Healing is too strong in PvP - 1 storypoint solution

divnyi

There is nothing to address the issue in the patchnotes.

Problem:
It was said multiple times over the last patch that the healing is way too high at the moment, it is easy to outheal DPS, it is easy to burst heal from low HP to full.
Hybrid stats made backbar resto staff + vigor prevalent, which further increases HPS.

It means that players rarely die, it requires several players to actually do the kill if player knows what he is doing, long and boring stalemates are everywhere.

It is incredibly punishing to newer players, that can't outDPS pros even if they have greater numbers.

Solution:
Do -30% healing across the board via battle spirit.

Last words:
Yes, there can be more sophisticated solutions to the problem.
Probably whole thread will have them listed.

But this is the easiest one, can be implemented in 5 minute by changing one number.

It will not ruin PvP, it will actually lead to much better meta than we are in right now in one simple change.

OBJnoob

I’m not a number cruncher like some of you guys but my knee jerk reaction is that 30% is way too high.

I’ve always been a proponent of splitting healing power away from weapon/spell damage. I also like what I’ve seen others suggest about just limiting the number of regens/vigors a single character can have stacked on themselves.

Would it be nice to cut a healthy chunk out of magdk and magplar self healing? Sure, but honestly I’d rather see alterations to those specific skilllines rather than a blanket nerf to healing that would make, for example, a stamsorc struggle even more than they already do.

That same guy that can tank 5 guys due to his meta build and greater experience… sure, it FEELS unfair, but it isn’t. It’s his meta build and his experience, lol, both of which were earned.

And what happens to the less skilled and less geared player when they’re suddenly in a fair fight? Time to kill would be ridiculously low.

I’d be on board for like 10% and see from there.

divnyi

@OBJnoob

-10% will not change a lot, it will make broken heals bit less broken, but they will still outheal all incomming damage in 1v1 - but chars that did struggle with healing will be outright useless.

-30% will make sure that nobody outheals all incoming damage in 1v1. Thus, burst and damage suddenly become more impactful than healing.

OBJnoob

Yes but shouldn’t you be able to outheal all incoming damage in a 1v1? At least sometimes? At least if you’re winning? If you’re winning a 1v1 you should, if you so desire, be able to top your health off. It shouldn’t be a race from 100 to 0 where the only winner is who damages fastest.

I don’t think burst and damage should outperform healing. It should be perfectly balanced and the winner should be who knows when to do what… who makes the best usage of their global cooldowns.

You say my 10% will make some broken heals less broken. Well that’s what we should want isn’t it? 30% is a whole new meta. And two weeks later everybody will scream omg they nerfed it too hard why do they always nerf it with a hammer.

divnyi

OBJnoob wrote: »

It shouldn’t be a race from 100 to 0 where the only winner is who damages fastest.

Actually it should. That's the point. You can reduce the speed at which your health goes down. So instead of getting down in 4 seconds, HPS and timely blocks will extend that number to, say, 40 seconds. Still a serious advantage, and you should still use heals and active mitigation if you want to duel.

But if heals and active mitigation sources means you stay at 100, then it means doing correct stuff you can never be defeated. Maybe opponent can try to attack your sustain, but if you've covered this front too - there is no vulnerabilities. Zero attack vectors means stall.

Full stalls should not happen, unless both builds are so healing/tankiness oriented that they never supposed to kill anything.

Thecompton73

A blanket nerf to healing is a bad solution. The issue is over-tuned self healing on a couple of classes/specs and the outrageous amount of cross-healing possible in ball groups. 30% to every build would absolutely destroy a lot of solo builds while leaving the classes and groups that are already on top still in much better shape comparatively.
I'd rather see them make major defile easier (more abilities/better sets) to put on single opponents to deal with individual classes, maybe with a slight buff up to 20%.
As for ball groups I think the best solution would be to introduce a set or skill with a healing absorption mechanic similar to the one from the Soldier of Anguish set or the Borrowed Time skill from the Psijic line, except it would apply instantly and scale the absorbed amount depending on how many are hit. 5K for one person with something like 33% more for each opponent in the area to equal around 15-16K on a ball group. It would be much harder for those groups to use against pugs than the current solution of damage scaling sets since pugs rarely outheal 10 ulti's dropped at the same time anyway.

