Add Heal Threat

[chester99]

I solved this problem a long time ago for myself by joining a guild and having multiple healers on my account.

and I had subway for lunch. $5 footlongs rock.

[weyoun]

I'm not certain, as I'd hold healing aggro on my paladin back when the guild I use to be in would do it with a fighter, rogue, and paladin. Had enough UMD for heal scrolls and I'd heal them up fully and sometimes take him over to the usual ladder for a couple of pillars. He'd only shoot at me and ignore them.

I don't think DDO has ever had healing agro. Not in the sense that I am talking about, when a monster stops attacking the person who is beating on it and switches to the healer. DDO has a lot of random agro - devils, undead, titan and a lot of line of sight agro that doesn't get re-evaluated until the 6 second combat turn (or whatever it is) is over. That's why something will keep bearing down on a target even though they are getting pounded on - ogres like the named one in waterworks with his triple-lundy attack are a good example of LoS agro.

[weyoun]

and I had subway for lunch. $5 footlongs rock.

I had peanuts and diet mountain dew.

[Ranmaru2]

I don't think DDO has ever had healing agro.

The older version of the Titan raid had it, you could sit on ladders and he would attack NO ONE but you, no matter what. Then they changed it to what it is today.

[weyoun]

The older version of the Titan raid had it, you could sit on ladders and he would attack NO ONE but you, no matter what. Then they changed it to what it is today.

I ran titan back in the day as well and I have to disagree.

[wolflordnexus]

I really only see problems with this seriously it's going to make things a bit more challenging for all of 2 days until everyone figures out how to exploit the new AI or decides to make a new Heal Tank the dwarf 12 cleric RS DR builds and WF favored souls will come out of the wood work. Then you'll just be back to complaining how easy it all is while Pug Shrouds still fail with alarming regularity. Want the game to be harder stop abusing the AI its plenty difficult for those that don't know all the little tricks that are abused in your regularly scheduled day. This change will add significant difficulty to the players that can't hack it while barely even being noticed by people completing Difficult content I don't see it being in any way good for the game.

[sirgog]

Agreed. I went afk / auto attack on Horoth last night with zero consequences, heck I even got the kill. Bosses need AoE damage and mass DoTs as well.

IMO they need persistent or semi-persistent AOE damage effects that are too dangerous to ignore.

The Epic Cojoined Abashai Devastator's white 'special' is an example of this, albeit a brief one. Abbot Inferno is another good example, although it's only dangerous to a geared level 20 group because of its SP drain, and it's too short lasting and takes up too much space.

In short, we need more attacks that say 'get out of this or die horribly'.

These suggestions are more about making life difficult for DPSers than they are about healers, however, which would be the primary implication of healing threat.


IMO Healing threat should be tied to monster intelligence and quest difficulty. As a test number, can I suggest the following threat values:

0: Healing around an unintelligent target such as a golem, lion, etc (Int 1, 2 or -)
1: Threat generated per point of healing around a monster of low Intelligence (Int 3-9), or around any monster on Casual difficulty
3: Threat generated per point of healing around a monster of moderate Intelligence (10-19). In addition, this is the maximum healing threat on Normal difficulty.
4: Threat generated per point of healing around a monster of genius Intelligence (20-29). In addition, this is the maximum healing threat on Hard difficulty.
5: Threat generated per point of healing around a monster of supernatural Intelligence (30+). This is experienced on Elite and Epic difficulties only.

I'd also recommend removing any threat from overhealing, and that any testing is done in Tower of Despair, Chronoscope and Vision of Destruction (the main tanking raids).

[Ranmaru2]

In short, we need more attacks that say 'get out of this or die horribly'.

While I can somewhat agree with this, I also disagree at the same time, as we don't need to see a whole raid wipe in mere moments like in WoW from one attack.

[Angelus_dead]

Say wouldn't heal threat be nice? At least with average intelligence mobs. With quickened mass heal completely OP a little heal threat could even things out?

In the large majority of DDO combats, healing threat would be a nerf to monster effectiveness, and serve to distract them from attacking the more vulnerable targets.

That's because DDO allows more active movements than typical MMORPGs, and those movement options enable a heal-spec character to survive most kinds of aggro quite well (either by turtling, kiting, or perchings). In other kinds of games a monster would quickly kill non-tanks who get aggro, but that's not what happens in DDO.

