I've always enjoyed playing healers, as it suits me as a player to play that class.

However, now I consider strongly about my next. First was the change with the NPC's attacking people not fighting, and targeting people not in front. As a healer, you often stand back, watching the fight and throw a heal here and there. Now you are drawn into the fight constantly, kicked dirted, bashed and what not.

I think the class suffering the most from this change, was the healer class.

Now with the recent change of healing NPC's, the value of a healer is even more hampered.

Also, the none healing of the cabal guardians, needs some tweeking as well. I know why the change was done, but right now, as ranger, or paladin can do more healing to their NPC's than a healer can. Herbs, and lay hands are way way better than first aid skill. It would be cool if dark pact could be a link to one npc... (I know that it would be a problem with the out guardian vs low level raiding).

But as things are for now... If im on, and a 30+ decides to raid, I dont even bother to return to the cabal no more.. I can grant the guardian sanc (and frenzy if I remove either weapon or shield), but not bless while the guard is fighting, nor first aid.

So, I would hope you would consider some of the problems here, I dont say that the changes are all bad, and I dont have a solution for them, but as It is right now - I think something is broken, one way or another for the healer class...

Most of the times I don't even bother with a raid because there's zero chance of keeping the item now. For Empire it's even worse since centurions were taken out of the equation.

With that being said I can see how this can be beneficial as well. Maybe allowing everyone to have their powers the majority of the time will lead to less bandwagoning/more fighting/etc. I guess we'll see.

There is nothing worse than feeling obligated to keep spamming rejuv on your outer while lowbies practice their weapon skills on it.

Only those who are in pk range should be able to stop outright.

It sounds like you don't even bother to try and slow them down anymore which is cool if that's what you want to do. Even cooler if I'm retrieving against you. I mean having gate it doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to get back drop a sanc and leave again. You never know. Buying that extra time could be enough for someone who can actually defend to show up.

There's no doubt that these changes are a sizable nerf to the solo healer in a cabal defense scenario that doesn't include any other PC defenders. Unfortunately, we couldn't come up with a way around this that we liked, at least not that wouldn't have taken far more time than we were interested in investing in the problem.

We left the various "non-spammable" healing abilities alone because while they might have some impact, there's a huge gap between them and a communer spamming rejuv or heal on a NPC. You're right though, healer first aid doesn't trump other similar abilities, and I'm fine with that. If we find out that a lone ranger is somehow keeping their outer healed faster than a decent mid-rank retriever can handle than we'll look into that, but I haven't seen that to be the case yet.

Right now all I can offer is two thoughts:

1) These changes wouldn't make me any less likely to play a healer, which I've done a few times in the past. But for what it's worth, I tend to prefer exploration and big group battles where these changes don't come into play as significantly. Likewise, my play times aren't typically such that I need(ed) to heal NPCs to be at all effective.

2) We went into this change knowing it was simple but impactful, and we certainly intend to pay attention to how it plays out. It might remain as-is forever, or it might not. I very much dislike rolling back a change or making follow-up changes too early or with too little information, but I'm not against doing so entirely. We'll see how it goes.

That someone could still do an Andira build? Because that was harder for me to overcome as a midbie retriever than any healer was. Because she was never having downtime.

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That fort has arguably the "toughest" inner period. I used to read the posts from people complaining about the watcher and think they were crazy - holy crap I'd rather raid any other cabal.

gr

Nexus is easy for mine. And for a number of those I've played in the past. The watcher is not, because he dispels and blocks word of recall. If there's someone good at preventing physical fleeing, the watcher sets you up for things like entwine or bash.

I dont mind Fortress inner... But the outlanders... I hate it...

If you raid, you will find yourself with spores, insects, and what else not. A terrain that can hide x numbers of players, and a maze. But thats just me.

There are some pretty sizable drawbacks to altruism. I'm pretty sure using Altruism has killed more Acolytes than standard pk =).

Hero acolyte can shut down midrange retriever - you need to throw in hero level allies or it's head vs brick wall. And really that's the same situation as healers before the fix.

I know there is no easy solution, thats why I didnt come up with five new ideas on how to "fix" this.

