So one of the things that Bioware planned on addressing with the next patch was to tune the ops to be a little more difficult in the future. My question is this. Instead of adding new mechanics to fights that could make them harder, or increasing the damage that the encounters incur to the raid, they are basically taking the nerf bat and passing it around to everyone and telling them to beat the healers to a bloody pulp with it.

I don't understand how fundamentally changing almost every class in game at the same time is the solution to "balance" issues or "making raids harder". I can't see this scale of changes as being a good thing. massive in my experience usually lead to unintended exploits or unintended game breaking mechanic changes. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

Discuss

I think it should be mentioned that i am speaking to operations not pvp in this thread. thats a whole new can of worms, and i think most people can agree sorcs/consulars were op healers.

I don't see any need to change classes for PvE. I don't play PvP because I can't get a q to pop on my server.

I agree with the OP. I'd rather see more complex fight mechanics than making the players weaker. While I concede that consular healers are excellent, they definitely can't save the day when everything turns pear shaped. We can pump out crazy heals for about 30 seconds, and then we run out of Force because we weren't able to stick to our rotation. So if people are doing the fight wrong, they're still going to die.

As a healer, it makes me mad when people imply that I could've "just healed through it" instead of letting people die. If they nerf healers, we're going to get even more of these ignorant comments. I personally would prefer that players who fail fight mechanics get one-shotted, so it's clear that they have no one to blame but themselves.

Yes i agree entirely. my guildmates are really good about understanding that they ****ed up. But as a whole nerfing players to make fights harder is always the wrong route to take. i have seen it happen in many mmo's and it almost always leads to bad things.

This is not concerning pvp i know that sorcs/consulars are currenly the strongest healers for pure healing output, but when you consider how squishy they are relative to otehr helaer types its really not as wide a gap as people make it out to be.

I feel that it was the only thing bioware could do to make the changes they want to raiding. From the start they have pushed for fights where it is possible to see what direction it is heading in. They want the raid to look and see that they are falling behind because people are screwing up and to adjust that on the fly. It should be clear that too much damage is being taken across the raid for healers to handle it.

Now, if bioware decided not to nerf healers and instead increase boss damage then that would cause the WoW issue where health bars basically fly up and down within seconds with the occasional death occurring from the spike damage. By nerfing healing across the bored bioware ahieves it's goal of creating fights that are more consistent and possible to comprehend if the raid is fighting wrong (or just bad).

Keep in mind that with the implementation of the target of target frame gives raiders another tool to use for avoiding damage. This puts more responsibility on everyone to ensure they avoid unnecessary hits or else the healers will become overwhelmed and it will show.

So yes, the healing job is now that much more of a nightmare and it will be that much easier to blame the healers for wipes. All kinds of uncontrollable situations will be forced upon them because of mistakes by there fellow companions. The growing pains will help evolve healers to know and understand that things are turning for the worst and to be able to say "Hey, this is to much so next person to mess up dies!".

Good or bad, it will be interesting non the less.

It's not about making ops harder it's about taking classes that are way out of line and bringing them back to reality. It's a step in the right direction for the game and will help with class diversity. These changes are a step in the right direction and should have happened along time ago.

sorcs are not out of line compared to other healers sorry. if you have ever raided with a godo smug healer or a good commando healer you would know this. commando healers are currently the best single target healers in game contrary to popular belief

I feel that it was the only thing bioware could do to make the changes they want to raiding. From the start they have pushed for fights where it is possible to see what direction it is heading in. They want the raid to look and see that they are falling behind because people are screwing up and to adjust that on the fly. It should be clear that too much damage is being taken across the raid for healers to handle it.

 

Now, if bioware decided not to nerf healers and instead increase boss damage then that would cause the WoW issue where health bars basically fly up and down within seconds with the occasional death occurring from the spike damage. By nerfing healing across the bored bioware ahieves it's goal of creating fights that are more consistent and possible to comprehend if the raid is fighting wrong (or just bad).

 

Keep in mind that with the implementation of the target of target frame gives raiders another tool to use for avoiding damage. This puts more responsibility on everyone to ensure they avoid unnecessary hits or else the healers will become overwhelmed and it will show.