Ragnaroek93

I don't think that a 30% nerf to healing would solve the issue. Not saying that defense in PvP isn't completely gamebreaking tho (especially dk and temp). Nerf crosshealing, rework undeath and tune down Dk healing a bit.

OBJnoob wrote: »

Yes but shouldn’t you be able to outheal all incoming damage in a 1v1? At least sometimes? At least if you’re winning? If you’re winning a 1v1 you should, if you so desire, be able to top your health off. It shouldn’t be a race from 100 to 0 where the only winner is who damages fastest.

I don’t think burst and damage should outperform healing. It should be perfectly balanced and the winner should be who knows when to do what… who makes the best usage of their global cooldowns.

You say my 10% will make some broken heals less broken. Well that’s what we should want isn’t it? 30% is a whole new meta. And two weeks later everybody will scream omg they nerfed it too hard why do they always nerf it with a hammer.

There needs to be a middle ground. A duel meta in which everything boils down to a random oneshot combo after 10 minutes while what happened the 10 minutes before is completely irrelevant is equally bad as a meta in which the class with the highest dps wins all the time.

divnyi

@Thecompton73 to nerf balls you want to nerf cross-healing stacking. This is not the easiest thing to implment, so I've ommited it.
edit1: also it will not change anything about 1v1 gameplay.

Healing absorption is horrible mechanic and we don't want to see more of it. It's like oblivion damage.

Problem with any sets and status effects is that balls will stack all the effects much more effeciently than zergs.

Thecompton73

divnyi wrote: »

@Thecompton73 to nerf balls you want to nerf cross-healing stacking. This is not the easiest thing to implment, so I've ommited it.
edit1: also it will not change anything about 1v1 gameplay.

Healing absorption is horrible mechanic and we don't want to see more of it. It's like oblivion damage.

Problem with any sets and status effects is that balls will stack all the effects much more effeciently than zergs.

xylena_lazarow

Damage CPs nerfed, healing CPs left untouched. Wrong direction, ZOS.

edward_frigidhands

This is not and should not be a game with 1v1 balance of any kind.

Time to kill is pretty high with organized groups so I am not sure what you are observing or where

dinokstrunz

I'd rather see ZoS focus on the biggest offenders rather than every heal in the game. It's quite clear that the biggest healing offender right now is Radiant Regeneration.

propertyOfUndefined

I think the best 1-story-point bandaid suggestion I’ve read is to buff defile.

umagon

I think a better temporary solution would be limiting the healing in a way so players can only have one healing effect on them in pvp areas. And placing a condition that the strongest heal will be the healing effect the player(s) will receive. So ideally players would only get one healing effect per second.

This would limit healing in both small and large engagements. Individual players could not layer healing effects on top of each other, and it would be less effective for groups to having everyone or most of their group running restoration staffs as their second weapon.

One on one engagement would stalemate less and groups would still be powerful but there would not be able to heal through everything. Meaning the current in game counters to large amounts of players would be more effective.

Cuddlypuff

The issue is still performance. A kill combo in this meta still takes several skills timed to burst within 1 GCD to pull off, but it only takes a single heal cast to counterplay.

MashmalloMan

No thank you. Your idea doesn't tackle the root of the issue and is a bad bandaid like solution to a larger issue. 1v1s are fine depending on the class (some are over the top), group play is where healing is ridiculous right now.

The solution in almost every scenario should never be a blanket nerf to everything like -30% on Battle Spirit as this will devastate some classes while barely scracthing the builds that were overperforming.

