Healing - the worst imbalance in PVP history, in it's current form

There is a lot of rambling and also a lot of truth to what the OP says. Healing in this game is overpowered. Maybe not the heals, but the near limitless resource pool and the amount of classes who can heal.

I agree that there is an imbalance. A healer should not be able to infinitely heal themselves while at the same time beat on someone w/ double their armor and win...consistently. It shouldn't take 3-4 people to focus down a single healer.

If a healer were unable to outheal a single DPS, it would be essentially pointless to have healing in PvP. If a single healer cannot even counteract a single DPS, it would be more efficient to bring zero healers and just replace them with DPS, since killing the other team faster would be more effective than having this healer do healing which can't counter that single DPS. Quite simply why would you bring a healer if he can't survive against a single DPS? Why would you bring a healer then, if as a result double DPS would easily beat healer + DPS since the healer can't even counteract the one DPS.

This is why in many MMOs the balance was set at healers who are not being harassed being able to outheal the output of two damage dealers. This would allow a healer + DPS to compete with two DPS players, it coming down to whether the healer + DPS survive the double DPS before they can wear them down, with the outcome depending on who uses peels and interrupts the best.

Personally speaking, I have no problem with healers as they are in the current game. I have no problems killing or at the very least harassing them into ineffectiveness as a Kinetic Shadow (allowing my teammates to kill the DPS in the meantime). My one gripe in general is how little interrupting a spell currently comparatively matters (since it only locks out the spell which was interrupted), which can make it a little frustrating to see the healer just cast another heal instead. That said if they started implementing school lockouts or the like, healing might have to be toned up (as well as ability to kite for some 'casters') to compensate for this, since I don't consider healing overall to be overpowered right now.


The OP as a whole comes of as a long rambling statement by a person who tries to hide his ignorance behind a wall of text in an effort to seem informed and more insightful than other players. It's a lot of text, but has very little logic or substance, depending on a ridiculous concept which has never been used and makes zero sense (maximum potential health) and contrived situations of small scale combat. The reality in PvP is that it's a team game, where shockingly both sides have healers which are very much capable of being shut down or bursted down. You can keep trying to come up with hypothetical situations where supposedly the healer's side has infinite health and the side with only DPSers does not, but this is not how things work in reality. The healer's team will have considerably lower DPS output meaning it will take a fair amount of time to wear down the DPS players. Moreover burst DPS will force healers to use a lot of less efficient heals, and will run them out of resources eventually. (A healer cannot exactly heal indefinitely at maximum power, which is required to keep up with multiple players focusing a single player)

In the end, having healing and tanking in PvP makes it a far more interesting team effort than just putting teams made out of DPSers only seeing who can burst down the other team quickest, and every player dying in a matter of seconds when attacked.

As a combat medic. I sometimes tank 3 people just healing myself and running around. While doing this my team kills them.

What makes healing OP the most is that on voidstar and alderan if you have 2-3 good heals to can easily win objectives as nobody dies.

A. A healer can't just heal himself and kill some dude at the same time, If that is happening to you, get something besides greens.

B. It doesn't take 3-4 people to focus down a single healer in this game, It might take 3-4 people to focus down a healer who's being guarded and a tank is taunting the people.... But no.. it will not 3-4 to kill a Healer.

@OP
I guess you never played a healer in this game, or any other MMo.

Yes I play a healer and i hope nobody even listens to your "great" ideas...
You want to balance the healerrole around a modell that can never work out in fight with more than 4 persons involved.

Well, no. The OP should concentrate more on the pretty girls instead of the other stuff, when they take him down, to the Paradise City.


The argument is beyond flawed.
If dps > hps => Damage dealer wins.
If hps > dps => Healer doesn't die.

The potential limitless amount of healing done (which is capped by the max life) is counterbalanced by the potential limitless amount of damage done when someone gets healed. It is not a constant but a flowing variable. It's the derivative of the healing / damage function that matters. No absolute values.

OP thought he had a moment of clarity and found an eternal truth. But in fact, it is really trivial.

