Goblin Squad Member
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I don't know that the buffs are best served as being timed only. I think a far better option might be to have them be a charge(s) that is cast on a target until the next time they use an ability that would expend that charge. Have it decay off after several seconds (say 15), this would allow for groups to have some effective prefight buffing that wouldn't imbalance the entire fight.
That's good to hear Urman. Maybe I just need to develop the player skill to do running heals too, and perhaps I shall. I'm curious if those clerics have alpha-testing experience as clerics, or they just learned it faster than me in their first day because they were stubborn and wouldn't set it aside.
But if clerics can't heal well on their first day of play, a lot of them are going to set it aside and do something else to contribute to their group's success, even if that something else is just dishing out DPS.
It will be interesting to see how many players (including me) take a second crack at being clerics if they see others doing it well.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why does my healer have to kill thousands of creatures to level up his healing?
Your healer is in the same boat as my fighter. If I try to "grind" those kills, I will loose my mind.
If I just have fun and play my fighter in a non-grindy way, those kills will come naturally over time (weeks, months, years of play..) with out me even noticing it. Its a matter of perspective.
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Why does my healer have to kill thousands of creatures to level up his healing?Your healer is in the same boat as my fighter. If I try to "grind" those kills, I will loose my mind.
If I just have fun and play my fighter in a non-grindy way, those kills will come naturally over time (weeks, months, years of play..) with out me even noticing it. Its a matter of perspective.
I was grinding goblins solo for a while when a nice man from the west came along to help mow down some bandits to kill an hour or so, and I have to say group play makes this not only easy to get achievement progress reasonably but is also fun.
Besides if you die, at least then someone can laugh about it and you both learn something new.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I do hope that at some point there is a achievement track for non-damaging orisons. It might take a lot more casts than kills, because of the risk, and because each kill probably represents multiple casts. But it's EE. We maybe should crowdforge/clamor for such a thing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Early Enrollment is all about Crowdforging. If you have thoughts about how to make things better, share them with the community; they actually have a pretty good chance of impacting the development of the game.
I think the suggestion for a movement effect on some heals that brings the Cleric to their target is a great example of this, and I hope it gets enough support to catch the devs' attention.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... as a gate to healing.
I think that's where you're losing the plot.
It's not a gate to "healing", it's a gate to Cleric Feats, which include healing and attacking. And I doubt you'd have much success swaying the community to clamor for a Role dedicated to only healing, with no attack Feats, which is the only way to make sense of having no attack-related gating.
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Why does my healer have to kill thousands of creatures to level up his healing?Your healer is in the same boat as my fighter. If I try to "grind" those kills, I will loose my mind.
If I just have fun and play my fighter in a non-grindy way, those kills will come naturally over time (weeks, months, years of play..) with out me even noticing it. Its a matter of perspective.
But at least a case could be made that your fighter is fighting and practicing the skills related to that.
My healer killing creatures (by the hundreds and thousands) serves absolutely no role in helping my healing skills.
It's the equivalent of saying that before you can become an architect you have to grow 1000 plants. There is no relationship or correlation. It's normally absurd in video games but in PFO it is even more absurd because of the way XP is broken out. The game is NOT saying I need experience.. it is saying that I have to slaughter creatures as a gate to healing.
Right, but how else are you going to practice your Healing Arts but in combat?
Stay twisty friend ;)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Perhaps the orison trainers simply expect their students to be seriously competent with a battle focus, and kill-counts is an easy way to establish that you won't put someone's eye out with the focus, flailing around in a classroom envisonment.
In some future Golarian world, the battle focuses will have LED displays that show how many times they have been used, so the trainers can admit or refuse students based on some other metric, but for now, kill-counts is what they use.
And I don't think you need to kill thousands of foes right away. 1250 for focus expert 7, as a gate for Lv4 orisons, at week 3 or 4 in game?
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No issues with the alleged "grinding." Nothing in the game is forcing me to grind right now. I've hit no gates and won't for the foreseeable future. If I choose to grind enough so that I can bypass gates months in advance, that's my choice.
As a PFO player who DOES NOT play a full cleric (and so I'm blissfully ignorant to their finer aspects), I expect that many of the buff complaints here are coming from people who are frustrated with *Orisons* because they're not *Spells*.
As a tabletop player, I do have to admit that I don't like seeing clerics somewhat pigeonholed into healing full-time. I understand that some of those issues can be solved by spells' power later, but I've always been fond of versatility in my characters, and a battle cleric (mace/shield plus buffs/healing) should be doable without someone dying from lack of focus spam.
