mairwen85 wrote: »

BNOC wrote: »

Self heals are insanely strong, that's why healers are worthless in this kind of content.

Maybe they just need a third difficulty tier, it could even be as simple as %hp, %damage and %mitigation increases, then chuck a flat healing debuff in there to a point where DD's can't sustain on self heals alone.

Dedicated healer heals would also be down but part of the difficulty I guess.

Also, you'd probs just get dds heal stacking each other.

True but if I'm healing myself, or another, I'm wasting resource and not doing damage. Every DD heal is less damage done. Heal stacking would be sharing the healer role amongst individuals who are taking high damage consistently over a short period of time puts strain on the group -- making it more obvious that a dedicated healer would be more beneficial (in my view anyway).

I can see your point -- perhaps you'd suggest an increase in cost of self-heals? Or that heals rely more on CP stars like Blessed in order to have viable power (which would gimp most dps)... That said, your idea of the 'wounding' debuff also reducing healing taken or healing done is an interesting thought.

It boils down to multiple issues working against the design.

Cp power creep combined with group damage checks being set low enough for a wide range of players to complete said content has created the issue where there is not enough trade off to make when slotting self heals in exchange for damage throughput.

Then on the flip side you gave 110 percent trail ready dps builds with little healing blowing through bosses and quite often circumventing mechanics outright.

Either way, the issue is deeply rooted and not a sinple fix. Its why zos realizes a new power progression system is desperately needed asap.

GarnetFire17 wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

mairwen85 wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

mairwen85 wrote: »

The purpose of this thread is to provide community feedback and ideas for how dungeons (present and future) can be updated or designed to make healers more relevant to the content (as the title suggests). Seeing as devs are regularly revisiting dungeons and weakening bosses, reducing adds, etc (not addressing the core issue of dungeon difficulty in my view, but it is what it is), I don't see why retro fits can't be introduced.

The main gripe you often hear is centred around 'One-shots'. I'm not arguing for the total removal of all One-shot mechanics; they add difficulty, they can enforce mechanics, and make for reactive strategy; but the sheer volume and number of sources are a major issue in current dungeon design -- and seeing as they often exceed the amount heal-able, more dps is preferred in many cases in order to progress faster. A rethink would be to instead of apply x damage, apply a 'wounding' debuff on target that does x/y over time (e.g. instead of single hit of 45K, 12Kps over 4 seconds). This makes a healer's role more necessary as that buff becomes purge-able(?), and the damage recoverable over time, despite the actual effect still doing decent enough damage to retain difficulty.

Self heals are in a good place in terms of cost vs effect, and dps or tanks slotting heals do little to outweigh the applicable power of a dedicated healer (considering additional effects and buffs).

Any other thoughts?

Frankly I think they should just remove "one shots" all together. They're stupid - and just makes a dungeon more annoying. It's also probably why so many people don't want to buy their DLC dungeons.

Challenge is only good so long as it makes the game more fun. If it's to the point that it makes the game more frustrating and annoying, then it's doing more harm than good.

So how would you provide that challenge in a way which makes healers relevant, and doesn't gimp the dungeon too hard.

Just make the damage and health of the enemies threatening - but not to the point it one shots people. That way healers can actually heal and keep people alive.

how do you make the damage threatening to a tank without being able to one shot DPS and healers?

That's not really an issue as it relates to one-shot mechanisms. That's more the problem in that Damage Dealers and Healers tend to skimp on their defenses to the point they are made out of a paper and die very very easily. So damage that a tank would barely notice tend to obliterate the other group members.

This happens more often in difficult DLC dungeons because they can't just overwhelm their enemy with their DEEPS and kill everything before it has a chance to kill them. Which is why I was careful to include the health of the enemies in my post as well. But this isn't the case in most dungeons and why healers aren't really ideal in many of them.

Nearly all the problems with this game revolve around what I believe to be a conscious effort to cater to the "Glass Cannon" philosophy that a good offense is the best defense. That's why I believe they prefer the most challenging aspects of a fight to involve some kind of silly one-shot mini game where you have to play dodge ball or hide and go seek successfully else you die so it can be perceived as "challenging" while they run around melting everything. It's gotten so bad that a lot of damage dealers don't even consider tanks and healers tanks and healers anymore - but "support" designed to make them do more damage. lol That's how ridiculous it has gotten.

So I guess the answer to your question is you don't. You make the damage severe enough to where the damage dealers are dependent on the tank and healer to stay alive. You also make it severe enough to where they have to give up some of their offense for more defense - otherwise they simply die and stay dead. If they did that it might actually convince all these manic DPS to stay in range of the healer and let the tank on the front lines.

