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(MECHANIC SUGGESTION) Dividing Support into 3 roles
bluhman
Posts: 2,410 Arc User
Q: What why
This is mainly a UI/usability concern I'm addressing here. A small bit of it is balance, but the truth is that the three roles probably could just have the same mechanics and still would probably fulfill what I want here basally. Simply put, this would be to make clearer the distinction between support characters that... Cover the different areas of support.
Q: Ok but support is only really good at the first two things
Correct! Mostly. That's discounting that most supports use Buff Auras. But then that also gets into a big problem with how buffs are implemented in this game. Most buffs and debuffs:
How to make a healer build: Stack Pre -> Take Compassion -> Get the most meta heal and forcefield -> sample from a decent dps set for backup or something -> congratulations you are now a competent healer.
There isn't any kind of cohesion really needed to make a support build - if not that, certainly no thematic cohesion. Ok, so, if you want to make a healer with a theme you're SOL because you're limited to either being a psychic, angelic-sorcerer, voodoo witch, or some darkness life-sucking guy. Lord help you if you're going heavily for the meta, too, because then there's just straight-up meta choices you take to make a healer there - Not going DEX? (you usually aren't), Imbue all the way baby!! Oh, wanna do crit-healing? Arcane Vitality them boys up and rack up the greens.
Q: Ok hold up you blabbering loon, Fire and Electricity have gotten their own heals and stuff that work with their own set mechanics and are effective. They require execution and synergy to use!
Yes, but let me ask you this: are those heals that trigger off of non-scaling debuffs (that any role can use) benefitting support builds more, or DPS builds more?
This is an issue I'm seeing with the current direction that support set overhauls are heading in. At the core, these are still gimmicks for characters that are going to be spending most of their time targeting enemies. A big thing about this game (and basically any game with combat really) is to make the enemy's numbers go down faster than your own numbers, but what really makes RPGs actually interesting is obfuscating the fact that - really, that's all you're doing.
Q: Alright, buddy man, how about forcefields and crowd-control then?
How often have you seen people using Forcefields at a cosmic? Inversely, how often have you seen people using CC outside of cosmic events (which specifically engineered themselves, or I daresay, hamfisted, the mechanics to work there?)
That's purely because, in the current setup of how things are scaled, balanced, et-cetera, both Forcefields and CC are big losing options in the 'numbers game' I was talking about above. Again: huge part of RPGs is making the enemy's HP number go to 0 before they reduce yours down to 0. DPS do that the fastest. Tanks make enemies do it the slowest. And Support (specifically healing), reverse the enemy's progress.
Meanwhile we have CC and Shields. What's CC do? It stops enemies from reducing your HP. In practice, for how long, though? And really how would you balance that feasibly? Make them stop for too long, and CC becomes an auto-win button. Stop for too short (as it is now with things like Sleep.... in an alert) and the effect has absolutely no standing on this HP game. How about Shields? Well, thing is it's only temporary, and also playing at a massive disadvantage because, unlike healing and damage, it hasn't scaled upwards exponentially like how PRE-stacking and Passives and Mods and Toggles and Specs have, and then it also straight-up doesn't scale well with how large incoming effects have become. A temporary forcefield that grants you 20k HP means nothing at a cosmic when this temp HP takes all damage unmitigated. Meanwhile, base HP can receive layers upon layers of stacking defense - 300% from blocking. 50% from your defense statting. Another 50% from AoRP (from a healer no doubt). Up to maybe even 100% if you happen to have the right passive that matches the damage type of the big boss. What's easier - repeatedly force-fielding a single target so that they can take a series of hits that probably do more damage than the shield itself? Or having a passive that allows you to pump out ticks of +1200 HP over time on a target that's taking about 16% of base damage of this massive attack?
Q: What do you do about that then, huh? Mr 'oh look at me im totally a better game designer than a company that's been in the industry for almost 2 decades now' bluhman face.
Ok yes it's a complicated problem. But to break it down real fast with some bullets, I'd say I'd do stuff like this:
Q: literally what was the point of all that
support is boring as a playstyle and it's just getting homogenized into other playstyles. pure healers are dying. there's no set synergy or thematic variety to making a support.
