This is a feature I've gotten used to in other games, and a feature that in its absence still makes healing feel awkward.

For those unfamiliar with what mouseover entails, imagine that you instead of clicking a target to cast a certain spell on; simply hover your mouse over it.

For healing, this means that you can have your tank or perhaps even the opponent/boss targeted, and still be able to heal yourself and your teammates by holding the mouse over them or their ops-frame/character portrait while casting a heal.

This, more than any other feature, I am certain, would make sure that you'd see a whole lot more healers in your groupfinder queues and in your warzones.

Discuss.

Haven't heard a word about it here, and I am glad for it. If people are deterred from healing because there's no mouseover, perhaps they shouldn't heal at all, for all effort they're willing to put into it.

That was harsh it just makes the healing more smooth then what it is at the moment manually target people in the frames click on them to target > Then you can heal them it's a freakin stoneage system.

This would make my life as a healer so much easier.

Admittedly I haven't healed anything beyond normal Athiss and some PvP but it's such a pain to try and organise movement AND target the right player AND cast the right heal. I'm not a bad healer by any means and I can still heal without it but playing other games really made me want this feature. Healing in PvP with mouseovers is so much easier too, with much less delay on getting the casting off.

Also before anyone says it yes you can keybind party target keys and whatnot, but I've only got 2 side buttons on my mouse that I use for shift/alt modifiers so I can use the huge amount of skills swtor gives me, so i'd prefer not to HAVE to. At the moment though I'm dealing by switching my TAB key for targeting the next player. This works pretty well but sometimes it can be really awkward.

Ten/Kirine:D

It wont get implemented unless BW added macro support ingame.

Actually, entirely the opposite.

At the guild summit, they specifically said they consider macros and "mouse over healing" completely separate. You don't need macros to do mouse over healing, you just need to add it to the UI.

Go hear if for yourself....

Youtube ...

(The link is to the direct timecode for the statement made.)

As for the original question... I think we can safely say BW's response would be "Yes, that's definitely a feature we want to add - but we don't have an estimate as to when it will be added". ie. the same as ever other feature request.

This line intentionally left blank

That was harsh it just makes the healing more smooth then what it is at the moment manually target people in the frames click on them to target > Then you can heal them it's a freakin stoneage system.

Yes, I intended to be harsh. If people can't be bothered to click someone they want to heal, perhaps DDs shouldn't be required to target the mob they want to attack any more?

What is the POINT in playing a game if you sit in front of your monitor doing next to nothing?

Yes, I intended to be harsh. If people can't be bothered to click someone they want to heal, perhaps DDs shouldn't be required to target the mob they want to attack any more?

What is the POINT in playing a game if you sit in front of your monitor doing next to nothing?

You realize, of course, that mouseover healing would be little else than a quality of life addition, and not actually make things easier, don't you? o_ó

This, more than any other feature, I am certain, would make sure that you'd see a whole lot more healers in your groupfinder queues and in your warzones.

 

Doubtful. Loads of healers don't join random pugs for WZ simply because :

a: They are not being guarded and have random persons screaming around heal heal while the unguarded healer is being zerged by the opponent team. Not to mention some are totally lost and run around all over the place not following orders.

b : Some healers dont join pugs because some are terribad, (a) was one example. The other example is some are terribad because they are slow clickers. I don't want to start the whole keybinding discussion all over again but using keybindings and macro's makes gaming less frustrating.

I'm a healer myself and am more frustrated by the slow reactionskills of other people or the total lack of "ow we have a healer, let's protect it" then not having "mouse-over healing". Healing in this game is fine as it is with some keybinding.

Haven't heard a word about it here, and I am glad for it. If people are deterred from healing because there's no mouseover, perhaps they shouldn't heal at all, for all effort they're willing to put into it.

Only bad players are against convenience features. Fact.

Only bad players are against convenience features. Fact.

Only bad players want things to make there life easier.....

Sorry but if its to hard to click player in window and start healing, well, il leave it at that....SWTOR is one of the easiest MMO's ive played for healing by a long shot, small OPS and FP groups are a walk in the park, its not even difficult in the slightest, range has nothing to do with it either, with mouse over healing if the target is not in range you cant heal...

Some really stupid arguments in here for the simple fact people are out right lazy.

Only bad players want things to make there life easier.....

 

Sorry but if its to hard to click player in window and start healing, well, il leave it at that....SWTOR is one of the easiest MMO's ive played for healing by a long shot, small OPS and FP groups are a walk in the park, its not even difficult in the slightest, range has nothing to do with it either, with mouse over healing if the target is not in range you cant heal...

