Hello Forums!
I wanted to bring up a conversation I had recently in regards to PET CLASSES & one of my favorite class types, HEALERS.
You guessed it, I’m combining the ideas together, and I’d like to share the reasoning behind this.
I love healing, but there are a few issues I and others have with older games involving healing. The games which address these issues are actually very few, but I want to highlight what lessons have been learned from their approach which Visionary Realms can take and do an even better job. I’ll be focusing on solo to group play and how adding a ‘pet’ to every healer can act as the bolts and rivets to make the class have a stronger ‘identity’.
Let us talk about Solo play at lvl 1.
Imagine a Lvl 1 healer who has a tank pet. And only a tank pet. All the pet does is auto attack and build threat, similar to an actual tank. The tank pet may have a few abilities or it may have none. This pet takes significant damage and must be healed often each fight (even at lvl 1).
Most of you reading this understand by now what I am bringing up. One disparity I have heard from healers is the ‘group shock’ which happens when a Healer joins a group and suddenly their identity changes. Solo play is so different than group play it quite literally is a shock, and sometimes that shock isn’t always a good one. What can be done to help is to bring healers combat role in focus with how their group play will be.
How does the suggested change help? Would it not cheapen game-play and make it easier to solo? This is a group game, not a solo game.
This is where any designer has to be very careful. The power of life pools and mana pools and your pets life pool are something which can be molded to make sure combat is meaningful, not childs play. Also, solo play is going to happen. Pantheon is a ‘group focused’ game. This does not say solo play is impossible or the game will go out of its way to punish you if you try to solo. Chances are the game will be made to include the ability to solo to some small degree, but the most focus will be group play.
What you’re saying is just going to end in something stupid like pets for everyone.
No, and the reason why is this: The abilities a DPS class uses are many, and all of them can be used when they solo (the same can be said for Tanks aside from taunt) and there is no ‘shock’ for a DPS when they get into a group. They still use the same large set of skills they were using before. The difference here is the healing abilities a healer uses have slim to no use in most MMORPG’s when doing solo play. This is part of the problem. Healing is important, it needs to be important all the time, not just part of the time. It should be the focus identity which makes the class. If you give healing abilities to this character, but they only use them once in a while or never at all when playing by themselves, I call that a problem. The ability you use the most, is your core. When you are by yourself, as a healer, are you using your core? Or are you playing some other class when you solo?
Why not just have no pet, and make healer classes squishy enough they need to use their healing abilities on themselves a lot.
My question to this is: how does this help to build the idea of healing in a group situation, where you care about your mana bar and your parties health? Let’s also keep in mind the pet a healer would be using is constantly attacking which helps build damage on the enemy. Even while the priest heals, they would be contributing to the defeat of their enemy which would help ease the amount of time it takes for the healer to solo. Everyone is going to have a difficult time soloing, but let’s not make it an ‘absurd’ waste of time where healers take 5 times longer to kill something because they have to keep healing themselves or they will die.
Wait … what happens when you’re in a group? Would you still have a pet?
No. And there are a lot of things you can do to ‘disperse’ your pet. One idea is your pet may be tied to a buff you give your allies—pet out, no buff. But disperse your pet while in party, it becomes a significant buff for everyone.
What other games did something like you are suggesting?
Mystic class from Tera
Scholar class from Final Fantasy 14
Cleric w/ druid soul from Rift
Devoted Cleric w/ Tanking pet from Neverwinter
Aren’t those theme-park MMORPG’s that are too easy? Why would you want to take anything from them? It’ll ruin OUR game!
I trust VR has the ability to learn from other games and apply what ‘makes sense’ to their own. Pantheon is a modern MMORPG, and as such, will be looking at the small successes other games have had but staying away from their failures. IE: easy-mode mechanics.
I consider some of the approaches these games have had to healing to be of monumental importance for game design.
Adding a pet to the classes which heal would fundamentally change the ‘feel’ of that class. It’s just not how the vision of X class should be.