Q: Well, you're insane for even sticking with this game for the past 9 years and you really should realize by now they're not going to implement anything like this you huge dweeb, go eat some toast.
ALRIGHT FINE I'LL JUST WAIT FOR TOAST ARMOR COMING Q3 2019 GET HYPED OH MAN I CANT WAIT FOR SOME TOAST ARMOR WITH MY BUNNY SLIPPERS KSDJFAKSFJ
Q: ok bye
This is mainly a UI/usability concern I'm addressing here. A small bit of it is balance, but the truth is that the three roles probably could just have the same mechanics and still would probably fulfill what I want here basally. Simply put, this would be to make clearer the distinction between support characters that... Cover the different areas of support.
- Supports who heal people
- Supports who control mobs
- Supports who buff or debuff
Q: Ok but support is only really good at the first two things
Correct! Mostly. That's discounting that most supports use Buff Auras. But then that also gets into a big problem with how buffs are implemented in this game. Most buffs and debuffs:
- Are non-stat dependent, aside from a select few.
- Are not role-dependent. Effects made for DPS builds (defense debuffs like demolish, shred, etc) aren't more or less effective in Tank or Support role, just as how effects made for Support biulds (ally-applied buffs like illuminate, inspiration, IDF, redirected force) don't scale better or worse if you were in Hybrid or whatever.
- And then those very few effects that do scale - those are either extremely niche effects like despondency (oh hey it's a debuff to DODGE, you know, that stat every enemy uses!) or are all Passive Effects that are made to just augment the playstyle of other abilities.
How to make a healer build: Stack Pre -> Take Compassion -> Get the most meta heal and forcefield -> sample from a decent dps set for backup or something -> congratulations you are now a competent healer.
There isn't any kind of cohesion really needed to make a support build - if not that, certainly no thematic cohesion. Ok, so, if you want to make a healer with a theme you're SOL because you're limited to either being a psychic, angelic-sorcerer, voodoo witch, or some darkness life-sucking guy. Lord help you if you're going heavily for the meta, too, because then there's just straight-up meta choices you take to make a healer there - Not going DEX? (you usually aren't), Imbue all the way baby!! Oh, wanna do crit-healing? Arcane Vitality them boys up and rack up the greens.
Q: Ok hold up you blabbering loon, Fire and Electricity have gotten their own heals and stuff that work with their own set mechanics and are effective. They require execution and synergy to use!
Yes, but let me ask you this: are those heals that trigger off of non-scaling debuffs (that any role can use) benefitting support builds more, or DPS builds more?
This is an issue I'm seeing with the current direction that support set overhauls are heading in. At the core, these are still gimmicks for characters that are going to be spending most of their time targeting enemies. A big thing about this game (and basically any game with combat really) is to make the enemy's numbers go down faster than your own numbers, but what really makes RPGs actually interesting is obfuscating the fact that - really, that's all you're doing.
Q: Alright, buddy man, how about forcefields and crowd-control then?
How often have you seen people using Forcefields at a cosmic? Inversely, how often have you seen people using CC outside of cosmic events (which specifically engineered themselves, or I daresay, hamfisted, the mechanics to work there?)
That's purely because, in the current setup of how things are scaled, balanced, et-cetera, both Forcefields and CC are big losing options in the 'numbers game' I was talking about above. Again: huge part of RPGs is making the enemy's HP number go to 0 before they reduce yours down to 0. DPS do that the fastest. Tanks make enemies do it the slowest. And Support (specifically healing), reverse the enemy's progress.
