SUPPORT ROLES ARE DYING

Ezhh

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

They need more enemies putting out more sustained pressure overall, instead of just a few enemies that have 1 shot mechanics and that's all that's threatening. Once DPS are too busy healing themselves to actually be able to deal damage then a healer becomes valuable. .

Firstly, I'm not disagreeing that there is a problem, but I struggle to see how the solution can be so neat and easy.

To give one example of where I see a problem: I healed vKA HMs yesterday. On the last boss HM during the end phase, myself and the other healer output over 200k raw healing per second between us. This is without counting healing group members did on themselves. The amount of overall healing getting used up by the group was just over 110k during this phase. It's admittedly one of the most intense healing checks the game has. It's still fairly simple for me and my co-healer to meet it, but does feel engaging to me and we do need to focus and know what we're doing. If we were newer or less experienced healers, we might not pull it off.

Drop the difficulty down to vet without the HM, and how much can you reduce the incoming damage in this phase before healers like me don't feel very needed? Then drop it down to normal. If you made it genuinely engaging for a healer like me on normal so that I'd feel engaged and useful at that difficulty level, then how would the difficulty be increased for things to still work on vet? How about on vet HM? If you raise the incoming damage on normal so that it would feel challenging and worthwhile to me, what happens to the healers who are just learning and currently struggle?

The floor and the ceiling are just too far apart, and in a random normal dungeon queue people from both ends get mixed together. You simply can't increase damage to be healed a meaningful amount on lower difficulties without either making the higher ones practically impossible when their requirements go up in turn or by bringing the difficulties closer to each other, and the gap between floor and ceiling needs to close before that can work.

---

Short version: For any given group of players, player capability floor and ceiling are too far apart for every difficulty level to need supports the same amount. This means players who can easily complete vet dungeons/trials (especially HMs) are less likely to need a healer for dungeons or two healers for normal trials. It's a game balance issue, but I think just a symptom of the larger problem.

svendf

Let me put it this way. It doesn´t matter if Im in a normal/DLC dungeon on my healer. In 98% of the time they will struggle, what save them time is my debuffs and buffs. The funny thing about this is, they don´t know about it at the lower levels. Many dds actually believe at those levels, they are that good.

In vet dungeons you are even more needed as a healer, because I see more and more low levels and first time runners in there.on console.

I find it possitive that people run this content. You will from time to time have people in your group, who don´t understand, why you as a healer are there.

When they starts to get negative towards you, remind them you provide major and minor maim, boost their over all damage and more. Some can´t handle that and tells you, they don´t need that. They are gods gift to ESO and, what not.

Regarding trials ? Im not there and not running trials on my healer. Not because I can´t or my build can´t. I have my reasons. SO I don´t nothing about that scene.

Same goes for those leaving, when you tell it´s your first run. The good players are those, who stay and want you to learn and want you in that content.

That said. You can go into any dungeon content and be a helping hand to the team. Just keep in mind that your job as a healer is not to out dps the dds xD, though in can happen.

Don´t spend so much time on the forums, play the game. Forums can be a very bad place to spend your time. It can make you believe that´s the way to play ESO,. Like fake roles and healers, tanks not needed in some content. Dead wrong!

Yes ther are people, who exclude healers and tanks and they are few if you look at the, whole community. And why would you join help these people any way ? They don´t respect your role or you any way.

Maybe ZOS should have a look at the healer and tank role.

I do follow a streamer from ZOS and a darn nice guy. They know, what´s going on. So heal on an remember the bad ones and stay away from them.

Cheers

peacenote

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

I don't feel like I am trolling anyone by wanting the healer role to be better and more important that it currently is. I actually want it to be useful and engaging as I have almost always been a healer main until I got to this game and basically said "wow is this seriously it?". The most I have seen is basically "but who else would cast ele drain" and "you need to light attack sometimes".

What is it that you feel you are bringing to the group dynamic that is not already being brought with DPS and a tank? Others want them to have an actual identity with valuable skills that are desirable.

I think it is true that the healer's identity (at least in PvE) has been diluted over the years, for a large variety of reasons. Probably not all in the right order, but:

• Healers have taken regular, ongoing hits as attempts to balance PvP impacted PvE. One small example: a helm considered a healing helm, Earthgore, used to be a nice choice for dungeons and an amazing choice for healing PUGs. Obtaining and having Earthgore in their kit was one small thing expected of a healer. However it was abused in PvP, where people all wore it and figured out how to trigger clouds of ongoing heals and purges, so it was nerfed to the point of uselessness and is now considered a niche tank set.
• Healers used to be able to be more quick, strategic, and flexible, with fast moving layered heals that could be placed pro-actively, and then additional DPS, buffs, or mechanics could be handled for the group in between healing. We took some pretty big hits during the year(s) of "performance" where changes to our core kit were done because it was believed it would improve performance - healing springs could no longer be layered, and orbs could only be released one at a time, at a much slower speed than before. There was a huge uproar, and orbs were altered so that multiple people could synergize, but even after ZOS admitted that these changes didn't produce performance improvements, we lost our layered heals and quick orbs for good. I now have less simultaneous options to heal non-stacked groups as a healer.
• Healer identity suffered, as well, during the "standardization / homogenization" initiatives where all abilities of certain types were changed to be a certain length or behave a certain way. For example, the templar's signature burst heal, Breath of Life, was nerfed so many times it was almost ridiculous, and still was changed to be a cone like all of the other heals, losing its uniqueness.
• Healers also used to be the ones who typically brought the lightning staff. Now, due to the new CP system, lightning is considered useless, tanks bring frost, DPS bring fire, and healers bring... "whatever" or "it depends" (but not lightning).
• I believe it is no coincidence that we've seen so many more of these topics after the Ring of the Pale Order was introduced. In fact, once vampires were re-done, and the idea of a game mechanic where "you can only be healed by yourself" came to Tamriel, it hurt healers a lot. Though the Ring has now been nerfed, I think its existence literally taught a large variety of players to disrespect and disregard healers. To me, this really would be like if ZOS introduced a mechanic where OTHER PEOPLE can make it so the tank's taunt is no longer effective. Vampires and wearers of the ring can invalidate a big part of what healers have always brought to the table through no fault of the healer. Their heals can be rendered ineffective in instanced group content and the open world. And even with the nerf, in dungeons DPS can keep the ring on and get an 8% healing buff in addition to their self heals. I literally have been told in groups "well do something other than heal, then" instead of people wanting to remove the ring. The whole idea behind the mechanic is anti-teamwork and anti-healers and caters to the thinking that DPS don't need heals.

So yes. In addition to the issue of power creep, where above-average players must have crazy-DPS to complete harder content but old content feels like tissue paper, we have all these other things that have slowly eroded what "healers" brought to the table and encouraged people to replace healers with DPS. Some of it is actual loss (like lightning staves) and some of it is perceived (like people equating the Ring of the Pale Order with what a healer does). But even if the devs were to read this summary and agree with me, I'm not sure any of these changes could be easily reversed. I'd love to see Ring of the Pale Order be removed from the game completely, but tons of people would be upset. And I'm still not sure why it was necessary to nerf the lightning staff.

However, despite all of this, I think it is flawed to say that healers must bring something completely unique to the table to be needed. Because healers in ESO were always hybrids, always did some healing and some damage... just like DPS. The difference is that the focus of healers is support, with proportionally higher healing done, while the focus of DPS is damage, with proportionally higher damage done. The goal of healers throughout the history of this game has always been to directly or indirectly INCREASE DPS.

