to play a healer. I have played a couple mmo's and have never played a healer. Last night I spent an hour reading about how to play an IA healer and kept thinking, "man that seems really hard!". I have a hard enough time staying alive trying to just do dps, let alone trying to pay attention to my health, my teammates health, and the destruction of the other side. It seems almost impossible to keep track of. I commend those that heal and always make it a point to give a shout out like "thx for the heals!" because I really appreciate them. Maybe I just get tired of trying to heal at work and just want to come home and blow **** up. At any rate, thanks to all those that dedicate their toons to healing and keeping selfish guys like me alive.

I haven't had the real honour of trying out a healer when it comes to HM FPS or Ops yet, although I do have an alt that's leveling as a Scoundrel sawbones. It's definitely a different taste on the combat system, and I can certainly see how there can be some real stresses on the healers with flashpoints and raids, and I, too, commend those that chose this particular profession in the game.

And it takes a person(s) even more "special" to make those special persons who like healing... hate it.

 

(Just to be clear, I guarantee with 100% certainty I am not referring in any way, shape, or form to any SW:TOR players.)

Edited April 26, 2012 by Xaearth

And it takes a person(s) even more "special" to make those special persons who like healing... hate it.

 

(Just to be clear, I guarantee with 100% certainty I am not referring in any way, shape, or form to any SW:TOR players.)

 

^^I don't understand.

^^I don't understand.

 

The people to whom you addressed this thread do, I assure you.

Well it does, healers have to make alot of tactical descisions in PvP healing becuase you gotta think who is most valuable to keep alive at any given moment of the match, and they hardest one "Do i heal my self, or heal an important person dying" which only on rare occasions i have truefully regretted healign myself. hell if you can heal you self to the point the DPS are TIRED of tryign to out dmg your heals they will back off anf focus the tank and you in turn heal the tank, but thats just me...

 

Bottom line. Heal the person taking the MOST dmg until they die or peopel back off and trasnition that way

The people to whom you addressed this thread do, I assure you.

I do.

 

I really do

and it takes a person(s) even more "special" to make those special persons who like healing... Hate it.

 

(just to be clear, i guarantee with 100% certainty i am not referring in any way, shape, or form to any sw:tor players.)

 

roflmao

And it takes a person(s) even more "special" to make those special persons who like healing... hate it.

 

(Just to be clear, I guarantee with 100% certainty I am not referring in any way, shape, or form to any SW:TOR players.)

 

Our metrics show that everything is working as intended.

Zoltar,

 

It's sweet of you to come here and recognise the good work that we do. It is a tough job being a healer - not least because good healers have such a sense of responsibility for when things do go wrong.

 

What the others here are trying to high-light is that at the moment, BW have made some changes that make the job of healing a lot less fun to play and harder to do. Quite a few healers have stopped playing healers as a result, with many switching to DPS or even leaving the game.

 

You just came into the healing forum at a time when there's a bit of an atmosphere....

 

X

Zoltar,

 

It's sweet of you to come here and recognise the good work that we do. It is a tough job being a healer - not least because good healers have such a sense of responsibility for when things do go wrong.

 

What the others here are trying to high-light is that at the moment, BW have made some changes that make the job of healing a lot less fun to play and harder to do. Quite a few healers have stopped playing healers as a result, with many switching to DPS or even leaving the game.

 

You just came into the healing forum at a time when there's a bit of an atmosphere....

 

X

 

Well that makes a lot more sense to me and that's too bad. I've never been good at subtle innuendos (or maybe not so subtle ones in this case

Nonetheless, we appreciate your support! :-)

Well that makes a lot more sense to me and that's too bad. I've never been good at subtle innuendos (or maybe not so subtle ones in this case

 

Yeah, sorry. There is a lot of resentment on these boards, and among healers in general. BW has done a remarkable job of wasting huge amounts of potential.

 

In light of that, however, you should try and be extra supportive of the healers you do have. If you are running a PUG flashpoint, make sure to thank your healer, and back them up when everyone decides a wipe is their fault. And if it was their fault, be nice about it and see how new they are and if they are open to advice. If you can't give it, send 'em our way.

 

Personally, I'll try and give what advice I can, although I imagine it will get outdated eventually since I am one of the healers who has simply left the game entirely.

you typical healer selected a healing class, not because they want to be thanked (though most of us wouldn't mind being acknowledged every once in a while), but because we enjoy the challenge.

