Direct Healing In Guild Wars 2Follow

Hmmm, interesting indeed. I can't say I am very surprised at a low degree of direct target heals, but it is interesting that the Regen does not stack effect, only duration. I am somewhat sad that they are moving away from hexes and enchantments, I always thought that was a very fun system; proactive (protection) based healing was far more interesting that burst healing (imo), and having characters that operated almost exclusively though hexes was also a fun way to go. It really makes me wonder what mesmers will be like if they even exist (I really hope they do).

:) Amen, reverend!


Edited, Nov 23rd 2010 8:52pm by jadyness

You know, I'm wondering if we'll see some sort of delayed healing. I know there's pulse healing, but I'm going to assume that it starts to work the second its casted. What I'm thinking is whether there will will be traps and mark that cause healing when an ally passes over them, or when the caster triggers them respectably. For instance, a necromancer places a "Mark of Pure Blood," on the ground and after a short time, an ally gets close enough and the necromancer activates it causing the ally to get some pulse-healing. Respectably, a ranger could place a "Nurturing Mud Puddle," that causes regeneration only when an ally walks over it. Any thoughts?

Edit: Sorry for the double post, I thought someone had posted on this already... Silly me... (^^)'''

Edited, Nov 27th 2010 8:49am by TriggerSad55

I think it might be nice not to see much burst healing in the game. When I think about it, that seems like the mechanic that really led to the traditional Whack-A-Mole mechanic for healers.

I really like the idea of healing being placed on a spot in the ground. That makes getting healed the target's responsibility as much as the healer. It's past time that burden was shared instead of people leaning on healers as a crutch to save them from their own stupidity (Then blaming the healers when they die anyway).

I'm quite interested in how this will all work. I didn't really get on with Monk in GW due to the often chaotic fights and the targetting system, and as a frequent solo player most of my characters ended up with Monk as their secondary class just for self healing, as that was often more important than other skills that would be brought to the table.

I like the idea of each class being more able to look after itself, and I really love the idea of healing affects being placed on the environment rather than on a specific person. It's a nice step away from the norm of dedicated healer roles.

Nice info, Trigger, thanks. Consider yourself schollared :)

Yeah, though I do enjoy that aspect of healing when I play on my monk, it can get a bit tedious at times. I'm not going to miss the fact that I'm the teams life-line... Seriously, there were time where we were getting too much DPS and I couldn't handle it because I was the only monk or the other wasn't pulling their weight, and I'd still get blamed for the wipe. Then there were the over extenders that would ninja their way away from the party so when I went to heal them, my monk would start sprinting and I'd be soooo confused because of it. Then at the same time, someone back with the main party was about the get ganked, but by the time I canceled the first heal and started casting the other the second player would be dead! Then the over-extender would die and I'd get blamed for both deaths... Ugh!!!
...
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Um... Yeah, I'm glad that ArenaNet is take the initiative of getting the players to heal themselves... For the sake of sanity within the support community...



I was assuming the same since we're not getting a definite way of friendly targeting. Then there's the fact that not everyone is going to be in the same party, so support skill that place boons and heal people would be rather difficult. Think about it, in Guild Wars the game was instanced, so parties had their own little window to work with. If a member of the party needed some help, the support players would just click their names and do their thing. In Guild Wars 2, everyone will be playing in the same area at the same time, so there needs to be a more dynamic way of supporting other players. Argo, we have ground based support spells now...

Also, wasn't the "F" button used as the revive button in the demo? I'm not sure if that was it, but I do know that it was close to WASD...



Is that why I'm blue now?!? Cool, thank you for that!! :D
Yeah, it is a breath of fresh air to know that everyone is going to be able to take care of themselves. Now if you want to play support, it's going to feel less mandatory that you do so. It's going to be nice! :)



Oh, I missed that entirely... Then again, I don't play mess around with my ranger's build that much... I think I should, Glass Arrows is fun to use for the added damage, but I've been meaning to look at what else they have to offer. :P
Still, I can see where you're going with players placing multiple traps, but I thought you could only put down on of each trap at a time, or was I thinking about marks? :(



Oh, I guess there was a button in the demo then! Silly me! ;)


/EndSupaLongPost

Sorry, I misread your post then. I thought you wrote that rangers could place multiple of the same trap, but I knew about the trap limit they have. Though I didn't know that they only get triggered by enemies and only affect enemies... There goes my idea... :(
I also know that marks are necromancer only... I guess I should have written that better! :p

My question now is how will regeneration be applied exactly (unless is just varies on the skill that applies it), and better yet if it'll be a boon or not. I'm still a bit fuzzy on that... :(

Some nice little gems of info in this thread; thanks TriggerSad!