Some general idea's to fight the real problem, not all of them need to apply at once, but they should be looked at:

• Make Rapid Regen only target the original caster or at least, provide an option via settings somehow. This will passively shift builds away from Radiating Regen. The option is still there, but not every single player would have it slotted. This is a similar solution that we saw apply back in the day to Resolving vs Echoing Vigor. No one switched to Echoing Vigor when Resolving Vigor was made self targeted only. Echoing does suck, but thats a larger issue..
• -30% nerf to any heal you do to other players via battlespirit.
• Aoe hot caps to 1 or 2 of each skill/effect. Primarily focussed on the issue regen stacking has caused as it's the most popular, but only tackling regen would shift the stacking in large groups to other sources, so why not look at everything instead, it would also make build diversity for premade play more interesting.
• Coupled with the above change. Reapplication of aoe hots will only refresh the duration and copy the most recent applicators tooltip (instead of just extending the first casts values). This would mean crappy heals should be thought about more instead of multiple players blindly stacking whatever they have on each other.
• Look at the overperforming classes and off healing ease of access. Eg. Sorc's flappy bird heals 2 targets + itself for the same value, it's 2skill bar skill, but you can shift some of the benefits elsewhere instead of making it heal 1 extra target for the full amount every cast. It completely outclasses every other classes burst heal. Eg. Templar has an insane amount of heals that wouldn't be a problem for just themselves as it's sort of their identity, but many of them apply in aoe to other people for the same value. AKA, Backlash, Rushed Ceremony, Ritutal of Retribution. Couple that with Regen and they're aoe healing monsters without specifically speccing for it like a healer would.
• Bring back only being able to heal your group instead of anybody (in pvp, leave pve the same), only really a Cyro issue, but it would also make healing more meaningful. You are meant to be a team.

I reserve the idea that our primary source of survival should almost always be ourselves which is another reason nerfing healing across the board is a bad idea. We deserve to die if we mess up instead of being carried by a random person stacking 5 hots on us without even trying to do so. I feel practically unkillable in some BG matches where I have a few regen stacks on me, when you have someone with a mag burst heal too, it's just game over. They don't even need to be a healer. Templar, Sorc, Necro and NB all have burst heals for themselves that effect others for the same value. DK and Necro have passive burst heals via Cauterize and Mender.

When classes choose the best skills for self healing that also happen to off heal, there's an issue. It should be a choice and if there is no choice or can't be a choice then fixing it directly through Battlespirit is an easy solution.

I'll share an experience I had. I main stam sorc and I've played them for 95% of my time on ESO, I have every class, but I don't meta chase and my experience on other classes is very little for pvp. I happened to be interested in Templar following a few changes recently. I made a build and got into pvp. The first thing I noticed is how much I was able to help other people while being just as proficient for myself as that luxary isn't on stam sorc. On my stam sorc, my heals are Dark Deal, Critical Surge and Vigor.

Templar on the other hand, Ritual, Backlash, Rushed Ceramony, Regen, Bubble, Jabs, Rune. It's fine that Templar's survival is based on stacking healing, I've got speed on Sorc where healing is lacking, the problem is most of the above heals are aoe and I didn't give anything up to achieve that. Converting from Stam Sorc, Ceramony is my Dark Deal, Regen is my Vigor, Ritual is my Crit Surge. Bubble is my Elude. Rune is my Hurricane. Jabs is my spammable. Backlash is my Haunting Curse. I easily converted my sorc playstyle to templar and managed to output crazy offhealing.

The ability to see a team mate in danger and swap to back bar and heal them from 10% to 100% by spamming my burst heal is just ridiculously helpful. On my stam sorc, I'm completely selfish, but it's the only legit way to play them. Not complaining about Sorc, I think their kit is fine for melee and ranged. I'm just saying aoe heals should be adjusted somehow and the above solutions are how it can be achieved.

MashmalloMan

divnyi wrote: »

It is incredibly punishing to newer players, that can't outDPS pros even if they have greater numbers.