• Did you save someone from dying with heals or shields? That increases the DPS they are doing (or saves the tank so the group doesn't wipe).
• Are you buffing and/or de-buffing with Combat Prayer, Powerful Assault, Master Architect, Martial Knowledge, Ele Drain, etc.? That increases the output of the DPS!
• Are you providing resources via Orbs, Shards, the Master's resto staff, etc.? That increases the amount of casts the DPS can do!
• Are you helping with ultimates, like Warhorn rotations? Oh, look... this helps the DPS.
• Are you kiting? That keeps others from dying which means... oh yes, the DPS can keep DPS-ing.

Even when healers had more things that made them unique, that only they tended to run and slot and do, they always did the same things they do now. They don't NEED to bring something completely unique to the table to be fun or helpful part of the group. There are two DPS needed for the dungeon finder. That seems redundant. How come we aren't insisting these days that you aren't a good DPS unless you can clear content by yourself, with a tank and a healer?

In fact, the only role that does something completely unique is the tank, the person taunting, and THAT is because only one bad guy can be taunted by one person at one time. In contrast, everyone does some damage, even tanks. So uniqueness is not the issue here.

Anyway, I think what healers bring to the group is flexibility. I agree that more identity would be nice, and some of what we are seeing now is the fault of design choices that were warned about in PTS but ignored, but I don't agree that the role isn't needed beyond ~3 end game trials. It's a lot of fun and brings a lot of value in many scenarios. It is a complex problem that we face today with the power creep, and many people being inexperienced without an understanding of what good healers (and tanks) can bring to the table.

Fennwitty

The major factor is really PvP vs. PvE not being separated.

Tanks and healers are reduced because they make PvP a long slog, but it entirely impacts PvE also.

And this game barely cares about its PvP players as it is! Yet they keep hurting one side or the other when they make changes.

They can't be balanced the same. They should be balanced separately.

madrab73

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

ForeverJenn wrote: »

Support is needed in most vet content. If you are upset that your support chars are boring in normal content, then challenge yourself to more endgame stuff.

You can literally solo the majority of dungeons on vet hard mode. The only thing that discourages you from doing so is that you can do it faster by bringing more people.

All the vet solo arenas are basically a joke especially with Pale Order ring.

You could probably even solo many stages of vet group arenas it would just be a waste of time.

And usually the solution to your problem is not that you need more supports, you just need more damage to reduce your clear time.

Have you got a video of Dread Cellar HM solo from your clear?

svendf

peacenote wrote: »

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

I don't feel like I am trolling anyone by wanting the healer role to be better and more important that it currently is. I actually want it to be useful and engaging as I have almost always been a healer main until I got to this game and basically said "wow is this seriously it?". The most I have seen is basically "but who else would cast ele drain" and "you need to light attack sometimes".

What is it that you feel you are bringing to the group dynamic that is not already being brought with DPS and a tank? Others want them to have an actual identity with valuable skills that are desirable.

I think it is true that the healer's identity (at least in PvE) has been diluted over the years, for a large variety of reasons. Probably not all in the right order, but:

• Healers have taken regular, ongoing hits as attempts to balance PvP impacted PvE. One small example: a helm considered a healing helm, Earthgore, used to be a nice choice for dungeons and an amazing choice for healing PUGs. Obtaining and having Earthgore in their kit was one small thing expected of a healer. However it was abused in PvP, where people all wore it and figured out how to trigger clouds of ongoing heals and purges, so it was nerfed to the point of uselessness and is now considered a niche tank set.
• Healers used to be able to be more quick, strategic, and flexible, with fast moving layered heals that could be placed pro-actively, and then additional DPS, buffs, or mechanics could be handled for the group in between healing. We took some pretty big hits during the year(s) of "performance" where changes to our core kit were done because it was believed it would improve performance - healing springs could no longer be layered, and orbs could only be released one at a time, at a much slower speed than before. There was a huge uproar, and orbs were altered so that multiple people could synergize, but even after ZOS admitted that these changes didn't produce performance improvements, we lost our layered heals and quick orbs for good. I now have less simultaneous options to heal non-stacked groups as a healer.
• Healer identity suffered, as well, during the "standardization / homogenization" initiatives where all abilities of certain types were changed to be a certain length or behave a certain way. For example, the templar's signature burst heal, Breath of Life, was nerfed so many times it was almost ridiculous, and still was changed to be a cone like all of the other heals, losing its uniqueness.
• Healers also used to be the ones who typically brought the lightning staff. Now, due to the new CP system, lightning is considered useless, tanks bring frost, DPS bring fire, and healers bring... "whatever" or "it depends" (but not lightning).
• I believe it is no coincidence that we've seen so many more of these topics after the Ring of the Pale Order was introduced. In fact, once vampires were re-done, and the idea of a game mechanic where "you can only be healed by yourself" came to Tamriel, it hurt healers a lot. Though the Ring has now been nerfed, I think its existence literally taught a large variety of players to disrespect and disregard healers. To me, this really would be like if ZOS introduced a mechanic where OTHER PEOPLE can make it so the tank's taunt is no longer effective. Vampires and wearers of the ring can invalidate a big part of what healers have always brought to the table through no fault of the healer. Their heals can be rendered ineffective in instanced group content and the open world. And even with the nerf, in dungeons DPS can keep the ring on and get an 8% healing buff in addition to their self heals. I literally have been told in groups "well do something other than heal, then" instead of people wanting to remove the ring. The whole idea behind the mechanic is anti-teamwork and anti-healers and caters to the thinking that DPS don't need heals.

So yes. In addition to the issue of power creep, where above-average players must have crazy-DPS to complete harder content but old content feels like tissue paper, we have all these other things that have slowly eroded what "healers" brought to the table and encouraged people to replace healers with DPS. Some of it is actual loss (like lightning staves) and some of it is perceived (like people equating the Ring of the Pale Order with what a healer does). But even if the devs were to read this summary and agree with me, I'm not sure any of these changes could be easily reversed. I'd love to see Ring of the Pale Order be removed from the game completely, but tons of people would be upset. And I'm still not sure why it was necessary to nerf the lightning staff.

However, despite all of this, I think it is flawed to say that healers must bring something completely unique to the table to be needed. Because healers in ESO were always hybrids, always did some healing and some damage... just like DPS. The difference is that the focus of healers is support, with proportionally higher healing done, while the focus of DPS is damage, with proportionally higher damage done. The goal of healers throughout the history of this game has always been to directly or indirectly INCREASE DPS.

• Did you save someone from dying with heals or shields? That increases the DPS they are doing (or saves the tank so the group doesn't wipe).
• Are you buffing and/or de-buffing with Combat Prayer, Powerful Assault, Master Architect, Martial Knowledge, Ele Drain, etc.? That increases the output of the DPS!
• Are you providing resources via Orbs, Shards, the Master's resto staff, etc.? That increases the amount of casts the DPS can do!
• Are you helping with ultimates, like Warhorn rotations? Oh, look... this helps the DPS.
• Are you kiting? That keeps others from dying which means... oh yes, the DPS can keep DPS-ing.

Even when healers had more things that made them unique, that only they tended to run and slot and do, they always did the same things they do now. They don't NEED to bring something completely unique to the table to be fun or helpful part of the group. There are two DPS needed for the dungeon finder. That seems redundant. How come we aren't insisting these days that you aren't a good DPS unless you can clear content by yourself, with a tank and a healer?

In fact, the only role that does something completely unique is the tank, the person taunting, and THAT is because only one bad guy can be taunted by one person at one time. In contrast, everyone does some damage, even tanks. So uniqueness is not the issue here.

