Healer's Dynamics in Group Play

Left_Hand

Hi,

I've been grouping a lot since the start of the game with my Sorcerer restoration staff focused healer, be it public dungeons or instanced ones, but one thing i have noticed is the complete lack of understanding from other players about how their classes should work in a group environment.

The healers in this game will go out of mana very fast if they spend every encounter just spamming heals, so we need to actively regen in the case of the sorcerer by either attacking with the staff or using dark exchange later on.

This has lead to groups complaining that i should focus on healing instead of doing DPS or that i was a bad healer because i was always OOM while healing them.

In my view players should learn to also take care of themselves by having either leaching abilities slotted or self heals or damage mitigation abilities, allowing more leeway for the healer in the group to properly manage their mana and guarantee everyone survives an encounter. Also blocking and dodging seem to be alien concepts to most people.

Another big problem with the current group setup, is a gameplay mechanic one, the group window doesn't show other players mana, so the group never knows when the healer is going OOM or if they should wait before charging on to the next encounter. This is troublesome because due to how near each pull is, by the time i type (we need to wait to regen mana) they are already pulling another mob.

This is very frustrating to players who want to dedicate themselves to a healing role, as it all adds up to having less of an incentive to do so and just rerolling as DPS instead.

Thete

The confusion about roles is fairly standard in a new MMO. You will also get any number of players in even well established games who think that, as dps especially, they can go charging in and spam their nonesense. If they get aggro, it's the tank's fault and if they die it's the healer's fault.

Best thing to do is try and find a guild of like minded players and group with them when you need to.

Alyrn_Grey

Yes a number of recent MMO's have gotten away from the pure trinity. ESO goes even further in that direction though people are still expecting others to assume the old trinity rolls. ::Shrug::

Thete

Alyrn_Grey wrote: »

Yes a number of recent MMO's have gotten away from the pure trinity.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'pure trinity', but it still exists in ESO. There are still tanks, dps and healers.

NeeScrolls

Alyrn_Grey wrote: »

Yes a number of recent MMO's have gotten away from the pure trinity. ESO goes even further in that direction though people are still expecting others to assume the old trinity rolls.

Exactly. As far as i'm concerned, the so called "Holy" trinity can die an awful UN-holy death.

More freedom = more fun imo.

Stautmeister

Played both healer and tank i completely agree. Dps need to learn to not have 5 dmg skills on the bar, but add some interupts and survivability tools as well. Most healing should only be done when the tank runs out of stamina for blocking (thats a major tanking spike)

Left_Hand

But the trinity still exists in ESO, you still need a tank a healer and DPS, the difference is that these classes need to be a bit more active, tank blocking and dodging, as well as the DPS, and the healer needs to also do DPS to regen mana in some cases.

In the case of games without the trinity roles, like GW2, they are very different from ESO, everyone needs to have self heals and support abilities slotted and there is no tank or healer role.

I dislike this no trinity approach for one reason, it promotes disorganized gameplay, everything is down to dpsing the boss with little or no coordination.

Coggage

Thete wrote: »

Alyrn_Grey wrote: »

Yes a number of recent MMO's have gotten away from the pure trinity.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'pure trinity', but it still exists in ESO. There are still tanks, dps and healers.

The lines are blurred though, and the roles don't work like they did in the strait-jacket days of the inflexible Trinity. Players have to be prepared to mix it up a bit, and this baffles players who still wear The Blinkers of the Trinity.

The two biggest problems are that the meat shields still think they can hold all the aggro, which they can't. They also seem to think healers have 10 X as much magicka as they actually have.

I was in Spindleclutch the other day and, sure enough, the guy with "Hit Me!" tattooed on his forehead thought he could just run straight to the next cave 0.5 of a second after the one we'd just done had been finished. He just didn't get it at all and didn't want to learn. We got the usual "hey, I've been tanking for X years" spiel so we all waved 'bye bye' to him, pretty damn quick.

