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DC changes and possible advice?
technoblitz
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
This is kind of a rant but I seriously need to get this off my chest, maybe some of you can tell me why DC's seem to underpowered and maybe justify it for me. 'Cause right now i'm just not feeling the love.
I feel that healing agro is way to high, especially with the fact that the the tank's taunts cant pull anything off me and that my self healing is reduced by 40%. I can't do a dungeon without being swamped by monsters and boss fight adds which means I am doing a lot of running around and wasting health potions while my teammates focus on the boss and complain that i'm not healing(if I stop to heal, I die).
The agro is understandable but it needs toned down a bit. And Righteousness has to go or be hugely reduced. I've never played any other healer in any other game with that kind of debuff. DC's get targeted first in PvP and then we are hard pressed to defend ourselves with low dps and hps. I find it hard to not just plain give up when i'm attacked by a TR, because really what am I supposed to do? Out heal them until I get assistance? Impossible. Dps them faster? Not happening either. Be able to do anything while i'm stunned through the whole short fight? Unlikely. It's pretty much like this with most of the classes I fight. I understand i'm a support class but I've played many many mmos and 99% of the time I am a healer and I've never had such a hard time in any game like I do in this one.
Maybe I just suck or maybe i'm missing something. Is there any DC's out there that is doing well and can tell me how to get better?
I feel that healing agro is way to high, especially with the fact that the the tank's taunts cant pull anything off me and that my self healing is reduced by 40%. I can't do a dungeon without being swamped by monsters and boss fight adds which means I am doing a lot of running around and wasting health potions while my teammates focus on the boss and complain that i'm not healing(if I stop to heal, I die).
The agro is understandable but it needs toned down a bit. And Righteousness has to go or be hugely reduced. I've never played any other healer in any other game with that kind of debuff. DC's get targeted first in PvP and then we are hard pressed to defend ourselves with low dps and hps. I find it hard to not just plain give up when i'm attacked by a TR, because really what am I supposed to do? Out heal them until I get assistance? Impossible. Dps them faster? Not happening either. Be able to do anything while i'm stunned through the whole short fight? Unlikely. It's pretty much like this with most of the classes I fight. I understand i'm a support class but I've played many many mmos and 99% of the time I am a healer and I've never had such a hard time in any game like I do in this one.
Maybe I just suck or maybe i'm missing something. Is there any DC's out there that is doing well and can tell me how to get better?
Post edited by technoblitz on
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The solution is not be for us to have "lower" threat (since we may still be the only one on the agro table and thus doesn't change anything), but rather that Tanks need to have a threat pulse that ticks every second equal to roughly 10% of their base damage or something like that. This puts them on the agro list and improves their threat gen (which is needed in order to stay above high DPS).
The reason I stated it the way I did is because not everyone believes that the DC's need to be 'fixed'. So I was merely asking for an opinion in a way that could have probably been written differently.
That makes sense and maybe if they do that there will be more GF's doing team PvE stuff instead of just pvp.
'buffing' a class only requires a starting point (ie now) and an endpoint (upward). The class is mostly working outside threat generation.
It seems more that mobs in NW ignore distance. Most aggro systems in MMOs use criteria to decide who to target and when to target them. Distance is usually a factor, hence tanks which are right up in the mobs face, can generate more aggro than casters in the back. This is also how most games get away with the healers not dying to add spawn because it starts farther away from them.
NWO seems to ignore distance as a factor, so the high threat of heals and buffs is disproportional to taunts and damage.
1) If the aggro table is entirely empty then the mob will attack the nearest opponent
2) If there is more than one player on the aggro table, threat is increased by some amount (30% in the case of WoW) to any character within melee range.
The problem with Healer aggro in Neverwinter is that unfortunately we are almost always the only person on the aggro table and thus both #1 & 2 don't even matter.
Admittedly I've never played either of your three examples in my 18 years of playing MMOs (Not entirely true I do recall spending a week with GW near it's release and being bored), but plenty of systems do not work that way. All threat should be based on distance between objects. Usually with 'edge detection' for agressive mobs, so they aggro when a action causes a player to fall into an edge case (like healing within their maximum aggro range or attacking another 'friendly' mob within said range). But the amount of threat generated is low due to distance form target and so other targets can easily generate more threat very quickly and 'steal' the attention of mobs. This is what NWO doesn't do and would seriously fix the issue.
