The Healer Situation

[jpark]

There is no better barometer of a MMORPG than looking at the healer situation.

My Empath defender - level 34 - with most enhancements in some sort of healing - I played for about month after a hiatus of almost 2 years.

Not sure I have ever been in a game where I had such a barrage of grouping requests (played a cleric in EQ2; Priest in WoW).  I had thought that CoH would immune to this given that combats are pretty fucking easy - and the prevalence of hybrid classes (scrappers vs. tankers; empaths vs. empath taken as secondary in controllers).   Clearly, this does not seem to be the case any longer.  The sheer demand for healers - seems to suggests to me that the combats are harder and require folks dedicated in this area.

To me that's good.  I like playing pure classes.  However, a healer given his purity of purpose, like a tank - really looks to the endgame where his craft will be tested most thoroughly with the consumate rewards.

Of course there is no endgame - that I know of - in CoH.  So the longterm pay-off for dedicated classes - such as healing - is not really there.  For myself, as much as I respect and enjoy CoH - and endgame has to be present for me to strive for in playing a pure class like a healer.

I suspect other players inclined to play healers share my mindset - perhaps this explains their absence leading to the rampant group invites I received while playing (no lfg flag on btw).

[Typhon]

I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum.  I hate the "pure" classes as I feel that they are synonymous with the "LFX" lag that accompanies games that include, and therefore require, the pure classes.  It's just that simple.  Once you put in a pure class that is less amusing to play, there will be a shortage of that class, and the developers will respond with game mechanics that require that particular class (to encourage folks to play that class, as if being desired/required was a answer to the class being inherently non-fun).  The initial effort is decently-intentioned - to make those players that desire to play that type of class happy.  Unfortunately the end result is often that the game simply forces people to play a largely undesirable pure class as an escape from the waiting for hours to do "end game" activities that have been tuned to require the undesirable/underplayed pure class.

Could I be wrong?  Sure.   Do I think I'm wrong?  Not even alittle bit.  Pure classes are the bane of "casual" play, where casual play is defined as play that requires (on average) less then 10 to 15 minutes of prep time per play session, and "fun" is achievable regardless of what class mix is in the game.  After playing EQ, DAOC and finally WoW, my desire to play a game with pure classes has reached nil.

To bad that I can't imagine a game that caters to both yourself and myself without major advances being made to AI of minions.  Hopefully the new batch of MMO game designers are more clever and creative then I am.

[geldonyetich]

Over the time I played City of Heroes, I eventually learned that the call for healers come from players conditioned for other games.  They don't understand the concept of super powered Tankers who are sufficient at healing to keep themselves alive, nor super powered glass cannons who can actually nuke all the foes before they become a threat (once that initial alpha strike is dealt with).  Such a thing is unheard of in other games.  But they do understand the idea of healers being able to allow them to compensate for playing badly.  If you're really good at City of Heroes, you can arrange to barely take any damage at all.  (Unless you're fighting stuff about 3+ levels higher than the rest of the party.)

[jpark]

Over the time I played City of Heroes, I eventually learned that the call for healers come from players conditioned for other games.  They don't understand the concept of super powered Tankers who are sufficient at healing to keep themselves alive, nor super powered glass cannons who can actually nuke all the foes before they become a threat (once that initial alpha strike is dealt with).  Such a thing is unheard of in other games.  But they do understand the idea of healers being able to allow them to compensate for playing badly.  If you're really good at City of Heroes, you can arrange to barely take any damage at all.  (Unless you're fighting stuff about 3+ levels higher than the rest of the party.)

Possible - but the level range was 30-45 for grouping requests.  I think at that point these guys would be pretty familiar with the game in its current state.

[pxib]

I was a big fan of defenders and found that referring to them as "healers" was, as geldon points out, a matter of player inexperience. It's a common mistakes in MMOGs to assume that just because somebody is higher level, they understand the workings of the game. The game isn't that hard. It doesn't require any epiphanies to go up a level, just a lot of time and patience. You can level without ever fighting if you feel like it.. you'll just have to find groups that don't notice or don't care how worthless you are as you leech experience.

I've seen it done.

People in CoH ask for "healers" because they don't understand that the game doesn't have any. Defenders are buffers and debuffers, not healers. A group of defenders with various powersets can turn eachother into demigods and run around pretending to be invulnerable blasters. It was my favorite thing to do when I played... put together a kinetics, miasma, and radiation defender team and just go kill giant groups nonstop forever.

Then I realized it actually was FOREVER and quit some time between level 40 and level 50.

[caladein]

To bad that I can't imagine a game that caters to both yourself and myself without major advances being made to AI of minions.  Hopefully the new batch of MMO game designers are more clever and creative then I am.

Guild Wars: Nightfall has quite good AI for your Henchmen (recruitable fill-ins) and Heroes (outfitable minions that you can directly control to some extent).