Truth be told, flavor is important, and I would sacrifice a lot to keep it. Including this design suggestion. However you could try to appeal to the flavor in some way and still have the pet. Such as a Totem pet, or a small pillar shield being wielded by an invisible person.
What if I don’t want to heal on my character, what if I want to do lots of damage and debuff my enemy? I don’t WANT a pet.
If you pick a class who’s entire existence is to be the healing back-bone of the group, with a little fluff of diversity, then this suggestion applies to you. Again, it’s a suggestion, there are people who hate pet classes. If you don’t see the value in this suggestion, that is fine. But there is the thought of seeing value for others, not just for yourself.
And hey! I’m sure it’s entirely possible to consider healing yourself to stay alive also being able to do damage to your enemies if they hit you in the last X seconds. There are a lot of idea’s out there.
I hate your idea, I hope VR never considers it.
This is just a suggestion. A turn of the rubix cube. A conversation. Try not to get too passionate about this. We all come from different backgrounds and we all are looking to have the best time looking forward. Try to be respectful with your disagreement. Leave sarcasm and name calling at the door. We are all part of the same forum family.
TL;DR
Suggestion to add tank pet to every healer class
This will help healers identify with their role better due to the heavy cohesion they have with their tanking pet.
Thanks all for reading.
Stay constructive, and positive.
-Todd
Neat idea, but sounds alot like a necromancer or mage. Why not just have a training dummy that can simulate taking damage from either an easy/even/hard mob and you, as a healer, have to keep the dummy healed or it "dies." If you overheal, you will actually start taking damage, etc. That way, no pets but a healer can get used to the ebb and flow of group battles?
I like it a lot. I played a cleric to 60/65 (can't remember) in EQ and was always disappointed with the restricted feel of it compared to pretty much every other class. I was so excited when I got the Hammer spell, but so disappointed it was 'dumb' and fragile and combat duration only.
I would love a Guardian Angel for my Cleric. Don't like pets? Just lay it on yourself like a buff. In a group? Lay it on the tank. Soloing or don't have a tank? Set it free to tank the monster and keep it healed.
You could make it relatively weak, so when you come to healing in a group it's relatively easy! Hehe.
You could make it relatively weak, so when you come to healing in a group it's relatively easy! Hehe.
You know, I did think it would be an interesting touch if healing your pet was difficult, and when it came to an actual group the stats on the 'player' tank plus their abilities made them easier to heal. I guess you could think of it as prep'ing the healer for omg situations all the time. But then I think that might be 'picking on them' which would not be my intent. Like most things, its not one way or the other, it's a little bit of both.
I would hope that as the game is very group focused that there would be plenty of grouping from level 1 which should lead to people learning to heal without the need for a pet.
Unfortunately this wont be the case all the time. It is going to be great for people just starting to play at the launch of the game, but give the game a year or two and even the mentoring system wont help new players with no friends find a good group consistantly (or at all).
im just gonna say 'no'
but sine you made the effort to make a long post, it IS a slippery slope. healer has a helpful pet, - why not the tank that has a helpng dpes pet? or the dps a helping tank or heal pet? as soon as one archetype gets this helpful thing, everyone wants it. you might be right that a damage class doesnt change too much solo or group, but that doesnt matter. people will want it , cry they dont have it, etc.
dps should solo with killing fast but being lower on health at the end
tank should solo with mitigation, less health loss, but longer fights
healer should solo with, well, healing and probably longer fight
CC/utility should solo with strategy, or the risk of utter failure
just my humble opinions
Clerics can solo reasonably well. Root/Undead DDs/Heal/Divine Aura/Pacify spells/Invis vs. Undead (and ability to res upon death) allow clerics to be able to solo well in certain locations. Given that it is a Brad game again, I expect the spell lines to be similar. Warriors/Rogues without any utility had it much worse.
So, if you viewed soloing - grouping on a sliding scale of 0 to 100 where you can't solo at all is 0 and you can solo to 50 is 100, the closer you move to 100, the less you need groups. And, with EQ, which I'd consider about the least solo friendly MMO, I'd view clerics at around a 20-25 with warriors/rogues at about a 5-10 depending on gear and mob level. You could perhaps give rogues/warriors a few more skills to bump them to a 15-20, but no more than that as you would start blurring the lines of needing a group. I knew many clerics that soloed in Unrest and Gukbottom and did well both exp-wise and lootwise.
