I love building glass cannon dps,so my teams usually consist of buffers,shielders,and/or healers What I love even more is when those games have coop and you can punish people for thinking your supports are a weak choice,”I only chose to not bring my dps because you didn’t want to play healer,I get to decide if you should live”
In my experience running healer in FF14, I've kind of come to the opinion that the DPS is the easiest role to screw up. It's obvious when you're doing bad as a healer and tank, and obvious when you need to improve. DPS too often blame others for not performing their job correctly tho...
@@itsame7491It's not about the value though, healers are obviously valuable, especially in mmo raids etc, that complain is about perspective on the skill, like if you a healer main you're just worse at the game, which is personally i can't argue about bc never mained a healer in any multiplayer game.
One big thing that makes healers feel unfun is the tendency for designers to make a healing specialist who is ONLY capable of healing, and is terrible at everything else. If your healer can also do some damage, throw up mitigation like shields, and apply some status effects they will be much more interesting and fun than 'spam heal move forever' healers could be.
What healers should really be is the utility class. Something for them to actively do to support their team or weaken the foe, and heal their allies as their reaction. They're utility characters, and the healing is just the common secondary to all of them. It's why dedicated healers often don't work outside of situations like SRPGs.
I think instead of making healers less one note, let's remove him and give other classes utility. The dps applies a debuff that restores health on hit for all allies Tanks store damage in a buffer and can apply a healing/regen buffer in an aoe for a % value Mages apply shields on a spell for each target hit Something like that And depending on specialized role you get more or less utility Sure an assasin has all damage but no healing But the 'stalker' class might get a aoe burst of shield applied on unaware enemies or on backstab, something like that
@KingTwelveSixteen Exactly, healers should have different way to mitigate other people's damages, whether it is in the form of pure healing, temporary shields/HPs, %Dmg res or any payoff that depends on effective HP. Giving everything to everyone is the (most often shitty) design choice that ruined the role in a lot of modern games.
Ok so I really REALLY agreed with the part about healers (and other supports more generally) being insulted by extremely toxic players being a reason for people to quit the game. For context, I used to play League of Legends. My sister and I started playing at the same time, and often together, so we kind of gravitated towards bot lane where we could have fun together and coordinate a little easier than if we were on opposite sides of the map. I will admit, she was a better support than me (I generally had little to no situational awareness so naturally I was the perfect low elo ADC player). She perfected healing me and/or the entire team, throwing out any snares or immobility moves, she was really better at support than I was at trying to DPS anything. The number of times the toplaner would take a bad fight, die, and then immediately show up in chat to talk about how shit the Soraka was because he died (HER BURST ISN'T UP ALL THE TIME) was just ridiculous. To be entirely honest, the few times I got to be the carry, I would not have been able to achieve it at all without the Soraka or Lux or Leona or whoever she chose to play at the time. She was really probably only in a lower elo because of me tbh. In our last couple of months playing League, we switched roles so now I bore the brunt of the insults. Now I will admit, I was not the best support, so I did mess up quite a lot, but the amount of flak I would catch for something that was not even remotely my fault sometimes was just amazing. We both quit a couple of months later, because having a 0/15 Yasuo in chat type to the other team about how you don't even have a braincell is not something either of us enjoyed.
Support main here. If people flame you and it makes your experience worse, just mute chat. People are idiots and insulting other players is the easiest cop out for their lack of skill, they shouldn't be paid any attention. I hope you'll give League another chance and that your experience will be better ❤
@@MattHatter360I tend to main support in games and I am not ashamed to admit that when someone is toxic I find great joy in being even more toxic towards them. Refuse to heal or buff them and laugh at them while calling them noobs when they die. Don’t forget to be supportive to the rest of the team so they back you up when toxic gamers strike back and finally say that you while start healing them if they apologize, it doesn’t often work but it makes them very angry. I think if more games add the same mocking taunts that tf2 has then a lot more people could enjoy my brand of support.
IMHO, it's good you two quit League, don't go back. I quit league long ago and never went back as well. It can be fun, but it's overall not worth it. Regarding getting blamed and such, it's almost always the other person's ego was triggered. Like they made mistakes, played bad, etc, so they find someone else to blame so they won't feel as bad about themselves. So if you can, don't take any of it personally (but that can be hard to do, especially if you're new to such things). Like the harder they go at it, the more you can pity them, cause it's usually an indicator for how much the person actually hates themselves. This can apply to IRL and the workplace and such too, it's a pretty effective skill set to learn in the long run, cause you can use it to help de-escalate various situations.
Fellow support main and enjoyer here, I 100% felt this fr. People start insulting you even before your start the game. Whenever I played seraphine I liked to take tp instead of heals, it’s unconventional but it’s something I liked having. It was my style. And I was a damn good support btw. But man I still remember one game where I was paired with this random VLAD adc (a frickin VLAD bro) and the whole time the team was just flaming and nitpicking everything I did. Mostly by the mf that picked Vlad adc. It’s crazy bro
This, i love playing healer cause i like to choose wether my team deserves to live or die. I play the other role when i decide if the other team gets to live or die :3
Strangely enough, Honkai Star Rail has some of the most creative designs for healers. You got healers whose powers scale off ATTACK stats, healers with AoE attack, healers that tanks damages, healers that raises your crit rate, and so on and so forth. And I think that's what the other games are missing: healers who can do more than just heal.
Why doesn't genshin learn from their own games ;-; I suppose the ocean hued set can give atk but other than the set there's not exactly much healers who scale of atk only one being Bennet.
this is also true in the sense that healers are the archetype that get debuff dispel in hsr, and shielders dont, so in scenarios where you want to get rid of a impactful debuff healers are better than shielders
Healers with AoE or tank capacity is no to strange, at least in TRPG And any in many games the magic attack stats boost the healings But yeah, we need more healers with other tricks
I often enjoy playing healer characters because I know they're less played/appreciated. People are usually in demand of a healer so it feels nice to be wanted. I enjoy the feeling of helping my teammates be the MVP of the game. Watching others succeed is fun to me, as I don't mind being a more background presence. Really, the only negative experiences I've had being a healer is the perception some players have that healer players are inherently less skilled at the game. I've even heard it called "The Girlfriend Role" (which has its own set of extremely negative stereotypes). So sometimes, I've been accused in lobbies for picking a healer because I'm "bad at the game" and can't play a "real character". But those have been few and far between, and overall I find being a healer to be a mostly positive experience both from the game and the player communities
Im a healer main too and i am self admittedly not the best at video games. But i dont get why some people are so elitist about player skill. Im sorry i didnt grow up with fps and dont have fast reaction times. Thats part of why i am playing healer. Im going to be playing either way so would you rather me play poorly at a high skill role i suck at or play well at a "low skill" (healers just use different kinds of skills) character i am good at
@@zenmaster8 they're like that because they want to feel better than SOMEONE at this game. they perceive skill at this game as being an important goal, and by not being skilled, they're just a worse person. I know the idea, because I used to be like this in these games. I used to feel like I was awful just for not being really good at things. I never dogged on healers though, I love healers, always have. but their response is to find ANY reason to be perceived as better, even if it's just stupid or silly.