 

Some really stupid arguments in here for the simple fact people are out right lazy.

It's not that we say it's impossible or we can't do it without it.

It would just make our game expirience better.

We do not need it, but we would like to see it

I don't see why everyone is so against it tbh. Surely you've had those moments when you missed the mark by like half a second to save someone from death just because you had to move the mouse to click it on the operations bar?

Ten/Kirine

It's not that we say it's impossible or we can't do it without it.

It would just make our game expirience better.

We do not need it, but we would like to see it

Pretty much this.

Mouse-over healing does not make the game easier, it does not lower the difficulty curve. You still need to move your mouse and select the correct people to heal; if anything, mouseover healing rewards skilled players with fast reflexes, allowing them to play even better.

Were as I silly as the people who claims MOH is for lazy people, I could make a case for people who are against MOH to be stupid or bad players, but that'd be ridiculous, wouldn't it?

Healing and tanking are essential roles which are in high demand and low supply; why are people against incentives which would increase the numbers of these two roles, without simplifying or damaging the game in any way, shape or form?

To be honest, I really haven't felt a need for it in this game like some of the others since they made dps easy-mode. After all, unlike other games, the dps normally just has to stand there and shoot with no real skill or common sense needed. I mean, how often do you hear anyone on this game yell, "get out pf the fire!" It is surprising how much easier healing gets when dsp no longer require even a shred of a brain to be self sufficient. It was almost always dumb dpsers and tons of environmental damage that made addons like heal bot almost a requirement.

However, one thing I do miss from having some of the healing add ons from other games is the ability to watch more of the action when things do get really active. It is the same reason I do not like playing melee characters cause if I am that close in the combat, I miss seeing the whole thing unfold as nicely from a distance. But I think that is just player preference more than anything else. Lots of people love melee and feel more part of the combat when right on top of the enemies.

However, one thing I do miss from having some of the healing add ons from other games is the ability to watch more of the action when things do get really active. It is the same reason I do not like playing melee characters cause if I am that close in the combat, I miss seeing the whole thing unfold as nicely from a distance. But I think that is just player preference more than anything else. Lots of people love melee and feel more part of the combat when right on top of the enemies.

I feel the same way. What I did was going into settings, and putting the amount of zoom on your camera allowed to absolute maximum, which made me be able to see much more of the field, usually from a birds point of view.

Try it out!

I feel the same way. What I did was going into settings, and putting the amount of zoom on your camera allowed to absolute maximum, which made me be able to see much more of the field, usually from a birds point of view.

 

Try it out!

Awesome suggestion actually. I've unfortunately never looked through all the options. To the op though moh sounds pretty cool. Only healed on another mmo and there was no moh so this is the first I've heard of it.

Healing in general in this game is pretty boring. I heal on my sorc and it gets real boring spamming the same two heals and a bubble all the time.

Not having macro support seems like a huge step backwards. I can understand Bioware's fear of people botting, but Blizzard does a pretty good job at detecting botters and banning them.

It just seems lazy on Biowares part. They spent $200 million on this game yet they were unable to add macro support and figure out a way to detect people who bot.

I think that there's probably an issue with difficulty levels that causes some of these disagreements.

ToR really isn't in any way challenging as a healer. There's a relative lack of differentiated abilities, few valid combinations of abilities - to the extent that the healing classes verge on having rotations, there's relatively little variation in mob damage (spikes), few complex encounter mechanics etc etc. All this together means that healing in ToR just isn't very complex and really doesn't require a great deal of thought.... and it has worsened rather than improved over the 3 main patches so far.

For those players who really seek challenge and want their skill to be a real factor, targeting is one of the few areas where their skill and speed can perhaps contribute to make a difference over other players. For such players, the thought of making targeting a lot easier, really presents them with yet more simplification of their game-play, which is likely to be unwelcome.

Other players don't really seek to challenge themselves on a skills basis, but instead are more result oriented; that is they want to heal their friends well enough to beat the opposition, whether that be mobs or other players. These outcome oriented healers will tend to see further ease of targeting as very attractive.

Frankly, a lot of the healers who have left over the 1.2/1.3 patch cycles are the healers who are looking for challenge and for their skill to be a deciding factor. So the majority of remaining healers are likely to be much more outcome oriented. The ToR design team has made a point of homogenising and simplifying the healing in the game, reducing variability, which means that their remaining customer base is even more in favour of mouse-over targeting.

If they introduced mouse-over targeting now, they may alienate a small portion of the remaining healer player-base. But if they don't implement it, then they're more likely to see fewer healers coming through the ranks and staying in the game. Not implementing isn't goign to attract those skill oriented healers back to the game.

