How do you think healers will play out on the battle field?

[Right Mojo]

Well I know this game hasn't even came out yet, but it's always fun to speculate from what we know. Having moderate Mmo experience, the most common way of healing a large of number of people would be through AoE heals or party heals. In this game, with a friendly fire clause, healing would prob help the enemy. So, in a large fight, how would healers properly heal?

My first guess would be extreme organization and assigning of healers. If this is so, zergers will have no chance.. What do you think?

[Alandar]

Well I know this game hasn't even came out yet, but it's always fun to speculate from what we know. Having moderate Mmo experience, the most common way of healing a large of number of people would be through AoE heals or party heals. In this game, with a friendly fire clause, healing would prob help the enemy. So, in a large fight, how would healers properly heal?

My first guess would be extreme organization and assigning of healers. If this is so, zergers will have no chance? What do you think.

Well if you can keep your people organized you may get a chance to heal them en mass. If people are just running into the battle you will have no chance.

[Rahkim]

organization will be key, as it is in most other games, but to an even higher degree.... at least i hope~

[bongloads]

i'm thinking line of sight barriers protecting AOE heal circles, and spaztic rezzers sprinting from one dead corpse to another

[fusion04]

i think healing is going to be just as skill based as archery, you better sure as hell hit your target or else you're screwed

[Daimyo]

Well I know this game hasn't even came out yet, but it's always fun to speculate from what we know. Having moderate Mmo experience, the most common way of healing a large of number of people would be through AoE heals or party heals. In this game, with a friendly fire clause, healing would prob help the enemy. So, in a large fight, how would healers properly heal?

My first guess would be extreme organization and assigning of healers. If this is so, zergers will have no chance.. What do you think?

one organized way would be to leave a couple strong healers in the back flank with 2 melee/archer or melee/mage hybrids to defend them... anyone who feels tehy got low health, fall back behind the lines and get proper heals then go back into the fight... mages and archers mainly on the flanks to secure any fast flankers or get a better angle on the enemy (we dont know how lobbing arrows will work, or arched spells). If anything, there wont be the generic healer anymore... he will most likely be rounded in combat too or spell craft etc... Most people will probably have a self heal or stamina to health spell maybe... so they wont be a huge role

[Sup3rnova]

My geuss is healers would be positioned in various places behind the defence where they can fire there heals at allies and if a aoe heal is needed they can run to the healer whilst other defence stays in position.

[Tayend]

I hope having a healer in your party dosent mean your party will "auto-win" like in alot of games.

[Sup3rnova]

I hope having a healer in your party dosent mean your party will "auto-win" like in alot of games.

Tbh I hoped there was no such thing as healing but maybe first aid so once you return to a safe town or guild hall you get get healed up.

[edaw22]

Yeah I would really love to see healers, at the back of the ranks where injured players can run back for heals, but, with many target heals which you have to aim, i would also thin that the fact you have to manually aim spells, like with Archery would most probably mean, they would do more dmg, to make up for the possibility of missing and the fact that reagents are needed. This is obviously in relation to Melee.

[Sup3rnova]

I can see this aiming to be a pain especially to people who never played FPS type games before.

[Atus]

Tbh I hoped there was no such thing as healing but maybe first aid so once you return to a safe town or guild hall you get get healed up.

In the last gameplay video, you can see that (at least) AoE healing is in. I guess it is around 10m.

[Tethron]

I both hope and fear Uo style bandage cross healing. Good teamwork can easily kill a zerg. But on other hand due to the target range limit you are very vulnerable to aoe and ranged as i hope you cant move while applying first aid.

[drebk]

I hope having a healer in your party dosent mean your party will "auto-win" like in alot of games.

first, keep in mind, there are not any classes. 'healer' just means someone who has healing spells and can reliably use them in combat (ie. can cast them fast enough, doesn't suck ass at aiming his umbral bolt heals etc). Since anyone can be a healer, without completely gimping their character, i exepect any organized group to have at least one high spec healer, and have many backup/secondary healers. I think nearly everyone is going to pick up at least some form of castable heal. [i say nearly everyone because i can see the most hardcore of the organized pigeonholing their members into classic archetype classes to perfect the min/max. for most everyone else though, the name of the game will be hybrid.]