Anyway, I think what healers bring to the group is flexibility. I agree that more identity would be nice, and some of what we are seeing now is the fault of design choices that were warned about in PTS but ignored, but I don't agree that the role isn't needed beyond ~3 end game trials. It's a lot of fun and brings a lot of value in many scenarios. It is a complex problem that we face today with the power creep, and many people being inexperienced without an understanding of what good healers (and tanks) can bring to the table.

This Sir is a mighty fine post. Long, but very true. I agree to every word of it. You cover a lot of the issues, and yes! A lot of people don´t know or even think of, what a healer can bring or brings to the table.

Regarding the PO ring ? It should never have been allowed in group content.

Cheers.

YoureWrongImRight

Ezhh wrote: »

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

They need more enemies putting out more sustained pressure overall, instead of just a few enemies that have 1 shot mechanics and that's all that's threatening. Once DPS are too busy healing themselves to actually be able to deal damage then a healer becomes valuable. .

Firstly, I'm not disagreeing that there is a problem, but I struggle to see how the solution can be so neat and easy.

To give one example of where I see a problem: I healed vKA HMs yesterday. On the last boss HM during the end phase, myself and the other healer output over 200k raw healing per second between us. This is without counting healing group members did on themselves. The amount of overall healing getting used up by the group was just over 110k during this phase. It's admittedly one of the most intense healing checks the game has. It's still fairly simple for me and my co-healer to meet it, but does feel engaging to me and we do need to focus and know what we're doing. If we were newer or less experienced healers, we might not pull it off.

Drop the difficulty down to vet without the HM, and how much can you reduce the incoming damage in this phase before healers like me don't feel very needed? Then drop it down to normal. If you made it genuinely engaging for a healer like me on normal so that I'd feel engaged and useful at that difficulty level, then how would the difficulty be increased for things to still work on vet? How about on vet HM? If you raise the incoming damage on normal so that it would feel challenging and worthwhile to me, what happens to the healers who are just learning and currently struggle?

The floor and the ceiling are just too far apart, and in a random normal dungeon queue people from both ends get mixed together. You simply can't increase damage to be healed a meaningful amount on lower difficulties without either making the higher ones practically impossible when their requirements go up in turn or by bringing the difficulties closer to each other, and the gap between floor and ceiling needs to close before that can work.

---

Short version: For any given group of players, player capability floor and ceiling are too far apart for every difficulty level to need supports the same amount. This means players who can easily complete vet dungeons/trials (especially HMs) are less likely to need a healer for dungeons or two healers for normal trials. It's a game balance issue, but I think just a symptom of the larger problem.

By your own admission the group is only using 55% of your overall healing output, this does not seem like you guys are exactly straining to keep up.

I am not suggesting that we make it so difficult at normal mode the by the time you get to vet HM it's literally impossible. I would be happy to see more degrees of difficulty added to the same content that already exists where you can set the difficulty level directly upon instance entry, lets say 5 difficulty levels where mobs hp, resists, damage and overall number of enemies is tuned accordingly. I would not be opposed to level 5 feeling like it is almost impossible even at very high CP and all the best gear.

I have always been a support main and I understand their function is to heal and mitigate/augment damage. Which is why I am upset when I see self healing over tuned the way it is, things like Ring of the Pale Order as another mentioned above, and things like Kinras being meta sets where the dps can just bring all the self healing and buffs that a support would be providing.

I miss the days of old when people were desiring support roles to run with them rather than cursing them for not just being hybrid damage. You don't get that same feeling from bringing others back from the verge of death in high pressure situations in part because they do that themselves on a regular basis.

Some of you seem to have found a good community/guild that appreciates your efforts, but that has not been the experience of myself and many others. For others there seems to be this mentality that everything is just perfect as is and if you don't desire to run all but a limited number of trial content you should basically just quit the game because nothing can be done to tweak the 4 man content for just playing with a few friends (or at least have the option to tweak it).

Troodon80

peacenote wrote: »

• Are you kiting? That keeps others from dying which means... oh yes, the DPS can keep DPS-ing.

As someone who mains a support role (tank), this really irks me. I've said it before and I'll keep saying it. DDs will not play any mechanics if they can foist said mechanics onto the supports. Almost every fight in ESO can be solved "by just bringing more DPS" and similarly almost every fight outside of first boss on Dread Cellar can be described as "stack and burn," and even that's just a "controlled stack and burn" provided DDs are disciplined in what they're nuking (that's a good joke, right?). Even first boss in Rockgkrove, while not stacked on hard mode, will/should be close enough to take cleave damage.

Everything just favours bringing more damage. The fights are not really getting more complex or technical -- for DDs, at least. Anything that involves DDs and thinking usually results in having a bad time (Embrace of Death on Bahsei?). Imagine if ESO had Construct 7 style fights (you can Google that if you're interested).

Amottica

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Naftal wrote: »

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

Naftal wrote: »

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

Naftal wrote: »

I don't know how they'd make healers "needed" for dungeons without making it so you need a very good healer or you can't do the content. If the group or at least tank doesn't take very high sustained damage all the time, self heals can handle it. If most 4 man content had super high damage output then the more casual healers and tanks couldn't really do the content at all.

Maybe give better buffs for the group for using resto staff? Release stronger damage buff sets for healers that require you to actually play a healer somehow? Even then healers would just be buffers. I guess the healer role in dungeons could be more of a buffer anyway.

Is this any different than needing a tank for boss encounters? I don't see the difference. You cannot complete it without DPS, why should you be able to complete it without a healer?

They need more enemies putting out more sustained pressure overall, instead of just a few enemies that have 1 shot mechanics and that's all that's threatening. Once DPS are too busy healing themselves to actually be able to deal damage then a healer becomes valuable. If they can just throw one heal on themselves every 10 seconds and it can sustain them then they're not needed.

So how do you propose this is done without balancing the content for only the top 1% healers? If it's balanced around having a casual healer then most groups will still go without one.

I don't get what you mean by these top 1% healers, in ESO it's not exactly a complicated task, the game literally has smart healing where you don't even need to select a target, it selects the target for you, and the rest of the abilities are GTAOE. The point is that if DPS would need to spend 1/2 - 3/4 of the time healing themselves to stay alive rather than dealing out damage, it now becomes more efficient to have a dedicated person performing that function. The issue now is there is no need to have anyone perform that dedicated function, it is more efficient to just try to put out more damage and more damage and more damage. If the incoming pressure is enough that 3 DPS would be wasting too much time with self healing they will opt to get a healer instead.

Most healers don't heal that much and probably don't know proper healing rotations if you need really high healing per second. The amount of healing those players do at the moment is irrelevant when you can self heal.

So how much damage should the group be getting all the time? More than most healers can heal or less that can be self healed easily?

and in the more challenging content uptime on buffs and debuffs is important on top of providing resources. This is on top of positioning since that is important for many heals.

So while healing seems simple, and is when the content is steamrolling easy, top raid groups are top raid groups in part due to their healer. Even with small group PvP, the healer can make a difference and it is more than just tossing heals.

The buff uptime is extremely long, like 20 seconds usually, that's only 3 APM to keep it rolling.

Other than that I think we have basically looped back around to the root issue here. We are all acknowledging that they are completely useless other than this "real end game content" which is like 3 vet trials and other than that they are of less value than just swapping a DPS in their place.

Where did you get 20 seconds from? That does not seem right.

Combat prayer buffs last 8 seconds making for a tighter rotation. That is also not the only skill outside of healing a trial healer will provide. I am also speaking of the challenging raiding in the game and with the good groups, extremely high uptime of the buffs is a requirement.