Meanwhile we have CC and Shields. What's CC do? It stops enemies from reducing your HP. In practice, for how long, though? And really how would you balance that feasibly? Make them stop for too long, and CC becomes an auto-win button. Stop for too short (as it is now with things like Sleep.... in an alert) and the effect has absolutely no standing on this HP game. How about Shields? Well, thing is it's only temporary, and also playing at a massive disadvantage because, unlike healing and damage, it hasn't scaled upwards exponentially like how PRE-stacking and Passives and Mods and Toggles and Specs have, and then it also straight-up doesn't scale well with how large incoming effects have become. A temporary forcefield that grants you 20k HP means nothing at a cosmic when this temp HP takes all damage unmitigated. Meanwhile, base HP can receive layers upon layers of stacking defense - 300% from blocking. 50% from your defense statting. Another 50% from AoRP (from a healer no doubt). Up to maybe even 100% if you happen to have the right passive that matches the damage type of the big boss. What's easier - repeatedly force-fielding a single target so that they can take a series of hits that probably do more damage than the shield itself? Or having a passive that allows you to pump out ticks of +1200 HP over time on a target that's taking about 16% of base damage of this massive attack?
Q: What do you do about that then, huh? Mr 'oh look at me im totally a better game designer than a company that's been in the industry for almost 2 decades now' bluhman face.
Ok yes it's a complicated problem. But to break it down real fast with some bullets, I'd say I'd do stuff like this:
- Get us them support buffs and debuffs. This would be things like retooling effects like Disorient in the TP tree to be a new effect that would actually scale with the necessary role, stats, or other support setup. That way, this sudden out-of-the-blue super-debuff we got can't be exploited by a build that's setup to murder things as fast as possible. This would be like what the Telepathy rehaul wanted to do originally, but failed to do so because all it really was was a series of crappy holds and unscaled debuffs that built up to.... oh boy, a sub-par DAMAGE spike. The main mechanic the set uses overall is Disorient, which is something that Heavy Weapons uses in equal measure while also being a whole lot more focused on actually beating people up and being a much more popular powerset.
- Seriously re-evaluate how Forcefields fit in this crazy Cryptic Math problem. Ok so I get that the math in this game is jank and stupid and deliberately designed to be self-obfuscating (much like the game's code base AM I RITE) but like, figure some things out. Maybe like, layer that shield temp-HP maybe just a bit below some defense layers. Heck, maybe balance the stupid things around the fact they exist outside of layers! Maybe give them stupidly high amounts of HP so that they can last for long periods of time, or like, serve as a substitute for blocking in some fights, I dunno be creative with your goddamn engine
- Design future support sets with those scaling buffs and debuffs in mind. You want to make a Healer's job interesting? Rewarding? Require thought? Give them the ability to place some buffs on teams beforehand or prepare like 'charges' of emergency heal on themselves, and have them 'rupture' that later to just instantly grant someone huge bursts of temp HP and defense in a pinch. I don't know! You're the devs, DO SOMETHING
- And lastly, that support role split. This is the one thing I'm actually set on, because that'd be basis on which to do all the above I'd think. So, split it up into:
- Heal - Role that really sucks at combat, semi-defensive, high-energy, big bonus to healing.
- Control - Moderate damage output, poor defense, moderate energy, bonus to control strength and recharge.
- Manipulation - Kind of like a weak hybrid, but provides powerful buffs to effects that buff or debuff. Works very well as a support on teams, would be the substitution of what all the people calling for "AoED"s need in stuff like Teleiosaurus.
Q: literally what was the point of all that
support is boring as a playstyle and it's just getting homogenized into other playstyles. pure healers are dying. there's no set synergy or thematic variety to making a support.
Q: Well, you're insane for even sticking with this game for the past 9 years and you really should realize by now they're not going to implement anything like this you huge dweeb, go eat some toast.
ALRIGHT FINE I'LL JUST WAIT FOR TOAST ARMOR COMING Q3 2019 GET HYPED OH MAN I CANT WAIT FOR SOME TOAST ARMOR WITH MY BUNNY SLIPPERS KSDJFAKSFJ
Q: ok bye
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As someone who has a fire healer, and who now uses it more than my dumb boring "use all the best heals" healer, I guess I can answer this.
To the first, are they benefiting support or dps builds more. I would say they benefit support builds more. As a fire dps the toon had okay heals. As a fire healer, it has monster heals. They are after all still heals, and they still benefit from healing bonus - in this case, healing bonus from Fire's healing form.
