BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

Healing Skills
There's no doubt that cross healing is a really big issue in ESO. The biggest culprits are auto targeting and "sticky" heals over time like echoing vigor or radiating regeneration. First, there's no way that this can be good for server performance and secondly it's terrible for the game's balance anyway. I think that these skills should be completely replaced with PvP specific versions that still offer utility, but without the ability to to be abused through heal stacking. There's many ways to go about this and there's lots of great ideas on the forums. It's also important not to introduce any new healing skills that can be abused through heal stacking when new PvP specific skills are added.

IMO this is absolutely the BIGGEST myth that is being promulgated about PVP healing. I'll admit that cross-healing helps the survivability of a group that is playing together, but those groups that are allegedly impossible to kill are "impossible" to kill mostly due to highly skilled healer play. I know this to be true because my group experimented with eliminating healers from the group to see what our survivability was like without dedicated healers, and we got wrecked. Repeatedly.

Without a dedicated healer(s), we were defensive far too often and rarely had offensive windows where we could press the fight. Cross-healing helps to keep your health topped off, but without well timed burst heals and ulti heals, an organized group goes from unstoppable to just plain ordinary.

Do you propose that healing just be removed from PVP altogether? Or phrased another way, do you believe that healers have a place in PVP? Because a healers job is not to get kills but to keep their teammates alive, and when we do our jobs, our guys don't die. Cross-heals mainly help with the piddly attacks that the group absorbs as other people try to build ult on us or kill us from a distance, but they don't do anything to prevent a group from getting killed when they need burst heals at a critical juncture of the fight.

moosegod wrote: »

It's sad that the game is in a state where to improve performance in Cyrodiil they are looking at fundamentally changing the gameplay through PvP specific skills. I assume they will be simple abilities with basic animations to not overload the servers.

I don't think you get the point.

In one GCD, a healer healed 10K hp at the cost of 4K Magicka in one GCD.

In another, a healer healed upwards of 70K HP using 4K MAgicka in one GCD.

Basically: Ballgroups make you more resource efficient with AoE heals.

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

I don't think you get the point.

In one GCD, a healer healed 10K hp at the cost of 4K Magicka in one GCD.

In another, a healer healed upwards of 70K HP using 4K MAgicka in one GCD.

Basically: Ballgroups make you more resource efficient with AoE heals.

I get the point, but that is the benefit of playing in a group - in a game built for playing in a group. It's this way for ANY GROUP, not just a ballgroup by the way, you are just singling out ball groups because they are going to be the most efficient due to the coordinated nature of the playstyle. Ballgroups are just going to be more efficient because of the coordinate nature of offensive/defensive windows and the healer's timing when they use certain skills.

And if you do harm to this mechanic in PVP, your also going to do harm to healing functionality in PVP. It's how healing works, and healers would not be functional if it worked differently because it would be too much strain on resources if costs scaled with the number of targets hit.

There is literally nothing wrong with this. This is kinda what distinguishes truly good healers vs. people who have no clue what they are doing and they run around spamming breath of life and radiant regen, when there are better tools available. To say it differently, this is just part of highly-skilled healer play - knowing what to use and when.

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

The_Meathead
The_Meathead
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@BXR_Lonestar

I feel like you're making a great argument FOR Cross-Healing to be removed/drastically limited, rather than actually defending it.

You (from things you've said) want Healers to matter and for their impact to be evident and require their active interaction? Me too! I want actual Healers throwing out unique heals on their group and nearby allies to really be what keeps them alive, not just be the icing on the HP cake on top of a dozen Vigors, Scribed Shields and whatever else can stack.

Ball Groups should and will always benefit -tremendously- from their organization, communication, focus, and theory-crafting. As much as I groan about them, they are the furthest theory crafting goes: a maximum-size group tweaked out fully in every way possible to interact and support each other. I (at times grudgingly) respect that. It's the full evolution, for better or worse.

But on the subject, you go back and forth making it sound like Ball Groups don't need the stacked Cross-heals and -shields, that they don't really matter, but then saying removing them would be wrong and defending their presence. If you want to say it's for the good of the Zergs or less organized groups, I admit I don't buy it - because if BG players go from having a dozen of each HoT to suddenly having 1, while Zerg folks go from having maybe 2-3 of each to having 1, the relative loss in strength would be FAR larger for the Ball Group.

To me, it seems like we'd all be better off if Cross-healing and -shielding were cut to one of each type per character, both for gameplay and for performance/lag reasons, and that the truly talented Ball Groups(with truly talented Healers) would still be massively hard to bring down but the garden variety ones would become a great deal more vulnerable to things like Sieges or Bombers, offering better gameplay across the board.

I think you feel this way because you weren't really following the conversation. The conversation shifted from the focus on cross-heals to the resource efficiency of burst heal abilities. The person I was responding to apparently has an issue with BOTH, and I think both are fine as they are. I also KNOW that healers in PVP make a huge difference because I've played in groups both with and without them - and with and without GOOD healers, and I can see how big of a difference they make on the battlefield in the current meta.

And my previous post didn't indicate that cross-heals don't matter. I openly admit that a bunch of sticky HOTS running on you helps deal with fights where you are constantly getting bombarded with ranged light/heavy attacks, sniper spam, etc. THOSE are the heals that are helping to keep your health topped off. But those don't save you when a bomber strikes your flank, or your group gets pulled (or is doing the pulling) and there is a ton of chaos and damage going on at the mesh point. THOSE are the instances where healers need access to strong aoe burst heals in PVP, and it is always going to be more efficient with a ball group because more players should be on point. (By the way, the need for strong aoe burst heals is ALSO present in PVE). In the existing paradigm, this is where the quality of your healers is truly going to matter - being at the right place, at the right time, and doing the right thing.

With that being said, where cross-healing is useful and helpful is that with a lot of cross-heals running, I have resources to cast other stuff for the group (Not going to share the details of my build/playstyle) because I am not constantly running around burst healing other players when they need it. It allows me to do less babysitting when we're maneuvering and I can keep an eye on where the fight is going and what the crown is doing so I can anticipate where my next burst heals will be needed. It basically puts less burden on my plate so I can be engaged in the fight and not babysitting health bars. But they aren't really the reason ball groups are very difficult to defeat. If you have ever played in a ball group without a dedicated healer and were only trying to rely on cross-heals alone to save yourself, you would see how ineffective it really is to address burst damage scenarios, even where your ability to heal is not being negated.