 

healing (and tanking) are much more dynamic than DPS, not only do you have to be aware of everything DPS does, you also have to continuously make decisions. It's not just mashing the buttons in the right order, in order to maximize dps. You have to pick and choose the correct abilities, manage your cooldowns to be ready for the mistakes made by the tank or dps (getting caught by an AOE, or unlucky hit, etc). Healing is challenging, and we enjoy living up to the challenge.

 

this is also why there's been a mass exodus of healers from SWTOR - the reasons why we enjoy healing has been taken away. our healing abilities have to be mashed in a set order just like DPS now. skill no longer matters. if the game allowed macros, you'd be able to macro a healer to 1 single button, repeated.

Edited April 26, 2012 by oredith

Couldn't say it better that oredith . For me, it's about pulling my group through. Perhaps it borders on OCD, but I can't stand healthbars that aren't full . Healing by intuition, making split second decisions based on the situation as it is at that point and actually managing it ... that's the fun. I tried tanking in WoW near the end of the Lich King expansion, but tanking is just not my cup of tea. I do have several DPS characters, though, the one I enjoy most is my Gunnery Trooper.

you typical healer selected a healing class, not because they want to be thanked (though most of us wouldn't mind being acknowledged every once in a while), but because we enjoy the challenge.

 

healing (and tanking) are much more dynamic than DPS, not only do you have to be aware of everything DPS does, you also have to continuously make decisions. It's not just mashing the buttons in the right order, in order to maximize dps. You have to pick and choose the correct abilities, manage your cooldowns to be ready for the mistakes made by the tank or dps (getting caught by an AOE, or unlucky hit, etc). Healing is challenging, and we enjoy living up to the challenge.

 

this is also why there's been a mass exodus of healers from SWTOR - the reasons why we enjoy healing has been taken away. our healing abilities have to be mashed in a set order just like DPS now. skill no longer matters. if the game allowed macros, you'd be able to macro a healer to 1 single button, repeated.

 

So very true. I was a tank during LK because it was the hardest role at the time. In Cata, they made it easy and boring, so I swapped to healer which people were fleeing because it was suddenly really hard. And it was really hard at first, until you geared up and it became super easy again because Blizzard has always had a problem with stat inflation.

 

I don't mind hard. I like hard.

 

SWTOR healing now has a lower success rate, but the actual doing of it is boringly easy.

So very true. I was a tank during LK because it was the hardest role at the time. In Cata, they made it easy and boring, so I swapped to healer which people were fleeing because it was suddenly really hard.

I did the same thing, warrior tank for H LK (though i had my disc priest for H LK too, the OP bubble mana return was a fun meta-game.

 

chakra had a lot of potential, but I kinda got fed up with cata due to personal conflict.. ex-gf being part of the raid and all, and left the game.. >_>

SWTOR healing now has a lower success rate, but the actual doing of it is boringly easy.

Bioware will have successfully "balanced" healing, when the role of the healer can be replicated with this:

 

http://www.scientificsonline.com/media/catalog/product/cache/2/image/348x/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/3/0/3053617_4.jpg

Our metrics show that everything is working as intended.

 

Correct, which was 90+% of people standing around on Fleet, popping on each other to farm DNA samples for either the quick cash or collector slag.

 

Or maybe the other metric, mission success rate reduction for PvE, which I guess was still not enough so they removed the Black Hole loot from EC chests in hardmode.

 

BW developers just hate their customers having fun and succeeding in the game.

Edited April 27, 2012 by ShadowAxx

Correct, which was 90+% of people standing around on Fleet, popping on each other to farm DNA samples for either the quick cash or collector slag.

 

Or maybe the other metric, mission success rate reduction for PvE, which I guess was still not enough so they removed the Black Hole loot from EC chests in hardmode.

 

BW developers just hate their customers having fun and succeeding in the game.

 

I logged in randomly the day that came out, and ran around a little with a friend trying out the story.

 

I then exploded on the Fleet a few times while AFK watching Game of Thrones.

 

I haven't logged in since except for 1 raid night.

 

It's funny, what you said. Tattoine was pretty dead, despite that being where the dailies were. Even day 1 of the event people already knew that exploding on the Fleet was the way to go.

It's funny, what you said. Tattoine was pretty dead, despite that being where the dailies were. Even day 1 of the event people already knew that exploding on the Fleet was the way to go.

MMO has been trending into the less "massive" model in the past years.