Don't thank me, thank Izzy for being nice enough to share the information the first place!! :)



That's what I'm thinking too, if you place one regen boon on a player, then another, then the durations just adds up. Unless they average themselves out, but I'm guessing that it's the first one. :p
And I'm sure that there will be some sort of cap on boons too. If I'm right, there's a cap set on bleeding which is a condition, since boons are like conditions, but are beneficial in nature, I'm assuming that they'll have the same limitations that conditions do. :)



Yeah, it's a breath of fresh air to know that boons and conditions aren't going to be as messy as enchantments and hex were in Guild Wars. They had some interesting features, but in the long haul, it's easy to see where the big flaws were with their mechanics. :)


Anyway, I made a visual aid of sorts on this and thought I'd share it, as well as with some of my thoughts on regeneration and pulse-healing.

The image can be found here!
http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j79/Ra-Se-Phan/HealingInGuildWars2.png?t=1291319263
The image can be found here!

Imagine that the black rectangles are players and the blue, red, and yellow circles are three separate pulse-heal areas. The green, orange, and purple sections are where two of the circles over lap with the brown section being where all three circles overlap.

Now then, if all three circles were to pulse healing at regular intervals, then the player in the brown section would be receiving the benefits from all three. However, since pulses don't stack duration and are their own separate areas, the health received won't happen simultaneously. If yellow had been placed first, with blue and red being placed later in that order, then it would go as such:

From my understanding, pulses aren't like boons, but more of an area-of-effect, such as Meteor.
A question about it though... How will we be able to manipulate the pulses? Will be able to change the frequency of the pulses or will be able to extend their duration on the field with traits? Remember, they aren't like regeneration where if you become affected by one then another, the time becomes extended. Instead, if one gets placed over another, the amount of health you receive increases. If one pulse happens to expire, the other one will still be there.

Now with regard to pulsing regeneration; here's what I think. Looking back at the picture I made, say that the blue and yellow circles are two elementalists' Healing Rain spells. Healing Rain pulses regeneration, so like with my first example, each Healing Rain will pulse a regen boon in their own, separate, intervals. Since regeneration does stack, the duration of the boon will just extend and extend until the player either leaves the area-of-effect or the spell expires. Now, the player in the green area will be receiving double the amount of stacks of regen boons as apposed to the players standing in the blue and yellows circles since he's being pulsed by both Healing Rains.

What I'm starting to assume is that the main ways a player will be receiving regeneration, or any healing at that, will be from pulses. Unless there's a secondary effect that heals a player or applies regen boons.

Edited, Dec 2nd 2010 2:54pm by TriggerSad55

Edited, Dec 2nd 2010 4:43pm by TriggerSad55

Ok, so Izzy sent me a clarification tweet! I feel dolty for getting mixed up... 0:)



He also sent a quick bit about stacking too!



Everyone give thanks to Izzy for being so nice! :)

Edited, Dec 2nd 2010 6:06pm by TriggerSad55

Thanks for posting this. :) Good stuff!

I notice the discussion has gone further on Guru2, but I don't think anything new has been added to our understanding of the system, has it? :)

I think the most interesting question that has come up is how stacking is handled for things like fear, cripple, daze, and the anti-cripple... haste, whatever it's called.

That is to say, if you allow daze or fear to stack in duration, that seems like a bad idea, particularly for PvP. Similarly, which is more interesting - allowing the duration of cripple to stack (potentially resulting in some poor SOB having 15 seconds of cripple stacked on them), or allowing the effect to stack? "Now I'm at 50% movement speed... crap now it's 40%!"

Oh, the suspense. I guess we have a big list of things to check at the next convention or trade show, huh?

Edited, Dec 3rd 2010 12:12pm by BriseBonBons

Interesting bits of info, thanks for posting it.

I'm perfectly fine with less focus in burst healing. I also like the idea of area-based healing that puts the responsibility on the target as well as the healer.

Clear visual effects for the healing area will be needed, however, otherwise you're deliberately interfering with the target's ability to take their own responsibility for their healing and I don't think that would be a good route to take. Make it clear for people to do it if you want them to do it.

I wonder if they'll have radius healing from the caster? That was a mechanic that was used in City of Heroes/Villains and I always thought it worked rather nicely. But then there wasn't dodge rolling in CoH/V and you tended to be more stationary ao that might not be as effect in GW2.

Edited, Dec 3rd 2010 9:12pm by InvincibleOverlord