As for "targeting enemies most of the time" that's actually a great thing, and one of the ways this benefits support toons more than dps. Simply put my fire healer can dps. They can dps while healing, so long as I stay on top of things - when things are getting rough, they can focus entirely on healing, when things are smooth they can throw out dps. Also my fire healer can solo. Sure sure, my other healer can technically solo, but nobody has time for that. My fire healer solos QWZ in good time, and with great heals.
As for the question "is that a real healer?" or "is that really a support toon?" ( which you didn't bring up but certain people would ). Yes, yes it is. That is the role it fulfills in TA, and it has those nice fast TA runs that a healer with an aura would - it probably has more fun tho. At cosmics in regard to healing it's the same as my other healer - if there are many other healers there, it's not going to have to do much healing, but it can. Huge benefit here is that if there are other healers, my fire healer can dps while still being ready to blast out big heals at a moment's notice.
So, as far as this specific direction for healers goes, it's a massive improvement for support toons, specifically because it doesn't stick to the old-fashioned idea of "healer as healer, and only as healer". I hope they update all healing in all trees to function in this way.
So in short, the direction for example Fire has taken is the solution to...
"support is boring as a playstyle."
Because pure healers are the reason support is a boring playstyle. So rather than trying to go backwards, we should be moving forwards, and away from pure healers. Pure healers aren't very superheroey anyways.
Also...
" and it's just getting homogenized into other playstyles. pure healers are dying. there's no set synergy or thematic variety to making a support"
Doesn't really make sense? I don't see how support is getting homogenized into other playstyles. It's being integrated into them yes, but it doesn't really make sense to just toss the term homogenized in there to make this seem like a bad thing. Pure healers, for now are definitely not dying... but they probably should. As far as set synergy or thematic variety... well again, you're not making sense, since these new changes are increasing that, not decreasing.
In fact, if you're looking for a culprit when it comes to homogeneity in healing playstyle... well look no further than that other healer of mine, since she represents in large part what the majority of healers in the meta look like. On the other hand, that fire healer represents a major leap in thematic variety, as well as synergy within the fire set and with other sets. You'll still be able to make a pure healer - the main difference now is that you'll be able to make a bunch of them that actually play differently, rather than just having different auras.
So really instead of trying to narrow support down like your suggestion would do and make them more "pure", we should actually be broadening them. More mixing of roles leads to greater variety, and more interesting play styles. Dirty up those supports.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
But I mean, then there's also the way I built those - just pure tanking and pure healing. In a way yes, having support characters that have this hybrid-like approach is fun, and absolutely better than just targeting allies all day and funneling iniquity into them. You're going to have a tough time, until I see it (even if it's like a youtube FRAPS cap), convincing me that the builds that fall under that category of 'heal-while-attacking' will be those same healers funneling enough stuff into the singular tank for them to be able to not die. I don't doubt ability at all. Just looking at the recharge and base number of what stuff like Absorb Heat generates upon triggering off a single target though, the HPS just isn't there compared to a targeted heal with no cooldown.
And of course I'd be happy to even take your word for it at some level, because building an acceptable support character is so dang easy. One stat does everything you need, and it's not like specific passives help heals more than others. ****, just take a bunch of random mish-mash attacks from various trees that have Dependency-applying advantages and you're dang set!! What I'm getting at is half-exactly what you're talking about - healing people is boring. But here's where it diverges: you can do more than just HEAL PEOPLE.
Ok so we got our hybrid lifedrain support area. Now where's my "actually can use AoE holds in alerts and contribute tangibly" builds? Or my "what the heck how did you make Redirected Force and Protection Field actually useful and completely bypass the need for healing" builds? Or how's about the "Oh dang we're getting like 50% attack boost whenever you land that Mind Shatter combo off of the Ugly Butt Hallucination summon!" build? WHERE THE HECK'S MY "this guy has a force maintain ability that makes their targeted ally have block-like propreties and then allows them to keep attacking to keep building aggro or maybe also block to get ridiculous damage mitigation" BUILD???
I'm sure somewhere in that OP I accidentally said "healers" when I meant "support" - because, I want to make it real clear, and especially considering what I posted up in the title, that there should be more damn ways to help your allies than just green-numbering them to constant fullness!