P.S. As a non-combat character who took the touch-range Minor Cure to help support a party of dual Whirlwind-ers: Ouch. Please stop hitting me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... as a gate to healing.I think that's where you're losing the plot.
It's not a gate to "healing", it's a gate to Cleric Feats, which include healing and attacking. And I doubt you'd have much success swaying the community to clamor for a Role dedicated to only healing, with no attack Feats, which is the only way to make sense of having no attack-related gating.
Far closer to the lore and the systems PFO is built on, you're being gated by the divine power that gives you your spells. That being has enemies and requires you as their agent in the world to not only provide succor to the weak but to go out and smite enemies of the church! THAT is why you must go forth and kill.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My healer killing creatures (by the hundreds and thousands) serves absolutely no role in helping my healing skills.
I believe their is a disconnect between how you envision a "healer cleric" and what a "PFO Cleric" is. The former is a TT specialized cleric build dedicated to one aspect of a clerics potential; the latter is a badass* mid-field warrior, divine spell caster, and damage dealer who also happens to toss in a few heals now and then. :)
*=Eventualy
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P.S. As a non-combat character who took the touch-range Minor Cure to help support a party of dual Whirlwind-ers: Ouch. Please stop hitting me.
LOL.
Wait until your mages use wraith's cry.
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Goblin Squad Member
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But at least a case could be made that your fighter is fighting and practicing the skills related to that.
My healer killing creatures (by the hundreds and thousands) serves absolutely no role in helping my healing skills.
Your deity insists that you not sit back in the temple growing fat on the labour of the flock. I bear a gift that will give you all the tools you need to protect your god's people, and in return the deity demands that you make inroads among the blight of the undead that are infesting these lands. Do this in the name of your god, and it shall open unto you a world of new powers that you may display greatness in your service.
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P.S. As a non-combat character who took the touch-range Minor Cure to help support a party of dual Whirlwind-ers: Ouch. Please stop hitting me.
LOL.
Wait until your mages use wraith's cry.
I expect I'll enjoy it as much as I enjoyed my serving of Burning Hands.
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Goblin Squad Member
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P.S. As a non-combat character who took the touch-range Minor Cure to help support a party of dual Whirlwind-ers: Ouch. Please stop hitting me.
LOL.
Wait until your mages use wraith's cry.
As someone playing a mage, this is an issue. If I'm surrounded, the "go to" spell for me is wraith's cry just to survive. If I've got someone standing near me, I try not to use this spell to avoid collateral damage. I appreciate the trade-off/choice that has to be made but anyone playing a cleric is going to have issues with touch cures. We are not robots and can't optimize.
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Please change the range on Cleric spells, if you don't want to turn it into a "watch heal bars" experience do this:
Give clerics range but put their heals on a a decently lengthy time, say 10 seconds, so they cannot spam heals. I don't really care what you do, but you all trying to tell us that making heals only be touch based is because that's how the tabletop functions is kind of silly. What about the other things from tabletop you've changed in PFO? Why be so adamant about translating healing from the tabletop to healing in an MMO?
TL;DR
This isn't working; no really, it isn't.
(Let me clarify: Yes, it is FUNCTIONING. But is it functional or fun? No, in my opinion it is not. I seriously have to constantly mash keys over and over whilst chasing allies this way and that.)
:/
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Goblin Squad Member
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I will be shocked and very disappointed if they change low level healing spells to be ranged. It has already been said higher level spells will have ranged heals in the mix but no it should not be the norm. I for one will be very happy if the touch healing forces the twitchy running around seen in pretty much every other MMO to GO AWAY.
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Goblinworks Lead Game Designer
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Hey guys, just to let everyone know we are all keeping an eye on the thread.
A thing to keep in mind is the current list of achievements is not intended to be all the achievements in the game; we want to have healing achievements, saving people from bleeding out achievements, wizard kill achievements based on wand or staff type, etc. Problem is right now we have no tech for detecting when these things happen, so yes while we would like to get more achievements in for clerics (and wizards), we have to balance it against things like getting achievement points showing up on your character sheet, making Attacker flag functionality clearer, PvP looting, etc. It's always a trade off.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It is very hard to do something different now in MMOs. If you design roles as people are accustomed to from years of experience in multiple games, then you're a clone. If you do something different then it breaks player experience/expectation/skill specialization, and they get unhappy.
Re: grind/gating/achievements. I was vocal about alternatives in the past. I came to realize like other posters above it comes down to playstyle. People who play regularly and have to wait for xp to accumulate will not notice the gates. Casual players, or very focussed playstyle (pvp only, optimum builds, roleplayers) - or essentally any group that allows large amounts of xp to accumulate and then want to advance ranks quickly - will feel very restricted.
