A melee healing class.

[Shadowborn]

Alright so i've read a lot about wildstar recently, I'm fairly new to the hype train and I had a lot of catch up to do. I've came across tons of info and speculation, most of it concerning the two unrevealed classes. As announced one of those class will be a healing class, many people came up to the conclusion, by looking at screenshots and videos, that the last healing class was going to be a staff wielding melee healing class.

So here's my question to you fellow healers: What do you guys think about that ?

I've played a lot of healers in many games, I've tried all sorts of mechanics and resources but now that I think about it, I never really played a strictly melee range class as a healer. Most of the time, even if your character can be played melee ( wow's pally, rift's cleric, etc... ), by making him a healer you also make him a caster ish ( I know holy pally aren't strictly casters but you rarely use your melee attack on an encounter ). I can't help but think that I'd find a melee range healer kinda meh, wildstar's healing seems involved enough, I really don't know if I'll want to add more to the learning curve.

Or I'm simply over thinking it and it's just gonna be range casted healing spells with melee offensive abilities, what you guys think ?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Shardreg]

I have played a Warrior Priest in Warhammer Online and a Chanter in AION. Both are/can be considered "melee healers".

What can I say, it's ultimately a lot of fun!

Debuffing the mob/boss, giving your allies the ability to heal themselves while hitting it, casting quick heals from the front-line... it's a very mobile and agile concept.

And that's why I think it's a good fit for Wildstar: the above sentence describes pretty well how the game as a whole felt when I played it a GamesCom this year.

Thoughts?

[Shadowborn]

I have played a Warrior Priest in Warhammer Online and a Chanter in AION. Both are/can be considered "melee healers".

What can I say, it's ultimately a lot of fun!

Debuffing the mob/boss, giving your allies the ability to heal themselves while hitting it, casting quick heals from the front-line... it's a very mobile and agile concept.

And that's why I think it's a good fit for Wildstar: the above sentence describes pretty well how the game as a whole felt when I played it a GamesCom this year.

Thoughts?

Good points !

I do remember the warrior priest from WaR and it looked like a ton of fun. I'm just really concerned about being one of the main healers in a 40 man but also having to work from melee range, I just wonder how viable it would be. That said, you're also right about combats being very action oriented so I guess it'd fit the game fairly well.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Shardreg]

That said, you're also right about combats being very action oriented so I guess it'd fit the game fairly well.

Just judging from the PAX videos and my GamesCom glimpses, the boss fights have huge and complex telegraphs for their abilities.
If I remember correctly, one boss fight even turned the whole room into a telegraph except a spot around a single person of the raid/group.

I don't think it truly matters where you are in the raid, since this game is telegraph-based and not so much the traditional "melee range = death" dogma.

I could however also be horribly wrong.

Cheers,
Tilo / Shardreg

[Shadowborn]

Lol, fair enough. Thx for the input mate !


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[TheDutchess]

Melee range healing class in raids would probably be assigned to healing the melee people mostly i suppose, and yes probably be tasked with putting debuffs on the boss to make sure they hit less and heal people when they hit him. Could imagine it also being a bit like the shaman in WoW, with e.g. totems to buff the people nearby (aka the other melee folk and tank(s)). It sounds interesting, though not really my thing, but that's because i've never been much of a melee person other than for tanking.
Can't wait to see what they come up with for the remaining 2 classes though, would the other one be a ranged tank perhaps?

[Shadowborn]

Melee range healing class in raids would probably be assigned to healing the melee people mostly i suppose, and yes probably be tasked with putting debuffs on the boss to make sure they hit less and heal people when they hit him. Could imagine it also being a bit like the shaman in WoW, with e.g. totems to buff the people nearby (aka the other melee folk and tank(s)). It sounds interesting, though not really my thing, but that's because i've never been much of a melee person other than for tanking.
Can't wait to see what they come up with for the remaining 2 classes though, would the other one be a ranged tank perhaps?