[jpark]

Defenders are buffers and debuffers, not healers.

Interesting points.  On this particular comment - as a group yes - but the Empath Defender is a healer.

[hal]

Empath defender is as pure a healer in as much as any MMORPG that I have played. And at least at lowbie levels defenders are making a comeback. The really good news is that tankers are as well. Thats gotta be the most boring job on earth. But it makes a group shine. Anyway this last issue seems really fun, unless your a controller, but thats hardly news.

[geldonyetich]

There is such a thing as a healer in City of Heroes.  It's just not particularly fair to lump all Defenders (or Controllers who have Defender primarys as their secondaries) in as healers.  Only empath, radiation emission, and dark miasma is able to heal.  Thus we've a bit of a kneejerk reaction here from Defenders who are sick of being called healers.

The funny thing is, the non-healing Defenders can counteract as much damage as Empath Defenders, or even more.  One early targetted anchor AOE power out of the Dark Miasma Defender's bag, for example, is capable of blunting the enemy's capacity to do damage by 33% and also their accuracy by an additional 33%.  Suddenly 100 points of damage is cut down to (100 * 0.66 * 0.66) about 43.5.  That's just from one power, he has more debuffs in his bag of tricks yet, and I think that accuracy debuff is the unenhanced value.

Now, throw onto that you've got Tanks and Scrappers whose power pools grant them even more damage reduction, and that everything in City of Heroes stacks with the exception of the same buff from the same hero on the same target.  (In other words, two force field defender bubbles will stack, but one force field defender bubble cast twice isn't supposed to - glitches aside.)  There's caps in place, but I think in the end we're looking at the necessary tools for a combination of heroes to bring the enemy's damage inflicted down to a very meagre portion of it's original amount... like 5-10%.  At that point, healing becomes completely unneccessary for most encounters. 

Thus, in the end, the demand for healers in City of Heroes are for those who are in other MMORPG's mindsets.  They think, "Well, we're getting badly hurt, lets get people who land heals on us."  If only they knew: if they're getting badly hurt it's more likely because they lack the proper members to tank, buff, and debuff.  That's not getting into the offensive aspect - Controllers stacking holds on bossses/archvillains or Blasters blowing away all the minions in their opening salvo.

[Trippy]

There is such a thing as a healer in City of Heroes.  It's just not particularly fair to lump all Defenders (or Controllers who have Defender primarys as their secondaries) in as healers.  Only empath, radiation emission, and dark miasma is able to heal.  Thus we've a bit of a kneejerk reaction here from Defenders who are sick of being called healers.

You left off Kinetics and Storm.

[Llava]

Then I realized it actually was FOREVER and quit some time between level 40 and level 50.

Heh.

I'm as tired of the grind comments as any, but that was funny.

[geldonyetich]

Sure, if you call those heals.   

Yeah, you're right.  Still, even of the Defenders that can heal (not trick arrow, force field, sonic resonance and haven't dabbled in the medical power pool), some are definitely better at it than others.  Dark Miasma's heal is hardcore, but their debuffs: far more effective as keeping a team alive.

[Trippy]

Sure, if you call those heals.   

I "primary heal" using Transfusion all the time (as a Controller no less) so yes I do call that a heal.

[geldonyetich]

You'd be less defensive if you read the whole message :P

[Trippy]

You'd be less defensive if you read the whole message :P

I did read the whole thing. Doesn't make any difference.

[geldonyetich]

I was being sarcastic and agreed you were right.  Ah, but I don't blame you, sarcasm carries poorly in text form, even with emoticon support.

[Glazius]

There is a large amount of proactive mitigation available in CoH.

This does not change the occasional need for reactive mitigation.

Sometimes you need both of them. I'm just remembering this one time when we were engaging some Family and got ambush pincered from both sides. It was great. Grav controllers and Consiglieres playing Katamari Propelcy and everybody just firing off everything possible. Without some proactive we would have been shredded by focus fire, but we needed the reactive to weather the additional beatings until we got everything taken down.

--GF

[Trippy]

People in CoH ask for "healers" because they don't understand that the game doesn't have any. Defenders are buffers and debuffers, not healers. A group of defenders with various powersets can turn eachother into demigods and run around pretending to be invulnerable blasters. It was my favorite thing to do when I played... put together a kinetics, miasma, and radiation defender team and just go kill giant groups nonstop forever.

Then I realized it actually was FOREVER and quit some time between level 40 and level 50.

Unless you are being PL'd by a Fire/Kinetics controller in which case it's really fast (in CoH terms). I went from 44.75 to 50 in 15 calendar days playing roughly 2 hours a night mostly being PL'd (they needed me to SK/bridge) by various Fire/Kinetics controllers plus one Fire tank (but he had ungrouped buffers).

I sense another nerf coming on.

