It's time to bring Healing Surges into the game

[Uska]

Too bad this discussion got tied up with 4th edition, because healing surges, if implemented well, could help get players used to the idea of self-sufficiency without replacing other healing.

Minor self-healing isn't going to break the game as long as it does not compete with UMD or real healing. I start every life with thousands of cure serious potions, but why shouldn't newer players be able to regenerate part of their health a few times per shrine?

Monks have an ability that works along these lines. It's popular with new and cheap players who want to top off their hit points, but someone with plenty of cure pots rarely bothers.

I disagree with one part of the suggestion that healing surges be based on constitution modifier. Because CON is so inflated, this would change endgame calculus too much. Even many sorcerers have, say, 40 CON, so they would all have 15 healing surges. We're looking at the equivalent of a hundred cure serious potions every shrine.

I would support a more universal way to ease the self-healing burden for newer players, especially between fights. If it makes every class have 15 self-only lay on hands, that's probably overkill.

Self-healing without sacrfice feels wrong to me for dnd only paladins should have lay-on hands period. I dont support more self-healing then we have already infact we have more then we should potions really shouldnt be so common and cheap. nor should wands and scrolls

[Bacab]

Too bad this discussion got tied up with 4th edition, because healing surges, if implemented well, could help get players used to the idea of self-sufficiency without replacing other healing.

Minor self-healing isn't going to break the game as long as it does not compete with UMD or real healing. I start every life with thousands of cure serious potions, but why shouldn't newer players be able to regenerate part of their health a few times per shrine?

Monks have an ability that works along these lines. It's popular with new and cheap players who want to top off their hit points, but someone with plenty of cure pots rarely bothers.

I disagree with one part of the suggestion that healing surges be based on constitution modifier. Because CON is so inflated, this would change endgame calculus too much. Even many sorcerers have, say, 40 CON, so they would all have 15 healing surges. We're looking at the equivalent of a hundred cure serious potions every shrine.

I would support a more universal way to ease the self-healing burden for newer players, especially between fights. If it makes every class have 15 self-only lay on hands, that's probably overkill.

New players should have to start with Dwarven Clerics that have...

Good STR, CON, WIS.

Then when they unlock they can then roll a crappy 6 CON Drow Sorc like I did. Then they will miss their old one-eyed Dwarven Cleric that actually had HP and lived through stuff.

I am only kinda joking.

I have one regret about DDO...I deleted my first "real first toon". He was HIGHLVL! He got to cap (level 10!)

I deleted him to "focus on my 6 Con Drow Sorc". Not sure why I deleted him. But I wish I didn't.

But yeah, I honestly think a self-sufficient toon out of the box like a Cleric would be a good idea for a new player.

[Archangel666]

But yeah, I honestly think a self-sufficient toon out of the box like a Cleric would be a good idea for a new player.

Do you not find it interesting that when thinking of a "Self Sufficient Toon" your mind went straight to Cleric and not Ranger or Pally?

[Truga]

Sounds like yet another way to water down one of the signature abilities of paladins (lay on hands) by giving everybody access to it without having to be a paladin.

This.

@OP Get silver flame pots or heal scrolls.

Edit: And my most self-sufficient character is my rogue, she can literally do anything.

[Bacab]

Do you not find it interesting that when thinking of a "Self Sufficient Toon" your mind went straight to Cleric and not Ranger or Pally?

In 3.5...

Cleric>every class...except maybe Wizard

Cleric is pretty much the only class in PnP where if you just go with 5 Clerics...you will roll all content.

Think about...

5 Barbs...

5 Fighters...

5 Rogues...

5 Clerics...

etc....

That 5 Cleric party will pretty much spank everything.

And that is why I made a cleric as my first toon. Also Bestow Curse used to be permanent...and remove curse cost a LOT of gold (back in 2006).

[Archangel666]

In 3.5...

Cleric>every class...except maybe Wizard

Cleric is pretty much the only class in PnP where if you just go with 5 Clerics...you will roll all content.

Think about...

5 Barbs...

5 Fighters...

5 Rogues...

5 Clerics...

etc....

That 5 Cleric party will pretty much spank everything.

And that is why I made a cleric as my first toon. Also Bestow Curse used to be permanent...and remove curse cost a LOT of gold (back in 2006).

Oh, I wasn't criticizing you Bacab, just making an observation.

If someone were to do a quick survey and ask people to name self sufficient classes what would you bet that Ranger and Pally would be just above Barbs and Fighters?

If you then did a second quick survey and asked people to name high DPS classes, what would you bet that Ranger and Pally would be at the bottom(Though likely above the poor Bards)?