Yeah, I pretty much came to the same conclusions.
Ranged tank, now that would be amazing ! I'm really trilled to see how every class in Wildstar can be either tank/heals and dps at the same time. If they do what they announced, it'll make raid leading so much easier, having the possibility to ask virtually anybody in your raid the become a tank or a healer is fantastic. It also give them so much tools, they wouldn't have to design whole raid zone with a set number of tanks in mind and could have encounters requiring crazy amount of heal or tanking due to the versatility of everyclass !

[Shardreg]

If you're scavenging through the internet and the YouTube videosphere, other than the "Medic", you'll find mention of the "Engineer" - the dataminers are relentless, really!

So let's try to figure this out. We've got so far:

Warrior
Spellslinger (note: sLinger, not singer! It's from Gunslinger, not some elvish drek)
Stalker
Esper

Additional classes (suspected):

Medic
Engineer


Warrior
Melee Dps and Tank

Spellslinger
Ranged Dps and secondary Heal

Stalker
Melee Dps and Tank

Esper
Ranged Dps and primary Heal

What does that leave us with - or rather: what does that leave us without?

Medic
Primary Healer and Melee Dps

Engineer
Debuff and (Melee/Ranged) Dps


How does that sound? Pretty good, hm?

The reason why I'm excluding a ranged tank is that I have trouble seeing it from a game-play and balance perspective. Here's why:

While it could easily be done in class design (e.g. throw in ranged aggro, mitigation and avoidance, etc.), the interaction with bosses and trash would be difficult.
How do you solve positioning in boss design to account for the possibility of both, ranged and melee tanks?
How do you create sets of boss abilities to account for it?
How do you balance it in PvE for solo play (read: farming)?
How do you integrate a ranged tank in PvP?

Those would just be the tip of the proverbial iceberg for me.

Anyone fancy taking a stab at solving those?

[Shadowborn]

...
While it could easily be done in class design (e.g. throw in ranged aggro, mitigation and avoidance, etc.), the interaction with bosses and trash would be difficult.
How do you solve positioning in boss design to account for the possibility of both, ranged and melee tanks?
How do you create sets of boss abilities to account for it?
How do you balance it in PvE for solo play (read: farming)?
How do you integrate a ranged tank in PvP?

Those would just be the tip of the proverbial iceberg for me.

Anyone fancy taking a stab at solving those?

I'll try

-With telegraphs, specially if you saw the latest dungeon and raid presentation, I get the feeling that having a melee tank isn't required, all the bosses' attack patterns seems to be room-wide and not specially aimed at the tank. ( also the tank spec skill set could be like low range for mechanic purpose ) So that kinda tackles your first 2 concerns.

Range tank solo pve - This one is tricky, but in all honestly since all classes have some form of utility I don't think they'd have a hard time tuning this. ( if it's to hard to do solo content with the utility spec just switch to the dps spec, and vice-versa. )

Range tank pvp - not a big pvp dude, it's hard for me to really mesure the implications of a range tank but really, I get the feeling that it would kinda be useless ? I mean, clearly, a range tank's dps would be kinda low so the only real use would be a CC bot ? I guess it all comes down to : What will be the skill set. ( and I don't think that having unviable specs for certain aspect of the game is a design flaw. )


The thing about the engineer, and the reason why I don't think we will see a pet class is that, Wildstar in general is movement and awareness heavy. I get the feeling that having to control your pet trough telegraphs plus having to take care of your own toon would kinda be nightmarish.
Also, I really doubt that they'll make a unique utility role, like a debuffer or something, cause so far they are trying really hard to give everybody versatility. So let's say you play the Engineer, the only class in the game able to be a 'support' ( not a healer but a support ), nobody will want you to dps in raids or elder gameplay, there's plenty of dps, people will WANT you to do that unique role. See where i'm getting at ? I think that would not follow their class design guidelines.

In pretty much any other game I would've laughed at the idea of a ranged tank, but in wildstar.... that could be doable I think.

[Shardreg]

With telegraphs, specially if you saw the latest dungeon and raid presentation, I get the feeling that having a melee tank isn't required, all the bosses' attack patterns seems to be room-wide and not specially aimed at the tank.

And you still have to account for auto-attacks that would make the boss move from his position, running towards the (ranged) tank.

Which is probably the biggest issue with it.