It was merely tossed up here for a discussion, as I feel it impacted me quite alot. And yes - I've been raiding the outlanders, where a druid and a ranger could heal the ranger faster, than I could do damage to it, as a hero healer. (to be fair, there could have been another one there out of my range, but all in all I feel rangers/druids/paladins have better options now healing the guards.

Perhaps a solution could be, if the npc was in combat x ticks ago, it cannot be healed. Then it would be some kind of "timer" to get the raid done as quickly as possible.

Which is negligible.

>1) These changes wouldn't make me any less likely to play a
>healer, which I've done a few times in the past. But for what
>it's worth, I tend to prefer exploration and big group battles
>where these changes don't come into play as significantly.
>Likewise, my play times aren't typically such that I need(ed)
>to heal NPCs to be at all effective.


The random redirection of mob abilities has not only made it harder to explore, but for the more fun areas (ST, Inferno, or Shadow Plane) it has made it pretty much impossible. I can assure you that mobs like Mephistopheles+Herald or Belial are pretty much impossible now (instant death and all your gear destroyed on anyone in your group not wearing a shield? really?), not to mention how some ST archmages were insane before these changes. I'm not saying that the change wasn't necessary (an entire group hiding behind one mob seemed a bit silly), but some abilities shouldn't be able to be redirected... or you get scenarios where you've made things impossible.

I know the chances of them being fixed/changed is all up to the area writer, which happens once in a blue moon considering their interest levels, but just wanted to note what has happened. A lot of interest for me in the game was taking on the incredibly hard exploration fights and with dwindling numbers and this change, it's a nail in the coffin.

It's not like not having a skill forbids you from holding one?

Disclaimer: I have never personally been to hell.

A number of the fights in hell and other area explores involve unique abilities from the mobs. Countering those unique abilities in many cases requires having or doing very specific things. The overhead of getting that setup for 1 person could be very very different than doing it for a group of 12 (which is about as big as you get today but would be considered medium or small back when hell itself was designed).

There may be creative solutions to figuring out how to tackle these challenges in light of new functionality but it took years to figure out the original game plans and it likely will be years to come up with new ones.

It pretty much excludes a lot of things, from both fights. For example, even though you can wear a shield the attack destroys it, and it can repeat it again the next round. Add in lagging maneuvers from the boss, and bu-bye... you were all carrying 15+ shields right? shifters get to just watch nowadays.

It is hell, but come on, it wasn't designed with this in mind. The herald instant kill ability can now hit anyone as well, it's pretty nutty. Don't get me started on "heat metal" on non-tanks now...

Your group can pass shields to each other. You don't need a zillion each.

>Your group can pass shields to each other. You don't need a
>zillion each.


Is this mob able to break elemental shields? I thought they couldn't be broken and I know several of them.

There probably is a simple solution but it's not as simple as what you suggest. Anyway, I've probably said too much already as hell stuff is off limits. I've only been twice tho and the first time that's what got me killed horribly.

Belial nailed me 3 times before I died and even then I still had most of my gear. Arguably he is easier because of this. I died because earth shield fell and I had dirt in my eyes. He then got me repeatedly before the dirt came out. With the change, he's less likely to waste the guy who just got dirt kicked.

Like healing mob does 100/3 = 33 hp instead of initial 100. This way you can heal it, but it's not as effective as to make it a major frustrating issue.

... I dont know the solution to the problem, I just think its a bit of an issue, but yes that could be (part of) some solution.

...when Empire powers/Healer class was theorized and implemented, I believe they were envisoned with 80-100 players to be on.

As in, it used to be common for my last healer (circa 2008) to have to defend against 4-5 people at once, solo. Being in Empire, moreso as a High Priest, it was doable.

Now, defending against 1-2 players, it's somewhat overkill. Interesting to try and do as Jhyrb say and think of a compromise.

Maybe since Healers have in their code "healing effectiveness" (evil healers don't heal as much as goodie healers without dark pact), you could find a way to shoehorn "mob healing" rates. As in, if random NPC you only get 5% effectiveness (so 10 hp on a rejuvenate...not even worth it), Cabal guardian/mob 20% (so 40 hp on a rejuvenate...MAYBE WORTH IT).

Or can you not cast that either?

An outer with sanc and lifeshield can still ruin some lowbies day. Especially if you have troll amulet.

nt

What if there was a compromise? Make healing mobs cost like 3x mana? I think that'd be fair.