The very rare DDO bosses that use heavy DOTs to punish aggro swaps could potentially be more dangerous if they occasionally aggroed on healers... but it's unlikely that healers could actually pull aggro from a normal tank, unless the heal threat was so high that healers could actually use it to tank themselves.

EDIT:
However, healing threat would be a giant nerf towards players who use Hirelings, because a Hireling Cleric is completely unable to use the self-preservation actions a player Cleric can. They're not even smart enough to hold down "Shift" when standing there being pummeled.

Oh and put a 2 min CD on mana pots too.

A large delay on Mnemonic Enhancement potions has been one of my old favorite suggestions (although it would be better to use a more complex system than a simple cooldown)

[weyoun]

In the large majority of DDO combats, healing threat would be a nerf to monster effectiveness, and serve to distract them from attacking the more vulnerable targets.

That's because DDO allows more active movements than typical MMORPGs, and those movement options enable a heal-spec character to survive most kinds of aggro quite well (either by turtling, kiting, or perchings). In other kinds of games a monster would quickly kill non-tanks who get aggro, but that's not what happens in DDO.

The very rare DDO bosses that use heavy DOTs to punish aggro swaps could potentially be more dangerous if they occasionally aggroed on healers... but it's unlikely that healers could actually pull aggro from a normal tank, unless the heal threat was so high that healers could actually use it to tank themselves.

EDIT:
However, healing threat would be a giant nerf towards players who use Hirelings, because a Hireling Cleric is completely unable to use the self-preservation actions a player Cleric can. They're not even smart enough to hold down "Shift" when standing there being pummeled.


A large delay on Mnemonic Enhancement potions has been one of my old favorite suggestions (although it would be better to use a more complex system than a simple cooldown)

Well as always you have some of the best input, Angelus. No sarcasm. I enjoy reading your posts. Honestly this suggestion comes out of total boredom with DDO. Its hard to even log in. My fight with Horoth last night was the first time I had done a raid in about 2 months and the utter ease of the fight is why I'm not playing right now.

I have a ton invested in DDO, time and TPs, reincarnations, friends etc. I just feel like I'm going through the motions when I log on. There are a number of good suggestions in this thread. All of them I think are well intended requests for more challenge. I hope the devs will look at it an incorporate some of the ideas presented here. We have several different modes of play as Sirgog and I have pointed out and distinct differences between the two could introduce some sorely needed challenges.

[sirgog]

In the large majority of DDO combats, healing threat would be a nerf to monster effectiveness, and serve to distract them from attacking the more vulnerable targets.

That's because DDO allows more active movements than typical MMORPGs, and those movement options enable a heal-spec character to survive most kinds of aggro quite well (either by turtling, kiting, or perchings). In other kinds of games a monster would quickly kill non-tanks who get aggro, but that's not what happens in DDO.

The very rare DDO bosses that use heavy DOTs to punish aggro swaps could potentially be more dangerous if they occasionally aggroed on healers... but it's unlikely that healers could actually pull aggro from a normal tank, unless the heal threat was so high that healers could actually use it to tank themselves.

EDIT:
However, healing threat would be a giant nerf towards players who use Hirelings, because a Hireling Cleric is completely unable to use the self-preservation actions a player Cleric can. They're not even smart enough to hold down "Shift" when standing there being pummeled.


A large delay on Mnemonic Enhancement potions has been one of my old favorite suggestions (although it would be better to use a more complex system than a simple cooldown)

I think a lot of this comes down to the fact that most DDO monsters move too slowly (relative to players), and ranged attacks can't really hit moving targets (Magic Missiles aside). Healers can kite with BB aggro now, they could kite with Healing aggro if it is implemented, but if some/many/most mobs moved at 130% of player hasted movement speed, and if their ranged attacks didn't automatically miss moving targets, kiting would be far less overpowered.

[Seliana]

There is no lag in DDO. Nah, but seriously what if there weren't lag in DDO? Then what happens to your argument? I'm not being facetious. Most lag issues work their way out of the game. Its still there but nowhere near what it has been at times.

When you imply that raid bosses are too hard I have to wonder if we're playing the same game.

If this were a magical fairy land of elves and unicorns there would be no lag and additional challenge would both welcome and beneficial to the game. Unfortunately, DDO has pretty much had incredible lag from the very beginning and it has never gone away, in fact I'm sure its gotten worse over the past year or so as evidenced by the many posts sarcastically berating the dungeon alert system as not fixing lag.