@@zenmaster8the most important skill in any video game is learning to acknowledge strengths and risks, and improving them for yourself and your team. Healing does not require quite the same diversity of skills as other roles, but it absolutely requires a mastery of the ones it does. You are skilled because you know how you work, and never let anyone convince you otherwise. They can gab all they want but they can't make you feel inadequate unless you let yourself agree.
@@Mechan1calMag1c1an yeah, like first of all it's okay to be worse at the game so it's stupid that people get mad at you for that, if that's what they think they should be happy you didn't pick a "harder" dps role where they think you'd cause them to lose. But also being antagonistic towards the "weak low skill healers" is how you get mile long dps queues with nobody wanting to heal, or just teams with no healers and everyone dies? So antagonising your healers for being bad at the game just screws yourself over
Being a healer in MMOs is the worst. You are literally useless if you don't have at least 2 party members. If you fail to heal your team, they will instantly ditch you and avoid you like the plague. If you are really good, they will literally stick to you like they have a crippling addiction and your heals are like drugs and you unknowingly became a dealer, and they will rely on you so much that they will always assign you party leader and eventually push you to become a guild leader and now you have more things to do aside from healing to the point that it's not fun anymore and super stressful that you just want to quit. Yes, I've been on that cycle for how many times already.
Depends a bit on the game. Healing defiantly can be a very awful grind if you are solo. Games that offer summonable pets or companions make it a lot better. But even better are games that let you bypass solo mob/quest grinding entirely and focus on other mechanics you enjoy more. For instance in EVE there is no level grinding and in ArcheAge I always just leveled via trading once I unlocked it 1 day in to my character's progression. In SWTOR I quest grinded a lot with my companion before I got sick of it and did all of the rest of my leveling via PvP arenas. As to being forced into being a guild leader. If you don't want to do that just attach yourself to someone who likes to lead so you can convey the authority they want to force onto you onto them. Guild leaders love nothing more than someone who plays a useful role and supports their authority.
Healers usually: "Stop running away and let m-... Every freaking time." Meanwhile, Hunting Horn users: "Bow before me mortals!" * Whacks fire-breathing dinosaur on the head with bagpipes *
Honestly, this is the real reason I even play bard in MH. The team buffs are a nice bonus; I here so I can smash dinosaur skulls with oversized anime bagpipes. Only if they introduce accordions as a new weapon type in a future entry will anyone be able to top that 🧐
Monster Hunter: fear my glorious melodies peasant!!!! (Yelled at a dragon the literal size of a mountain, it was never going to be a fair fight ....for the dragon.)
@@anarchyandempires5452 Me, in my head: (Monster the size of a mountain"... Uhhh, I guess that narrows it down, but there's still a quite a few it could possibly be... there's Raviente, Dalamadur and the Shah variant, I guess Lao Shang Lung and the Ash variant counts, then there's Jhen Mohran, Dire Miralis, Zora Magdaros....) Me: "🫡 Thank you Mr. Hunting Horn Main Sir! You shall have my hammer for whatever you choose to hunt next, cuz!"
I have fond memories of being the group healer in a team way higher level then me, allowing me to still play with friends and still be an important contributing member of the team. I think that's where my enjoyment of player healers started from, as it felt good getting thanked even though it felt like I wasn't doing as much as others at first!
There was a realm vs realm game I used to play, where the max lvl was 50, but I played a full support healer, purposely stayed at lvl 35 (where I maxed my healing tree), and also purposely only ever wore lvl 17 armor (I liked the way it looked vs max lvl healer clothes lol). I would get targeted all the time, but it was actually beneficial, cause I could bait the enemy and just let my random realm members kill them as I kited around.
yeah, games that have those are instantly bettter feeling for healers and supports, bc even if you know it's automatic, having sb (in this case the game devs) acknowledge your actions just feels nice, it's wild what little positive feedback can do to make the healer experience much better
I used to hate healer class bc men would always assume that was what I mained as a girl. But now I know it isn’t an “easy” role, it’s essential for most team comps and a good healer can carry a team through raids and other challenges. Plus I love the kitten ears on some of the white mage robes.
Many times, playing a healer just felt like being a babysitter. Especially for PuG/Pick-up Groups where you are just thrown into a run with some randos. You don't know each others' skill levels, how you like to play, nor even if they understand the level/have any experience with it whatsoever. So... I'm often just hard-carrying a group of idiots that refuse to listen or learn or prepare for the run in any way, shape, or form. And they are just legitimately terrible at understanding their class specifically and role in general. It's like being stuck babysitting a bunch of drunk people at a party. You don't really know these guys except for the fact you very much do NOT like them... but you get this feeling if you leave them alone they're just going to get themselves killed. And since no one else is stepping up to take care of these idiots... you sigh and commit yourself to keeping them from choking on their own vomit, drowning in the pool, stumbling off the balcony, etc. It's a very thankless job, especially since the idiots never learn a damned thing and often blame you when things go wrong. But you know what? I learned to take even that in stride. I gained so much 'experience' as a healer salvaging disaster runs with terrible randos that I could then take into more serious runs with my guildies. If nothing else, there is this rush of accomplishment when you hard-carry the short bus to the finish line. They'll never thank you... but you know goddamn well what you just accomplished.
Sounds like the men in question were right about you, and your only real problem was letting the feminists tell you how to think. (Especially given how cute you find the kitty ears :P)
@KopperNeoman or people just disliked being stereotyped by randoms even if it's true, also that last part was unnecessary and had nothing to do with the topic
This right here. If healers would have the same killing capacities as the other characters, like they do in Battlefield or Apex Legends, more people would play them
i love playing healer. i hate being swarmed by the enemy because my team let their guard down for like one millisecond. your team may overlook you and take you for granted but at least the enemy seems to think you're important
It's a bit of a skill issue. No amount of positioning can save you from your own team, but I've found that teammates tend to be very appreciative of seeing the hit points come back in clutch situations.
The concept of overheal is a good marriage of shielding and healing. You are given an incentive to use your healing skills even when the party is in good shape, and it's the same defensive benefit of mitigating incoming damage. I recall unlocking an overheal passive for a healer class in Etrian Odyssey 5 and it changed the way that healer class was performing.
Yeah. Or overhealing as buffing. In Genshin overhealing is incrdibly important if you want to use one of the best buffers of the game, Furina. You can only get her full buff if she is overhealed. Not to mention there are damage type that are actively causeing damage to your own charcters. If you don't have a healer, you end up dead pretty fast (bloom, hyperbloo, burgeon)
@@Vickiraytive You're lucky you picked Tighnari. For Dehya/burning to work, you have to have some dedicated characters like Emilie, who doesn't really work in any other team.
Fun video! As an ex edgy dps main turned dedicated supporter I loved hearing about the game design angle. I just want my friends to have as much fun as possible so I heal whenever it's needed and the joy of being there for others completely offsets any downsides.
As a jrpg enthusiast I vastly prefer having a good healer, I am a slow methodical player rather than being the best at making plays that dish out damage and a good healer is essential for my playstyle. I remember basically getting to a stalemate with the final boss in Bravely Default 2 because i had a hard time doing damage but i outhealed her constantly and suddeny i get the message that the boss si out of mp for their attacks and I was like "Did I just stall out the final boss??"