Quote: Originally Posted by endikux

Incontrovertible fact: A character with 10k health can have a maximum damage done to him of 10k. At 10,001 damage he is already dead.
A team of 10 guys with 10k health each have a maximum amount of damage they can absorb of 100k.
Pretty simple.

Incontrovertible fact: Strategy games require strategy. Pretty simple.

Quote: Originally Posted by endikux

It's quite sad how many people can't move beyond thinking that they are either being attacked, thinking I am complaining about my personal experience in the game, or thinking we need their advice on how to PvP better.

Just because you preface your posts by saying "any one who replies with A, B, or C, is incorrect" that doesn't make those replies incorrect. In your case, they very well might all be true:

A) By saying that healing is unfair you are attacking all healers.
B) By reading your posts, we can tell that you are indeed complaining, most likely because of personal experience.
C) By what you post about pvp mechanics and strategy, it's evident that you need to PvP better.

The fact of the matter is that healing is a fundamental game mechanic. It will not go away, ever. Join the club of people who know at least one thing about large scale pvp strategy and "kill the healers first".

In what reality were you PVPing? I cannot remember a single game with PVP that did not have some form of healing. PVP is not just a DPS race, it invloves at its best a group dynamic, knowing what classes/who is healing and either CCing or bursting them down. You can also try aoeing damage to overload the healers ability to keep everyone up(not the best idea depending on class but sometimes viable)

PVP at its core is eliminating your opponents, it is not a dps race. Some of hte best PVP classes were not burst but high control/CC with moderate dps.

I just love how OP lumps up all the healers together. Well, sorry to say, but as a merc I can't do both dps and healing at the same time and I can't keep healing non-stop. Well, I can-do the healing scan(1.5sec)=>rapid scan(2.5sec heal)=>rapid shots to cool off/till healing scan cd resets=>healing scan again. The snap is that it takes 1.5+2.5 seconds with a 6 seconds cooldown for a healing scan... And it still isn't enough to outheal the damage that gets delivered in a meantime.

Sure I can spam my 2.5sec big heal non-stop, but that gets me overheated in a matter of seconds, after which I can only do rapid shots. Than again, I can always pop my supercharged gas and go on healing frenzy... Oh wait! I need to collect 30 charges first and it only last for a few seconds.

Of course there's the whole damage dealing part, you know-it's when I stop healing and actually trying to hurt you...with a 1.5sec cast that gets me overheated just as fast as spamming my rapid scan... And it won't be all that effective, by the way.

So as a healer merc I simply can't do both dps and healing at the same time. In fact, I can only prolong the inevitable.

Also, I'm pretty sure that OP/scoundrel healing is no better. I remember pretty well, how two healer-scoundrels could barely keep my health up while I had jug offloading at me. Now, I'm no expert on op healing, but those two weren't only spamming their default healing.


Which leads me to believe that if merc and op can't really outheal burst and constant flowing damage, that leaves us with sorcs... Good luck balancing those out! If you nerf'em for pvp they end up being total gimps in pve. And the sad part is- you can't really pve without of them.

strong heal makes the game more difficult to play in pvp as focused dmg, burst dmg and interrupts/cc need to be coordinated better in order to score a kill. a kill becomes a team effeort and solo players have less chances to kill anything on their own so they start articulating their dislikes in the forums.

heal gives us the advantage to choose our targets by priority, not by the pobbability of killing the target beofore getting killed. without heal the fighting will become chaotic and wont punish lack of teamplay in a matter appropriate for an mmo.

besides in swtor healers are very weak since they cant even heal themselves up against a singel dd let alone dealing reasonable dmg to a dd AND healing up against him.

skill is not only how well u use your abilities but also how good youre tactics are. the presence of healers forces special tactics against them, as well as the presence of guard or stealth or cc.

teamplay will allways be superior to soloplay, u could calkl it imbalanced. you could also call unexperienced players imbalanced to experienced ones but itd be stupid becaus u dont want to end up to play /ramdom in am mmo.

balancing is only possible for the top lvl players (i dont want to call swtor balanced).