And, EQ's resource management was punishing, and I doubt it will take quite as long to med/regen from OOM as it did in early EQ, so I think you'll be able to solo reasonably well again given the right gear, mob level, and circumstances in Pantheon, but not nearly as effective as grouping, and, with a group focused game, I'd argue that as a good thing regardless of how the population will look years down the line.
I tend to look at engaging the post launch population conversely - I'd rather find ways to engage the population to bring people together years down the road versus spreading the population out and implementing mechanics that leads to more anti-social behavior even if a player was in the same zone. One system that Pantheon has looked at is the progeny system, and depending on how it's implemented, it could produce a steady flow of alts.
We started having a pretty good discussion on the progeny system over on the champion forum:
http://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3542/my-idea-for-the-progeny-system-champion-edition
Mages had healing spells for their elementals. I remember having to load two, the best and the next one down ( about 6 levels down) when soloing at 65 in Natimbi. The re-cast time was so long sometimes I could barely cast a fire sheild on the elemental or even a DD spell on the monster just to keep the elemental alive. and by the time one resolved the other was avaliable- Small heal, then *whew* large heal! but not enough! Cast a spell, watch mana. Had ot med to full after each one. If I pulled an add, had to zone.
But I had no undead specialty, nor invis to undead, nor hide! ( wizards got hide?!? unbalanced! lol) no root, just rocks, or air, or water, or fire. was...awesome, and lonely sometimes.
Clerics could wear plate, though, they could certainly take a hit. tough stuff.
I would say:
Druid - as it applies to lore - meaning things like plants and/or animals.
Shammy - as it applies to their spirit totem - meaning an animal associated with the lore for the RACE that a shammy is from. Somehting like an Ogre shaman having a Dire Wolf, A Dark Myr shaman having some form of turtle or alligator, etc.
Cleric? Not really.
Well I will say it needs to make sense for the class. And Im definitely not a huge fan of pets in general or FFXIV. But I thought FFXIVs Scholar was a very cool idea for a healer. Of course in that case it wasnt a tank as much as it was an interesting way to have healing mechanics work. Scholar is an extremely powerful healer but requires a bit more finesse due to constant pet placement. And the Scholar alone cant heal very well by itself so that power is bulked up by its healing Fairy pet. This is a healer pet (if there was any) idea I could get on board with because its intersting and it keeps it all in the same wheel house. Healers heal. Tanks tank. etc etc. And emphasise class interdependency while reducing homoginization........... which includes over hybridization of roles (Im looking at you Shaman, Bard, etc but thats another thread)
Kilsin said:Sylee said:Shamans in Vanguard had pets.
And they suited the class very well! :)
And is there any reason they shouldn't suit a 'cleric' in Pantheon?
It already sounds like there are to be two 'flavours' of cleric in Pants: A robed one and an armored one. So, sure, perhaps the fully-armored battle-priest doesn't need any pet - I see that as the EQ priest (in my opinion in EQ you suffer badly from a lack of variety and ability but *shrug*) but the robed 'pure' healer may well need more protection and might be even more at the mercy of the 'find a group or sit on your arse' situation than the EQ cleric.
Yes, in an MMORPG the ideal is to find a group, but we all know that there's lots of times you can't or don't want to for good reason. I think it's unnecessary to have certain classes be 'gimped' when soloing. It costs nothing to give parity to other classes.
I think adding some variety and solo capability would lead to more clerics being made and so more groups finding clerics, not less. Is making tanks and clerics unsoloable really the answer to making sure there are tanks and clerics available for groups?