I feel like if you manage to stall a boss until they're out of MP, that you should get some sort of line from them along the lines of "Why won't you JUST DIE ALREADY!
In Bravely Default I used the generic method? which prevents all combat damage where you would Brave everyone to the maximum amount and then use the spell that prevents all damage from being done for two turns. In the same way, in JRPGs I find using gimmicks that damage dealers have for lifesteal or spell vamp, or good timing on interrupts or similar tools to avoid damage entirely rather than rely on heals. MTG has this where nobody uses temporary increases in toughness to survive combat because of the insane amounts of exile and destroy in the meta now. As in the video, there's a lot of difficulty in designing a game to need healers while also making healers optional, as majority of players are less geared towards healers.
I love being a support player, but I admit sometimes I wish healers had more going on than just heal. I remember going to Paladins and finding my place with Furia. A character that could both heal and still be a decent DPS, and recently in Marvel Rivals, I loved playing Loki with his mix of both healing and misdirection. I think giving a player the feeling of contributing more to combat outside of pure healing is the key to making a healer fun to play. Also, Gallagher is the peak rpg healer. I will not elaborate.
Not really on the same levels as MMOs and such, but I really liked how Battlefield Bad Company 2 made the healer the only class able to use machine guns. You became a solid support class that both healed your team and laid down heavy suppressive fire.
21:40 "sorry, forgot about Baizhu" Mika found dead in a ditch 💀. Kaveh, Gaming, Wriothesley and Neuvillette also heal, but only themselves (and every catalyst can heal the party with proto amber, but it's only really viable for Neuvi)
Even on neuvi it's a garbage weapon. I don't get why people like PA is the holy grain when it's literally just a terrible option no matter how you look at it unless you are f2p and coping hard
Every sword user can also heal for themselves, with the Black Sword from the BP. I use that at times in co-op at times for my Chiori, as between that and crystalize, she can happily self sustain.
@@Axterix13 Lol, that's kinda funny. I'm fairly in the weeds in terms of game knowledge, theorycrafting and such, but because I'm f2p, I don't even know what BP weapons do. But yeah, malenurse army grows!
@@GoldenOwl_Game Yeup. He was one of the characters brought into the conversation with Furina's release and ends up being a really good option for wanderer and some other main DPSs if you have her. Eula's best team is Furina-Mika-Raiden now, I believe, so one of the big arguments for not C6-ing Bennett went out the window. It wasn't as much of a deal as it was for characters like Jean or Noelle, but yeah, chocoboi got a moment in the spotlight recently.
I like that Gallagher’s in the thumbnail. He’s one of my favorite examples of a healer character, who essentially says to his teammates “Look, I CAN heal you, but you’re gonna have to attack the enemy if you want it. Don’t even bother building me with the usual healer stats, I’m just gonna keep attacking until they’re weakness broken.”
I've really enjoyed the moments in TF2 when I've been able to heal many as Medic. To me, being able to tell my self, "I did a good job helping the others stay alive in the match today." is satisfying and at least can hold me over until I actually get proper thanks from teammates.
You know what I personally love myself? Healers that can just get in there and beat up the enemy themselves. They're an independent man/woman and ain't needing anyone to cover for them, but being in a party is still appreciated for both themselves and the rest of the group due to the supportive capabilities they bring that enhances group perfomance as a whole... and often things go more efficiently even if they can take care of themselves if there's teammates.
@@edvingjervaldsaeter3659 In Paladins one of my favorites would actually be Khan who is *sort* of a semi-support lmao Haven't played that game in awhile though, servers were unplayable last I recall and people kept getting kicked back to lobby without warning
@@cyanthedragon6462 Well, glad to announce that the last 10 times I have played, I haven't had any problems on EU, even yesterday went about as smoothly as it can go with my... less than stellar internet connection, but still went really well
A Korean MMORPG I used to play, Dungeon Fighter Online, have character classes (the Priest class and specifically the Crusader subclass) that can dish out a fair amount of damage while providing healing, buffs, and revives. The game does split the classes into genders though so there's particular differences between the Male Crusader and the Female Crusader; mainly, M.Sader can be built up as a battle medic with a variety of attacks and attack/support skills. F.Sader does have offensive options but her kit encourages being more of a buff medic than the girl swinging a fuckhuge cross hammer into the enemy. Still doesn't stop people like me from building my F.Sader into a wrecking ball, but yeah.
I think the best approach to a healer is not just making them only healers, but also giving them their own way to dish out damage or do other useful things like dish out buffs. That way when healing is not needed a healer can do other things. I've played some games where the best choice for a healer can also turn around and hurl out devastating debuffs and has their own kind of limited bag of "I came to heal but I am all out of bubblegum" nukes to drop when push comes to shove.
This for sure My absolute favorite is when healer and buffer classes are merged into one and they become insanely bulky support for my fast glass cannons of dps.also whenever a game gives you an ability or item to convert hp% to dmg
Your comment made me remember of Hotarugusa in Onmyoji and her healing basing off her ATK because she functions by sucking the hp out of the enemies to heal herself on the basic move. I dreaded seeing one with a set that allowed her to counter-attack.
Arknights has an alternate form of Reed who can deal devastating DPS to groups of enemies by either spamming spinning fireballs on two characters to burn enemies up close or striking enemies to put up a special debuff that makes them explode and spread the debuff to other enemies hit by the explosion to trigger a chain reaction. This also gives her a ridiculous amount of healing based on the damage she deals
I feel like Genshin recently managed to break this curse with some fun design choices. It feels good seeing Kuki trigger a bunch of hyperblooms, and it feels good to use Jean’s burst knowing that it is fulfilling furina’s ult instantly and you are getting a bunch of damage out of it.
Bennett's already been doing that since day one man. Expanding on the Bennett-fication doesnt mean that Hoyoverse hasn't done it. Its just that nothing in Genshin deals enough damage to warrant just a straight pure healer and your healers or shielder better be bringing some other party buffs to the table alongside their healing.
@@matrinezkevin11492that's also consequently why Genshin doesn't put pure healers in their game. Every single healing character since Barbara has been able to offer something else teams want. Grouping, shielding, buffing, etc. Genshin is self aware enough to know that pure healers are almost always unnecessary and not balanced for the 4 team slots you have.
Some team like the one that has Furina and many fontanian hp drain character actually needs healer, Gaming constelation grant him more damage when he gets overheal
Hello. Healer main here. I’m not much for online team competition games, but I have played a few. When I played overwatch, I started with playing Hanzo and Reaper, but the main I settled on was Lucio. In Pokémon Unite, I was an Eldegoss and Blissey main. Ultimately, I like being the back line support. I don’t find it as stressful. UNTIL my teammates are complete ass. Occasionally in Overwatch and too many bloody times in Unite, I had the highest K:D. The fucking CLERIC had the highest K:D. It was the most tilting thing ever that I just stopped playing both games. In Dragalia Lost, I also liked playing Clerics in multiplayer lobbies. Again I found it more relaxing and that was actually successful for awhile……. Until the meta became blitzing offense and tossing clerics to the wayside. I then became good at ranged dps instead.