So your main function is to drop a combat prayer, which stam dps can just slot camo hunter to gain, as well as major savagery and an extra 3% to their weapon damage for their trouble via passives. Again the main point here is that the role has been diluted because DPS have access to everything you are bringing to the table without you.

Not sure what your point is as I have been very clear I am speaking of serious raiding. As such my comments are correct and the information I have noted is accurate, including the length of buffs. They were also made to add to a comment another player made and their comments were accurate as well.

If you found an inaccuracy in my comments please do bring them up, but I am not interested in discussing aspects of the game that do not apply to what I had said. Just FYI.

My apologies, I thought we were all under the understanding here that we are talking about support roles in the game overall, not just 1% of the content. There have been many points brought up here regarding 4 man content, PvP etc as well.

Major Courage buff from Olorime lasts 20 seconds, I'm sure you're aware of this being a serious raider.

Well, the comment of mine that you first replied to was specifically speaking about the content that is actually challenging and that the healer in top raid groups is a big reason why they are a top raid group. Those are two key points that indicated my comment was directed to content and groups where a healer is more important.

And I do not recall suggesting Major Courage was a different duration. I do not recall mentioning that buff at all. I merely pointed out suggesting all buff times were 20 seconds was not correct since there are buffs with much shorter durations. But it is good to mention such a buff since it makes it clear that the healer is dealing with varying durations of buffs.

WraithShadow13

I don't think they're dying, so much as they've just been neglected and abandoned, in favor of DPS. Had they been doing ANYTHING to balance the insane gaps between the high DPS builds and everything else, it wouldn't be so bad. More so, when they cater to them and allow for tanking and healing abilities to be scaled along side the DPS, so those insanely high DPS builds become the unstoppable players just steamrolling through groups of players in PvP or speed running normal dungeons. I think it's great that people can math out those kinds of builds but it's on ZOS to keep that from happening and balance that so healing and tanking isn't dragged into the state they currently are.

Ezhh

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

By your own admission the group is only using 55% of your overall healing output, this does not seem like you guys are exactly straining to keep up.

I didn't say we are straining - we both know our roles/rotation/class/skills and so on well enough to not have an issue; however it's closing on the limits of the amount of damage per second that can be reliably healed. It's a simple issue that when each member of your group takes a large damage tick per second, you have to fit that amount of healing in between each tick of damage. So yes, there is a lot of overhealing, but that's a side effect of making sure you get enough between each tick of damage. It doesn't necessarily mean we are doing more healing than needed, because timing heals down to a split second isn't really possible, and even with this overhealing, miss a couple prayer casts at the wrong moment and you have some dead group members.

I've seen a lot of healers fail this healing check and making it more difficult won't do anyone, especially the majority of healers who might already struggle here, any favours. There is certainly some vet HM content where damage could be increased, but not all of it has much scope for that.

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

I am not suggesting that we make it so difficult at normal mode the by the time you get to vet HM it's literally impossible. I would be happy to see more degrees of difficulty added to the same content that already exists where you can set the difficulty level directly upon instance entry, lets say 5 difficulty levels where mobs hp, resists, damage and overall number of enemies is tuned accordingly. I would not be opposed to level 5 feeling like it is almost impossible even at very high CP and all the best gear.

I'd love to see more gradual difficulty increases, because it would make it easier for people to work into harder content, but none of this changes that to make healers feel needed in both the easiest and hardest content would require the floor and ceiling to be closer together. The moment you make normal content feel rewarding for me to heal, how is the the random healer who just occasionally casts Radiating Regen and otherwise uses nothing but Mend Wounds going to handle things? Something that is doable for them is trivial for me, and something that is engaging for me would be no fun at all for them. You need to close this gap, or get people into content of an appropriate difficulty level for their ability (and gating based on CP level like some have suggested won't address it, because CP isn't equal to ability).

YoureWrongImRight

Ezhh wrote: »

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

By your own admission the group is only using 55% of your overall healing output, this does not seem like you guys are exactly straining to keep up.

I didn't say we are straining - we both know our roles/rotation/class/skills and so on well enough to not have an issue; however it's closing on the limits of the amount of damage per second that can be reliably healed. It's a simple issue that when each member of your group takes a large damage tick per second, you have to fit that amount of healing in between each tick of damage. So yes, there is a lot of overhealing, but that's a side effect of making sure you get enough between each tick of damage. It doesn't necessarily mean we are doing more healing than needed, because timing heals down to a split second isn't really possible, and even with this overhealing, miss a couple prayer casts at the wrong moment and you have some dead group members.

I've seen a lot of healers fail this healing check and making it more difficult won't do anyone, especially the majority of healers who might already struggle here, any favours. There is certainly some vet HM content where damage could be increased, but not all of it has much scope for that.

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

I am not suggesting that we make it so difficult at normal mode the by the time you get to vet HM it's literally impossible. I would be happy to see more degrees of difficulty added to the same content that already exists where you can set the difficulty level directly upon instance entry, lets say 5 difficulty levels where mobs hp, resists, damage and overall number of enemies is tuned accordingly. I would not be opposed to level 5 feeling like it is almost impossible even at very high CP and all the best gear.

I'd love to see more gradual difficulty increases, because it would make it easier for people to work into harder content, but none of this changes that to make healers feel needed in both the easiest and hardest content would require the floor and ceiling to be closer together. The moment you make normal content feel rewarding for me to heal, how is the the random healer who just occasionally casts Radiating Regen and otherwise uses nothing but Mend Wounds going to handle things? Something that is doable for them is trivial for me, and something that is engaging for me would be no fun at all for them. You need to close this gap, or get people into content of an appropriate difficulty level for their ability (and gating based on CP level like some have suggested won't address it, because CP isn't equal to ability).

I think we are basically in agreement here on most things. As based on the numbers you are providing you are capable of completing more difficult content than what you are currently doing, and as more people gain more and more CP and just naturally get better gear and better at their rotations etc this will be the case for them.

There should be content available for all experience levels that is challenging and include all the roles. This does not eliminate the case that at normal level a veteran player could still complete a dungeon solo, there is no way to have it scale correctly going up the ladder if this is not the case. But it should be impossible for them to complete it solo at max difficulty. This should require the intended number of participants, be it 4 or 12.

Wolfshead

The problem I see as I play heavy DPS and I easy over aggro is this so call fake tank and fake healer don't stand chance when I go full DPS in the dungeon so I end half tank for the cant keep aggro but its big problem we have got hybrid class that can both heal and tanks and DPS which make tank and healer class feel not welcome anymore.

Personally, I take a real tank and heal over a fake one for it make gameplay more fun.

Cryptical

TumlinTheJolly wrote: »

Yes, it should be viable to build pure tank or pure healer...

HOWEVER, this should not come at the expense of the viability of hybrid builds.

If people want to run 1 tank, 3 dps... 4 dps... 2 dps, 2 full hybrid... 4 hybrids... etc, this should be just as viable as 1 tank, 1 healer, 2 DPS.

Obviously each composition operates on a spectrum of 'safe clear' to 'risky speed clear', which is as it should be. For content where a healer is not required, the issue is the difficulty of the content IMO. A solution to this would be to tune up the damage output of the enemies but reduce their HP, which would increase the need for a healer/support, without significantly slowing the clear.

Forcing the need for 1 healer, 1 tank and 2 dps would result in significantly reduced build diversity, which is arguably ESO's greatest strength.

NO.

Absolutely not.

A 1tank 3dps should not be as viable as a standard configuration, because if it is just as viable to go without a healer as it would be to go with a healer then the entire role of 'healer' is useless.