There is no reason the rogue smacking the boss in the rear end with a dagger should not generate more threat to mobs close to them than the healing produced by a cleric. Though most systems weight buffing/healing higher than damage. For instance Lineage II (Which I know the threat system very well because I helped debug it) a heal produced 2x the threat of the value of the heal. So say you healed for 1k, the targets within range would gain 2k of threat toward you. Now a melee class does 1k damage to them and it causes 1k of threat as well, so the mob still runs toward the healer. A Taunt then would have say... Power 2000 and used by the same melee fighter would cause 2k of threat. Now we add in range and let threat fall off with distance, using a range of 100 feet/yards (not sure what the scale is in NWO). So the healer is 50 units of distance away and the melee fighter is 1 unit away. The melee fighter gets their 1 or 2k of threat because the full value is applied. The cleric however is 50 units away and their 2k value of the heal is dropped off either 5 times (or 50 times depending on detail, but most games use wide bands of distance) for distance to be 1k. Which would mean the threat for the melee doing the taunt is now stronger the the heal from the healer by 2x. Also eh could hit the mob for 1k and tie the healing done at range.
With the ranged healing/buffing this game uses the system I describe is a much better match than the one you suggest EQ/WoW/GW use.
Healing (conversely) typically generates threat on all mobs that are in the vicinity. Thus, since healing applies to all mobs and DPS only to the mobs that get hit, it becomes a near mathematical certainty that healers get aggro when you increase the number of monsters. The "easiest" fix for this is that instead of applying healing to all mobs at full value (which I believe to be the case for Neverwinter) it should be divided amongst all the mobs in the vicinity.
This is an "odd" way to go about it. In general healing output of a single healer should roughly equal damage output of a single DPS. This is usually done to help balance PvP with PvE. If healing generated twice the agro as damage then be would set up such that healing output would more or less be 1/2 that of DPS baseline.
Now that you're healing is half that of a DPS, you're going to be punishing healers considerably in PvP.
First, I assume you want "threat to matter." That is, that a tank should have to work to stay on-top of threat and if he doesn't do it well then DPS start to pull aggro. If this is the case, then what you're proposing is simply going to discourage players from bringing melee at all and simply take ranged DPS.
Is there a Right answer to what should be done about aggro? No, but you have to be really careful about the implications on class selection and PvP when creating an aggro system.
Im not anything of an expert but I am pretty sure this is just plain incorrect in most MMO games.
Oh no, it's not as bad as most people think it is. It's worse.
Strive ceaselessly to dominate your environment.
Be merciless in the execution of your duties, and show no pity to the weak.
Respect tradition and authority.
- You're a minion, and your boss summons you to help him. There's a rogue doing 5000 dps on your boss, a wizard just wrecking all your minion buddies, or a cleric throwing out sporadic healing. Really, which one would you be attacking to save your boss?
I want this class in NW.
It's not only my minion buddies. In every game healing generates AoE threat so if you are healing every party memeber every time they hit something with ASeal, you heal your partymates with AS and you heal your partymates with FF you are healing for tens of thousands of HP all the time and not only that, in most mmos healing generates extra threat (depending on the mmo it varies from 50% to 300% more threat) and your mates cannot deal so much damage to the adds to generate an equal ammount of threat and not to mention that unless you use a HUGE AoE attack you won't hit so many adds and that's why clerics have sooo many minions coming to them.
Also if i'm a minion and I see soomeone healing others for like a TON but he's weak (receives 40% less healing) -> so its easier to kill i'll obviously target him first.
Then, after the cleric is dead the others receive MORE damage (not buffed with AS and FSight) and don't get healing. So whatevah brah, they may be minions but they have some degree of intelligence even if it's artificial.
I want this class in NW.
That logic falls flat on its face though when as a cleric I can be standing there letting others generate initial aggro and not casting anything whilst they build it and the mobs still all coming running at me like I'm made of the most delicious and valuable substance in the universe.
And to be fair I know that if I were in a fight, I'd be wanting to get rid of the people trying to kill me with daggers, giant swords or shards of ice way before I'd even look at the guy at the back putting out the healing equivalent of shouting "Fight! Fight! Fight!"
That logic falling flat as you say it's the logic of almost every MMO in the market. Healing generates AoE threat like it or not. In many MMOs healing spells have a higher threat modifier and it's quite obvious that this game in particular has it too.
And I've never seen what you describe happen to me ever. you may aswell be making it up. If I stay iddle nothing comes to me unless I build initial threat by walking through/too close to their pack (duh). Tested it with my companioins and in several skirmishes (cause i refuse to do stupid stuff in dungeons).
If you don't cast anything your wizard companion will take every mob, if you don't cast anything, your sellsword will take everything. Your cleric companion is just like you. And the man-at-arms is just limited to a 1-target aggro building.
If you cast a BotS or a LoF only the mob you hit will come to you. If you cast a Sacred Flame, the 3rd hit will generate AoE threat.
The moment you cast an ASeal you draw the attention of the whole neighbourhood and if you cast SBurst you've just become a NW Celebrity with the biggest fanclub. The same for everything that applies a buff or heals.
You may want to review your testing.
I want this class in NW.