And people are asking for more self healing options...

[Full_Bleed]

This mechanic is one of the core mechanics that turned me away from 4e. At the time it felt very much like something you'd see in an MMO. Not a very good one mind you...

DDO doesn't need it.

[MrkGrismer]

They had a "Heroic Surge" ability but I don't think it ever made it to live, or if it did it didn't last very long. I don't remember as to why.

Edit: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=228947

Looong answer: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=223571

[DakFrost]

Yeah! Then they can add at will powers, encounter powers, and daily powers!

Then they can make all the classes fit into 4 basic groups! Defenders, Controllers, Strikers, and Leaders!

Then they can get rid of multi-classing! Eliminate all diversity!

It'll be awesome, just like WoW!

No thanks....

I think there's a reason no developer has made a 4th edition MMO.

[Jaid314]

To be fair, there are people that quit when AD&D2.0 was introduced, displacing "REAL" AD&D. And probably even more people left when 3.0 replaced 2.0.

I think 4e made a lot of misteps (including healing surges EXCEPT for a single second wind) but they did do some things very right. For example, a 30th level mage doesn't end up using their sling because they are out of offensive spells for the day, instead they have unlimited use of a number of basic spells that still do reliable (if someone smallish) damage.

sure, some people will stay behind with every edition. i'm saying i strongly suspect *more* people left when 4th edition was release than any other edition.

5th edition (or "D&D Next" as they are calling it) kinda scares me. it promises the moon, and in all the reviews i've seen of it, not one person has criticized it... which is creepy as can be, because we're talking about gamers here. we'll complain about anything and everything, no matter how good it is. zero criticism has frankly got me more convinced it's all going to go horribly wrong than all criticism would i think... also, i'm not remotely convinced that what they're claiming the game will be like is even possible.

[dejafu]

Wow. Leave this thread alone for a day and come back to yet another pile-on against 4th edition.

So you folks hate including anything remotely 4E in the game? Guess we'd better get rid of Epic Destinies, Half-Elf Dilettante, etc.

4E had some perfectly good ideas that don't have to be thrown out with the bathwater. There's no way to transform the current game into anything close to that edition, 3.5 mechanics are baked in too deeply, and I'm glad for that. But some pieces here or there that could improve the overall gaming experience for players isn't the end of the world.

But okay, folks don't seem to like the idea in general. So it goes. Let's get back to complaining about over-reliance on healers, how there's never a healer around, etc.

[Chai]

Healing surges were designed by reverse engineering WOW and EQ2 - games where when youre "out of combat" your character heals up to get ready for the next encounter. Regardless of how much we want to harp about 4e, the real reason not to put these in is that DDO is already monte haul to the point of hilarity. Pure Dwarf Fighters with a dumped cha can get the 40 UMD required to toss heal scrolls.

There are already epic destiny abilities which mimic healing surges, like the Fury Made Placid ability.

[Chaos000]

If they found a way for heroic surge to be tied in with healing kits and heal skill I have no opposition to that.

A stacking health regen (outside of combat and stationary) at the rate of 1 per every 5 seconds? I wouldn't find that so gamebreaking either.

[Chai]

4E had some perfectly good ideas that don't have to be thrown out with the bathwater.

Its the same reaction you get when you offer an idea from another game like WOW or EQ. Peoples reactions are "we dont want 12 year olds with noob as their only vocabulary word running around in DDO" when in fact, this would not happen at all if one suggestion was implemented. Jaded forumites have this habit of seeing everything in terms of extremes - black and white - while continually ignoring the huge gray area in the middle.

[Chai]

If they found a way for heroic surge to be tied in with healing kits and heal skill I have no opposition to that.

A stacking health regen (outside of combat and stationary) at the rate of 1 per every 5 seconds? I wouldn't find that so gamebreaking either.

THis is how it was done in NWN - didnt follow 3.5 rules, but made the heal skill actually useful.

[Junts]

Its the same reaction you get when you offer an idea from another game like WOW or EQ. Peoples reactions are "we dont want 12 year olds with noob as their only vocabulary word running around in DDO" when in fact, this would not happen at all if one suggestion was implemented. Jaded forumites have this habit of seeing everything in terms of extremes - black and white - while continually ignoring the huge gray area in the middle.

I basically agree with most of this thread, particularly Anthios and the dwarven cleric conversation (not coincidentally, when I started playing DDO .. Anthios made me a dwarven cleric!). Some limited self healing that would allow new players to play solo as melee classes and might allow you to regenerate between combats (IE out of combat healing, not something usable in combat, the way that wholeness of body functions), say 3-5 uses per shrine at most, is something I'd be fine with. I think most players would nearly forget about it at cap if it had a usage time requirement, but it would make starting a new melee and soloing less forbidding, and that's ok.