A lot of it comes down to the design vision of how we are expected to play.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I didn´t read the whole thread, so i apologize if someone pointed this out already and i just missed it.
Minor Cure:
What i would like to know here is this.
What is the plan for leveling it?
In the last build i leveled it to level 4 and used it with a T2 focus.
I still healed 50hp. regardless of armor worn by the target.
For now i will keep it at level 1 till training it up actually does something.
Healing and flags:
We noticed in the last build that once a member of your party got the aggresor flag he could no longer be healed by other people in the party.
-> I presume this is not wai, so what are your plans for this?
Gedichtewicht of Brighthaven,
I'm really really new, but it seems that most feats aren't worth raising levels on if you can't match the keywords to make it worthwhile.
In PvE I am running only the first level of my feats, and I and my friends are killing stuff wonderfully, including groups with reds and purples.
I doubt I have a single keyword matched on gear yet, nor do I do anything to consciously take advantage of states like "Distressed", yet in my feat use.
Yet stuff is dying well, and we aren't dying much.
I'm guessing minor cure gets better by matching keywords, and that there are better keywords to match at higher levels.
But I'm still a clueless newbie, so I could be mistaken.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Way too early (for me) to make any final call on the touch based "assisting" healing / buffing (as opposed to self healing / buffing), but at least in PvP it does have a few challenges to overcome (I have no doubt that it will have its uses for certain PvE encounters):
- exposing the healer and target to AoE damage
- exposing the healer to friendly fire
- relatively weak (spammable) heals (at least so far)
In practice this may mean that in most cases trying to use a touch based heal / buff on someone in PvP "in the thick of things" is simply an inferior choice to e.g. doing straight DPS to the opposition.
This is not an easy issue to solve as the outcome tends to be that healing/buffing is either so good that they are a "must have" or not good enough to be worthwhile (at least for the min-maxers among us).
I would be interested in seeing how the formations work, though, before making any drastic changes to the current system, as clerics seem pretty well equipped to stand in the frontlines toe to toe with the fighters.
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From my perspective, the current status quo of gameplay mechanics makes dedicated healer party members not particularly useful.
1. Aggressor flagging makes healing a aggressor party member impossible.
2. Touch range healing is not feasible due to friendly-fire damage from AoE attacks.
3. Touch range healing makes it difficult to get to somebody in time to heal them before death.
Additionally, since there is no limitation on a mostly-fighter type character at taking a healing orison, the dedicated healer becomes less necessary as you can easily heal yourself.
More effective to have people be less squishy and/or have everybody train minor cure, and disengage from the fight to self-heal.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just a stray thought, but having Clerics be somewhat constrained in their ability to heal everyone on their team will probably very significantly reduce the other team's incentive to focus fire them into oblivion, which might make it more fun to play.
Just a stray thought, but having Clerics be somewhat constrained in their ability to heal everyone on their team will probably very significantly reduce the other team's incentive to focus fire them into oblivion, which might make it more fun to play.
I hadn't considered that, which is pretty stupid, since in Eve-Online I fly logistics (repair ships) and my nickname ought to be Primary. :-)
Of course, how easy is it to identify who the clerics are in this game?
(I'm new, and my bloodthirsty mates kill every stranger we see long before I can figure out our target's role).
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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Minor Cure:
What i would like to know here is this.
What is the plan for leveling it?
Healing will eventually change to a small flat number plus a percentage of max HP. Healing will eventually scale based on Effect Power vs. Effect Protection. I'm waiting on tech for both.
Healing and flags:
We noticed in the last build that once a member of your party got the aggresor flag he could no longer be healed by other people in the party.
-> I presume this is not wai, so what are your plans for this?
This is a weird interaction of the convenience fix we put in to have Beneficial effects target you instead of your enemy target so you don't accidentally heal the monsters. We need to get some overrides in so settlements/compaines/parties keep people green even when they should be red, and then a further override command that lets you go "I know helping that guy will tag me into the fight, turn me hostile to his enemies, and maybe cost me a rep hit, but I want to do it anyway."
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Promised AAR:
-Couldn't find Strength Surge, the most promising orison.
-Resistance is typically more effective than Lesser Cure.
-Four buffs on two characters is possible briefly iff they stay still and near each other.
The test was cut short due to events, but I stand by my assertion that the best orisons are dominated by the best buff cantrips.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Balance?
Orisons are weak compared to weapons on cantrips
Buffs and not scored as divine events, but are limited to effects to balance other actions. So buffs can not be more or longer as they will unbalance play, but there is no measure or gain to clerics for doing them.
heals are not scored as divine. So heals/cure can not be more or ranged as they will unbalance play, but there is no measure or gain to clerics for doing them.