[Hutch]

Unless you are being PL'd by a Fire/Kinetics controller in which case it's really fast (in CoH terms). I went from 44.75 to 50 in 15 calendar days playing roughly 2 hours a night mostly being PL'd (they needed me to SK/bridge) by various Fire/Kinetics controllers plus one Fire tank (but he had ungrouped buffers).

I sense another nerf coming on.

If they are, in fact, planning to nerf the bridging/PL abuse, there are a number of things to consider:
- Putting some kind of level limitation on sidekicking will defeat the purpose of having sidekicking in the first place, i.e. letting you play with your friends even though you're different levels.
- Nerfing fire/* controllers is a pandora's box. Good luck beating them down without taking the rest of controllerdom with them.
- Nerfing */kin is a pandora's box with a side order of canned worms. Now you're beating down defenders and corruptors too.
- Even if you do nerf fire or kin or whatever flavor is being used nowadays, the people who are prone to PL are just going to switch to the next AT in line.

Ultimately, the problem isn't the powersets, or the sidekicking. These are just game mechanics that are being abused. The problem is the grind itself. Which is one of the themes here at f13, so I shall expound upon it no further.

[Llava]

They already nerfed the fire imps.  Dropped their level down.

[Strazos]

I heard it is possible to accept a mission/TF at max difficulty, get your whole team over to the door, have everyone but 1 player log out, have one player enter said door, have everyone else log back in, and have that particular instance spawn the amount of enemies balanced for 1 player.

/breathe_on

Is this still true (if it ever was)?

[geldonyetich]

Partly true.  If the mission has yet to be instanced (if nobody's entered the door) and everybody but one player logs out, upon instancing the mission (by entering it), it should have the mob count adjusted for one player.  However, once everybody logs in as you head deeper in, it should spawn a mob count appropriate to the party.  This is something I had noticed myself on past occasions. 

I suppose what you could do is have that one person run through the entire mission with invisibility on.  That would probably get all the spawns done ahead of time so it won't spawn more mobs.

It may not work as well on Task Forces because often those have fixed mob encounters in places.

[Strazos]

Oh, I was under the assumption that once a mission is instanced, everything is spawned. Did something change at some point to make spawns more Dynamic?

[geldonyetich]

Nope, it's just a clever illusion.  The mobs that the players' can see will have spawned, but the ones later on (say on above floors in a building) are spawned later.  How I know this is I noticed when the mobs suddenly spawned in greater number and higher level as the group picked up more members mid-mission.  My experiences lead me to believe that spawns happens in chunks rather than entire scenario at once.  (Unless that scenario is small.)

[Strazos]

So, if there is only 1 floor in an instance, does it all spawn?

[Trippy]

So, if there is only 1 floor in an instance, does it all spawn?

No, unless it's really really small.

[geldonyetich]

Because they spawn in chunks, well out of the players' sight, it's hard to say how many will have spawned just from sitting around the entrance.  If I had to guess, I'd say it happens at least 2 rooms away and there's triggers set up at intersecting corridors.  Different tile sets may require different spawn patterns. 

All this is conjecture though - all I know is that:

a) I've yet to encounter a situation where I watch groups spawn in an interior mission.
b) The later spawns in some missions I've done have adjusted to changes in group composition mid-mission.  (Ex: Frostfire.)

I bet outdoors zone missions spawn em all at once, because the developers want you to be able to see them from afar.

[Llava]

All that said, it doesn't really stop people from trying it.  Which is pretty retarded.

[Strazos]

I just heard from someone one day that you could level very quickly like that. Perhaps it only works on normal missions?

[Trippy]

I bet outdoors zone missions spawn em all at once, because the developers want you to be able to see them from afar.

No they don't.

[geldonyetich]

Well then, I lost that bet.

[Llava]

I just heard from someone one day that you could level very quickly like that. Perhaps it only works on normal missions?

That's the same kind of person who said you could level quickly by sitting at a portal in a CoT mission and letting it endlessly spawn behemoths to kill.

Sure, you could do it, but it's fucking boring and ruins the fun of the game, plus it's not THAT much more efficient.  The only time the game has seen the sort of leveling efficiency that trumped all other forms of experience gain was the first Winter event with the Winter Lord farming.  That was so fast you might as well not do anything else.  But farming mission experience rewards with lower spawns?  Not even worth the time it takes, you'd get more experience for just doing the mission as is even if it takes a bit longer.

[Strazos]

I think the point was that you'd be killing max-difficulty mobs easily, plus TF xp.

[Llava]

Again, though, you're killing 2 or 3 at a time.  That's way, way, way less efficient than taking down a whole group of +1 enemies.  The experience at the end of the mission doesn't change THAT much with the difficulty levels.  It's a good way to burn yourself out on the game, though.

[geldonyetich]

If you're resorting to cheap tricks to try to get a few extra xp, burnout has probably established itself.