Lucio AND Eldegoss? A true person of culture. From a fellow healer main, I shake your hand and share the pain of having a bad team. I remember too many god damn times when people would leave me to guard a lane all by myself and then fight for my god damn life as no one comes to fucking save me.
I felt that last one. Up until a certain point, healing was actually pretty viable in DL, but then blitzing fights became the norm, and then Grace came along and made healers near obsolete due to her life shields. Of course, she would fold soon after the whole Curse of Nihility addition to later fights, which completely broke her back along with many others. Sigh, the game wasn't the same after all that.
@@ernestoportillo5136 that was the MOSt annoying. How am I 1v3ing bottom lane as Eldegoss and yall are STILL losing top. And nobody is helping me kill Drednaw!!!!! The real kicker is that I was able to stave off the 3v1s somewhat successfully, especially with Blissey. It almost felt like I was rewarding my team for abandoning me on bot lane. That’s mainly how I got ridiculous K:Ds. By just surviving the hell that was solo bot lane. Meanwhile Lucio is just fun even if my team sucks. Not having to consciously think about healing is great and of course healing myself. I had multiple games where I was surviving waaaaaaay to bloody long just bobbing and weaving through gunfire pushing the cart. And being able to speed boost parkcore back into combat after death was really fun. Never really mastered the art of pushing people off cliffs tho. Lastly, I swear every single Juckrat had my number. If I ever heard a Junkrat Ultimate, I just knew, no matter where I was, I was about to die in 5 seconds.
Ahh... Dragalia Lost. Good times. That game was a mix of fun and frustrating, but I left with overall positive emotions. I remember Heinwald was really fun for his offensive and proactive approach to healing. That said, the game suffered a lot over time because so much of the design shifted to instant-kill attacks if the party failed to dodge some things, which required a lot of effort and memorization. Too much effort for what's supposed to be a casual experience.
One thing you failed to mention is when healers are TOO needed. When the skill of the healer can be solely responsible for a team losing, it is very daunting to try out playing a new role. You are not allowed to be bad at your role and that is always a detriment when trying to learn something new. Non-healers need to be at least a little bit self sufficent in their survivability and be able to compensate the healer's lack of skill, however this has the danger of healers becoming unnecessary. It's a tough balance to strike, especially if you do this by creating entire game mechanics like alternative healing sources.
As a genshin player, i just like healing more than shields. They are just weird to use, hard to build to be strong, and doging is hard as a mobile player.
In D&D the major problem I have with healers (and healing in general) is that even the 'Dedicated Healers' are better off just killing the enemy rather than healing. However, in the Epic Battle Fantasy series I can certainly say healing is vital; although the main Healer's role as the Dedicated healer is a bit less pronounced in the later games when certain skills become equipped skill usable by a few member as opposed to the first games when they were all pre-set. Heck the White Mage from Final Fantasy 1 can learn buff spells as early as level 1 which makes me think that said effects should be more prominent on the healers, healing and buffs are kinda cut from the same cloth in my opinion; positive consequences to ally members to help them do their job more consistently and sometimes outright better than normal.
in dnd healing is more useful for picking downed members up. Which is why healing word stays very good. On any given turn you're likely to average more damage than you'd do healing.
@@tatri292Yeah, I remember doing the math on two similar spells, cure wounds and inflict wounds. At the low levels, cure wounds is likely to heal 7 or 8 HP (4.5 for average die roll +3 from mod). Inflict wounds deals 8-9 (4.5 x 3 for average dice rolls at a 60% chance to hit adding an extra 4.5 x 3 x 5% crit). With the added benefit of inflict wounds is taking care of the problem causing you to need the healing. Which removing combatants is a form, and is the best at it, of damage mitigation. Thus, its typically better to do damage than it is heal.
@@slydoorkeeper4783 cure wounds in particular isn't a very good spell. Heals a bit less than double what healing word does but is so incredibly worse in all other ways. It has one of the most efficient spell slot/healing ratios outside combat if resting or items aren't an option I guess but packing a better spell you wouldn't need it :wink:
@@tatri292 As I said, I selected those two because of how similar they are. Touch, slot use, action use. I know there is healing word, I was just trying to be as 1 to 1 as possible to show just how poorly designed healing is.
Neat video. never watched your stuff, but as someone who's thought a lot about healers in games myself, I felt compelled to watch. I think this provides a pretty good overview of the general issues healer design runs into, even if I don't agree with *everything* you said. However, I did want to bring up an element of healing in games that I don't often see talked about, but I think is a relevant element. Put simply, I think a fundamental issue that a lot of devs have to consider when designing healing is that healing often doesn't scale well with player skill, especially when compared to your traditional DPS roles. This is somewhat connected to the points you made regarding healing being more "reactive." Damage taken is often a controllable thing for players, and the usefulness of a healer is directly tied to that. A character's healing can only ever be as useful as how much damage players take. You mentioned that this can often result in healers being unnecessary; but even in situations where the healing is needed, like when players take a static amount of damage every fight, it puts a natural cap on a player's expression of skill. For example, in FFXIV, there are many people who are innefficiant at playing a healer in the game, and will often spam medica 3 or whatever to keep the party alive. If we ignore the healer's DPS output and focus solely on a players effectiveness in healing the party, as long as the party doesn't die, that player is just as effective as a healer as a world-first ultimate raider. Even if the player's skillsets are vastly different, they would be functionally the same. Compare this to a poor DPS vs a good DPS, where skill is clearly expressed through a nice shiny DPS number that makes the boss die faster. This whole issue is actually a major reason why the green DPS meme exists in FFXIV. When players hit the natural skill ceiling for healing, they're going to look to something else to optimize. That's why players have been fighting against the FFXIV dev's insistence that healers are only there to heal since 2.0 (though, thankfully CB3 seems to finally be starting to change their mind on this). Just some food for thought. I don't think this is an unsolvable problem by any means. You could go the route of giving healers other things to do when they need to heal, you could make it so that the game requires efficient healing through resource management and prolonged fights. There's probably a lot of solutions. I just think it's something important to consider in all this.
Ur definitely right when it comes to active and passiveness towards the role. If I'm playing healer, I want to be able to do something the entire game rather than react with my abilities. And as much as I love playing some healers in multiplayer games, sometimes I know that I am way better as than the current person playing tank or dps. Supporting a bad teammate means you have 2 useless people in a battle rather than just 1. It's often the most unappreciated, most important, and least rewarding role to play.