Most content balance is predicated on a 1 healer in every 4 players ratio.... which means that they need a lot of active healers in game to support heavier duty content requiring more than 4 players. They can't afford to take design decisions that may alienate the remaining healing pool... and doing nothing won't do anything to attract the unsubbed healers back again.

I'm not sure whether ToR can really afford to ignore the mouse-over healing any longer. We already see quite a lot of players coming through the AC forums saying they used to be DPS but their guild has told them to respec to heals and asking for advice. They're not catering in any way to a market of players that demands complexity and challenge in their healing, so they might as well bite the bullet and cater to the outcome oriented player base.

X

Only bad players are against convenience features. Fact.

why not put mouse over dps? tanks can have taunt, force jump, and stims on mouse over too? good players adjust and bad players whine, reroll, or unsub. healing is fine and this game is easy enough w/o training wheels, macros, DBM, vuhdo, etc.

why not put mouse over dps? tanks can have taunt, force jump, and stims on mouse over too? good players adjust and bad players whine, reroll, or unsub. healing is fine and this game is easy enough w/o training wheels, macros, DBM, vuhdo, etc.

Only bad players are against features that allow for an increased skill gap.

I think that there's probably an issue with difficulty levels that causes some of these disagreements.

 

ToR really isn't in any way challenging as a healer. There's a relative lack of differentiated abilities, few valid combinations of abilities - to the extent that the healing classes verge on having rotations, there's relatively little variation in mob damage (spikes), few complex encounter mechanics etc etc. All this together means that healing in ToR just isn't very complex and really doesn't require a great deal of thought.... and it has worsened rather than improved over the 3 main patches so far.

 

For those players who really seek challenge and want their skill to be a real factor, targeting is one of the few areas where their skill and speed can perhaps contribute to make a difference over other players. For such players, the thought of making targeting a lot easier, really presents them with yet more simplification of their game-play, which is likely to be unwelcome.

 

Other players don't really seek to challenge themselves on a skills basis, but instead are more result oriented; that is they want to heal their friends well enough to beat the opposition, whether that be mobs or other players. These outcome oriented healers will tend to see further ease of targeting as very attractive.

 

Frankly, a lot of the healers who have left over the 1.2/1.3 patch cycles are the healers who are looking for challenge and for their skill to be a deciding factor. So the majority of remaining healers are likely to be much more outcome oriented. The ToR design team has made a point of homogenising and simplifying the healing in the game, reducing variability, which means that their remaining customer base is even more in favour of mouse-over targeting.

 

If they introduced mouse-over targeting now, they may alienate a small portion of the remaining healer player-base. But if they don't implement it, then they're more likely to see fewer healers coming through the ranks and staying in the game. Not implementing isn't goign to attract those skill oriented healers back to the game.

 

Most content balance is predicated on a 1 healer in every 4 players ratio.... which means that they need a lot of active healers in game to support heavier duty content requiring more than 4 players. They can't afford to take design decisions that may alienate the remaining healing pool... and doing nothing won't do anything to attract the unsubbed healers back again.

 

I'm not sure whether ToR can really afford to ignore the mouse-over healing any longer. We already see quite a lot of players coming through the AC forums saying they used to be DPS but their guild has told them to respec to heals and asking for advice. They're not catering in any way to a market of players that demands complexity and challenge in their healing, so they might as well bite the bullet and cater to the outcome oriented player base.

 

X

Well said.

I'd go with this idea of mouse over healing if they changed the way healing works in this game... The only other MMO I played, the DPS were the ones with robotic, set in stone rotations, and the healers had to actually think. In TOR, it feels like the opposite. The healers have a rotation that they use for the best healing output., and the DPS have to actually think a little about what they are doing... On the DPS side of that, I'm fine with it, because for me its about time that DPS have to use their brains. But I hate feeling like a robot as a healer...

I miss going into instances and nearly getting kicked out because, based on my class and gear, I shouldn't be able to heal it, and then managing it just fine without a single death because I was skilled at healing... In TOR it feels like no matter how good you are, if you don't have the gear, people WILL die, and you WILL be replaced.

TL;DR: Give us mouseover healing to make targeting easier, and then make the healing itself more complicated, with more things to do than "click salvation-> profit."

Yes, I intended to be harsh. If people can't be bothered to click someone they want to heal, perhaps DDs shouldn't be required to target the mob they want to attack any more?

What is the POINT in playing a game if you sit in front of your monitor doing next to nothing?

That's all fine and well and good, but I shouldn't need accuracy down to the pixel to click on a player taking damage. The 'click box' for players is outrageously too unforgiving.