The lag this week alone was as bad as the Mabar event, When I am doing goggles in Abbot guiding a guild member across and they fall through a Grey floor tile that wasn't turning red while they were standing still on it somethings lagging pretty horrifically.... that incident was from a few days ago. Yesterday in Elite VOD ten guildies geared out in epic equipment with over 500 hp each went from full health to instantly dead in under 1 second thanks to lag, I know the trash had to have obviously beat them down slowly over several seconds but the whole party was shocked and asking what killed them so suddenly with confused expressions everywhere.

In fact the only reason I've seen my guild wipe any epic raids in the past 6 months is entirely and solely due to intense lag, usually during our many public events. The few moments of clarity when the lag lets up for a few hours we are routinely finishing an epic raid about every 30 minutes without failure or even any player deaths. The raid bosses aren't hard by any stretch of the imagination regardless of difficulty setting, they don't even require any thought beyond autoattack and spam heal/reconstruct scrolls at the tank, but I will state that DDO lag does put us in a situation where adding difficulty or complexity to encounters isn't feasible without people(including myself) who would mass quit the game out of frustration. I don't want to play a game that randomly punishes us and wastes our time when everyone played perfectly just because the server cant handle the data flow.

[zealous]

That's because DDO allows more active movements than typical MMORPGs, and those movement options enable a heal-spec character to survive most kinds of aggro quite well (either by turtling, kiting, or perchings). In other kinds of games a monster would quickly kill non-tanks who get aggro, but that's not what happens in DDO.

I think a lot of this comes down to the fact that most DDO monsters move too slowly (relative to players), and ranged attacks can't really hit moving targets (Magic Missiles aside). Healers can kite with BB aggro now, they could kite with Healing aggro if it is implemented, but if some/many/most mobs moved at 130% of player hasted movement speed, and if their ranged attacks didn't automatically miss moving targets, kiting would be far less overpowered.

Moving not breaking spell casting, prevalence of short cast times and the possibility to jump cast is one set of factors, I'd say that other differences are more important though.

In typical MMORPGs you generally need good damage mitigation coupled with healing to be able to take heavy heat. This in addition to having the hp (+etc.) to not die from bursts which we have in DDO too.

Damage outpacing healing is rarely if ever a issue even if you only have one party member with healing spells.

In DDO survival is mainly about A: Does the healer(s) care about using pots B: Can you survive one hit.

[weyoun]

Which is one of the reasons I'm for pot CDs. I think anyone who's been playing this game any amount of time makes their builds with as many HPs as feasible. One-hits rarely kill unless you're standing around in Velah's breath or caught in an elite/epic trap.

I don't know how its best implemented, obviously, and there are a ton of considerations, but heal threat is something that is missing from the game - and should be pursued.

[ycy1975]

sounds like healer-shortage is not bad enough....

If you pay attention to what monster do, you will find that they DO assign some of them to attack arcane and healer. Wonder why you didnt notice, you too good or your healer too good?

[weyoun]

sounds like healer-shortage is not bad enough....

If you pay attention to what monster do, you will find that they DO assign some of them to attack arcane and healer. Wonder why you didnt notice, you too good or your healer too good?

Line of sight agro and random agro. Healer shortage is for people who don't have strong guilds. Everyone in my guild has at least one healer, most of us have 2 and we've been playing since pre-merge.

[andreascott89]

Might stop all the pugs with 5 people waiting on a healer you see clutter up the LFM panel for hours.

Actually you might see the opposite. With heal threat, you might want to wait for TWO healers instead of one so they can share the heal threat and not pull aggro.

I think heal threat is a great idea (loved the difficulty of playing a healer in EQ1/2), but it will need careful balancing to be a great addition.

GS

[walkingwolfmike]

Nope. No sir. I STILL disapprove!
I get beat on enough what with comet falls, CC and healing. Adding more of a threat will just make me hang in the back more often and toss heals.

So, again, nope, no sir, I disapprove.

[Uska]

Pot cool down yes heal threat hell no

[Thrudh]

What we really need is a raid that has a end fight more like Shroud Part 2 used to be, where the group has to split up into 3 or 4 little groups...

No more of this everyone bunch up on one big boss monster while the clerics mass heal...

Force us to split up, so self-sufficient characters become sought after... not just max DPS with a pocket cleric.