So, I main a healer and a DD equally, and I'm deeply engaged in end game content, which gives me the benefit of seeing things from both sides. I don't know who started this whole conversation, or why, but I can say that healers are still wanted in end game, including 4 person content. I remember when this topic first started circulating in the healer discord chat, but I had no idea how much damage it would do to the health of the game in terms of reworking class and racial skills. If I had known then, I would have tried to squash it before it reached these levels.

Including a healer in the group is not better or worse, just different, and a pretty even trade-off either way. You either burn through content with 3 dps and a tank, dealing with the stress of trying to keep yourself alive while you're putting out as much dps as possible, or you can bring a healer and burn more slowly while seeing more mechanics, while also enjoying the benefits of having your health sustain pretty much carried. Two highly competent dps can pretty easily burn through even DLC content quickly enough that you still skip many of the mechanics, which gives healers a chance to shine in terms of allowing the dps to focus solely on damage. Many tanks will even say they prefer to bring a healer to the longer dungeons, only because it's less stressful for them and easier for them to sustain their resources. The current efficacy of self healing really allows those with lower dps to add a third to the group in order to augment what is missing.

**This is not to downplay the need to stack dps for speed achievement runs, where it make the most sense.

If anything is changed going forward that can create a niche for healers in non-raid scenarios, maybe we should consider introducing 6 person dungeons with strong healing checks. Maybe use a mechanic like the Tharaya heal in Depths of Malatar, but put it on the DDs. Place two "safe" circles in the arena, meant for the healer and the tank, and use a shield-phase mechanic like the first vMoL boss so that the DDs have to output tons of dmg while also taking insane amounts of dmg, and this can only be passed once their health has been sustained for a certain amount of time.

There are plenty of ways to create solutions without this endless and tiresome cycle of "taking away". Removing and nerfing and depleting are NOT the answer. That is just unforgivable laziness and lack of creativity. You add, supplement, and complement in order to improve a situation.

DenMoria wrote: »

With all the self heals, are healers really that relevant anyway?

Maybe for buffs, but, then again, you can get those so many other ways too.

From a DPS perspective - sometimes but usually no.

Since so many of the fights on this game require or encourage you to run all over the place chasing adds or dealing with mechanics is often easier for a DPS to heal themselves when they get into trouble than relying on a healer to do it - who has limited range and directional constraints and is usually staying near the tank where as a DPS can heal themselves instantly as soon as they are in danger where ever they are on the battlefield (something a healer cannot do). So that is part of the problem as well.

They need to make it to where healers can effectively replace the DD's self heal. Because as they are designed now - a healer is only really useful to a damage dealer during times of intense area damage. Otherwise, the damage dealer is probably better off just healing themselves.

p00tx wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

DenMoria wrote: »

With all the self heals, are healers really that relevant anyway?

Maybe for buffs, but, then again, you can get those so many other ways too.

From a DPS perspective - sometimes but usually no.

Since so many of the fights on this game require or encourage you to run all over the place chasing adds or dealing with mechanics is often easier for a DPS to heal themselves when they get into trouble than relying on a healer to do it - who has limited range and directional constraints and is usually staying near the tank where as a DPS can heal themselves instantly as soon as they are in danger where ever they are on the battlefield (something a healer cannot do). So that is part of the problem as well.

They need to make it to where healers can effectively replace the DD's self heal. Because as they are designed now - a healer is only really useful to a damage dealer during times of intense area damage. Otherwise, the damage dealer is probably better off just healing themselves.

This sounds like a nightmare dungeon scenario. DDs should not be far away from tank chasing adds. That's either bad tank for not chaining in adds, or bad DD for not focusing the adds the the tank has chained in for the DDs. Healers should be wherever the DDs are. A decent tank should be able to sustain themselves pretty well without a pocket healer. Also, a healer has amazing range and directional capability at their disposal if they make sure to use the right skills and tools. The other side of that coin though is that it is actually a DDs job to make sure to stay close to the tank and healer, and a well developed and smart dungeon team should move as a pretty tight unit. Even most mechanics shouldn't take you that far from your team, unless we're talking about the tether scenarios. Even those shouldn't take anyone out of Mutagen or Springs range though.

I know that you main a healer, and the scenario you described is an awful one. I don't know how you keep your cool with people playing like that.

That "nightmare scenario" is pretty much the norm for me in pugs. DPS near the tank and healer? Only in my dreams.

I used to "main" a healer though I don't play it nearly as much as I used to. Mainly for this reason.

Jeremy wrote: »

mairwen85 wrote: »

The purpose of this thread is to provide community feedback and ideas for how dungeons (present and future) can be updated or designed to make healers more relevant to the content (as the title suggests). Seeing as devs are regularly revisiting dungeons and weakening bosses, reducing adds, etc (not addressing the core issue of dungeon difficulty in my view, but it is what it is), I don't see why retro fits can't be introduced.

