WOW, Season 4. Arena or GTFO

[Sunder]

Where did I argue for improving healers? Your straw-man does not compute.

[Agraza]

You argued that the balance was in error, which means you think it should be changed. There is only one direction in which it can be changed, dps is weakened or healing is strengthened which is an equivalent move. There is no straw-man. Using words you don't understand is not the foundation of a discussion.

[Sunder]

Originally Posted by Zerai

The problem is. What do you do. As it stands now, 1v1 with a DPS class and a healer. The Healer wins because they don't do much damage, but since they heal damage done to them, and most dps don't, the healer wins the war of attrition.

Wars of attrition are boring.

So as said. The DPS always wins, or the Healer always wins. DPS winning can be slow or long. Healer winning is pretty much always slow. Unless they give the healer dps. In which case the healer winning is completely overpowered because the DPS would have 0 chance.

So, you retort with exaggerations that healers should just explode. But really what should happen in your mind? Healer heals forever until what? They run out of mana and die? That's acceptable? Bring back your idea of healers having energy. Then what. Healers would always win because they could never die unless they get gangbanged?

The whole situation is kinda crappy.

The problem you don't see because of your own myopic view of PvP is that if you nerf healers ability to heal themselves, you also nerf their ability to heal others. Once you nerf their ability to heal others, why bring them at all? What are they providing? They can't heal well enough to keep themselves or anyone else alive against DPS classes and they provide very minimal DPS themselves. So they shouldn't even be brought in the first place. This is the end-game of what you are advocating.

[Sunder]

Originally Posted by Agraza

You argued that the balance was in error, which means you think it should be changed. There is only one direction in which it can be changed, dps is weakened or healing is strengthened which is an equivalent move. There is no straw-man. Using words you don't understand is not the foundation of a discussion.

I argued YOUR balance was in error. Show where I said the current balance is in error. Reading comprehension is not one of your strong points is it?

[Agraza]

My balance? I'm designing WoW now. I need to get in touch with payroll about that. I don't work for free.

I believe the man you want is Kalgan.

[Sunder]

Originally Posted by Agraza

And yes healers should die to dps classes unless they're counter-attacking. 1 person solely self-heal tanking vs. 1 person solely beating the shit out of the other. Hmmmm....I wonder?

Do you have the memory of a fucking gold fish? Do you not remember typing this? How fucking dumb are you?

[Agraza]

It is as it is. I simply concur with the way the balance is now, but disagree with the way it's done. That doesn't make it mine. Healing is single-minded and mechanically simple. If you want an improvement you'll get it in maneuverability under the current design. You won't get MORE healing, you'll get different and more available, less powerful healing. Like Holy Shock is more available, but overall less powerful than simply spamming FoL. The designers suck thus the fighting sucks, but whatever the design with two competent players 1 dps should beat 1 healer. If the intended result is reversed then the fight lasts until infinity.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Honestly? I don't think that you should be able to heal at all in the first place. I think healing should be removed entirely from the game. The focus of the 'healer' should be that entirely of support. Support in the form of preventing the other guy from doing damage in some shape or form. The closest we should come to a 'heal' should be power word shield.

The paladin for example would have HoJ be on a 20 second cooldown, holy shock would be a spell interrupt like counter-spell. Consecrate would reduce any non-holy damage dealt in it's AoE by 50%. Holy Light would be replaced with Holy Ward which would absorb 50% of the damage dealt to the target up to a maximum of say 10k damage. Flash of light would be replaced with flash ward, an instant-cast (6 second recast) ward that absorbs 75% of damage dealt on the next attack against the target. Blessing of Sacrfice/Freedom/Protection would be un-nerfed.

Then you also give the paladin appropriate damaging skills. Excorcism should work on all players, just deal 2x damage to undead/demons. Holy Shock/Consecrate damage coefficients increased. Judgement portion of SoR increased significantly. Hammer of Wrath work on any foes below 40% health instead.