Left_Hand

Coggage wrote: »

Thete wrote: »

Alyrn_Grey wrote: »

Yes a number of recent MMO's have gotten away from the pure trinity.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'pure trinity', but it still exists in ESO. There are still tanks, dps and healers.

The lines are blurred though, and the roles don't work like they did in the strait-jacket days of the inflexible Trinity. Players have to be prepared to mix it up a bit, and this baffles players who still wear The Blinkers of the Trinity.

The two biggest problems are that the meat shields still think they can hold all the aggro, which they can't. They also seem to think healers have 10 X as much magicka as they actually have.

I was in Spindleclutch the other day and, sure enough, the guy with "Hit Me!" tattooed on his forehead thought he could just run straight to the next cave 0.5 of a second after the one we'd just done had been finished. He just didn't get it at all and didn't want to learn. We got the usual "hey, I've been tanking for X years" spiel so we all waved 'bye bye' to him, pretty damn quick.

Tanks are finding it difficult to deal with the fact they don't have AOE aggro tools and that the damage spike from mobs can be huge if they dont block properly. Hopefully players will learn to play better *cross fingers*

Regarding the mana issue, i think Zenimax has some work to do here, first the player resource bars in the group frame is a must, an informed group is a much better functioning group, having to pause to type "out of mana" after pulls get's tiresome fast.

Mana regen out of fights needs to be a bit faster.

Lalai

I've found another problem I've run into is players liking to spread out far too much. A dps who has aggro seems to want to run away from the group. This usually ends up in me chasing that person down to heal them, while the other two are still taking damage from different mobs. People in general need to keep on their positioning, both in respect to their environment (so they know which way to dodge) and in respect to their other players (so they don't out-range the healer).

Running dungeons I do tend to run into a lot of tanks that stand in red. Sometimes I can heal through it, sometimes I cant.

Sallakat

I completely agree with the OP and the comments in here. And this all makes me SO VERY glad that I'm in a guild with friends and we're always in TeamSpeak together when needing to do instanced dungeons etc. Even that doesn't always guanrantee a smooth run because the game mechanics are just so very very different. Long gone are the days where a really good healer can carry the rest of the group alone :P well at least when it comes to ESO. But it's all a learning curve and I'm trying to figure out this game's healing system at the same time than the DPS and tanks are trying to figure out theirs.

But also the magicka regen is pretty bad in this game even tho I've picked all of the passives there are for it and have it in gear, trying not to overcharge it tho. As templar healer I'm struggling all the time and go through a lot of magicka potions in tough spots.

Lal

Every character I have has some way to self heal and some sort of CC. As has been said before, if the "dps" just does damage then the group will lose. Blocking is amazing and helps mitigate a ton of damage. Doing a little CC if you see a mob starting to do a special like a heavy blow, AoE, or Cone of dmg is REALLY important. There is so much that players can do to save themselves. When I'm in a group, I figure if I die it's my OWN DAMN FAULT.

The other thing I've noticed is that a good share of the players in this game have not played an MMO before, so group roles and responsibilities are misunderstood or worse, no focus fire, no plan.

My advice to the OP is to ask why the hell the dps didn't kill the mobs/boss fast enough before they killed the group. What, were they out of juice so their dps fell off to pew pew levels?

Inversus

So far I haven't been blamed in a dungeon. To be honest as a healer I blame myself if I can't single-handedly keep everyone alive - but the truth is that pretty much all of the time it's a mix of faults.

It's easy for the DPS to blame the tank/healer but you're right in the sense that the DPS have to take partial responsibility when they die.

Thete

Coggage wrote: »

The lines are blurred though, and the roles don't work like they did in the strait-jacket days of the inflexible Trinity. Players have to be prepared to mix it up a bit, and this baffles players who still wear The Blinkers of the Trinity.

Not really. It's the tank's job to try and keep aggro, the healer's job to try to keep people alive and the dps' job to kill things. Each of those players needs to be aware enough to manage their roles within the group and it has been the same in every MMO I've ever played. DPS still need to be intelligent enough to burn down the same mob so you kill one at a time, the tank still need to be aware of the healer and the healer still has to be aware of their own positioning within the group to give the others' an easier time of their role.