I really don't understand this mentality and your comments in the thread.

A newer player should lose to a pro because the pro knows how to keep their buffs and sustained healing up, while also keeping their reactive defense up in prediction of burst to come. A pro knows to line up burst and CC properly for combo's to kill someone. A pro knows what every skill and action does, how sustain management works and how to notice an oponents behaviours to predict if they should combo them or not.

Give me 1 good reason why a newer player who doesn't understand these core concepts should kill a pro simply because they did a DPS rotation on them due to healing never being able to match the incoming damage they're taking unless they happen to have a 3rd party involved?

It makes no sense.

In the simplest way to put it, this is what ZOS aims for.

• Healing = Damage
• Mitigation + evasion + proactive counters (shields/hots) = combo's and/or burst.

Off healing as many stated here is the problem. Your solution kills any and all complexity to pvp and it's based on a questionable idea that somehow, someone who doesn't understand pvp should be able to kill someone that does. Why?

BlossomDead

The main problem I think is that there is no defined standard or concept of what: 1v1, 1vX, XvX encounters should look like, not even by ZOS. It's just the fact that we have a couple of maps with everything ported from PVE and tuned to the effect of 'let them be'.

As someone was saying in a post above mine - they consider that you should be able to outheal damage. This instead is turning fights from DPS based to Heal based. You are instead testing who heals better.

In my opinion fights should be dictated by damage.

So we might all have different opinions, but there is actually no standard in this game to relate to.

As it stands there are too many mitigation tools in everyone's kit to make PvP viable. Every class has almost the same kit, while some excel at healing, moreso than the rest.

I personally think in PvP what each class can do should be redesigned from the ground up.

Currently you can tank (shielding skills + hp regen and healing + potions, not necessarily armor), dps and heal at the same time.

propertyOfUndefined

I think this thread is trying to offer “1 story point” solutions — meaning changes that would take a developer a single sitting to implement and not require tons of test passes. There are ideas I’ve read here that could work, but would also take much more time to implement and test.

The blanket change to battle spirit is a good example of a “1 story point” solution, but seems pretty heavy-handed to me. The buff to defile should be equally easy to implement, but function more indirectly. It’s also something that would require choice from players as a counterplay mechanic — i.e. choosing sets and skills that trigger the defile debuff.

FeedbackOnly

Only in PvP do healers get to matter

Feljax

What I don't want to see is healing broadly nerfed to the point where making a dedicated healing build for PvP becomes useless. I personally prefer playing a dedicated healer, not putting out much DPS but effective at keeping myself and my team mates alive.

This is why I'm a big proponent of splitting healing from spell damage.

Silversmith

Shoulda had a separate stat for Healing and change the sets on the obvious healer sets to make healers able to heal.

divnyi

MashmalloMan wrote: »

In the simplest way to put it, this is what ZOS aims for.

• Healing = Damage

Healing is way above that atm.
Backbar heal staff + Vigor + class spammable (+ class HoT) = more than top DPS build can hit.

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Give me 1 good reason why a newer player who doesn't understand these core concepts should kill a pro simply because they did a DPS rotation on them due to healing never being able to match the incoming damage they're taking unless they happen to have a 3rd party involved?

Because they can't match the damage needed to kill even if they have 3rd party involved, or even 5 of them.

Heck, two "pros" would fight each other forever in CP PvP most of the time, especially on the builds that are used to 1vX.

divnyi

Feljax wrote: »

What I don't want to see is healing broadly nerfed to the point where making a dedicated healing build for PvP becomes useless.

Actually it will be the opposite, if DD can't fully outheal himself solo, dedicated healer with more HoT & spamming heals & using healer sets will be even more useful.

neferpitou73

MashmalloMan wrote: »

No thank you. Your idea doesn't tackle the root of the issue and is a bad bandaid like solution to a larger issue. 1v1s are fine depending on the class (some are over the top), group play is where healing is ridiculous right now.