But that's just me. The whole 'healing wounds' thing never made much sense in an in-combat sense. You'd think as a holy man who seeks to aid my allies I"d focus more on preventing them from getting hurt in the first place.

I seem more like a sadistic bastard in that I let my friends get beaten to a bloody pulp and then heal them up just to let them get the shit kicked out of them again. (See below)

But it's too late for WoW to do something about this so fuck melee and fuck Mortal Strike.

[Agraza]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

The paladin for example would have HoJ be on a 20 second cooldown, holy shock would be a spell interrupt like counter-spell. Consecrate would reduce any non-holy damage dealt in it's AoE by 50%. Holy Light would be replaced with Holy Ward which would absorb 50% of the damage dealt to the target up to a maximum of say 10k damage. Flash of light would be replaced with flash ward, an instant-cast (6 second recast) ward that absorbs 75% of damage dealt on the next attack against the target.

That would be cool, and you're right that it's too late.

Everyone still playing has my sympathy.

[Sunder]

whatever the design with two competent players 1 dps should beat 1 healer.

At which point healers become useless in 2v2. That design is utter bullshit.

[Araxen]

fuck PVP balance. I just want PVE to work, because when they start borking around with PVP balance they end up gimping or overpowering the class in PVE in some unforseen(by the devs) way.

[Lejina Bloodbath]

As a frost mage the whole dps cant kill healer sounds bogus to me. Paladins and shamen dont last 10 sec in 1v1. Priests are a huge pain in the ass, and druids means I best just go afk and make a sandwich.

Anyway, even if healers would have a garanteed loss 1v1 against a dps, they could still perform great in 2v2. There's that whole sinergy/support role thing that can be worked on you know.

[Zerai]

Originally Posted by Sunder

The problem you don't see because of your own myopic view of PvP is that if you nerf healers ability to heal themselves, you also nerf their ability to heal others. Once you nerf their ability to heal others, why bring them at all? What are they providing? They can't heal well enough to keep themselves or anyone else alive against DPS classes and they provide very minimal DPS themselves. So they shouldn't even be brought in the first place. This is the end-game of what you are advocating.

I didn't say that. You're assuming. I'm fully aware of the implications of reducing healing. But I'm also aware of increasing it too. The problem is the system is inherently flawed.

The system is partially designed around having abilities like MS. Which is why a lot of healing is pretty ridiculous.

I'd prefer if MS and MS like abilities (wound poison, aimed shot, whatever) was removed..and all healing is reduced by 50% from what it is now. Then maybe as a warrior I won't be so pigeon-holed and they could increase our DPS a bit to be more inline with a real dps class (such as a rogue, shaman, mage, warlock) or we could actually use the fury tree competitively in arenas.

[Araxen]

I play a frost mage now and well equipped Druids or Priests are pretty hard to kill if all they do is keep healing themselves. It's pretty insane how much I can unload on them and they stay alive. They die eventually but it takes forever which is how it should be if they are specc'd holy, etc..They gimp their dps in order to heal.

I have to admit though I'm in blues/purples now so that has a large part to do with it too.

[spronk]

aren't death knights supposed to be the anti-healer class, with abilities that reduce healing to 0% and stuff?

a large problem always in an MMO is how a mediocore group of players do compared to how very good players do. Cyclone is fine in the hands of a mediocore set of players, the druid will forget to do it a lot, will usually be out of range, will rarely root, and so on. But a good druid will absolutely rape with the same set of abilities. Likewise, a mediocore paladin will do great with most other classes up to 1800, its only after that that even the best paladins have a hard time because their abilities are meh compared to other healers. No idea what the solution is, but I hate when certain abilities/etc get buffed or nerfed based on extreme conditions.

It would be nice if certain abilities are only available with certain gear/brackets/etc - so for example cyclone is usable as long as you are in s3 or lower gear, but if you are wearing any s4 its no longer usable (while in arenas only of course). Sounds dumb and probably unworkable but some sort of "handicap" system where bad players get buffs and good players get slight "nerfs"...