It is just another tool in the toolbox. Just like you'd be retarded if you didn't spec at least a little ranged dps, you'll be retarded if you don't spec at least a little healing. (obviously speculation, but common consenus amongst forumfallers)

anyways, most people dislike the notion of being forced to have a dedicated healer in the group, b/c in most mmo's the dedicated healers were the least populated class. Thus it was usually a pain to field a good healer(unless you ran with a set crew and backups). Healers were typically awefully slow at soloing (AoC notwithstanding), did relatively low dps, and were often reduced to finding somewhere to freecast and 'watching health bars.' While in most games support classes typically have lower population DF is not most games.


Tbh I hoped there was no such thing as healing but maybe first aid so once you return to a safe town or guild hall you get get healed up.

There are heals in game, they are friendly fire like everything else. Hit an enemy with a bolt heal or aoe heal and you'll heal that enemy.
I can't remember which devquote they mentioned bolt healing though.

[Woodiwood]

Well I know this game hasn't even came out yet, but it's always fun to speculate from what we know. Having moderate Mmo experience, the most common way of healing a large of number of people would be through AoE heals or party heals. In this game, with a friendly fire clause, healing would prob help the enemy. So, in a large fight, how would healers properly heal?

My first guess would be extreme organization and assigning of healers. If this is so, zergers will have no chance.. What do you think?

There is a max range on anything, just stand far enough away from the enemy and close enough to your ally!, how hard can that be.

[otomotopia]

In a big battle, look to have them mixed in with non-magic formations. They will probably also pick up some fun defencive spells too.

Offencive mages will probably pick up some minor heals, so when in formation, they can just spam-heal who needs to be healed.

[Nibbler]

I can see a couple of ways.

1- TF2-Medic style healing. Good :D
2- AoE healing bot that stays far back and you run to when damaged. Boring :(

[Right Mojo]

There is a max range on anything, just stand far enough away from the enemy and close enough to your ally!, how hard can that be.
Well in a large scale fight melee will be on top of one another, so you will end up healing the enemy... It will be very interesting to see how it works out. Maybe healers won't play such a big role, like someone mentioned above minimal healing, more rezzing.

[Alienyouth4jc]

I would like to think healing was less like damage spells, where you shoot a fireball or such. Instead it should be touch based, i just dont see you shooting a ball of....life?

So maybe have an AoE spell that heals everyone around you (good and bad) like an aura or such. Then for the more combat oriented healer, have touched based heals. Maybe a heal after time spell that you can cast on someone, and after a set period of time it will start to heal, or rather then heals just have damage absorption spells.

Im reading Brisnger right now, and think the style of magic in the series would work well. Before a fight your healer/buffer casts spells designed to counter specific types of damage, and each person can maybe only have so many defensive spells on them at a time. Higher skilled spells will absorb more damage or multiple types of damage. After the spell is exhausted then the only way to heal is to runback to a healer(or have one run to you) where they have to do a touch based healing spell, at which time they can choose to rebuff you if they have the energy/mana/power to do so.

[End Dream]

healers will be of mass importance.. especially those rezing who the enemy dosent have to finish off

[Lawlobster]

i'm thinking line of sight barriers protecting AOE heal circles, and spaztic rezzers sprinting from one dead corpse to another

yeah i was thinking something like that too. have all the healers behind the melee lines and such in a certain area and if someone manages to get out of the combat they run over to the area to get healed. something like that

[Giraffe]

I am thinking that the people who want to be healer will learn healing and defensive buffs or spells. Then clan leaders or group leaders will assign them to a group of fighters. The fighters will take on the enemy and guard there "medic".

Thats just my guess on how healers will work.

[Obed]

I think due to the high movement rates and no auto-target, most of the healing will be done out of direct combat. Sitting still and exposed to enemy will get you arrows/spells inbound.

From my Planetside experience, healing is more a function of getting yourself and team back into, or recovered from, the fight, than an ability to keep taking damage while in combat.

[xaraaji]

There are no life bars above players heads. And I don’t think you can select someone to find out what their health is like. I guess the only way is to look at the person closely to see if they are bleeding.
So standing 10m away won’t really help.

[Reichsdiener]

I haven't read anything in this thread as I had an immediate answer to the thread title:

Healer-mages will play out the same as damage-mages.

[MGee]

Anyone play savage? The healers in that game need to manually aim for their spells, and Im betting more than a couple healing spells will be like that in DFO