in games with multiple roles (tank, DPS, healer), fuck the trend of making the healer less healy and more DPSy - and especially forcing them to manage both at once

if I’m playing a healer in a game, that means I love healing in games and want to spend my time healing. it doesn’t mean that I’ve grudgingly chosen to pick healer even though secretly I wanted to be DPS, so the game has to bribe me into healing by letting me DPS too

if anything that just adds extra plate-spinning that I have to manage on top of the healing that I actually want to be doing. so I’m probably going to feel overwhelmed and not enjoy the DPSing

this is a trend I’ve noticed across a few different genres

• TF2 had the medic whose entire job was to heal, but in hero shooters the medic became the “support” who may not even necessarily have a healing ability, but all of them were expected to do a bunch of DPSing
• In the low-level WoW content I’ve played I never felt like I needed to do anything as a healer other than heal. but more modern MMOs like FFXIV are designed with the assumption that the healers will also DPS

@kasdeya i played marvel rivals for the first time because my friend was lonely on it and i wanted to play a no-brain healer and all of them you needed to shoot your allies to heal them (very hard) and also manage your DPS abilities so your team doesn’t lose…

like, in tf2 i just click to heal and we win because healing is awesome

@Stellar yess omg this is exactly what I’m talking about! this is the #1 thing that turned me off from playing Marvel Rivals because there’s another hero shooter called Paladins that IMO gets healing exactly right with a few of its characters, because you get to only heal and it doesn’t require razor-sharp flickshots or any other sweatiness to do

@kasdeya

halfway through this post I was going to bring up TF2 medic but then I saw you already mentioned him >///<

@gracie yes omgg I think the TF2 medic is such a perfect example - I’m glad you thought of him too!

@kasdeya i had written up a whole post and then realized i’d kinda trailed off into a separate-but-related issue. i guess essentially my point was that

• i like that supports can be varied in their kits outside of just negating damage
• i like that healing can’t outheal damage because it creates distinct phases to combat interactions (the initial engagement followed by regathering to prepare for next the next encounter) which i feel creates distinct value for both damage and healing outside of negating one another
• it’s nice to feel as if i can contribute even when my team is full health or close enough that healing wouldn’t provide much benefit

though i can understand how those points could lead to a “everyone should do damage” design though because being able to damage and heal means that you’re useful in all phases of the game rather than just pocketing someone until it’s time to fill their green bar again.

that said, i really dislike how needing to context switch as a support takes one of the more accessible roles into the least accessible role. needing to land skill shots on enemies and allies in order to be useful feels really bad, especially for someone who just wants to have fun with a friend and doesn’t really care about skill grinding (which gets really exhausting really quickly). i feel there’s probably a way to give supports things to do (buffs, CC, etc) without requiring them to be simultaneously more skillful than their enemies and their own dps.

@rowan that’s a really good point that healing is only useful when the other players are taking damage! also in PvE I think you could get away with {healers can outheal most damage} but in PvP that would be pretty unfair and frustrating

I like the idea of a support character that buffs their teammates in combat and then heals them once combat is over tbh - or even one that heals them in combat as well but it’s just reduced (this is kinda how Paladins does it), and has other non-DPS stuff that they can do as well

but yeah I definitely would want the skill floor to be as low as it is for a DPS ideally, hehe

@kasdeya honestly, if they want to add extra plate-spinning, can't they at least make it support stuff? cleanses, protects, etc?

Guild Wars 1 was actually a really good example of the healers not being asked to do damage aside from sometimes auto-attacking things that came into range if they had time

@kasdeya and remembering how the best tf2 medic primary is the crossbow, that ditches medic's ranged damage option (which kinda sucks) with long range burst heal

(well it also does long range burst damage but like I mostly see medics aiming the crossbow at teammates for those heals)

@rowan come to think of it, my main problem with healers-as-DPS is that it requires me to be aware of both my own team and the enemy team, which I find overwhelming

playing as DPS lets me be aware of only the enemies, so I don’t have to keep my awareness split between too many things at once. and I think I like that a pure healer lets me be aware of only my teammates, similar to how DPS works

so I think that if I were to design a healer for a hero shooter I’d probably give them heals as well as buffs, but no CCs or debuffs or other abilities that interact with the enemy team - except of course maybe a low-damage emergency attack for self-defense (or an ability that lets you run away from fights)

@lykrast @kasdeya I really enjoyed playing the best healing class in TF2:

Engineer!🔧

Not only can you passively make the green bars get bigger, you ALSO passively make the red bars get smaller - which helps the green bars STAY big!🤗

@kasdeya Playing as a healer makes you the target of harassment from EVERYBODY.
I can understand why that class archetype is going out of style.

@kasdeya Eve Online does this with repair ships pretty well I think, if only through not being given the fitting slots to deal worthwhile damage.

Cognitive load factors into that too though, I can't manage staying on top of repair broadcasts, keeping myself in position, and keeping track of my cap chain partners (think giving mana regen to other healers) while also having to act on target broadcasts as well.

@kasdeya Now we do have organizational problems with getting people to actually fly repair ships. PVE rarely rewards repairing other participants, and some player groups track membership-requirement participation by how many player kills you're on, which repair ships don't appear on if they don't do damage.

Many organizations solve this by giving enough extra ship loss reimbursement to profit and by tracking participation in other ways.