Action Camera & Healing

Firstly disclaimer. I don't enjoy games where healing and DPS are particularly different in terms of level of engagement. I vastly prefer games where the moment-to-moment decisions of DPS are quite high as well as Healers. I am familiar with games where DPS is 'easy' and similarly with games where healing is 'easy'. In both these game types, I usually take on 'command' or 'coordinator' roles so that I have something else to do.

I don't have a strong expectation that 'AoE heals' are a requirement just because things have moved more toward Action. Firstly because MMO designers know that many healers don't even care about being frontline anyway so they just have to get to the correct position and keep their reticle on target. Secondly because I personally don't find it necessary. Healing is not explicitly easier or harder for me in Action, except for one thing.

If a game is explicitly designed with the expectation and intention that the healer is 'squishy backline' then they make it dangerous to be healing from up close, purposely. This makes sense because otherwise Healers often become able to tank somewhat in PvE (I enjoy this too). When 'pushing me to backline', it also makes 'close range big heal', a situation in which I move close to allies to heal strongly, a bad idea, which lowers my engagement relative to Action Combat.

Not necessarily relative to healing, but if the game is 'telling me' that 'You're a healer you shouldn't be frontline or even close', I normally expect to be 'not allowed to have fun in Action style' and have to rely on the game to consume all my focus from backline (most don't).

I would like to be able to heal from close. I do not mind if my 'big heal' cannot be self targeted to prevent me from also tanking. For a while I thought this was where Intrepid was going to go and they still might. I would be able to enjoy Action healing then, as I do in some other games.

I feel as if 'having access to too much AoE' would make it difficult to balance this, since it would also heal me, so I will hope that isn't the case, just from the perspective of 'I want to be more active while playing Shadow Disciple'.

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Well for clarity I didn't mean 'can never heal self'.

Just that some skills don't heal self. And in general, 'aimed' healing skills can't be aimed at oneself in my experience.

This is how I thought 'Devotion' was going to work in Alpha-1 and I found it interesting, I could use Devotion to heal others quickly and strategically, could use AoE and Hallowed Ground to heal myself, with Hallowed Ground being a real decision if I was backline at the time I wanted to use it, and still had the basic Heal that I could use on either others or myself. (Devotion was later changed to heal me too and then everything just became easy)

Healers with good other mitigation make good tanks unless balanced to explicitly not. If your disagreement is with this specific thing, sure, I'm glad to talk about it in another thread.

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Don't care much. In my experience it's harder to balance, that's all.

Particularly in a game where 'subclass', 'subjob', 'secondary kit', etc, are available.

If Intrepid WANTS Cleric/Tank to be able to do this, I'll be glad for it. I just don't want them balancing Cleric to be squishy backline so that they can't do it.

Making Clerics explicitly generate LESS Threat when healing has other problems, but honestly, at this point I'm arguing against my own interest here. The more 'broken' or 'potentially broken' Cleric is, the 'better' for me. I just don't like playing unbalanced games, and I don't like most of the approaches used for 'Cleric balance'.

Low threat generation? I'll abuse it.
Strong mitigation? Someone else will, I might too.
Massive powerful heals? EZ, absolutely using it.

The only good way I know to 'not result in abusable mechanics for Cleric in a system with secondary stuff' is to make healing HP as a whole weaker/less important in the game (hoping for this) or limiting the self-heals (will accept this).

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I'm sure Intrepid will come up with something, even if it isn't 'the one I believe I want'.

All I need to do is, if asked for feedback, tell them what I do not want. In this case, I think the only thing I don't want is the 'balanced for primarily backline even if geared'.

I ain't trying to reach Tank levels of 'waterfall stats' or whatever, but anything else that creates a big gap between 'The hits a Tank and I can take if wearing the same gear with no abilities active', I'm pretty opposed to.

Guess we've just played different games or different styles, so it is.

Tanky Healer + multiple high power DPS always worked for me. Enemies die faster, hate is 'absorbed' onto the Healer when they heal the DPS instead of 'focused on the tank', and the healer can just 'drop hate' by not healing themselves for a bit when they take damage (are we talking about games where taking damage doesn't reduce hate gained, though? Maybe that's it?)

Well, experiences differ. Ashes feels close to what I'm used to, based on what I played in Alpha-1. That's why I thought 'Oh, Devotion not healing me is intentional' (I'm pretty sure it really did change at some point in Alpha-1 from being not-self-targetable to being self-targetable).

I could, if I wanted to, 'tank' fairly easily this way, which doesn't say anything about long term design anyway, only 'basic hate mechanics'.

Ashes also had another proposed skill (I don't think it was present in Alpha-1 in the end) that would chain heal in front of you and didn't indicate that it would bounce back to you if you did this, so that's why I didn't find it weird.