The solution in almost every scenario should never be a blanket nerf to everything like -30% on Battle Spirit as this will devastate some classes while barely scracthing the builds that were overperforming.

Some general idea's to fight the real problem, not all of them need to apply at once, but they should be looked at:

• Make Rapid Regen only target the original caster or at least, provide an option via settings somehow. This will passively shift builds away from Radiating Regen. The option is still there, but not every single player would have it slotted. This is a similar solution that we saw apply back in the day to Resolving vs Echoing Vigor. No one switched to Echoing Vigor when Resolving Vigor was made self targeted only. Echoing does suck, but thats a larger issue..
• -30% nerf to any heal you do to other players via battlespirit.
• Aoe hot caps to 1 or 2 of each skill/effect. Primarily focussed on the issue regen stacking has caused as it's the most popular, but only tackling regen would shift the stacking in large groups to other sources, so why not look at everything instead, it would also make build diversity for premade play more interesting.
• Coupled with the above change. Reapplication of aoe hots will only refresh the duration and copy the most recent applicators tooltip (instead of just extending the first casts values). This would mean crappy heals should be thought about more instead of multiple players blindly stacking whatever they have on each other.
• Look at the overperforming classes and off healing ease of access. Eg. Sorc's flappy bird heals 2 targets + itself for the same value, it's 2skill bar skill, but you can shift some of the benefits elsewhere instead of making it heal 1 extra target for the full amount every cast. It completely outclasses every other classes burst heal. Eg. Templar has an insane amount of heals that wouldn't be a problem for just themselves as it's sort of their identity, but many of them apply in aoe to other people for the same value. AKA, Backlash, Rushed Ceremony, Ritutal of Retribution. Couple that with Regen and they're aoe healing monsters without specifically speccing for it like a healer would.
• Bring back only being able to heal your group instead of anybody (in pvp, leave pve the same), only really a Cyro issue, but it would also make healing more meaningful. You are meant to be a team.

I reserve the idea that our primary source of survival should almost always be ourselves which is another reason nerfing healing across the board is a bad idea. We deserve to die if we mess up instead of being carried by a random person stacking 5 hots on us without even trying to do so. I feel practically unkillable in some BG matches where I have a few regen stacks on me, when you have someone with a mag burst heal too, it's just game over. They don't even need to be a healer. Templar, Sorc, Necro and NB all have burst heals for themselves that effect others for the same value. DK and Necro have passive burst heals via Cauterize and Mender.

When classes choose the best skills for self healing that also happen to off heal, there's an issue. It should be a choice and if there is no choice or can't be a choice then fixing it directly through Battlespirit is an easy solution.

I'll share an experience I had. I main stam sorc and I've played them for 95% of my time on ESO, I have every class, but I don't meta chase and my experience on other classes is very little for pvp. I happened to be interested in Templar following a few changes recently. I made a build and got into pvp. The first thing I noticed is how much I was able to help other people while being just as proficient for myself as that luxary isn't on stam sorc. On my stam sorc, my heals are Dark Deal, Critical Surge and Vigor.

Templar on the other hand, Ritual, Backlash, Rushed Ceramony, Regen, Bubble, Jabs, Rune. It's fine that Templar's survival is based on stacking healing, I've got speed on Sorc where healing is lacking, the problem is most of the above heals are aoe and I didn't give anything up to achieve that. Converting from Stam Sorc, Ceramony is my Dark Deal, Regen is my Vigor, Ritual is my Crit Surge. Bubble is my Elude. Rune is my Hurricane. Jabs is my spammable. Backlash is my Haunting Curse. I easily converted my sorc playstyle to templar and managed to output crazy offhealing.

The ability to see a team mate in danger and swap to back bar and heal them from 10% to 100% by spamming my burst heal is just ridiculously helpful. On my stam sorc, I'm completely selfish, but it's the only legit way to play them. Not complaining about Sorc, I think their kit is fine for melee and ranged. I'm just saying aoe heals should be adjusted somehow and the above solutions are how it can be achieved.