Raynekatt

Thete wrote: »

It's the tank's job to try and keep aggro, the healer's job to try to keep people alive and the dps' job to kill things. Each of those players needs to be aware enough to manage their roles within the group and it has been the same in every MMO I've ever played. DPS still need to be intelligent enough to burn down the same mob so you kill one at a time, the tank still need to be aware of the healer and the healer still has to be aware of their own positioning within the group to give the others' an easier time of their role.

I have to say that I completely agree with this. To build on this from my experience...

The tanks I've played with so far are a mix of DPS and Tank, doing very well keeping the attention of the heavy-hitting mobs and the boss. We usually place the Tank and Healer to be either be looking directly at each other through the mobs or to the side of each other for LoS to pull any of said mobs away or run to each other for help. The tanks have also all had survivability skills, not necessarily HEALING, but buffs to help stay alive.

The DPS have varied based on the types we've taken.

• We have a NightBlade who uses the Siphon skills. Often we have 2 of these running around. Going to be honest though, those skills are great for maintaining health on trash mobs and adds, not so much on the boss. Even with blocks and dodges you still take damage and that can be a bit much. The Siphons help it from falling too much, but if constantly being hit, it does not bring it up. This leaves our Melees able to deal and survive - not really heal.
• The mages, not too much to say on them. They are epic at the damage and very squishy. Due to this every single one of them stands by me. This means they get the tank watching them and they have access to my healing very quickly. From a survivable skills, no idea they seem to die from 1 boss charge as they get taken by surprise (this is just the players getting use to the combat though and should improve...I hope!)

From the healer's stance, it's about seeing everyone and keeping them alive while letting them know you are managing your mana. It's been working out very well.

But I do not think it's possible to run with 4 DPS sharing the tank/healer role with no person doing 1 of those roles as their main in the dungeon.

Left_Hand

I'm finding it increasingly frustrating to heal with the sorcerer/restoration staff combo, the lack of a big burst heal is problematic as you face harder and harder content.

The only advantage i'm seeing in regards to Templars is that templars have to distribute their stats between mana and stamina to be effective, and Sorcerers can focus solely on mana and mana efficiency buffs.

Skeksi

Why do Templars need stamina? I play a Templar healer and have put no points into stamina. I usually heal my friends through dungeons when I am five levels lower than the dungeon requirements. I do enjoy having the big heals that Templar Restoring Light skill tree has, but I mostly use Restoration staff skills while healing.

Left_Hand

Skeksi wrote: »

Why do Templars need stamina? I play a Templar healer and have put no points into stamina. I usually heal my friends through dungeons when I am five levels lower than the dungeon requirements. I do enjoy having the big heals that Templar Restoring Light skill tree has, but I mostly use Restoration staff skills while healing.

Don't the templar heals scale off stamina instead of mana?

Deepfry

Thete wrote: »

Alyrn_Grey wrote: »

Yes a number of recent MMO's have gotten away from the pure trinity.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'pure trinity', but it still exists in ESO. There are still tanks, dps and healers.

I think he just means that there are no "pure" healers in the sense that you find in MMOs such as WoW, for example.

In WoW, a healer stands back and does nothing but heal, because the mana mechanics are designed in such a way as to allow him to do that - just heal, nothing else.

This is not possible in ESO. As the OP points out, any "healer" will run out of mana/magicka very very very fast if he just heals. So on the one hand the "healer" needs to have pauses. And on the other hand group members have to learn to crowd control, to dodge and to block. They are partly responsible for staying alive. It is not just the healer's job.

Raynekatt

I'm with Skeksi on this, I'm not sure of the place in having Stamina (baring the few times you need to run away *cough* fungal grotto *cough*).

I'd be really interested in knowing so that I can plan for it now.

Playing as a per healer with Resto Staff none of my abilities baring 1 runs off of Stamina. That one is the fighter guild's protection circle our 4 man groups have been trying out. Those interested in it, worth trying out for the protection it gives, though it is a small circle.