Agreed I feel like a lot of the issues I have with poorly designed healers is that they don't have a 'win condtion' they have a 'not loose' condition Or no real gameplan. I unironically loved support moonstone twice in league, because the poison meant 1 attack leads to 3 healing bursts and I always had to keep up the passive effect to keep the numbers big But like soooo many healers just wait for a good moment to heal or buff
Yeah, in general, it is rough to not have good teammates as a healer, but at the same time, depending on the game, that kinda also makes the game more fun. Like say healer in FF14 pve, it's actually more fun to heal if you have bad teammates, lol, or new players and such. It's pretty fun to see them also learn and improve over time. In pvp though, there are various things you can do as a healer in pvp games because healer is often the highest priority target for the enemy team to kill. So you can bait a lot of things as healer to benefit your team. Healers can have a lot of tactical control in matches, but it's generally nowhere near as direct / straightforward than playing a DPS. I view healer in team games (pve and pvp) as a sort of buffer to allow your team to play how they want, no matter if they're skilled or not as skilled. The more skilled you are as a healer, the larger the buffer you can provide for your team. As in, you can allow your teammates to have a much larger margin for error.
I've had this exact feeling. Kinda why I don't like role queue in overwatch. I'm more that aware that I could do better than the dps on my team because I play dps tanks AND supports. It's very irksome.
I love being a healer in games where healing is a role that actually makes a difference. I also enjoy when someone is being toxic towards the healer, and the people who want the healer eject that toxic butthole.
An interesting contrast for me is the healer vs the support. Supports are actually useful proactively, increasing damage, reducing damage taken or doing the opposite to enemies, supports are generally the busiest member of the team since "supporting harder" isn't really a thing generally so they support more by doing more things and getting better role compression so everyone else can work at their best. Generally, healers are the first thing to be cut from a team as the players get better since you can't heal harder than people are taking damage while supports are generally the first thing to be put in and then the team is built around them so they can support as well as possible, reducing overlap in areas covered and making sure that everyone can make use of their buffs and debuffs.
This is why dedicated healers are just bad design. Healer shouldn't be a class in itself, it should just be support/tank/dps that also have some heals in their kits, so they can heal when needed and do their thing when not.
One of my favourite Genshin Impact characters to play is Yaoyao :) She's a great healer and she can deal a bit of damage too. Whenever I had trouble beating a boss in the early game due to skill issues I'd make a team with both her and Barbara, which left me with more healing than the bosses could cause me, and with no one to heal Yaoyao damages enemies and I'd just run and dodge with Barbie's ring while Yaoyao's skill + burst did their thing :)
In party based RPGs I think one of the issues I had was definitely the opportunity cost problem only in reverse. Basically in games like Tales of Symphonia, Chrono Trigger, or Skies of Arcadia, you only have a limited party but you also get a steady stream of new characters you want to use with potential new synergies. But I always had to have an active team slot for the dedicated healer, reducing my options for fun experimentation because It’s more cost effective to have a Raine, Marle, and Fina on at all times with their greater suite of healing spells than to have one of the other characters that are more utility/offensive with less healing spells that are also usually less effective. So you don’t really have a party of 3/4 you can customize and play with, in reality you have 2/3 to work with unless you want to completely rely on healing items and that may be tenable in Pokémon but that’s slightly less so in the other games I mentioned.
While I generally agree with your point (I can add Bravely Default and Octopath Traveller to the list where healers in some capacity feels mandatory), I have to point out that Skies of Arcadia is a bit of a weird example here, for multiple reasons. The biggest one have to be that the party is shaped by the story more so than player input. You literally can't customize the party until the very final segment of the game, and even then, three of the four party members are locked to Vyse, Aika, and Fina, with only the fourth slot open to one of the remaining three characters. Secondly, while all her super moves are healing or support, it feels weird to call the girl with the highest magic damage a dedicated healer, even if damage is the worst use for magic in that game. And although Fina does have more defensive super moves than most, all characters do have their own defensive super moves. It's just that Lunar Light in particular is overtuned, healing, and happens to be Fina's final super. Also, the regular healing and revival magics and items all heals fixed amounts and can be learned/used by all characters, so anyone can be an effective healer. In fact, the less magic inclined party members make great (out-of-battle) healers since they probably aren't using their MP otherwise. I also like to use Aika for healing in emergencies due to her speed, as it really hurts when a heal fails because the target already fainted. Regardless, I love to see a Skies of Arcadia mention out in the wild. Sorry for rambling.
@@VTEySAG oh yeah that’s completely fair. I haven’t played Skies in a very very long time so my memory is fuzzy in certain respects including Fina’s complete role. I just know I had certain options in terms of who I could bring along and I don’t know if that was a GameCube difference or it really has just been way too long. I completely defer to your perspective.
@@MousaThe14 Makes sense, it's old game, and it's an easy mistake to make. I certainly don't expect everyone to know every minute detail of one of my hyperfixations, hence ending with an apology and appreciation.
@@VTEySAG No harm done, it’s a good hyper fixation to have, it was a great game, one of the all time greats that I still need to take the time to revisit.
Definitely interesting to listen to, as someone plays mainly healers, although preferably with other supportive roles. When you mention the medic in TF2 and how they can make major breakthroughs, I'd argue that in games like HSR and Genshin, many other healer characters do similar things. In that, the medic can provide buffs through his healing and that highlights (in my eyes) that healers don't always have to solely be able to heal. At the same time, I am a Furina main and absolutely adore how her playstyle is built around HP change, the more HP you lose/gain, the higher the damage. It creates an interesting dynamic and she actively encourages the use of healers. However, very *very* different when playing multiplayer games... definitely cried a lot when playing a healer in Val... never going back to that game.
I think one thing some games do to allow healers stuff to do is by making the Support class not just about healing, but applying buffs to teammates/debuffs to enemies so that there's always something.
Supports usually take on tasks that the other 2 do not. They can stand behind their team making calls or stand between their MVP and the enemy. Wards, area control, baiting are some other tasks that supports tend to be better at when they are with their teammates.
having just healing isnt that bad, forexample Necrophose from Dota, his Q heals, his W amplifies healing, his E provide healing and mana regen, his ult gives him burst of healing and mana plus pernament hp regen... he is a tank assasin
I recently played ff13 and I love how classes work in that game. Instead of having dedicated healers, multiple characters can switch to the healer role on demand if needed.
Meanwhile I have that one friend who loves healer and support, he's actually sad if there's no dedicated role/class like that And I have to say, he's really good at doing his job, in co-op games we simply perform so much better with his support. He's so good I never want to play co-op games with healer/support roles without him haha
I used to have TONS of fun playing a healing ship in Dreadnought. Came up with a crazy, dynamic playstyle and it was great. Notably, the game's "tactical cruisers" also had the only hitscan weapons, even with low damage, giving them a secondary niche of dealing with small, fast ships.
I'm not sure how or why but playing Xenoblade was probably the first time I ever had fun playing as a healer. Even though Sharla quickly gets outmoded, something about her role was just fun for me
When I played Xenoblade 2 i played a healer the whole time because i liked being in charge of when to heal. They're fun in 3 as well, especially with some classes like Signifer where you rapid fire buffs or playing Crossette in XB2 where her healing scales up her damage
@@tsunderemerc2963 should we consider crosset an healing blade by now? And funnily enough xenoblade x has only 4 healing art because monolith soft thought the player would not used it.
@@tsunderemerc2963same for xc2, though for me I mostly just resented the AI and couldn't trust them to heal correctly. Let me tell the AI to stay on the healer blades please, stop swapping for no darn reason.
