Quote Originally Posted by Citan View Post

Druid IS a curse class, so to speak, but that doesn't mean it should be better at healing -- it should offer more diversity of builds to make it useful in more roles and combinations. It is also, on paper, supposed to have "the best debuff in the game", so I actually expect that in return it should be a tiny bit less potent at healing overall. Not saying that's where anything is, just telling you the eventual goal.
Hypothesis: Priest has tons of heal power and a 'swiss army knife' suite of abilities that will undo any and every debuff the enemy throws at you. Therefore kits without a swiss army knife of abilities should heal more raw or at the very least have something they do better.

As an exmaple.... of these healing kits I have mentioned mentalism and battlechemistry suck as primary healers. There is almost nothing BC or mental do better than priest for healing a group. I think that feels wrong from a balance standpoint- If priest had the lowest damage potential in the entire game (it totally doesnt: see priest/fire builds) I could understand priest being the 'supreme' healer. Playing healing mentalism as it stands right now effort-wise might be like trying to run up a hill pushing a 40 pound weight. The priest meanwhile is having a leisurely stroll through a meadow sipping on a glass of cold punch.

You can compare bard to BC here in that both can be built to do aoe damage and both can do some healing. Bard has the best rez in the game and BC has no rez. BC has super cool hour long buffs but bard has the most powerful short term buffs in the game (example -moment of resolve : For 5 seconds, all nearby allies take 60% less damage from Crushing/Slashing/Piercing attacks). BC has a pet that may or may not cast a useful healing spell in combat; bard can have passive heal song active while casting all his other abilities. Overall bard ends up better than BC other than the fact that BC has a very strong group heal and bard only has 1 heal while BC has two. I would say they are roughly tied in terms of short term buffs vs long term buffs but bard ends up doing the healing role better because it has the passive heal. [ I want to mention in a brief aside this is under a future tense condition when flat mitigation is roughtly on par with % mitigation. Currently a flat mitigation offers most people in a group pretty much nothing to take -20 or so damage when they get hit for 300-550 damage by level 70 monsters]

On the other hand priest (with no secondary active) has enough raw heal abilities to be pretty close to the healing of BC+Bard. On top of that add in all the unique things priest can 'undo' (like crippled movement, stuns, poison, etc) and you will realize why nobody is playing Bard/BC when they could play priest/whatever instead. That in my opinion is the pat that needs adjustment.

I imagine a game where each class makes you say, 'Ooooo I want that'! The reality is that someone wanting to play BC/Mental,BC/Bard, Mental/bard, mental/psych, psych/bc, etc., as a full support healer is in for a rude awakening because they messed up because they didn't pick priest.

Conclusion: Pick any 2 healing abilities that does not include priest and compare it to priest +any other support healing class. The priest version is always better. That doesn't seem right to me - but the complete picture has not been painted yet.

Quote Originally Posted by Citan View Post
I'm not expecting people to give exact breakdowns by mods or abilities. The first thing to identify is: what is the really fun thing you can do with this skill? I want to avoid cutting the fun bits out of the game!

Of course, sometimes an ability is really only fun because it's crazily overpowered. In those cases, the fun may not be saveable, if the skill has a lot of other things going on. But let me make that decision.

So let me know what bits you think are fun, so I can do my best to keep those bits if possible. (This applies to individual skills and also to skill combinations!)
Can I tell you what isn't fun when trying to play a healer?

In Gazluk Keep player health swings from massively high to 99% dead in the blink of an eye for non tanks.


What if : you give some of these 'weaker' healing classes a new ability?

Say for example you gave mentalism a damage shield ability called mind shield. Project a mental forcefield on the target that protects against the first 200 damage (modded by +200 more). For 1 minute the target takes -15% damage from all sources. Maybe this power is a sidebar ability with a 5 minute cooldown.

What if you gave battlechemistry :

Potion of invinciblity (also sidebar ability). For one minute target takes -25% damage from all sources. Ninety seconds after that effect ends the target dies (meaning 1 minute of buffs, 1.5 minutes of waiting). Thirty seconds later your golem explodes and revives the target (10-15 minute cooldown).


Note: Obviously these abilities would not stack - and as such you could literally treat them as an alchemy potion for simplicity sake.


I don't expect you to actually use either of these but maybe it can give you some ideas.