer role. If ESO does have too much healing (I don't think it does), they'd be better off eliminating all self-only heals (or at least ones attached to damage abilities) than doing what the OP proposes.

Goregrinder

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Goregrinder wrote: »

Dr_Ganknstein wrote: »

That would suck because some people enjoy playing a healer. I used to have a lot of fun keeping my teammates alive.

Then join their group so you can heal them.....it's like 2 clicks of a button and you never have to talk to them if you're anti-social.

But the proposal Dr_Ganknstein replied to was to get rid of group healing, not to get rid of non-group healing. In other words, the only heals remaining would be self-only.

It's a terrible idea precisely because it totally eliminates the healer role. If ESO does have too much healing (I don't think it does), they'd be better off eliminating all self-only heals (or at least ones attached to damage abilities) than doing what the OP proposes.

It's better than what we have now: 30 non-grouped players spamming AoE heals, keeping each other alive...it's just ridiculous now.

x48rph

No simply because some people like playing healers. It's what they enjoy and what they are passionate about. It takes a much different mindset to be an accomplished one. (yes, every one can spam an HOT or two but that's not what I consider 'good'). Also not every one has the lightning fast reflexes to be a brawler or even enjoys playing like that. Removing healing is just forcing people into other roles they don't want to play and will surely lower the population which is the last thing we need as it's already dead enough outside of prime time, especially in the non main campaigns.