Just going to point out here that AOE heals have a cap at 6 already. Which seems to be a little known fact.

MashmalloMan wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

It is incredibly punishing to newer players, that can't outDPS pros even if they have greater numbers.

I really don't understand this mentality and your comments in the thread.

A newer player should lose to a pro because the pro knows how to keep their buffs and sustained healing up, while also keeping their reactive defense up in prediction of burst to come. A pro knows to line up burst and CC properly for combo's to kill someone. A pro knows what every skill and action does, how sustain management works and how to notice an oponents behaviours to predict if they should combo them or not.

Give me 1 good reason why a newer player who doesn't understand these core concepts should kill a pro simply because they did a DPS rotation on them due to healing never being able to match the incoming damage they're taking unless they happen to have a 3rd party involved?

It makes no sense.

In the simplest way to put it, this is what ZOS aims for.

• Healing = Damage
• Mitigation + evasion + proactive counters (shields/hots) = combo's and/or burst.

Off healing as many stated here is the problem. Your solution kills any and all complexity to pvp and it's based on a questionable idea that somehow, someone who doesn't understand pvp should be able to kill someone that does. Why?

100% this. However I do agree that PvP does need to be a bit more accessible. But blanket nerfs and directionless combat changes are not the way to achieve that.

Thecompton73

divnyi wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

In the simplest way to put it, this is what ZOS aims for.

• Healing = Damage

Healing is way above that atm.
Backbar heal staff + Vigor + class spammable (+ class HoT) = more than top DPS build can hit.

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Give me 1 good reason why a newer player who doesn't understand these core concepts should kill a pro simply because they did a DPS rotation on them due to healing never being able to match the incoming damage they're taking unless they happen to have a 3rd party involved?

Because they can't match the damage needed to kill even if they have 3rd party involved, or even 5 of them.

Heck, two "pros" would fight each other forever in CP PvP most of the time, especially on the builds that are used to 1vX.

Lol, there were two Mdk's, one DC and one EP that I've seen destroy 10+ people in just a couple of minutes in 1vX's that wound up fighting each other in a field. I watched them go at it for over 20 mintues. Each players health would constantly yo-yo from 100% down to 15-20% and instantly back up to full. Finally they realized neither was going to be able to finish the other because they had so many hots and both had infinite sustain so they just skipped off in different directions.

Cuddlypuff

I just don't understand what the PVP design direction is, if there even is an eventual goal. Buffing heals doesn't really equate to buffing healers. With self-healing and off-healing scaling off insane spell/weapon damage these days, there's very little need for a dedicated healer unless you are trying to fight entire factions.

What will dedicated healers and tanks even do now that everyone can heal and tank well without sacrificing much damage? I don't think even ZOS knows what they want ideal Cyrodiil gameplay to look like, and that's quite alarming...

Nebula_DooM

They should reintroduce befoul as a champion point. With the new system however, there is no diminishing returns and befoul could outright be op so change the percentage where needed.

dinokstrunz

Nebula_DooM wrote: »

They should reintroduce befoul as a champion point. With the new system however, there is no diminishing returns and befoul could outright be op so change the percentage where needed.

Over performing healing isn't only tied to CPs. It's over performing in noCP too.

doesurmindglow

Battle Spirit already cuts healing in half, would this be in addition to that?

Mayrael

I think it wouldn't hurt to try. The overall balance between players wouldn't be affected, while TTK would be significantly shortened especially in fights between strong players. This could make glass canon builds more popular again because a large preasure would allow you to kill even a brawler which is currently hard if you can't do it in 2GCD right away.

I'm against point solutions like defile buffs etc because access to such debuffs is severely limited and would upset the balance once again, while a broad solution that applies to everyone would be more fair.

Why not do such an experiment as part of the promised weekend PvP events or some sort of testing phase?