Hi. Healing outers was removed a while back. Why is the loophole that lets mass healing heal outers still there? Is it design or just nobody cares enough to fix? It kinda obviates a lot of the no healing decision.

Of course, healers and paladins using heal or rejuvenate doesn't work anymore but ways that you can heal outer guardians are:

Herbs
Field dressing
Mass healing (charity paladin/healer)
paladin/healer bandage skill(can't remember exact)
poultice (disease/poison)
lay hands
and maybe more...

Invokers can shield outers
Some paladins and healers can aura them
bards and boost them with songs
mages with talismans

So there are still a lot of things that benefit/heal outer guardians that is still available, it was just the heal supplication, and rejuvenate that was taken away.

As someone who played a caballed healer semi-recently (Yikaro), if I didn't have the ability to heal outers with mass heal I would have gouged my eyes out with boredom.

Mass heal is a 2 round lag heal, so it's much more risky for the healer, and it's not as powerful as a rejuvenate. It takes a long time to heal a cabal guardian up like that, but at least it lets the healer participate in a defense.

Healers need to be good at something. They're already pretty unattractive to play as it is due to their lack of independence.

From my understanding, the modifications to heal were made because before that, a well played and well decked healer for Fort or Empire could basically shut down a retrieval from anything short of 3 lvl 40 chars. So, you don't want it to be totally hopeless for the non-heroes. But you also want to give the healer some purpose. Mass heal seems like a good compromise there.

I think you're missing the point maybe? I'm not sure how not being able to heal a cabal outer with mass heal would make anything more boring - nobody else can do it either, you do whatever you want, it's not like it's either do that or do nothing at all in the whole game.

Healers are good at something. Healing. Players. And all other mobs. Not being able to heal one mob, a cabal outer, doesn't make the class less attractive.

I think the real point is that the decision was made to stop healing cabal outers, I think because they recognized it really stymied anyone other than mid to high ranks from retrieving, as you wrote. Healers, and in particular empire healers, made it pretty much impossible to retrieve. That decision seems to be circumvented by the mass heal, which again, with sanctuary, seems to foil the intent.

The answer to not being able to keep an item if the only way to keep it is a healer is to get more members of those lower levels. It shouldn't be that you keep the items just because a hero healer is on and makes it virtually impossible for a retriever to retrieve.

It's just weird that heal and reju and all that was stopped, but mass heal was missed. So the question is was it missed, or was it deliberately kept? And if deliberately kept, why? Imms?

I wasn't directly involved with the healing change, but TheBluestThumb hits on the major points pretty accurately. Healers cannot heal NPCs at all unless they are in their group or cabal. There are a handful of other healing options as well available, but overall they are all rather poor on the return on investment scale. Mass healing's longer lag and higher mana cost fit more into this category.


Only speaking for myself, I'm fine with a healer having one or two costly options to use.

Having played Sekope, I came up against this when in my 20's against black sanc at Empire.

Did the healer make it harder? Certainly!
Did the healer make it impossible? Definitely not!
Did the healer extend my sweet skills learns on the vanquisher? Hell Yeah!

If I could do it solo in my 20's then its completely possible. Most certainly possible with some persistence. I personally don't have any issues with it, further to this time things right, cat and mouse things a bit and you can even pick off some of the lowbie defenders.