The main gripe you often hear is centred around 'One-shots'. I'm not arguing for the total removal of all One-shot mechanics; they add difficulty, they can enforce mechanics, and make for reactive strategy; but the sheer volume and number of sources are a major issue in current dungeon design -- and seeing as they often exceed the amount heal-able, more dps is preferred in many cases in order to progress faster. A rethink would be to instead of apply x damage, apply a 'wounding' debuff on target that does x/y over time (e.g. instead of single hit of 45K, 12Kps over 4 seconds). This makes a healer's role more necessary as that buff becomes purge-able(?), and the damage recoverable over time, despite the actual effect still doing decent enough damage to retain difficulty.

Self heals are in a good place in terms of cost vs effect, and dps or tanks slotting heals do little to outweigh the applicable power of a dedicated healer (considering additional effects and buffs).

Any other thoughts?

Frankly I think they should just remove "one shots" all together. They're stupid - and just makes a dungeon more annoying. It's also probably why so many people don't want to buy their DLC dungeons.

Challenge is only good so long as it makes the game more fun. If it's to the point that it makes the game more frustrating and annoying, then it's doing more harm than good.

I'm a main tank, what's the point of having nothing to care about? So I just stand at that huge aoe one shot and don't care, slot purge become virtually immoral?

1st, 3rd and 4th boss of moonhunter keep, second of fungal 2, final boss of falkreath, all bosses or almost in scalecaller and so on, those one shot make sense to me, how do you make those mecanics relevant enough for people who don't want EVERY content to be like fighting a mud crab?
I understand people have fun in different way, but if you suck at the game, or don't like having a challenge, there is the normal mode of dungeons where enemy tickle you, veteran is easy enough as is no need make it even easier.

For healers to be relevant, this game would need to change way to much, and people would hate that, making DD's sustain a joke would render a lot of skill useless, even more pigeonholing classes in a single viable build.

Add to that the skill level of this game is already low enough, do you imagine the impact on gameplay overall with such mechanic? Most content feels better with a healer already when you play "end game", sure can tank almost anything without a healer, but still.
Most of the time, 3DD in anything but non doc content is like doing yourself a stupid, unless you don't do hard modes, then, it's mostly fine.

SoLooney wrote: »

Just be glad they're relevant in trials

"We have made you partly irrelevant. Pray we don't make you any more irrelevant."

Gotta love this attitude. Incidentally, do you play a healer? I'm going to guess the answer is no.

I have nothing against 3dd groups, but in the interest of keeping the game appealling to all classes/roles and the community as a whole happier, if healers are in a tough spot I'm siding with them. Rejoicing at others' problems doesn't make much sense to me.

mairwen85 wrote: »

The purpose of this thread is to provide community feedback and ideas for how dungeons (present and future) can be updated or designed to make healers more relevant to the content (as the title suggests). Seeing as devs are regularly revisiting dungeons and weakening bosses, reducing adds, etc (not addressing the core issue of dungeon difficulty in my view, but it is what it is), I don't see why retro fits can't be introduced.

The main gripe you often hear is centred around 'One-shots'. I'm not arguing for the total removal of all One-shot mechanics; they add difficulty, they can enforce mechanics, and make for reactive strategy; but the sheer volume and number of sources are a major issue in current dungeon design -- and seeing as they often exceed the amount heal-able, more dps is preferred in many cases in order to progress faster. A rethink would be to instead of apply x damage, apply a 'wounding' debuff on target that does x/y over time (e.g. instead of single hit of 45K, 12Kps over 4 seconds). This makes a healer's role more necessary as that de-buff becomes purge-able(?), and the damage recoverable over time, despite the actual effect still doing decent enough damage to retain difficulty.

Self heals are in a good place in terms of cost vs effect, and dps or tanks slotting heals do little to outweigh the applicable power of a dedicated healer (considering additional effects and buffs).

Any other thoughts?

Content design and game play got a lobotomy post 2016

Slunksters wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

mairwen85 wrote: »

The purpose of this thread is to provide community feedback and ideas for how dungeons (present and future) can be updated or designed to make healers more relevant to the content (as the title suggests). Seeing as devs are regularly revisiting dungeons and weakening bosses, reducing adds, etc (not addressing the core issue of dungeon difficulty in my view, but it is what it is), I don't see why retro fits can't be introduced.