 

So yes, the healing job is now that much more of a nightmare and it will be that much easier to blame the healers for wipes. All kinds of uncontrollable situations will be forced upon them because of mistakes by there fellow companions. The growing pains will help evolve healers to know and understand that things are turning for the worst and to be able to say "Hey, this is to much so next person to mess up dies!".

 

Good or bad, it will be interesting non the less.

you make good points here. but the problem is not going to be just a healer "nerf" in long fights you will receive NO healing from sorcs because they will no longer have a decent way to keep their FP up.

sorcs are not out of line compared to other healers sorry. if you have ever raided with a godo smug healer or a good commando healer you would know this. commando healers are currently the best single target healers in game contrary to popular belief

Sounds like you need to roll up a commando then!

And yes they are out of line, they always have been be it for PVE or PVP. Saying otherwise means you are out of touch with the rest of the game.

No it's not the right move.

If all they want is to increase raid difficulty why not up the boss difficulty then? Instead they nerf the abilities which affects EVERY ASPECT OF THE GAME.

This is how MMOs get cancelled subs. Sweeping changes driven by one components of the game.

IMO this has nothing to do with PVE and everything to do with PVP.

And to that I can only say: For the love of God find your INTERRUPT key.

4 seconds of no healing = dead healer.

In regards to sorcerers:

My biggest concern with the coming patch is the nerf to Consumption. This is forcing me down the biochem path and/or sink even more creds into med packs. As if biochem needs any more help or additional intensives. This is a nerf that is completely nullified by taking a specific profession.

(I've got a Biochemist alt BH with rakata adrenals, stims, and medpacks. Don't want to have to have two.)

---

The double dipping of force mending I can agree with in PVE. I probably shouldn't be able to pump out that amount of healing in the time it takes. I got a fealing I'm ****ed in PVP without it.

IMO this has nothing to do with PVE and everything to do with PVP.

 

And to that I can only say: For the love of God find your INTERRUPT key.

 

4 seconds of no healing = dead healer.

And to that I say use more than one healing spell. It doesn't lock out a school of magic.

Face it, compared to other healers, sorcs had a near infinite pool of force. Operative healer can be infinite if there are 0 bursts happening in the raid. And that's like... one raid boss out of all of kp and ev.

Saying that you didn't need your resource nerfed to be brought in line with other healers is a joke.

In ops when we first did the hard mode the dps commented on how easy it was.

I commented that it wasnt easy for me as a healer but I was happy that we had finished the hardmode.

I cant see how my combat medic will be viable in end game post 1.2.

And to that I say use more than one healing spell. It doesn't lock out a school of magic.

 

Face it, compared to other healers, sorcs had a near infinite pool of force. Operative healer can be infinite if there are 0 bursts happening in the raid. And that's like... one raid boss out of all of kp and ev.

 

Saying that you didn't need your resource nerfed to be brought in line with other healers is a joke.

Nessirin, I'm sorry I misread the tooltip and assumed it worked like WoW interrupts. My bad.

Nevertheless, I personally have 3 interrupts that can stop a heal, and I'm assuming everyone else has some version of the same thing. It can't be that hard to lock down a healer in PVP if you're not too busy mashing other buttons.

Also, the unlimited force pool concept is a fallacy. It only seems unlimited when fights are going well. If I have to scrap my rotation because people are taking too much damage (heavy hits on the tank, raid standing in the fire), I can and do run out of Force very quickly.

Nessirin, I'm sorry I misread the tooltip and assumed it worked like WoW interrupts. My bad.

 

Nevertheless, I personally have 3 interrupts that can stop a heal, and I'm assuming everyone else has some version of the same thing. It can't be that hard to lock down a healer in PVP if you're not too busy mashing other buttons.

 

Also, the unlimited force pool concept is a fallacy. It only seems unlimited when fights are going well. If I have to scrap my rotation because people are taking too much damage (heavy hits on the tank, raid standing in the fire), I can and do run out of Force very quickly.