Choices NEED consequences. "Play however you want" does NOT mean your chosen character will be as good as any other combination. If you choose a Nord Sorc then you should not be anywhere near as viable as a healer as an Argonian Templar healer.

It is as simple as that. Too much flattening of the capabilities between the races and classes has led to the tank and healer roles being far too easily replaced by dps characters.

A HUGE opportunity was completely missed when they overhauled the champion system. The most fundamental thing they could have done to buttress the need for separate roles in the group content was to dump the separation between the warrior/mage/thief stars with their separately equal point pools. Instead of forcing players to make choices between enhancing defense or enhancing damage, their continuation of the champ point 3 plate buffet allows DPS people to slot Deadly Aim to enhance their damage alongside slotting Boundless Vitality to boost health.

If you want to support a need for all roles in group content, then the NUMBER ONE thing you avoid is creating a system that destroys the barriers that form individuality between roles. In other words - make it so only Healer builds can fulfil the role of healing, so that anyone (of appropriate champ point level) that tries to fake it is unable to meet the requirements. It's not unsalvageable, though.

Instead of granting people 3 separate buff areas for champ points of 4 abilities each, they should have 1 buff area that accepts abilities from any constellation. The number of abilities that can be slotted would have to be tested, but at least that would force players to make solid choices between one role or another.

Ultimately, the [snip] support roles being made largely irrelevant beyond the most exceptional of content will never ease until ZOS takes action in two ways:
1 - Accept that they must steward a system that has functional inequalities and even downright impossibilities between some build configurations regarding roles (accept that some builds will be less viable or even not viable at all in some roles) This is largely an internal "Face Reality" action.
2 - Accept that existing content will need to be revisited in order to rectify earlier choices. Also largely an internal "Face Reality" action.

[snip] Right now straight from the eso website about the classes, the DK claims "Burn your foes in cleansing flame and withstand almost any assault with the Dragonknight, ".... so logically that would mean OTHER CLASSES cannot withstand almost any assault. Meaning that other classes are inferior to the DK regarding tanking. Why bother having individuality in the lore and flavor of the game if the mechanics are going to wipe that away in favor of making everyone equally viable in every role in pursuit of a totally bland "play how you want"? Having different graphics and different spiffy abilities when the mechanics are being balanced into a bland sameness is a horrible sin against the players.

Edit:
It's usually good to try and give different examples of what you mean, so that you can be more sure that your point is understandable. Well, the super bowl is coming up in a few weeks, I'll use that...

The linebacker role needs raw strength to stand and hold the other team away from the quarterback. They don't need speed. They don't need great coordination. Their role is to be a solid wall. You can pull up on youtube videos of those uncommon times that a linebacker gets hold of the ball - it's a huge guy clomping his way down the field without speed (speed belongs to the Receiver players) and by the time he gets any large distance he is obviously panting so hard his lungs feel like they are exploding. The linebacker build is barely viable at the role of moving the football down the field.

The running back role needs speed, coordination, and able to keep sustained effort. They don't need raw strength to hold back a wall, their build needs to move those legs quickly over a decent distance without slacking. You can pull up youtube videos of a receiver getting in conflict with a linebacker, and a description of "He got flattened like a pancake" usually fits.

Can anyone imagine rebalancing the different roles in football to try and apply Zos's "play how you want"? It would rebalance buffs on the running back because they score the points - they are the DPS of football. Can anyone imagine how much of a debacle that would be? The whole strategy would devolve away from feints and deception plays and focus merely on getting the ball to the running back and boosting that guy up the field. No more linebackers - the running backs would have been granted balance buffs to dodging so that the team no longer needs a solid wall of defense. No more quarterbacks - passing the ball is a danger to keeping possession, so just make the whole team a bunch of running backs to maximize the DPS against the opposition.

ROLES ARE NECESSARY. STOP BALANCING THE MECHANICS INTO A BLAND SAMENESS OF ABILITY ACROSS THE BOARD.

[edited for rude/insulting comment]

Troodon80

Cryptical wrote: »

The linebacker role needs raw strength to stand and hold the other team away from the quarterback. They don't need speed. They don't need great coordination. Their role is to be a solid wall. You can pull up on youtube videos of those uncommon times that a linebacker gets hold of the ball - it's a huge guy clomping his way down the field without speed (speed belongs to the Receiver players) and by the time he gets any large distance he is obviously panting so hard his lungs feel like they are exploding. The linebacker build is barely viable at the role of moving the football down the field.

I'm not saying whether you're right or wrong. I'm not disagreeing or agreeing with the assertion. However, ironically, all you've done with this example is prove that, if pushed, it can be done. And in ESO, you don't really have physical fitness or lung capacity to think about. And in end game, especially, the thought is "if it can be done, then why not do it?"

Probably not the best example to use if you're arguing for strict role enforcement, to be honest.

YoureWrongImRight

Troodon80 wrote: »

Cryptical wrote: »

The linebacker role needs raw strength to stand and hold the other team away from the quarterback. They don't need speed. They don't need great coordination. Their role is to be a solid wall. You can pull up on youtube videos of those uncommon times that a linebacker gets hold of the ball - it's a huge guy clomping his way down the field without speed (speed belongs to the Receiver players) and by the time he gets any large distance he is obviously panting so hard his lungs feel like they are exploding. The linebacker build is barely viable at the role of moving the football down the field.

I'm not saying whether you're right or wrong. I'm not disagreeing or agreeing with the assertion. However, ironically, all you've done with this example is prove that, if pushed, it can be done. And in ESO, you don't really have physical fitness or lung capacity to think about. And in end game, especially, the thought is "if it can be done, then why not do it?"

Probably not the best example to use if you're arguing for strict role enforcement, to be honest.

I don't think this detracts from his point at all. Tanks are putting out small amounts of damage generally via taunts and damage return etc. Does this mean they can take down a strong enemy over a long period of time and horribly inefficiently, yea it does. Unless their taunt does no damage at all they can theoretically fill the role of DPS at the extremely poor end if pushed to do so, like he has demonstrated in his example.

The issue is that in ESO it is not inefficient to do so, it is actually encouraged through the mechanics.

Dem_kitkats1

Cryptical wrote: »

TumlinTheJolly wrote: »

Yes, it should be viable to build pure tank or pure healer...

HOWEVER, this should not come at the expense of the viability of hybrid builds.

If people want to run 1 tank, 3 dps... 4 dps... 2 dps, 2 full hybrid... 4 hybrids... etc, this should be just as viable as 1 tank, 1 healer, 2 DPS.

Obviously each composition operates on a spectrum of 'safe clear' to 'risky speed clear', which is as it should be. For content where a healer is not required, the issue is the difficulty of the content IMO. A solution to this would be to tune up the damage output of the enemies but reduce their HP, which would increase the need for a healer/support, without significantly slowing the clear.

Forcing the need for 1 healer, 1 tank and 2 dps would result in significantly reduced build diversity, which is arguably ESO's greatest strength.

NO.

Absolutely not.

A 1tank 3dps should not be as viable as a standard configuration, because if it is just as viable to go without a healer as it would be to go with a healer then the entire role of 'healer' is useless.

Choices NEED consequences. "Play however you want" does NOT mean your chosen character will be as good as any other combination. If you choose a Nord Sorc then you should not be anywhere near as viable as a healer as an Argonian Templar healer.

It is as simple as that. Too much flattening of the capabilities between the races and classes has led to the tank and healer roles being far too easily replaced by dps characters.