Vikova

So much blasphemy in this thread. Trinity this, trinity that.

Left_Hand

Just healed through the second set of 3 dungeons, the 20-23 level ones, with my resto staff sorcerer. Was much easier than the first set, due to 3 main facts:

1. Players are playing better, tanks are blocking, dps is dodging, things are smoother for the healer;
2. Mana is not an issue now, i rarely go oom in a fight, i can spam almost indefinitely and it shows with the number of people left alive after boss fights;
3. Branched out to other skill lines to complement, like the fighters guilds protection circle with the healing rate morph, very useful.

Mie87

I had a tank that wouldn't stand out aoe because he felt I should be able to heal him through it....
Sometimes I wish there was a tutorial for this.

GambitJ79b14_ESO

just goes to show so many people are not ready for such a dynamic, I see so many people that want it standardized like a recipe or book - which is all WoW is, then if you can't fulfill your roll in the recipe they get mad at you. There is so much more in this game. Being able to run a dungeon with all DPS but 2 of us running off-heals still worked great.
- A big portion I've noticed is all the simple damage mitigation that some are accustomed to ignoring because of that trinity roll definition. I was originally just dps with bow, but I've branched out to (templar) heals and dual wielding, I'm surprised how versatile it's become.
- Other than that I'm still confused why people hate on sorcerer staff healers anyway. Running with my friend who plays a sorcerer staff healer and it's hard to find a group, some write noob hate messages about the healer before leaving the group and we haven't even started the dungeon yet... why? and we haven't been having any problems with healing capability... ???

nudel

@GambitJ79b14_ESO‌ I see similar nonsense in zone chat all the time. The problem is that non-healers don't want to dodge or block or avoid AOE. They then wrongly blame their deaths on the healer's lack of a burst heal. They also don't seem to understand yet that most heals in the game (including Temp heals) are AOE and they need to be close if they want to stay up.

Stautmeister

Got some more experience as a tank (vet 1 dungeons)
And currently the most problematic parts are people not knowing the mechanics of a bossfight.
Dps not doing enough dmg (this is actually the most problematic part)
Healers healing to much so they go oom to quickly. This has to do with the lack of recourse bar showing in the healthscreen.
If i am on full mana and stamina, dont heal me till i drop to 50%, there is no need to actually keep me topped up. Between blocking, 40hp/s and my 33% of missing health self heal im pretty capable of keeping myself alive.
However when my stamina/mana drops this is where it gets problematic and i need the healer to actively keep me up (cant block every hit anymore)

This is why dps need to learn to keep their dmg recourse bar high during the entire fight. because you dont have infinite recourses the last 20% of the fight is actually the most difficult, here the healer and tank will probably be oom (xcept for mages with their stamina into mana conversion)
Once the tank runs out of recourses the dps should go all out, because now its a fight for survival.

This is new for a lot of people, they are not used to having to save their resources for doing dmg.

But as i stated earlier:
Healers keeping people around 75% is more than enough. Between health regen and the survivability tools people have their is no need to keep them up. Only time where this shouldnt be done is if the boss has an unavoidable skill that does 75% of their dmg (even then they should still block)

Main rule of thumb for healers: You cant heal through stupid.
Main rule for tank Control and Avoid, dont stand there taking hits. ( a lot of big bosses how do slow animations kan be kited pretty effectively.)
Main rule for DPS. A dead DPS isnt doing dmg. So block/dodge/selfheal.

thisisdustinsemail_ESO

Left_Hand wrote: »

Hi,



Another big problem with the current group setup, is a gameplay mechanic one, the group window doesn't show other players mana, so the group never knows when the healer is going OOM or if they should wait before charging on to the next encounter.

YES OMG

I cannot tell you how many times my group has wiped because the other members just sprint straight into the next battle with 0 stamina, while my Magicka has barely started to recharge...

Then they're all like, "Dude, where were you?" My bad dawg, I was in the previous room waiting for my Magicka to recharge, because it was at 0.