I want to see more than just healers, with some AoE buff passive, showing up to raid fights. More than just controller guys who stack PRE and INT through the roof and have 90-second-long sleeps keeping giant death dogs tucked in and cozy. I want to stop seeing crazy mishmash people rushing around shooting Tenacity with a tazer arrow, then running to Courage while charging up their psychic.. ARCHER MENTAL RAYS to make that one stop healing the giant flaming ape.
I want variety in my support. I want it to make sense visually. I WILL ACCEPT TOAST ARMOR IF YOU ALSO MAKE A COHESIVE SUPPORT SET BASEED PURELY AROUND TOAST
And then circling back to the thread title, if that's gonna happen, I'm foreseeing that it'll probably be important to make it clear, with separate roles or icons, that hey not all these people might be capable of keeping mr. solo tank here alive if that's alright.
I also have Warmth. That alone is enough for focus heals. Also I have a healing rune on Pyre. That, Absorb Heat and Nova Flare bring me beyond what is needed for focus heals. I guess you uh... forgot all the things that Fire got. Would you like to revise your response to account for these before I respond further? Cause if not, then that's my response: You weren't accounting for all the powers involved.
Actually from what I learned making my fire healer, I realized that a CCer that actually does good damage while also locking down mobs hard is very possible, and from my tinkering in the powerhouse the results look promising. You'll probably see it soon ( depends how much of my attention Resident Evil 2 takes up ). Maybe I'll start a "Spinny's amazing support builds" thread.
Redirected Force and bubbles are part of power trees that haven't received updates, so until those occur it's not really reasonable to demand much of them. Also what you're actually asking for there is updates to those power trees, not roles.
For Mind Shatter... er, Mind Break? Honestly have no clue what you're referencing here so you'll have to catch me up. I'm not aware of an attack with either of those names that is intended to have the effect you're talking about.
And again, you're referencing Force, which has not seen an update yet.
Me too, that's why I'm working on making them rather than just continuing to make the things I'm bored of. I'm kind of a "be the change you wanna see" kinda guy. Uh but... gotta point this out. Tazer Arrow doesn't have a cooldown, so they could just use that on all three hearts.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
you could switch out warmth with empathy heal or rebuke or.... (actually that's like the only two crit-friendly heals I could think of worth using for real focus functions because everybody already knows about iniquity and psionic healing is unbelievably risky) and you'd still have a viable support build.
And yes you have the half of the build that deals damage while doing that, okay, great, that's one thing that Fire can kind of do while you're healing people.
Well now I don't know what the problem is anymore. You say you don't want boring supports, and then I give you a fun support and you basically just go "NO NOT THAT KIND OF FUN SUPPORT VARIETY". Like what... do you want a CCer that also heals? We have those too. Do you want new powers that do new things? That's not roles, that's powers.
PS - majority of my post was probably loaded in after you were already typing your response.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
More Support Passives which primarily augment the user and not their allies would allow for a much more interesting dynamic. Congress of Selves could be a wonderful reworking of this idea by improving Ego Damage and Healing Strength like Hearth and Seraphim, but instead of adding a minor Healing over Time effect and making it another copy of Seraphim, slap on a Charge Speed or Cooldown Reduction modifier.
Now, adding more Forms is pretty important as well. Currently, there's three total support forms, as compared to the sea of damage forms available. This sort of falls back on the whole dilemma of Supports using only Presence scaling though. The Sorcery Form could have been a WONDERFUL bridge to an Int-based Damage/Support mix, but instead of making the secondary bonus go to Healing, it was made Melee Damage which has next to no reason to be associated with Sorcery's current moveset. I made an entire thread of Form suggestions. The prime idea behind it was to reduce Forms favoring pure DPS setups and branch them out to open options for Survivability and Support. All of that disregarding my hated for the existence and implementation of Forms in the first place.
This is exactly what needs to be done. We shouldn't be homogenizing Supports to be Pure Healers, Pure Aura-bots, or Pure CCers. We need more abilities to mix things up, blend them with other roles. In some cases, make Supports feel more like what Hybrids should be.
And I will always be @DZPlayer122.