The main gripe you often hear is centred around 'One-shots'. I'm not arguing for the total removal of all One-shot mechanics; they add difficulty, they can enforce mechanics, and make for reactive strategy; but the sheer volume and number of sources are a major issue in current dungeon design -- and seeing as they often exceed the amount heal-able, more dps is preferred in many cases in order to progress faster. A rethink would be to instead of apply x damage, apply a 'wounding' debuff on target that does x/y over time (e.g. instead of single hit of 45K, 12Kps over 4 seconds). This makes a healer's role more necessary as that buff becomes purge-able(?), and the damage recoverable over time, despite the actual effect still doing decent enough damage to retain difficulty.

Self heals are in a good place in terms of cost vs effect, and dps or tanks slotting heals do little to outweigh the applicable power of a dedicated healer (considering additional effects and buffs).

Any other thoughts?

Frankly I think they should just remove "one shots" all together. They're stupid - and just makes a dungeon more annoying. It's also probably why so many people don't want to buy their DLC dungeons.

Challenge is only good so long as it makes the game more fun. If it's to the point that it makes the game more frustrating and annoying, then it's doing more harm than good.

I'm a main tank, what's the point of having nothing to care about? So I just stand at that huge aoe one shot and don't care, slot purge become virtually immoral?

1st, 3rd and 4th boss of moonhunter keep, second of fungal 2, final boss of falkreath, all bosses or almost in scalecaller and so on, those one shot make sense to me, how do you make those mecanics relevant enough for people who don't want EVERY content to be like fighting a mud crab?
I understand people have fun in different way, but if you suck at the game, or don't like having a challenge, there is the normal mode of dungeons where enemy tickle you, veteran is easy enough as is no need make it even easier.

For healers to be relevant, this game would need to change way to much, and people would hate that, making DD's sustain a joke would render a lot of skill useless, even more pigeonholing classes in a single viable build.

Add to that the skill level of this game is already low enough, do you imagine the impact on gameplay overall with such mechanic? Most content feels better with a healer already when you play "end game", sure can tank almost anything without a healer, but still.
Most of the time, 3DD in anything but non doc content is like doing yourself a stupid, unless you don't do hard modes, then, it's mostly fine.

I guess it depends what kind of game play you're after. I actually enjoy the core game play of MMORPGs - where tanks invest in their defense, damage dealers invest in their damage, and healers invest in their healing to work together as a team to overcome obstacles they otherwise couldn't alone (they need to bring support classes back into the mix).

I suppose if that bores you, I could understand why you may want to replace this style of play with all these gimmicks and booby traps that you have to run around dodging or learn patterns else you die instantly. But that's just not the kind of game play I'm after. I believe the difficulty of a fight should revolve around how well the player performs their combat role - not how experienced and skilled they are at following some pattern or their ability to dodge lasers This kind of game play reminds me of the trial and error crappy games back in the 1980's and isn't what an MMORPG should be about. And judging by how popular the DLC dungeons are - especially when they first come out and before they are nerfed - I'd say I"m not nearly the only person who feels this way. I've been sitting in a queue for close to an hour now to do Depths of Malatar - and that's as a tank - and the last two runs I was able to get in people just left at the start.

The older base line dungeons were better designed and still challenging in their day. They had mechanics too - but they didn't one shot you every second. You do not need a constant stream of instant death one shot mechanics to make a fight challenging enough to be fun.

Maybe... just maybe... the game wasn't designed for paper tigers. Perhaps they wouldn't be one shots if the DPS had more than 16k health and no resists?

my biggest thing is that self heals are so strong. Every class - yes, every class - has access to plenty if not at least 1 or 2 good self heals. Off the top my head, coagulating blood (probably the worst), power surge, siphoning + swallow, lotus, jabs. There's even more if you include vigor and shields. DPS are far too survivable. The only reason healers are required in trials is because you need more people doing mechanics and you need utility things like purge, resources, and more heals because there's so many damage sources. I don't know an easy way to fix this really, because removing self heals would obviously be a huge problem, but increasing damage from dungeons would be a weird move too. I hope they're looking into this this year. I mostly dps now because not only is healing too easy in most cases, it's just not as fun and you don't feel as needed. most of the time when i try hard mode vet dungeons they just ask me to use a 3rd dps instead...

zaria wrote: »

The wraitstone dungeons demanded plenty of healing, this was probably intended.

No need for healers is probably in part because of CP as CP give lots of migration.
Also because so many runs vMA level builds rather than glass cannons.

*mitigation

I think is the word you meant?

mairwen85 wrote: »

I hope we can also agree that zos' previous attempts have been, well, not exactly well thought out. Recent addition of a gimmicky 'heal this npc' requirement for just one example.

Ugh, we think this is one of the responses to healer concerns? Please, no more of this. What a great way to foster "better" healers... ask them to take their eyes off of their team and run across the room to heal an NPC. HATE this mechanic.