I think a lot of people's thinking here is "the cleric is fine as it is", but the cleric I'm talking about is a Pantheon cleric. What are they like? Actually re-reading the blurb for cleric class in the Pants website, I would really urge the Pants People to think of giving clerics a little more flavour then just that super-strong-but-boring-after-a-while spearmint. Hopefully it's not set in stone yet ;)
I must have missed something: A robed healer? Only thing I ever heard of something like that would be a Blood Mage. That isn't a bad thing and also, the Blood Mage had a pet... IMHO that was the most influential "outside-the-box" thinking character developed in MMOS in a VERY long time. I would be all for the re-hash of something like that.
Nephretiti said:I must have missed something: A robed healer? Only thing I ever heard of something like that would be a Blood Mage. That isn't a bad thing and also, the Blood Mage had a pet... IMHO that was the most influential "outside-the-box" thinking character developed in MMOS in a VERY long time. I would be all for the re-hash of something like that.
There's lots of examples of robed (as opposed to armoured) healer classes in MMORPGs.
From https://www.pantheonmmo.com/classes/cleric/
"Armor: Heavy Plate Armor, Plate-Woven Raiment"
There has been some previous discussion: -
Sevens said: "It's a mixture of plate and woven raiment for more caster sided Clerics instead of full plate for the more defensively inclined Clerics.
This is a response I was given when asked about Plate woven raiment. Wonder if full plate will have bonus to buffs cast where as Woven will have bonus to heal spells..."
disposalist said:It already sounds like there are to be two 'flavours' of cleric in Pants: A robed one and an armored one.
Not sure where you are seeing a robed cleric mentioned, all I see is Armor: Heavy Plate Armor, Plate-Woven Raiment (raiment btw is a fancy word for clothes, even if its a robe its a plate robe)
Anyway my initial response would be no, after thinking about it my response would be 'if done right and only on one class'
A healer doesn't need a tank pet, they really don't need a pet at all. But if they were to get a pet I'd rather it be a healing pet, something that adds to or offsets the classes current healing. However in now way do I think its something that should be given to all healers, nor is it something a cleric should have.
I know tawd you say that you like playing healers but a few of your posts are about changing how healers play drastically. And I think thats fine to do for a new class, but not for every healing class and not for classes that have long standing history throughout all fantasy lore. Also everyone has to remember that not everyone else is going to want to play the same way, giving options is good. So perhaps instead of aiming all of your desired changes at healers in general you should aim them at a specific class, or make a new class up entirely that has those abilities and play styles you're looking for.
@Disposalist & Nephretiti
I'm sure there will be benefits like more AC on the plate, and potentially more caster stats on the Raiment, but part of the confusion on the classes still is derived from the Kickstarter classes where there was a base class with two specializations. As it stands now, from all the information released, the cleric will be more of the traditional D&D style with added flair with the unique Pillar Shields.
Although, I'd be all for a Bloodmage class though - loved it in VG.
This reply is trying to ignore the argument relating to too many classes having pets first off.
I'm not sure I entirely like the idea. EQ had the shaman pet which could basically do this plus the shaman had dps output better than a cleric. The shaman pet did make a little bit of sense lore wise though. A reason that makes me stand behind the idea some is that while the cleric can heal itself while soloing (not that it's very viable early on especially) it has to get those heals and nukes off without being constantly interrupted by mob interrupts via abilities or normal damage. Root + nuke works except that you have to root between each nuke and that adds to the amount of mana it takes to kill a single mob all while still having to actually get the next root and/or heal off after the root breaks from your nuke.
A healing pet would certainly be interesting. Someone mentioned another game having one in a previous post - it had a small HoT that it could place on people right? Something like that where it could only be on a single player at once would be neat, especially if you could set its heal target.
Summary: I'm not entirely against them, but it needs to fit properly with how clerics are designed / and their Pantheon lore. If VR decides to give them a pet, I'm sure by the end of alpha it will be fairly well designed or simply trashed.
Kilsin said:Sylee said:Shamans in Vanguard had pets.
And they suited the class very well! :)
I remember this too. I also remember agro issues sometimes but that may have been my spell casting gone stupid. Found myself on that setting a little to much.
I remember it being very balanced approach and the first I had seen that fot a full healer class.
Ox
