To the Action Combat Fans

We have not received permission from SirChancelot to share the quoted post.

I don't know if I'm an Outlier or not, but 'Action Combat' Healer is my preference.

I tend to heal more often than I DPS (usually Rogue) or tank (just one game really) in games that 'Respect the Role Trinity'.

I know a few others as well, but I hang out with MOBA players.

Then again I don't believe in 'Action', 'Tab' or even 'Hybrid'. The little details make up much more of the gameplay than any of those things for me. (before anyone derails, I don't currently like the implementation Ashes has chosen, but they promised Tab Target, so it must be this way, I'll settle for balance on Rangers' 'combo ender shot' not helping them with CC)

We have not received permission from Gizban to share the quoted post.

I feel like I've had this exact discussion with you precisely before in another thread. I am not talking about AoE.

I think it ended without either of us in any way swayed, educated or satisfied.

I will only repeat that if Action Combat healing is a thing in Ashes, particularly very mobile healing, I will be happy, and this applies even if I must aim a reticle at moving allied targets to heal them. I don't expect it to be, so it probably won't matter.

We have not received permission from Mag7spy to share the quoted post.

We know that there will be Tab Target Heals, but it's not as if Action Style games normally have a lot more 'Lock On' target heals. So the question I have is why it's 'balanced' or not? Even if healing and buffing is supposed to be cooperative, the opponent being able to affect it to mess with the healing is often exactly the point.

Action Games with a lot of Tab Target healing often end up adding abilities to nerf the Healing's effect instead of 'making the Healer's role harder', because of some reason, right? Usually because the 'basic heal' is 'Tab Targeted'.

Just apply the same reason to Ranger. The opponent 'wanting to do something to throw off the Healer's aim on that Healer's ally' isn't much different from 'the opponent wanting to do something to throw off the Fighter's aim against them'. It's balanced that way because of convention, which we can move past.

If your point is that less people will play Healers if it is like that, because it's hard, then that's the same reason we should have Tab Target Basic Shots for Rangers. We want more people to be able to play Rangers too. All the same problems with balance apply on both sides.

I'd love both melee attacks and healing to be harder

We have not received permission from Depraved to share the quoted post.

Low skill floor and high ceiling. Everyone should have basic low impact abilities and attacks, but anything impactful and heavy should be harder to execute.

We have not received permission from Depraved to share the quoted post.

The short version is that you 'shouldn't'.

The introductory class is almost always 'weak' for balance purposes, or 'overpowered' because you don't have to work as hard for results.

There should be a whole introductory PERIOD.

There's also a different factor to this which HAS been solved before in a lot of games. Gamers with NO previous gaming skills will always struggle in PvP games, so you need to teach them differently. Gamers with skills from other games should have 'a class or character that somewhat parallels those games' to give them a 'head start in understanding' relative to others.

This is actually a good argument for why we 'shouldn't' need a Tab-Target Ranger as MUCH, because many of the people who would think "I want to play Ranger" would have been playing games where they already had to do all the 'Action Combat' parts.

It's also a good argument for why Mag's point of view is correct. The reason Healing 'should be easy and cooperative' is 'because it's often been easy and cooperative'. But this matters only if you 'only want a lot of Healers from previous games like that'. Answer to that is probably yes.

We have not received permission from Mag7spy to share the quoted post.

That's just synergy though. It already happens with AoE heals unless they are so huge as to be skill-less.

If your movement takes you out of the AoE or lingering heal zone, that's very similar. For this to not happen, the game would have to have limited movement.

I think I've maybe shared the concept of 'Mobile Healer who can't target themselves with their big heal' before, to you. That's the 'standard' balance system used by Action Games I play. It's so common that I don't feel like people would have TOO much trouble with it.

I don't disagree with you overall, but I feel you can't really say 'difficult content might be a problem if healing isn't as effective' and then add difficult CC skillshots/debuffs too. On the other hand, apparently many people DID find WildStar raiding too difficult...