It's not just the interrupts that make things difficult for us in PvP. With the possible changes coming in the next patch, just standing still long enough to get heals off on ourselves with the revised cast time is going to be pretty rough since a stationary healer usually equals a dead healer. Is our new role in WZ's intended to be nothing more than a bubble machine?

I'm on the same page with you about unlimited force being a fallacy too. I've ran into plenty of situations where the tank takes heavy damage for a long enough period of time to drain me to almost nothing left. If not for a short window and my ability to quickly regen a little force, we would have had no chance. Making me waste half of that regained force to heal myself along with the gcds to do it could be a complete deal breaker.

If you have a resource system that the player has no need to ration or manage, your game is broken. It is irrelevant of ops or PvP. If you have a situation like I described, your game is broken. You need to nerf. There's no amount of "buff the other guy" or "make the raid boss harder" that going to fix that.

The devs have to be EXTREMELY careful about power inflation this early in the game's life. If they let themselves fall into the trap of buffing mobs and players, they are going to start a rampant stat inflation. That's going to create itemization problems down the line.

I got nerfed (Sage) and buffed (Marauder) across my two mains. So it's a wash for me. Getting nerfed is no fun, but it's sometimes necessary to have a healthy game.

At least now other healers will also be invited to ops, not only you sages...

As a raid leader I can tell you this is just not true. ALL healers got nerfed. So that still makes Sages some of the best out there. I will take a sage for there utility value over that of a Merc or Opp anyday.

If you have a resource system that the player has no need to ration or manage, your game is broken. It is irrelevant of ops or PvP. If you have a situation like I described, your game is broken. You need to nerf. There's no amount of "buff the other guy" or "make the raid boss harder" that going to fix that.

 

The devs have to be EXTREMELY careful about power inflation this early in the game's life. If they let themselves fall into the trap of buffing mobs and players, they are going to start a rampant stat inflation. That's going to create itemization problems down the line.

 

I got nerfed (Sage) and buffed (Marauder) across my two mains. So it's a wash for me. Getting nerfed is no fun, but it's sometimes necessary to have a healthy game.

This. I once played an obscure MMO where stat inflation happened early. In the end, in any "raid", you had to spam short term dodge and invincibility moves, as bosses would themselves spam moves that could do 10 times your max hp in damage, every second. Miss your dodge/invincibility, you died, period. Why? They had no choice: healing was such a trivial task, the only thing they could do is 1 shot you., as no other amount of damage would ever kill anyone.

SWTOR was already pretty close to that. The only even remotely challenging fights were the ones in nightmare that had 1 shot mechanics (ie: lightning balls in Soa, if you didn't approach them just right, you got 1 shotted). Nothing else was relevent unless you did it with scoudrel/operative healers, as sages, and to a lesser extent commandos, can heal through almost any amount of damage. In PvP, if you don't kill healers first, you can have 6 people wailing on a tank and he'll never die. We were already there. This had to be done.

Thats also why you would see so many "omg nightmare is too easy!" threads right next to "omg boss XYZ is impossible!". There was no way to balance the game toward groups like 3+ commando dps and 2 sage healers in one party.

If you have a resource system that the player has no need to ration or manage, your game is broken. It is irrelevant of ops or PvP. If you have a situation like I described, your game is broken. You need to nerf. There's no amount of "buff the other guy" or "make the raid boss harder" that going to fix that.

 

The devs have to be EXTREMELY careful about power inflation this early in the game's life. If they let themselves fall into the trap of buffing mobs and players, they are going to start a rampant stat inflation. That's going to create itemization problems down the line.

 

I got nerfed (Sage) and buffed (Marauder) across my two mains. So it's a wash for me. Getting nerfed is no fun, but it's sometimes necessary to have a healthy game.

They did have to "manage" their resources (by using Noble Sacrifice) but it was very easy and happened a lot. I don't have problems with them adjusting it to balance a little more between classes. Now there is certainly be more "rationing" of heals but little to no management since the benefits of Noble Sacrifice are hardly anything.

I have two classes that weren't changed much (gunnery commando, shadow DPS/tank) and I would have much more accepting of Nerfs to either of those (was actually expecting a dps nerf to my gunnery commando).