With that said, I'd point out that 'healing out of combat' didn't start with WOW, it started with FPS games, and the Halo/Gears of War damage model where you heal to full any time you are out of fire for a short time but can sustain a lot less damage in a short burst is, honestly, a much more enjoyable play model overall. Does anyone remember trying to play games like Quake where you had to be exceedingly careful on nearly every encounter not to take much in the way of damage so you could retain full health/armor etc for serious bosses?

Games are more fun when resource management is not the -primary- concern of the player. A resource and managing it are important, but when the nitpicky details of resource management have to last the entire quest, it simply doesn't play well because it demands a lot of player attention away from more intricate details. Newer FPS games like Gears/Halo/etc are more enjoyable because their resource modelf or health allows them to create more interesting challenges and allows the player to focus more of their attention on it and less on making sure they avoid every single stray shot or flake of damage that can eventually add up to failure.

I am ok with anything that lets DDO become less focused on micromanaging your spell point or hp bar and more focused on exact positioning, timing of tactical abilities like stuns and smites and cleaves, and etc. Not because it reduces the need for healing characters, but because it creates a more enjoyable, engaging game that can challenge players more significantly.

DDO's already doing that in ways that are great: Look at casters. 3 years ago, playing a caster was almost entirely about bar management. Ensuring you could do each encounter with no more than x firewalls/other spells to ensure that your bar would survive from shrine to shrine was basically the only calculus involved in playing a caster. The introduction of more spell like abilities and epic destiny abilities, etc has helped take the focus away from the SP bar (not that you dont pay it some mind, but not all your mind) and more on tactically combining your aoe abilities with abilities that produce helplessness for higher damage, your high-cooldown instakill abilities to particularly dangerous targets, etc. Moving away from penny by penny spell management has made DDO casters straight up more fun to play.

It is ok to continue in this direction. It will continue to lead to more engaging gameplay. It is a long and demonstrated fact in the field of game design at this point that it is next to always true that this will work.

With that said, it needs to be carefully balanced to be helpful but a little slow, so that it does not replace the sacrifices needed for strong self-sufficient healing capabilities and avoidance of damage, but rather helps supplement the fact that playing those kind of characters is often extremely expensive and hence very inaccessible to players on character 1 or 2 who cannot afford to drink potions and use wands and scrolls at the rate we use them.

If there's a 20s activation time on this kind of healing, it both won't get used in combat and won't replace zerg-friendly healing. And if it doesn't replace those things, its simply a net positive to DDO.

[Antiguo]

Sounds like yet another way to water down one of the signature abilities of paladins (lay on hands) by giving everybody access to it without having to be a paladin. It would help fighters and barbs which are already strong classes, but further deteriorate the flavor of a class that is already marginal at best and in need of some serious boosting. I'm not a fan.

The help that paladins need is NOT to keep gimp the pure melee classes in the self healing departament, but a buff to their dps and/or control.

[Full_Bleed]

The help that paladins need is NOT to keep gimp the pure melee classes in the self healing departament, but a buff to their dps and/or control.

The reason they are called "pure melee" is because they aren't supposed to be self-sufficient. They are supposed to play a "pure" role (Melee) and be so good at it that others that aren't pure need and want them. Reliance on one another is core the the whole concept of most RPG's (D&D in particular.)

DDO might be a better computer game for being so solo friendly, but it's not a better RPG for it. When all the roles become homogenized and self-sufficiency is a requirement/entitlement, the roles these classes once played becomes diminished and we move further and further from the game it purports to be.

[Anthios888]

The reason they are called "pure melee" is because they aren't supposed to be self-sufficient. They are supposed to play a "pure" role (Melee) and be so good at it that others that aren't pure need and want them. Reliance on one another is core the the whole concept of most RPG's (D&D in particular.)

DDO might be a better computer game for being so solo friendly, but it's not a better RPG for it. When all the roles become homogenized and self-sufficiency is a requirement/entitlement, the roles these classes once played becomes diminished and we move further and further from the game it purports to be.

Yeah, it would suck so much if a new level 7 pure fighter could tool around in a Hard Redwillow's Ruins without a healer or plat.

[Dolphious]

I used to be in the "more healing for melees" camp, but I've fully changed my mind and think that the existing options are fine, and reasonably well balanced. If you want more healing there are plenty of ways to get it without nonsense frebees like this.