 

it was a management nightmare to coordinate 40 people for MC, BWL, AQ, Naxx, but it felt a lot more epic, and massive. Not only that, the sheer amount of people roaming around capitol cities was impressive.

 

I have fond memories of using my piccolo in IronForge auction house, and hitting like 100+ people.

 

I'm probably just sounding like an old nag.. "BACK IN MY DAYS.... "..

MMO has been trending into the less "massive" model in the past years.

 

it was a management nightmare to coordinate 40 people for MC, BWL, AQ, Naxx, but it felt a lot more epic, and massive. Not only that, the sheer amount of people roaming around capitol cities was impressive.

 

I have fond memories of using my piccolo in IronForge auction house, and hitting like 100+ people.

 

I'm probably just sounding like an old nag.. "BACK IN MY DAYS.... "..

 

There is something to be said for smaller groups. Tuning any content requires an acceptable variance in output, to account for differences in player skill. With 40 people, all of those small error bars start to add up, and you end up with enough wiggly room to completely carry a couple of people. In 10 man content, without over-gearing it, everyone needs to carry their own weight.

 

I remember 40 man raids. I started as a Paladin with the pleasure of casting 5-minute buffs on 40 people, and hitting the decursive button if I had time at the end of that cycle before it started over again.

 

I switched to rogue, since we only had 1. My gear was terrible, but it didn't matter. There were so many other people that the difference in my ungeared fresh 60 DPS and my appropriately geared DPS just didn't matter.

 

There is something un-fun about realizing that your contribution to the group is negligible. Smaller groups allow you to see what and how you contributed to success. That's a good thing.

 

I do think, though, that MMOs need to do more to make their worlds feel alive, and to encourage large group activity. While 10 man is a good size for a raid team to keep everyone relevant, having non-raid things that guilds need to do that require or encourage more people would make guilds feel more alive. With 8 man teams, like here, a guild has little incentive to rise above 10-12 accounts. That gives room for someone to cover if someone else is sick, and to have people rotate in and out while going on most runs. More than that starts having lots of people sit out too often until you hit 16 and can do two groups or a 16-man, however 16 even means high risk of failure if someone is sick or can't make it one night.

 

With a guild size of 10-12, the number of people on at any given time drops, as do the chances of 3 other people wanting to run the content you want. In a guild of 32-40, with 4-5 raid teams, the odds of having 10+ people on at any given time are suddenly pretty good, which makes it a lot easier to get a group for any random content.

 

Currently there is little incentive to form a guild with multiple teams, and most people I know are in guilds with just one team, or maybe a 16 man raiding guild at most.

 

Unlike most of my criticism, I don't really have a suggestion for this one. Perhaps Guild achievements with rewards and Guild levels help. Perhaps events like the old Opening of AQ event, only make it an internal guild event instead of a world event. A one-off won't work, but if you had a system of rewards in place for concentrated guild efforts toward a goal, it could encourage larger guilds.

I remember 40 man raids. I started as a Paladin with the pleasure of casting 5-minute buffs on 40 people, and hitting the decursive button if I had time at the end of that cycle before it started over again.

did your healing group get to take a break to regen mana?..

 

I switched to rogue, since we only had 1. My gear was terrible, but it didn't matter. There were so many other people that the difference in my ungeared fresh 60 DPS and my appropriately geared DPS just didn't matter.

 

There is something un-fun about realizing that your contribution to the group is negligible. Smaller groups allow you to see what and how you contributed to success. That's a good thing.

i have a screenshot somewhere, where in a MC raid, my friend and I (both combat dagger rogues, me with a deathstriker and a broken bottle) combined to do FIFTY SIX percept of the raid wide damage in a MC clear.. yes, it was a full 40 man..

 

I do think, though, that MMOs need to do more to make their worlds feel alive, and to encourage large group activity. While 10 man is a good size for a raid team to keep everyone relevant, having non-raid things that guilds need to do that require or encourage more people would make guilds feel more alive. With 8 man teams, like here, a guild has little incentive to rise above 10-12 accounts. That gives room for someone to cover if someone else is sick, and to have people rotate in and out while going on most runs. More than that starts having lots of people sit out too often until you hit 16 and can do two groups or a 16-man, however 16 even means high risk of failure if someone is sick or can't make it one night.

my super casual guild has, for some really strange reason, been expanding lately (we do not advertise), and I'm faced with the rather difficult task of trying to manage our 8 man roster. really wish BW would put the 8 man and 16 man on separate lockouts.