Raynekatt

nudel wrote: »

They also don't seem to understand yet that most heals in the game (including Temp heals) are AOE and they need to be close if they want to stay up.

I'm not sure how small you're referring to the Templar heal distance to be, but I can personally say it's not that small depending on how you are healing. There are 2 great "ranged heals" - Rushed Ceremony (Templar)(with it's morphs) and Healing Ward (Resto Staff). Both are a range of 28 meters, which is more than enough distance for any of the dungeon rooms if you stand in the centre of the room.



With regards to the conversation, I'm not sure about the Resto Staff skills for healing on their own without the Templar ones to back it up. In the early dungeons, definitely it can stand head to head with the Templar ones. However, the later half of the non-veteran dungeons it struggled for our groups quite a bit (and not just as me acting as the healer, but other groups our guild has run). The problems we've seen is that while Resto Staff has 1 really good "sudden" heal to match the one in Templar (see named above) it is broken in half for it's healing and can lose a third of it's healing if it does not expire on it's own. The other heals are HoTs and great for the DPS or self, but struggle if the target is the one with the boss aggro. Also, many of the HoTs require your path to who you are healing to be clear and not blocked by rocks/walls/etc while the Templar heals do not have this issue.

The group I run with are old hands at dodging out of things and working together (Secret World, Rift, etc). We've a tank that can take hits like you would not believe, dodging and blocking all over the room and even with single target taunts keeps the adds and boss on him; and 2 DPS that bounce aggro between them like a ping pong ball to cause interrupts and spread damage (if you played Secret World, being told they did a min of 3.5k DPS might mean something to you).

Even with that group, built for survivability all around, I can say that if you are doing the later dungeons at the proper levels (not OPed) 1 hit from the boss (not the red attacks) can take Medium Armour players to the brink of death. As you go through the dungeons, you encounter more and more where there is not many safe spots to dodge or stand in; where there are so many adds for the bosses that their red attacks overlap for an KO that only a Heavy Armour block can stand...barely. In these cases, the HoTs and half "sudden" heal are not enough. But that is our groups position.

Also, Cleansing Ritual...you WILL need it.



* I am a "pure healer" combining Templar and Resto Staff veteran 1 nearly 2 at time of writing this. Restoring Light and Resto Staff Lvl 50 with all maxed out skills.

Left_Hand

Granted i'm still only level 34, but healing has become increasingly easier as i level up, as well as mana now becoming an unlimited resource even with dark exchange.

Spamming Blessing of Protection , Steadfast War and Grand Healing, converting stamina to mana and repeating, has kept everyone alive easily... except the stupid ones that just dont know any better.

But your right, the lack of burst heal is probably going to hurt down the line, hopefully Zenimax addresses this as a means to promote more healing alternatives cross class.

thisisdustinsemail_ESO

Left_Hand wrote: »

Granted i'm still only level 34, but healing has become increasingly easier as i level up, as well as mana now becoming an unlimited resource even with dark exchange.

Spamming Blessing of Protection , Steadfast War and Grand Healing, converting stamina to mana and repeating, has kept everyone alive easily... except the stupid ones that just dont know any better.

But your right, the lack of burst heal is probably going to hurt down the line, hopefully Zenimax addresses this as a means to promote more healing alternatives cross class.

You know, my Blessing of Protection never seems to do anything besides heal people... They still lose health just as quickly, so I don't really feel like the increased armor rating is actually happening...

Raynekatt

thisisdustinsemail_ESO wrote: »

You know, my Blessing of Protection never seems to do anything besides heal people... They still lose health just as quickly, so I don't really feel like the increased armor rating is actually happening...

It could be that you are noticing the short duration time it has or that the mob/boss has knocked it off your target. The skill places the shield on, but it can be knocked off.

If you're looking for a shield that cannot be knocked off and has to expire try the Circle of Protection from Fighter's guild. It gives the buff to armour and spell resistance as long as the target is in the circle. It's a bit tiny, and you have to run in to place it, but quite worth it. Particularly as it doubles the numbers if fighting undead, daedra and later werewolves.