A HUGE opportunity was completely missed when they overhauled the champion system. The most fundamental thing they could have done to buttress the need for separate roles in the group content was to dump the separation between the warrior/mage/thief stars with their separately equal point pools. Instead of forcing players to make choices between enhancing defense or enhancing damage, their continuation of the champ point 3 plate buffet allows DPS people to slot Deadly Aim to enhance their damage alongside slotting Boundless Vitality to boost health.

If you want to support a need for all roles in group content, then the NUMBER ONE thing you avoid is creating a system that destroys the barriers that form individuality between roles. In other words - make it so only Healer builds can fulfil the role of healing, so that anyone (of appropriate champ point level) that tries to fake it is unable to meet the requirements. It's not unsalvageable, though.

Instead of granting people 3 separate buff areas for champ points of 4 abilities each, they should have 1 buff area that accepts abilities from any constellation. The number of abilities that can be slotted would have to be tested, but at least that would force players to make solid choices between one role or another.

Ultimately, the cancer of support roles being made largely irrelevant beyond the most exceptional of content will never ease until ZOS takes action in two ways:
1 - Accept that they must steward a system that has functional inequalities and even downright impossibilities between some build configurations regarding roles (accept that some builds will be less viable or even not viable at all in some roles) This is largely an internal "Face Reality" action.
2 - Accept that existing content will need to be revisited in order to rectify earlier choices. Also largely an internal "Face Reality" action.

And it IS a cancer. Right now straight from the eso website about the classes, the DK claims "Burn your foes in cleansing flame and withstand almost any assault with the Dragonknight, ".... so logically that would mean OTHER CLASSES cannot withstand almost any assault. Meaning that other classes are inferior to the DK regarding tanking. Why bother having individuality in the lore and flavor of the game if the mechanics are going to wipe that away in favor of making everyone equally viable in every role in pursuit of a totally bland "play how you want"? Having different graphics and different spiffy abilities when the mechanics are being balanced into a bland sameness is a horrible sin against the players.

ROLES ARE NECESSARY. STOP BALANCING THE MECHANICS INTO A BLAND SAMENESS OF ABILITY ACROSS THE BOARD.

YES. I agree 100%. Classes have become so strong in every facet that basically "play what you want" has just become a system of play the same hybrid dps character and slap a different label on it and and implement a couple of unique abilities, but you can still do what everyone else can. Race doesn't even matter that much unless you care about having a little bit of extra sustain, resistances, damage, etc. However, players can still make playing any race for any class viable. It's because of this idea that true balance is the ability for one character to be strong in all stats against all other players, that support roles are rendered redundant in many cases.

In difficult content healers should be fulfilling their roles by doing more healing than 50% because that is your role and what you were built for. In my opinion, it's sad to see the role reduced to buff bot play and not that much healing at all. Especially when hybrid builds can get those buffs anyway through means of slotting certain sets and skills. It's sad to me that only in vet trials (a small percentage of content) that support roles are engaging to play and have any sort of impact. It shouldn't be viable for dps characters to solo hard vet dungeons and it is possible just look at youtube videos and twitch streams of people doing it. The fact that it is possible demonstrates that there islittle need for support roles.

Troodon80

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

I don't think this detracts from his point at all. Tanks are putting out small amounts of damage generally via taunts and damage return etc. Does this mean they can take down a strong enemy over a long period of time and horribly inefficiently, yea it does. Unless their taunt does no damage at all they can theoretically fill the role of DPS at the extremely poor end if pushed to do so, like he has demonstrated in his example.

The issue is that in ESO it is not inefficient to do so, it is actually encouraged through the mechanics.

Even if the taunt does no damage, things like Stone Giant and Scythe, among other abilities, do. They're not great damage as a tank in heavy armour, but if you can contribute 10k instead of 2k, with no impact to yourself, why wouldn't you do it? It's fine if you don't want to, by the way. That's the matra of ESO in play the way you want. No one is saying you have to. But it's a question that could be easily answered.

The example given is a fundamentally different concept. You don't get to just chug a potion during your sport to regen stamina or magicka or give major expedition, etc. And if you could build your linebacker in such a way that they could perform their role in exactly the same way and run the length of the field, again, why wouldn't you in order to help your team?

The argument seems to be in favour of strict roles in where the tank is a glorified meat shield who does nothing but taunt and block and where the healer does nothing but spam heals? There is so much more to what tanking and healing can be about. There's so much more to a good support than what is being suggested.

TumlinTheJolly

Cryptical wrote: »

TumlinTheJolly wrote: »

Yes, it should be viable to build pure tank or pure healer...

HOWEVER, this should not come at the expense of the viability of hybrid builds.

If people want to run 1 tank, 3 dps... 4 dps... 2 dps, 2 full hybrid... 4 hybrids... etc, this should be just as viable as 1 tank, 1 healer, 2 DPS.

Obviously each composition operates on a spectrum of 'safe clear' to 'risky speed clear', which is as it should be. For content where a healer is not required, the issue is the difficulty of the content IMO. A solution to this would be to tune up the damage output of the enemies but reduce their HP, which would increase the need for a healer/support, without significantly slowing the clear.

Forcing the need for 1 healer, 1 tank and 2 dps would result in significantly reduced build diversity, which is arguably ESO's greatest strength.

NO.

Absolutely not.

A 1tank 3dps should not be as viable as a standard configuration, because if it is just as viable to go without a healer as it would be to go with a healer then the entire role of 'healer' is useless.

Choices NEED consequences. "Play however you want" does NOT mean your chosen character will be as good as any other combination. If you choose a Nord Sorc then you should not be anywhere near as viable as a healer as an Argonian Templar healer.

It is as simple as that. Too much flattening of the capabilities between the races and classes has led to the tank and healer roles being far too easily replaced by dps characters.

A HUGE opportunity was completely missed when they overhauled the champion system. The most fundamental thing they could have done to buttress the need for separate roles in the group content was to dump the separation between the warrior/mage/thief stars with their separately equal point pools. Instead of forcing players to make choices between enhancing defense or enhancing damage, their continuation of the champ point 3 plate buffet allows DPS people to slot Deadly Aim to enhance their damage alongside slotting Boundless Vitality to boost health.

If you want to support a need for all roles in group content, then the NUMBER ONE thing you avoid is creating a system that destroys the barriers that form individuality between roles. In other words - make it so only Healer builds can fulfil the role of healing, so that anyone (of appropriate champ point level) that tries to fake it is unable to meet the requirements. It's not unsalvageable, though.

Instead of granting people 3 separate buff areas for champ points of 4 abilities each, they should have 1 buff area that accepts abilities from any constellation. The number of abilities that can be slotted would have to be tested, but at least that would force players to make solid choices between one role or another.

Ultimately, the [snip] support roles being made largely irrelevant beyond the most exceptional of content will never ease until ZOS takes action in two ways:
1 - Accept that they must steward a system that has functional inequalities and even downright impossibilities between some build configurations regarding roles (accept that some builds will be less viable or even not viable at all in some roles) This is largely an internal "Face Reality" action.
2 - Accept that existing content will need to be revisited in order to rectify earlier choices. Also largely an internal "Face Reality" action.

[snip] Right now straight from the eso website about the classes, the DK claims "Burn your foes in cleansing flame and withstand almost any assault with the Dragonknight, ".... so logically that would mean OTHER CLASSES cannot withstand almost any assault. Meaning that other classes are inferior to the DK regarding tanking. Why bother having individuality in the lore and flavor of the game if the mechanics are going to wipe that away in favor of making everyone equally viable in every role in pursuit of a totally bland "play how you want"? Having different graphics and different spiffy abilities when the mechanics are being balanced into a bland sameness is a horrible sin against the players.