 

Unlike most of my criticism, I don't really have a suggestion for this one. Perhaps Guild achievements with rewards and Guild levels help. Perhaps events like the old Opening of AQ event, only make it an internal guild event instead of a world event. A one-off won't work, but if you had a system of rewards in place for concentrated guild efforts toward a goal, it could encourage larger guilds.

Like most problems, the method to achieve the answer can generally be easily had by posing the question to the community. you and I may not have the perfect solution, but I bet if a dev posted "we would like to solicit ideas to expand guild activity, and allow for greater participation and multiple teams for guilds that are raid oriented", i bet there'd be no shortage of suggestions.

 

something like a tiered raid? (2) 8 man raids that need to be completed, to unlock a 16 man bonus raid? so that 2 teams can work separately and then combine later?

 

I dunno. it's still one of my main criticisms of SWTOR which i had even in beta. there wasn't as much of a sense of community in this game, as there was in SWG. I really thought there'd be option to go to war with another guild, especially when they announced allies and adversaries with the guild creation. turns out, that was just a way to (very poorly) implement auto deployment - i mean, lets put all the biggest, and earliest signup guilds (thus most likely to be highly dedicated) onto very limited number of servers, and expend from there!

 

sounds like a great idea!.. hahah

my super casual guild has, for some really strange reason, been expanding lately (we do not advertise), and I'm faced with the rather difficult task of trying to manage our 8 man roster. really wish BW would put the 8 man and 16 man on separate lockouts.

 

Probably because other guilds are dying, and less casual players are leaving a game with little for them to do. The more casual or SW dedicated members of those guilds are left homeless. Your guild still runs...so people come. The same is happening with the servers as a whole. BW has yet to give a tool for transfers, but many servers are so dead it isn't worth waiting, so people flock to Harbinger and Jedi Covenant, even though it means losing their characters, names, and Legacy name/progress.

 

Like most problems, the method to achieve the answer can generally be easily had by posing the question to the community. you and I may not have the perfect solution, but I bet if a dev posted "we would like to solicit ideas to expand guild activity, and allow for greater participation and multiple teams for guilds that are raid oriented", i bet there'd be no shortage of suggestions.

 

something like a tiered raid? (2) 8 man raids that need to be completed, to unlock a 16 man bonus raid? so that 2 teams can work separately and then combine later?

 

I rather like this idea, especially if the 16-man is more of a bonus encounter, like Magtheridon, than a sudden need to integrate two teams and tackle a massive raid, like Sunwell.

 

People might complain "but we can't complete that bonus with our small family and friends guild! Why are you making content not everyone can experience?" The answer, of course, is that they choose to not experience it, and that it exists to encourage a certain type of gameplay, namely larger communities.

 

I dunno. it's still one of my main criticisms of SWTOR which i had even in beta. there wasn't as much of a sense of community in this game, as there was in SWG. I really thought there'd be option to go to war with another guild, especially when they announced allies and adversaries with the guild creation. turns out, that was just a way to (very poorly) implement auto deployment - i mean, lets put all the biggest, and earliest signup guilds (thus most likely to be highly dedicated) onto very limited number of servers, and expend from there!

 

Even though Guild vs Guild is not available on TERA's PvE servers (and we have made suggestions for implementation that would still respect the consensual PvP concept of a PvE server), by the end of the Open Beta there were 5 guilds on Freeholds with over 100 members, and alliances and rivalries were already forming. One 200+ member guild has a large troll membership and has earned the animosity of most of the other large guilds. The politics system encourages larger guilds, and everyone working together. The PvP controlled provinces will make for interesting politics as guilds try and steal away the best PvPers from around the server. I'd like to see other things added, and I like your tiered suggestion, but it seems to be very community-focused.

Update, I thought I would bite the bullet and try to be a healer. I had already rolled an IA so I figured at level 12 it was never too late to start a healing spec instead of the initial intent for the toon. DAMN it's hard. Like I stated at the very beginning, it feels impossible to keep my team alive, keep myself alive, AND dish out some form of DPS. Gotta keep practicing. Got into my first wz with this mindset and got DEMOLISHED!!!! couldn't last more then 3 seconds and felt like I was tripping over my keybinds in the 3 minutes that I could tolerate staying in the battle. Got to work on my technique but I am determined to do it. If you got any good tips or can point me towards a good tutorial, that would be great. In the meantime I will keep looking:)