Suggestion Healers Kind of Suck at Healing Other People (Improvement Suggested)

[Dakinara]

So i have noticed there are very few people playing cleric on live at the moment, and only a handful of druids. I actually found druid to be a very easy to level class and decently strong in 1v1 pvp. However, as a healer (of other players) it is pretty crappy. The new heal cooldown and reduced healing numbers are still more than fine for keeping yourself alive while kiting, but trying to heal other players through high magic damage is basically impossible at the moment. Cleric has it a bit better, with great group heals, but even their single target heal cooldowns are too long to keep a single target alive through sustained damage. This may be intended, but i hate to see healers become a 1v1 pvp class due to survivability through kiting when i really feel the intent of playing a healer in a game like this is to support / heal other players. Therefore, I would really love if healers ability to self heal could continue to be reduced / adjusted as the balance team sees fit, but please give all healers (maybe even disciple) an ability like bloodgift (bloodmage spell) that heals decently but can only be used on other allies (not self). I really feel healers will need abilities that are other ally only in order to be balanced for self survivability vs ability to heal others. In addition, abilities that cannot target self are much easier to use without macros - you could even make these other ally spells "non-macroable" like damage abilities and force us to more skillfully select the intended target.

 

[0xNaomi]

I'm fine with it for the most part with two things:
1) Targeting does need changes, but I say it needs changes as a whole rather than just adding no-self skills.
2) Honestly, aside from the above, I'm fine with it aside from not knowing people's HP, which Party Frames solved anyway

 

[Dakinara]

I am just not sure how to simply change the targeting at this point - if anyone has suggestions that would be cool. This fix would be super simple as it basically just involves copying portions of the code from bloodgift over to an ability for other classes.

 

[0xNaomi]

Best I can think of is a "Skill" that swaps modes, if it's on then you can't self-heal except with AOE, and when it's off you can target yourself again. That way with binds you can toggle, heal, toggle.
Such a toggle would be free to use with no cooldown.
(If it's volatile and reset on logout, I see it as doable)

 

[Dakinara]

That sounds like it could work fine, but also have to keep in mind that delf pretty strongly believes healers self healing ability is too strong with current mine craft mechanics (which i agree with in many ways). However, the current healing cooldown mechanics make healing others fairly weak except for group heals and full heal, which are admittedly very strong. A simple glimpse through the wiki mana cost / cooldown / dmg & healing numbers will reveal that several caster / spell classes do more damage, with lower cast time / cooldown than most healing abilities recover. This means a single spell damage class going to town on someone could not be outhealed by single target heal spells without invoking full heal or using group heals when only a single target one is needed. I feel that is broken from a balance perspective. Healers should be able to outheal a single damage class attacking an ally or there is not much point in being a healer. Healers should not be able to necessarily always outheal a single damage class attacking them without kiting and generally outplaying the other player in some manner.

 

[0xNaomi]

It's been suggested before to scale out the heals for the same effectiveness in smaller bursts so that it's a continuous stream of heals rather than a burst. That sounds like it would solve both of your problems there, as you'd get steady healing on a target and also put more skill on the user.
As for my more off topic opinion, the heals have never been enough to just heal off hits and attack last map unless my opponent was a Beguiler (burst with enough CD to outheal on your end). Any high DPS class will outdo the heals in my experience.

 

[Dakinara]

I would say on last map a single enemy could out damage healing on myself if i tried to just sit there and take the hits. However, if they were attacking another target i could consistently outheal the damage they were doing to that target. This was mostly possible due to the very low cooldown on soothe / sacredword, which have been drastically increased this map. Healing an ally through damage is much harder now, with the only real exception being full heal, which is kind of broken since it literally just fully heals and the healing amount is not scaled off wisdom in any way (the targeting range is at least). My desire would be to get back that low cooldown soothe / sacred word ability like last map, but have it only usable on other allies, thus not really increasing the healers self healing ability at all.

@Delfofthebla any thoughts on this?