Edit:
It's usually good to try and give different examples of what you mean, so that you can be more sure that your point is understandable. Well, the super bowl is coming up in a few weeks, I'll use that...

The linebacker role needs raw strength to stand and hold the other team away from the quarterback. They don't need speed. They don't need great coordination. Their role is to be a solid wall. You can pull up on youtube videos of those uncommon times that a linebacker gets hold of the ball - it's a huge guy clomping his way down the field without speed (speed belongs to the Receiver players) and by the time he gets any large distance he is obviously panting so hard his lungs feel like they are exploding. The linebacker build is barely viable at the role of moving the football down the field.

The running back role needs speed, coordination, and able to keep sustained effort. They don't need raw strength to hold back a wall, their build needs to move those legs quickly over a decent distance without slacking. You can pull up youtube videos of a receiver getting in conflict with a linebacker, and a description of "He got flattened like a pancake" usually fits.

Can anyone imagine rebalancing the different roles in football to try and apply Zos's "play how you want"? It would rebalance buffs on the running back because they score the points - they are the DPS of football. Can anyone imagine how much of a debacle that would be? The whole strategy would devolve away from feints and deception plays and focus merely on getting the ball to the running back and boosting that guy up the field. No more linebackers - the running backs would have been granted balance buffs to dodging so that the team no longer needs a solid wall of defense. No more quarterbacks - passing the ball is a danger to keeping possession, so just make the whole team a bunch of running backs to maximize the DPS against the opposition.

ROLES ARE NECESSARY. STOP BALANCING THE MECHANICS INTO A BLAND SAMENESS OF ABILITY ACROSS THE BOARD.

[edited for rude/insulting comment]

Why should a Nord Sorc not be able to heal at 99% the effectiveness of an Argonian Templar? Why should we HAVE to play 1 tank, 1 healer, 2 DPS?

ESO's greatest strength is build creativity. We should have choice. If a DPS wishes to lose 50% of their damage to pull extra healing equal to 50% of a full healer's healing, they should be able to. Equally, if a healer wishes to lose 50% of their healing to pull extra DPS equal to 50% of a full DPS' damage output, they should be able to. The problem only arises when the gain from going hybrid results in a net output of greater than 100% effectiveness of a specialised role. The problem isn't that hybrid builds shouldn't exist, it's that they shouldn't be more viable than specialised builds.

With this being said, if you use the Dungeon Finder tool, where roles are enforced by default, you should be playing a relatively specialised build so as to not let your group down. For all other content played with friends, play however you collectively desire! If your 'friends' can't agree on how the aggregate pool of buffs, stats etc should be shared around, then ditch em and make new friends with preferences that reflect your own.

MindOfTheSwarm

Change Harmony Trait to buff the effectiveness of Synergies you PROVIDE as well as activate. This at least might make a support running a bunch of synergies viable for group content. Also, add more synergies to class/world/guild skills. A true support, should offer a lot of synergies that are too good to pass up. If you also change Harmony trait as I suggest. Now you have a very helpful ally in your team.

YoureWrongImRight

Troodon80 wrote: »

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

I don't think this detracts from his point at all. Tanks are putting out small amounts of damage generally via taunts and damage return etc. Does this mean they can take down a strong enemy over a long period of time and horribly inefficiently, yea it does. Unless their taunt does no damage at all they can theoretically fill the role of DPS at the extremely poor end if pushed to do so, like he has demonstrated in his example.

The issue is that in ESO it is not inefficient to do so, it is actually encouraged through the mechanics.

Even if the taunt does no damage, things like Stone Giant and Scythe, among other abilities, do. They're not great damage as a tank in heavy armour, but if you can contribute 10k instead of 2k, with no impact to yourself, why wouldn't you do it? It's fine if you don't want to, by the way. That's the matra of ESO in play the way you want. No one is saying you have to. But it's a question that could be easily answered.

The example given is a fundamentally different concept. You don't get to just chug a potion during your sport to regen stamina or magicka or give major expedition, etc. And if you could build your quarterback in such a way that they could perform their role in exactly the same way and run the length of the field, again, why wouldn't you in order to help your team?

The argument seems to be in favour of strict roles in where the tank is a glorified meat shield who does nothing but taunt and block and where the healer does nothing but spam heals? There is so much more to what tanking and healing can be about. There's so much more to a good support than what is being suggested.

I would argue for strict roles yes, because that is how you give them identity. I don't agree that taunt + block or just heal spamming is the solution. But many would suggest that the only other thing you should be doing is to augment damage by you yourself performing some attack abilities.

When the question is posed "What should I be doing as a support when nobody is low on health so I don't need to be healing, my 1-2 debuffs are already out and don't need to be recasted", the answer always seems to be, "Well you should be doing damage". The game does not even supply you with enough buffs and debuffs to keep cycling through them and keep yourself actually busy.

I think many people would agree that many of the boss fights are not very engaging, there's basically just one big baddy that the tank agro's and the rest is just stack and burn, there are obviously some exceptions to this, but it's fairly consistent from what I have seen. The adds are usually fairly minimal, at least from my perspective a couple adds is nothing to be crazy concerned about. Part of the reason for this is the adds often times have their own one shot mechanics, this adds a little extra agro management for the tank but leaves the dps relatively untouched most of the time. They obviously cannot add tons of adds like this because everyone would just be kiting around trying not to get one shotted, it is also not very engaging for a healer because you have 2 states of being, alive or dead.

This is why I would suggest to have more enemies putting out more sustained pressure with less one shot mechanics. You can still have 1 or 2 big baddies that the tank needs to be concerned with about, but there should be far more lower concern enemies as well.

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

Change Harmony Trait to buff the effectiveness of Synergies you PROVIDE as well as activate. This at least might make a support running a bunch of synergies viable for group content. Also, add more synergies to class/world/guild skills. A true support, should offer a lot of synergies that are too good to pass up. If you also change Harmony trait as I suggest. Now you have a very helpful ally in your team.

I like this idea, also would like to see them change orbs.

Have the synergy for Mystic have increased damage and no resource restore.

Inverse for energy orb, remove the heal component and change it to have increased resource restore.

The sustain portion should be a more important component of what the healer is providing, magicka classes are all throwing out orbs which makes it nothing special for a healer.

FeedbackOnly

It's simple it's time to Nerf self healing.

Time to buff other healing and tank classes. If DPS can play all classes then so should we

The devs should play other classes to understand we need buffs

Time for bard skill line full of buffs

Make adds unskippale in dungeons

Scale healing power to a new stat

Make bosses hurt more if low resistances

Bobby_V_Rockit

My healer is my favorite character. Just a humble Argonian warden using Olorime, Roaring Opportunist and the Spaulder of Ruin. My brother and I have good fun duoing

madrab73

DPS can play all roles? They need to start with their own first.

Ran a normal on tank this morning and the healer did more DPS than both DDs combined

hcbigdogdoghc

Group content needs to be adjusted and healer skills need to be buffed.

Need more dungeons like TDC(hm), SG and MGF where most sane players bring a healer unlike other 4 man content where people just go 3-4DDs.

But healer skills need huge buffs to raise the floor so that not only the top 1% healers can handle the required healing output, pre nerf dread cellar proves this, most pugs can't finish it because 99% of healers in this game can't heal for the life of them and are constantly getting soft carried. Cutting all resto staff skills cost by half, making radiating regen affect 4+ people, and bring back multi stackable healing springs + orbs would be a good start.

Troodon80

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

I would argue for strict roles yes, because that is how you give them identity.