X wss kinda designed to be played without healer and soul voices were supposed to keep you going but not heal you fully. Every class had a survivability art that costed TP. It was really interesting. But overdrive broke everything and you can just become invincible with a few tricks...
You can tell by playing Future Connected that it's really Chain Attacks that make Sharla weak. If they didn't exist, she'd be the team MVP and Melia would be the useless one... yep, just like in FC.
I love being the healer, it is satisfying to know that you were a contribution to others' success. As mentioned in the video, TF2 Medic is a blast to play, especially with a Heavy. However, my favourite is playing a Templar in Elder Scrolls Online. You have some incentive to do things even while your allies are at full HP, by maintaining their buffs. But in big fights, damage is constant, and maintaining AOE heals and Heals Over Time is a must.
I liked the explanation used in Log Horizon anime. One of the "healing" class characters is actually preventative. The other thing I always remember is the healing class video for FF14 frim Jocat. Damage prevented, damage done to enemies between heals, acts as pre-healing.
Log Horizon’s class system was based on Everquest 2, which did a pretty good job providing different styles of healing. Clerics had reactive heals, which provided a certain number of charges of healing that proc when you take damage. Shamans specialized in wards that absorbed a certain amount of damage. Druids had regenerative healing, which healed for much more in total, but over a longer duration. Each class also had different focuses on offensive and supportive abilities, like Shamans having strong debuffs and Druids powerful elemental nukes.
As a healer main that played every role in FF14, honestly, the big downside of healing in FF14 is that you need to do DPS, heh. As a healer, your "DPS" generally only consists of spamming 1 single button and using your OGCDs (off-global cooldowns) to heal between your single spell DPS GCDs. So it's quite boring, unless it's Savage or harder content.
Great video! Logically I understand all the reasons why people don't want to play healer but as someone who has to be dragged kicking and screaming from my healing/support builds in most games (god eater, monster hunter, mmos, hell I even play single player shooters as a healer when I can), it's always a shock when people tell me they hate it.
Your point about how a healer becomes less useful the more you have ways to mitigate or avoid damage was definitely one of the first things I thought of. Turn-based games usually make taking damage inevitable for several reasons, whereas more action-based games have scarcer healing sources and tend towards making healing effectively a punishment for not dodging/blocking properly. I'll bring up Etrian Odyssey again, because parts of the community have a bit of a stigma against using the dedicated healer and tank classes. I don't mind using them, myself, and they can be built to have a fair bit of flavor, depending on the game. But I can see why some prefer not to use them, since having a tank do nothing but throw up shields and a healer do nothing but heal isn't engaging and can even feel like a waste of party slots. In EO's case specifically, teams without healers or tanks can be viable if one focuses on lockdown through binds/ailments or just does big damage, though that requires substantial knowledge of the game to be effective and usually takes up limited item slots on healing/revival items, so it's considered a more advanced playstyle that opens up team compositions. EO's dedicated healers typically have several advantages over other healing sources, depending on the game: their skills can heal more effectively than the competition's, they usually have the best or only revival skills, they save money and inventory space over buying items, they sometimes have overheals, etc. They also have amusing quirks of their own: EO1's Medic has abnormally high ATK scaling to pair with a melee move that can stun, as well as a buff that significantly reduces most damage to the party; EO3's Monk can specialize as a bare-fisted fighter to save money on weapons in the early game, even if it doesn't scale the best; EO5's Herbalist can take the Graced Poisoner tree and throw around debuffs, ailments, and magic damage when not healing, though this works best with a Celestrian instead of the default Brouni. But even then, many players prefer classes with less-conventional healing, with EO3's Sovereign being a prime example that heals those they buff and provide party-wide regen if they're unharmed.
It's been a while since I last played EO, I should do that again. I always considered a healer and tank MANDATORY for any party, at least early game. But I remember in most EO games even later game Healers were useful even beyond healing due to often having really strong Utility passives and/or Grind reducers. Could be remembering wrong though, as I said it's been a while.
Action games tend to prioritize in-the-moment decisions for player agency in frames of seconds to fractions of a second, whereas strategy games and turn-bases often place a lot more obvious emphasis on tactical, strategic, goal-setting, and meta-level choices and decisions over longer periods. That means that any individual move is generally less emphasized in such games compared to action games as that is not the primary level of play the game is really played at, which means playing 'healers' is often playing then against the tactical or strategic challenge across a wider scope of time and context than action games are often phenomenologically experienced as. Ie, healers have a higher demand for a dedicated moment-to-moment core game loop that is intrinsically appealing to play or overcome in action games than a lot of other games types, and few action games include much of that.
2:30 We definitely need a followup video concerning dedicated healer mains, there is a lot to say on the subject In final fantasy 14, I mostly play healers. My reasons are a bit narcissistic - I feel healer is the most important role for deciding whether a group succeeds or fails. A good healer can really carry a group to victory, in a way a DPS can't (not at that level myself yet but aspiring to be). It's just a lot of fun. Preemptively shielding a hard mechanic, seeing a few people fail but survive thanks to my shields and knowing my action possibly just prevented a wipe feels great. And in normal difficulty content I love the hectic moments when half the party dies and I need to insta revive a tank, heal everyone, get the tanks to full HP+shields, then spend 8 seconds hard-casting a revive on the other healer to bring the party up.
Before Pokémon Unite banned me for literally 100 years, I loved playing as Eldegoss because she was the first support I got and she could do a good bit of damage as well. In some ways I can see what you said was good about medic, in so far as being fast and able to do good damage so you're simply helpless in a fight. In fact, I ran a mostly offensive eldegoss, stacking sp. atk and atk spd to debuff foes' movement and hunt them down if I felt I was able to do so. I was honestly too aggressive sometimes, but being able to chase down squishies running away or flee myself when it started looking rough, it was very fun to be moving and grooving. The linchpin was how my heal worked. I toss out a ball, it attaches to someone, and after a few seconds, it explodes, either healing or going damage depending on whether foes or allies were in the radius. This meant I could just toss that thing out and then focus on attacking while it cools down, meaning I got a lot more fighting than other healers. If this isn't really a dedicated healer build, then understandable, but this is the most recent multi-player game healer I've played and I've got a lot of good memories as playing as that puffball because I could scratch my itch to be supportive of my team AND the itch to take names if I get the chance. I felt I could take initiative or stay reactive and I loved it.
Resistance 2’s medic was an amazing healing class imo. You had a beam weapon that linked to enemies which charges a healing secondary blast. And then, you still had sub weapons with a more specialized use case so you could contribute to damage when healing wasn’t needed. The beam still did respectable damage too since it hit every enemy in a horde.
I used to avoid playing healer because it seemed too hard. You have to be watching everyone's hp and in the right position to help them without getting killed yourself. I hardly ever developed that kind of game sense so I usually don't play healers. There are times that I have wanted to though because I think its fun to prevent a teammate from dying. The few games I can somewhat play them, its really fun. Also some healers have really interesting mechanics and that makes them appealing to me, almost none of which were touched in this video though but oh well. Also, grass type pokemon had been considered the cleric type for a long time, idk if it still is though.