Most of orisons are buffs or cures, which do not advance clerics. 20 M orisons are weak compare to wizards cantrips. Melee orisons are very weak compared to weapons or wizard cantrips.
THis is balance!
A cleric is to provide support and not be credited for doing so.
A cleric is to fight undead, but most orisons don't work (what works against bloody skeletons). While clerics should be 'focused' on undead so few osrisons actually work. weapons work better than orisons!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Which equipped feat determines if you call yourself a cleric? Is it the Class Feature, the Armor Feat, or Implement? Or do you have to have all three? I ask this because in one of the groups I was in, I saw heals and buffs being thrown around by 4 of the 6 members at some point, cloth wearers leather wearers plate wearers, bow wielders, stealthed, and I have no idea which one was the cleric.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I doubt I have a single keyword matched on gear yet, nor do I do anything to consciously take advantage of states like "Distressed", yet in my feat use.
well, i doubt that;-) you will at least match the first keyword on your attacks and weapons and probably on your armor and armor feat.
look forward to get excited by better equipment with matching better skills, it really is worth it.In fact, have a look at this excellent keyword guide.
...it seems that most feats aren't worth raising levels on if you can't match the keywords to make it worthwhile.
...
I'm guessing minor cure gets better by matching keywords, and that there are better keywords to match at higher levels.
It would´ve been ok if i hadn´t had keywords matched.
In my example i was using the lvl4 orison with a T2 focus, so i matched a major keyword(masterwork), but it still worked as the lvl 1 version. Because:]Healing will eventually change to a small flat number plus a percentage of max HP. Healing will eventually scale based on Effect Power vs. Effect Protection. I'm waiting on tech for both.
Ok, so it will change in the future, good, looking forward to that.
We need to get some overrides in so settlements/compaines/parties keep people green even when they should be red, and then a further override command that lets you go "I know helping that guy will tag me into the fight, turn me hostile to his enemies, and maybe cost me a rep hit, but I want to do it anyway."
Thanks or your answers Stephen, looking forward to this as well.
May i ask another question?
would it be possible to implement a "touch of Light" orison?
You know, like touch of darkness but doing holy damage for undead killing and maybe even not ding damage to living foes at all?
Or will something like that be in the channel energy ability once that goes live?
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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All I want to know is why, as a cleric, I'm stuck zapping things with a wand instead of being able to smite evil with a nice holy mace?
Divine attacks for other weapons are in the system but waiting on art approval, balance testing, and a decision whether it's worth holding them as faction rewards for when we actually get factions. But there's no real reason why you shouldn't see them soonish once we get that worked out.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Playing in EE as a Cleric:
Leveling is slow, as it probably should be. It's not that hard to gain focus levels, especially only using a focus. It is, however, grindy as hell. Grouping doesn't give you the focus levels. Killing mobs on your own does. Just depends what you want to dedicate time to doing.
Cleric Orisons:
"Holy Damage" doesn't do additional damage to undead. This confuses me as I believe it should do double damage, or at least 1.5x.
Minor Cure doesn't seem to scale up at all. It didn't in Alpha and I'd be surprised if that's been addressed. I've been using rank 2 with a +1 focus and +1 implement equipped and it still only does 50 hp. It crits, every now and then for 100, it appears. But if you want us to fill the role of constant healer, you're going to either need to up our mana pools or up the healing, especially when its only touch-based and my fighters, rogues and mages can't sit still. Some range on these spells would be nice.
Also, a focus should be usable with a shield, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Please let me know if I am wrong on this.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It crits, every now and then for 100, it appears.
I believe this is actually a result of the way the damage and healing numbers are displayed. It appears to me that two numbers coming in rapid succession sometimes get added together to show a single number. So, if you're spamming Minor Cure and get two 50 point heals in a short time, they will sometimes get added together in the display to show 100.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Also, a focus should be usable with a shield, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Please let me know if I am wrong on this.
I believe it is intentional that you cannot.
It's also worth pointing out that, if you did have a Shield in your Offhand Weapon slot you wouldn't be able to slot any Secondaries from your Focus, which means you wouldn't be able to use Minor Cure.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The eventual intention is that anyone with a ranged weapon in their right hand will need an ammo container in their left- either a quiver, or a charge gem.
I have a Guard's Quiver +1 and Steel Bodkin Arrows +1 (200) in my back pack, none of which are "equipped" on the paper doll sheet.
I have fired my Hunter's Longbow +1 dozens of time, and not lost a single arrow. Is this working as intended or bugged?