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oh ok my fault for trying to respond early and playing the game at the same time.
I'd like, you know, maybe a Healer that also Debuffs. Meaningfully. Better than any average DPS build that happens to have Disorient on their Heavy Weapons attacks. This is a point I made in the OP I'm pretty sure. That one of the big reasons the first Telepathy pass failed is because it decided to base itself around a debuff that another set has and doesn't exactly execute with any more effectiveness than the former.
These responses aren't bringing up a lot of points about debuffs. Or healing synergies beyond "moar presence and HoT effects" and "trigger this heal by using a DPS debuff." I'd like that. Similar with CC, beyond "oh crap please be careful to not scratch the sleeping guy".
Cool. I got nothing else to say about that, that's solid. I'll acknowledge parts of the argument that hold up.
I need to reference things that exist currently to make a suggestion?
I think I understand why we weren't seeing eye-to-eye now.
oh good to know. wouldn't have figured that out since i'm dumb and like to design things within themes and making visual sense when throwing out abilities. Maybe I should get started on that archer CC, just gotta find that AoE hold that archery has. (Dogs have ice breath, having an AoE root won't be too helpful, especially when it's also doing damage that breaks holds!)
I will say that, if I was content with how support operated/came together to form game experiences that felt like they made sense, I probably wouldn't have posted this thread, so I guess that was my mistake in the first place.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
If anything though, maybe it'd be a good idea to take a look at pet users. Specifically, maybe give them a bump from Support to Hybrid, and change the Aura passives to only affect the user + their pets (with pets getting the same bonus as the user). It might also be a good idea to put a limit to the number of pets active and make those pets even stronger--a better alternative to "throw all the animals at the enemy!"
maybe so, but one might be able to tell that the scope of the suggestion is a bit broader than the title considering how huge my posts are.
I dunno, other mmos seem to be pretty content with splitting their player bases up into a class system of well over 5 categories usually. I haven't often come across the criticism of a game that is something like "this game gives me too many options on how to build".
To kind of pose my point of the title in a different light, though, I have heard the criticism of a game that goes like "this game's class system makes no sense I have no idea what anything does." That is an issue that CO has had in the past. Also an issue it could run into if, hey, the role of support were to diversify.
For reasons I've stated exhaustively above, I don't think healer is a fine role in this game.
Hybrid already has way too much benefit in its court already. Seemingly the most balanced role. It's what's fooling people into thinking that it's a viable/helpful thing to bring to a cosmic fight when, in these cases, it really is all about super-specialization on the team per unit. This is also getting to this issue of class-clarity I was talking about above.
"Buffing/Debuffing being lame by itself". Are you sure about that? Because to be honest this might be another communication failure on my part, but I have no idea what other words I'd use to describe game mechanics for a role that would:
Also yes, and this would further enforce the need for more divisions of support.
Consider also spec trees. Consider sentinel. It's this mixture of both healing and crowd control specs, which is very strange when the way that toggle systems right now are crafted is that it's more beneficial to really focus on one or the other. Meanwhile, in addition, the function of support doesn't really stretch to currently cover these different roles at the same time as-is, at least not naturally. I don't usually see builds that both are responsible for locking down Cosmic adds and then also healing the team - especially not during Kigatilik!
Lastly, now there's also the stigmatization that occurs against some newer players in these situations when they show up to these cosmic fights in hybrid. This also might happen if, say, you show up as a character in tank role, when there's already one/enough tanks to take the damage. And then, the crux of what I'm discussing, someone with a cross over their head shows up and it's not immediately clear to the players if that person came to deal with the Dogs, keep the tank alive, keep the team alive, or actually be responsible for applying Overpower to the boss. Because those are all things support can do (the last, actually, not much better than your DPS, but see above) but it's not immediately clear as to why. That also will only be exacerbated if you then add to this list "viable source of damage/soaking/add distraction/etc. in the form of pets".
So that's just the way I think through the situation at least - facilitating differentiation between these roles before putting in all the effort to pump out individual abilities that'd try to base themselves around a playstyle. Recall, again, past attempts to do that (with Telepathy) didn't exactly pan out.