@@MattHatter360 Yeah, I agree, I main healer and it's not really that it's harder, just a totally different skillset, which is what makes it fun for healer mains. So honestly, if a game is trying to make healers more like DPS, it takes a lot of the fun out of the healer role to me. Like I could just play an actual DPS instead of a healer "DPS".
@@MattHatter360 Very much so. I got turned, for the most part, permanently off of healers after a single run doing the healer role as a paladin in WoW years ago. It was my first and only dungeon run acting as a healer and according to all involved, both during and after, I did pretty well. However, I was stressed out the majority of the time and exhausted after finishing. As it turns out, I apparently have a fairly low stress threshold which I work around by perceiving things in such a way and setting things up that I rarely get much stressed over things in the first place. That strategy does not work well for rapid high-stakes multitasking and thus left my emotional experience of triage as shattered nerves. While part of that was my age and inexperience (and my build was not especially suited to the task, either), it is absolutely a different mindset and skillset to tanking and especially DPSing rather than 'better' or 'worse.'
Healers are fun, when just healing, if you have to invoke triage. As raid healer in TBC classic I had the most fun ever, because raid was getting constantly damaged and you have to quickly decide between GCDs where's the heal needed most. It was quiet high paced and gratifying.
Xenoblade 2 is a fun case where healers are a semi-necessary class to have for much of the early game, but when you approach endgame and postgame content healers fall off hard, with Advant Guard medals (heal whenever you crit) plus high crit items, you can keep yourself topped up. And then comes the DLC that introduces two healer characters, Fiora and Crossette who are better known for their massive damage potential. Fiora is crits for days while crossette stacks potions collected to deal massive damage and is the crux of speedruns (until endgame HP totals balloon). Two of the higher tier DPS characters, a NG+ earth blade and Dagas (base game), are better known for their support capabilities because one buffs damage to enemies weakness while the other grants a party wide damage buff. And then there is Corvin, another DLC character who is supposed to be a tank, but has really good specials that heal the party. Power creep really confused the power dynamic.
At least Fiona in Xenoblade 3 manages to be, more of a general support than a healer, but still one of if not the most broken character in the game by being _just that good at support._ She's literally a cheerleader, and by gosh she's the best dang cheerleader you've ever seen.
As a genshin player I feel the need to correct one of your statements. Furina can provide healing, but you'll never use it in battle. Instead you'll use her other stance that brings nice damage and hydro application Off-field ... at the cost of draining your teams HP. This, in turn, increases the value of every other healer in the game that classifies as a "Furina healer" aka a healer that heals a lot, preferably all teammates and quickly, mostly for her burst. See, Furina's burst weaponises on the fluctuation of HP (which she drains for the whole party, remember?) to gain stacks and turn them into a damage bonus for the whole party. In short, she turns healing into damage bonus. Furina, on her own, has made healers relevant once more in Genshin ... And then Genshin brought out Arleccino and Clorinde are main DPS that cannot be healed by any other character but themselves (they have some healing ability, and certainly aren't healer friendly) WTF ?
I don’t remember completely, but I think I enjoyed playing a healer in the mobile game Dragalia Lost. While it’s easy to always choose the cool and fast DPS, as you said, healers are often pretty accepted and mistakes aren’t as critical (though when needed, it does become important). In that game, you still would need to learn boss attack patterns and you still have to survive (healers could heal themselves but weren’t necessarily way more tanky or less). It was a nice way to contribute to the team in a meaningful way and (at higher levels, and once you’re more experienced) could provide a challenge too. Of course there were teams that insisted to go without healers, but when things didn’t go *perfectly* you could tell people were getting frustrated (even though running a healer just meant a slower clear time but still a clear).
You have very explained to me why I have avoided several games that I hadn't quite connected. I prefer healing/support roles, and have ended up avoiding games that fall into the problems you have outlined here.
As a SMT masochist i actually love healers, is just another part of the resource management gameplay, especially when your healer doubles as a buffer or debuffer. My funniest experience with a healer had to be in Fire emblem 3Houses Maddening, with my Mercedes never missing a magic level up. By the midgame she was dealing more damage than my dedicated magic damage dealer (Lysithea)
Healing and buffs are cut from the same cloth in my opinion, they both help other party members do their job in ways that are slightly different but positive all the same. As for funny healer experiences, Yuna from FFX is meant to be the healer (outside of Aeon shenanigans) but due to having more Agility AND Magic she's actually better at dealing magic damage than Lulu if she gets a hold of some damage spells. Healers really are a funny one.
My most memorable experience playing a healer was Ana in Heroes of the Storm. Her skillshot healing style just made a lot of sense to me, and when playing on a team with my friends so I could communicate with them better, I could really feel like I was making a worthwhile impact on the game. Healing for random matched public teammates, though, has always been a thankless hell no matter the game.
I main Field Medic in Killing Floor 2, which is the only game I play healer in so here are my thoughts 1) Medics have insane buffs that the medic can use on himself 2) Anything that potentially heals also becomes poisonous to enemies so no tool is useless when there are no allies 3) Medics have medic versions of all weapons so there is variety My only real suggestion for KF3 is that they add critical healing (more healing for headshots) or over heal
Killing Floor definitely got healers right. They made them very versatile in KF2 and KF1 it was basically the swat class with healing darts on their guns.
13:43 wish and aromatherapy are quite literally THE healing support moves in Pokémon, but it's more applicable in competitive than in single player for reasons you mentioned (they are quite good actually, just a bit uncommon).
Uncommon is a bit of an understatement. Wish is one of the rarest moves in the game. I don't think any NPC's actually use this move, and most of the Pokemon that learn it do so by egg move (which is a mechanic the average player is unlikely to even know about, let alone avail themselves of). I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of people who have played Pokemon have literally never seen this move.
Agreed in that I think there are significantly different implications for healing-focused Pokemon whether considering single player (and largely single battles) vs multiplayer. Double battles (and max raid battles in Sw/Sh) are where healer ‘mons shine the most - providing your hard-hitters with greater longevity through a partner is great, and in some cases invaluable. In Pokemon’s case you can also ensure your healer ‘mons have offensive moves to defend themselves too. Besides direct healing in moves, say Wish/Life Dew/Pollen Puff etc, you have abilities that can make an offensive partner into a pseudo-healer, like pairing a Toxicroak with Dry Skin with any other Pokémon that can use Surf. It’s not often very viable or practical for the single player story of Pokémon, but the implications on competitive play are much greater here.
Not many people play PlanetSide 2 or will see this, but Imma say it anyways. The Combat Medic in PlanetSide 2 gets a decent amount of firepower, the ability to restore people's HP and shields, and a tool that resurrects people. The strongest tool the Combat Medic has is a grenade that mass res people in a small area, which is heavily used by players doing a coordinated push/breakout where casualties mount at an astonishingly high rate. A single medic can bring back a team and a handful of well placed medics can sometimes turn the tables in a battle by resurrecting a massive push. The Engineer is more of a healer for mechanical things, they get a tool that heals exosuits (which is used like the infantry being on foot), they can obvious heal vehicles and emplacements. Best of all, they get grenades that heal a bunch of mechanical things in a group, that grenade is sometimes used when there is a mass breakout/push where exosuits take heavy damage (but to resurrect one you still need a medic). Honestly, PlanetSide 2 is the few I actively enjoy playing healers. I get a set of weapons kit that allow me to defeat non vehicle/exosuit enemies and take objectives decently well, I get kit that supports my job well, and the game actively encourages the use of medics to ensure that casualties can get up and fighting again.