So you argue against the freedom of choice that many people play this game for. I would argue that this destroys what ESO has built over the years. One major issue that arises here is that if you say "just add more buffs and debuffs to cycle through" then the actual hard content becomes doubly hard as healers are now expected to cycle through all their new buffs and debuffs and output a significant amount of raw HPS. If they add new buffs or debuffs, what happens with power creep? People keep complaining about that, too.

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

When the question is posed "What should I be doing as a support when nobody is low on health so I don't need to be healing, my 1-2 debuffs are already out and don't need to be recasted", the answer always seems to be, "Well you should be doing damage". The game does not even supply you with enough buffs and debuffs to keep cycling through them and keep yourself actually busy.

Honestly, I see nothing wrong with this. If they've got their HoTs down and their buffs up, what else are they going to do? They can stand around and do nothing. Spam more heals needlessly. Or do a little bit of damage.

Every MMO has the same discussion. Google search any of the major MMOs out there. WoW, FFXIV, even D&DO and Neverwinter Online, to name just a few. It comes down to preference. You, presumably, believe that a healer should do nothing but healing and buffing and debuffing, cycling through them and doing as little damage as possible, and that's fine. I know a number of tanks who believe they should have 60k+ health and only taunt and block (providing the basic debuffs along with taunt). But not everyone wants to be pigeonholed into playing the way you believe it should be, and that is the choice that ESO gives.

Though, purely out of curiosity, if we're going to force supports to only tank and only heal, applying their usual buffs and debuffs, can we also force DDs to hit a minimum DPS threshold before being allowed to queue into group content? I don't think too many people would like that. Do you?

When I'm playing group content with random players and I see group DPS is low, I mean really low, I don't want to do just 2k~4k DPS as a tank. I am going to look for ways to increase it, even if it is just spamming Stone Giant, so I don't have to spend two hours in Fungal Frotto. Can I put on medium or light DD gear and do more damage while still being able to perform, taunt, CC, etc.? You bet I will. I know many healers who do the same thing. What you are arguing for assumes everyone is playing to the same standard and that is very much not the case.

Gilliamtherogue also had a very good point over on Twitter. The discussion was more aimed at "fake" roles than whether or not support roles are "dying," but the points are good either way. As he adequately stated:

One of ESO's greatest strengths and simultaneously thorns in its side, is the amount of freedom it allows in terms of creating a character or build.

Most other MMOs don't allow this level of freedom and there is a very clearly defined meta and best in slot, and they still have these topics of "should healers only heal" and "should tanks only tank." If you want to only heal, then that is absolutely your prerogative and you don't have to do damage. Again, that's the freedom of choice of ESO.

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

This is why I would suggest to have more enemies putting out more sustained pressure with less one shot mechanics. You can still have 1 or 2 big baddies that the tank needs to be concerned with about, but there should be far more lower concern enemies as well.

They did this with The Dread Cellar, more specifially with the hard modes. First boss applies a hefty health scaling DoT. People complained on PTS. The second boss can one-shot an under-35k health tank with a light attack if they're not blocking. People complained. Last boss also has health scaling DoTs (fire DoT and bleed, which can tick at the same time) and summons a Scorion (first boss type mob) with more health scaling DoTs -- the latter also being able to shoot a projectile from the other side of the planet and one-shot DDs or healers. People complained. Bahsei is another example with Death Touch... and people complained on PTS. Can you see the pattern here?

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

I think many people would agree that many of the boss fights are not very engaging, there's basically just one big baddy that the tank agro's and the rest is just stack and burn

I agree with this and gave my suggestion in another topic. Have more group-based mechanics. Not just heal mechanics or tank-busters. More engaging mechanics that require people to think or do something other than stand in one position and parse.

Troodon80

hcbigdogdoghc wrote: »

Group content needs to be adjusted and healer skills need to be buffed.

Need more dungeons like TDC(hm), SG and MGF where most sane players bring a healer unlike other 4 man content where people just go 3-4DDs.

But healer skills need huge buffs to raise the floor so that not only the top 1% healers can handle the required healing output, pre nerf dread cellar proves this, most pugs can't finish it because 99% of healers in this game can't heal for the life of them and are constantly getting soft carried. Cutting all resto staff skills cost by half, making radiating regen affect 4+ people, and bring back multi stackable healing springs + orbs would be a good start.

Raising the floor only trivialises the ceiling. And if ZOS balances the ceiling around what can be done in terms of DTPS and raw HPS, nothing changes. We just shift the numbers up a bit and it doesn't fix anything. Then we get more topics popping up about 1% content and how trivial overland is. This isn't an answer.

Daoin

Support roles are not dying ! It's fake roles that are destroying the fun of dungeons as a random group. If i Queue for a random dungeon i expect a random team of random level and experience. just because a dungeon could take a bit longer or is a bit quicker depending on the group does not justify the role of fake healers and tanks (dd's) especially those who will 9 times out of 10 just leave the group behind regardless of level and experience. without being able to see the importance of tanks and healer to the game just shows how some people go out of there way to prove to other players even if they dont know them that they can do something another person cannot...when really its 3 dd's in any group that is not needed really anything can be done in 4 person content with the universally expcented make up for a good team dd's, healer and a tank. In my opinion those players at that skill level should have no problem creating a group of thier own to do randoms and leave the rest of us alone especially a dd that has the patience to wait in a Queue only to have it ruined by a fake healer or tank leaving everyone on a pickle.and well.. some of the party to just well...die..if they cant keep up...luckily there are some healers and tanks that know when the other faker trudges off, that its a group they signed up for and a group they got which is describes as 2 dd's a healer and tank on initial participation in the queue so become even more invaluable to a good random team ! unfortunately seeing higher level players play roles others did not sign up for almost makes it into a trend for some players...bring on more real tanks and healer please..the game needs them now more than ever !

Cryptical

Troodon80 wrote: »

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

I would argue for strict roles yes, because that is how you give them identity.

So you argue against the freedom of choice that many people play this game for.

I don't need to go any further down that rabbit hole of entitlement than that in order to counter you, with a single statement: The players DO have more than one character slot!

So your defense of freedom is unnecessary. If you want to play a dps, build one of those. If you want to play a tank, build one of those.

A hybrid build should suffer for the lack of focus by being barely adequate at best, not be rewarded with being able to dislodge actual focused builds from their roles.

Troodon80

Cryptical wrote: »

I don't need to go any further down that rabbit hole of entitlement than that in order to counter you, with a single statement: The players DO have more than one character slot!

I'm not sure what your argument is. There is nothing entitled about what I've said. ESO is built on freedom. Some players are arguing for the removal of that freedom. If anyone is entitled... well, it's not the person arguing for freedom of choice. Given the freedom of choice, you are free to not play the way I do and vice versa.

Cryptical wrote: »

So your defense of freedom is unnecessary. If you want to play a dps, build one of those. If you want to play a tank, build one of those.

I'm sure ZOS will be happy to hear that you think the armory system is irrelevant.

I'm not saying a tank should be able to output 50k DPS. I'm saying there's no reason not to use your global cooldowns on damage if it doesn't hurt in any way and you're keeping your buff and debuffs up. You've not proven that wrong, either.

Cryptical wrote: »

A hybrid build should suffer for the lack of focus by being barely adequate at best, not be rewarded with being able to dislodge actual focused builds from their roles.

It does suffer. A tank who has specced towards health and a mundus other than damage but puts on DD gear will not output the same amount as if they were a full spec DD. That assumes the same person playing for an even guage on skill, as a full-spec PvE tank can most definitely output more than some of the players doing 1k DPS. Moot point.