Expanding on Point 4, Wanting to Stay At Low HP, Final Fantasy 8 (and to a _much_ lesser extent 6) is a unique edge case where there actually _is_ a system wide mechanic that wants you to be at low health. In that game, Limit Breaks are almost always accessible at low health. Because of that, the dominant strategy is to have one character at the lowest sustainable health value for where you are in order to spam limit breaks. Often this is either Squall for his perfect accuracy and ability to hit multiple times per turn with Renzukoken, or Quistis for her utility blue magic (including an instant death spell). However, Zell can take advantage of this decently well with his build a combo limit break, and there is an entire category of items specifically for Irving's limit break. When combined with how the game passively punishes grinding and how you can take advantage of the card mini game to create powerful items and spells early on, this is one of many mechanics that leads to 8 being considered a broken game by many, and inherently kinda fun to speedrun despite being a multi disc PSX RPG. And while 6 has a prototype limit break in Desperation Attacks that can be randomly accessed at low health, it is far more random and less reliable than 8. Not that it matters since 6 lacks a dedicated healer, or the ability to spec someone into one, anyway.
You could make a whole channel around the topic of healers in games. Another type of healers which i found really interesting are medics in Battlefield titles, who get wildly different revelances in their arsenal in every entry.
I enjoy playing as the Healer. Having a passive role in combat fits my slowness I have to react to the fast-paced actions. It's even better in games that have NPC controlling the rest of the party, like in, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch.
I definitely enjoy playing healers, I love hanging back and making sure my teammates are able to get those big numbers. Unfortunately like you explained during this video most games don't need healers luckily playing support and healers in FFXIV is wanted and needed and they make it fun to play as well with some healers doing big damage numbers. I hope more games make healers needed.
In TF2 Nothing is more satisfying to me than out healing a teams top 4 or 5 damage dealers, negating that damage damage done. I have helped hold points while greatly out numbered from good heals. People do appreciate great heals and will for sure give you props for doing your part. Well timed ubers are just a thing of beauty. I typically play any class that the team needs most, but medic is my goto.
One of the games I loved healing in and I've seen many people praise is TERA (RIP), it was an action-combat MMORPG in which only 2 out of 13 classes could heal in a team-wide scale: Priest and Mystic. Priest was more of your average healer in an MMORPG but the TERA Combat mechanics made Healers extremely important and severely skill reliant on an individual bases. A good healer that could dodge and maintain their buffs up would theoretically keep fighting forever, and a lot of boss mechanics revolved around the Healer being able to disable major buffs enemies would receive. Priests had the unique ability to pull allies at a range to avoid danger and had mostly low cooldowns, which made them cycle through their skills quite often and have them at any situation as long as the player knew how to handle them. Mystic was this summoner class that could compete with DPS's when handled correctly and used Auras instead of buffs. Buffs had to be reapplied anytime an ally died but as long as a Mystic lived, their auras would remain active. Their thralls (summons) were extremely powerful in both supportive and damage based ways and the mystic had to choose which thralls to pull out to buff the team's dps at any given time or lay low and focus on healing. Mystics could also drop motes of both mana regen and health regen to promote active healing from your allies while not being limited from just directly healing allies themselves. For this same reason, Mystic was harder to play more efficiently, because Players had to constantly think in ways to efficiently heal (as they couldn't do so as widely and often as a Priest) while trying to provide as much DPS as possible. When played right, Mystics would be better than Priests in many cases and an extremely great boon to any team, while Priests weren't left behind and were seen as a competent, safer option for less skilled teams or first runs through dungeons. This combined with a game that had fast leveling and heavily promoted alt creation and usage, a competent healer main would comfortably have fun with both classes, and that is what made TERA special for me. Too much yapping but ty if you read through it all ❤
I really like playing healers, so much that i actively try to create healing classes sometimes, one of my favorites experiences was as using a support Sword and shield in monster hunter world and entering SOS missions to help other players.
Healers require replacing a team member with someone dedicated solely to making up for mistakes(aka losing health), when often people would prefer to prevent the damage from happening, either by increasing defensiveness, increasing skill to avoid damage, or increasing damage to kill the enemies before they can kill you.
The way how I see it is that restoring health and buffing stats are cut from the same cloth so dedicated healers should be the ones who get BOTH of those things; that way they have something to do when no one has any big gaps in their health bar. Personally, if the healer can protect the party's momentum from otherwise inevitable setbacks and/or speed up their total momentum to the point that it more than makes up for the initial loss of having one less damage dealer then that's a good healer (in my opinion).
It really depends on the game and the way it is designed. Like in Guild Wars 2, it was originally created to purposely get rid of the holy trinity in MMORPGs. Eventually everyone ran glass cannon DPS in pve. Later on though, the game devs introduced healer specs, and in World vs World (the mass PvP mode), even now, every top guild runs healers. Like in pvp, no matter how good you are, you're going to eventually make mistakes, and your opponents are going to constantly try to force you to make mistakes as well. So healers are like a buffer / allow for greater margin for error, but even top lvl play will have mistakes made on both sides (at least in pvp, where both sides are evenly matched in skill).
That depends entirely on the game. In some games, receiving damage is entirely avoidable and comes exclusively from making mistakes. In others, it is either practically or inherently unavoidable and not from mistakes but part of the rhythm of the game loop for certain segments of the game. Healing is an inherently contextual role, and thus live and die by how well the context necessitates and justifies that role.
I like hearing your game design thoughts! I used to play support in Overwatch. When I dropped the game and started playing others, I took more of an interest in tanks and attackers. Like Final Fantasy XIV, which shows up in this video at points. At first I took an interest in support and healing because I want to be helpful. But from another perspective, beating the enemy as quickly and efficiently as possible is just as helpful as restoring health.
Tales of xillia has Jude the mc as a healer and he's incredible. He can aoe heal in later parts of the game without slowing down his combat. Probably the best healer I've played Fire emblem the later games are trying but healers are still very prone to exploding on touch. Lissa Axe in the fates dlc would have made her great in awakening. But yeah healing makes you feel like you aren't doing anything just spamming a single thing
Most RPG tends to have their dedicated healer doubles as a secondary mage as both usually uses the same resources and benefits from the same stat. Namely, Tales series (the little girl that uses mainly dark arts is the dedicated healer, Jude is more of a damage dealer with heals), Trails series, Persona series and probably many others
I love how in xenoblade 1 and 2, healers aren't very usefull but in xenoblade 3 it's completely nesesary to have them for the harder boss fights. I love playing as Eunie with the lapidarist class, critical hit healing + buff spam is super usefull and fun to play. I believe that is how healers should play similar to this in any game. Make them esencial to the team and fun to play.
Healers have always had an interesting history. That being I've always wanted to try be a healer, but almost never play any team based games. So I never really got the opportunity to be one. The closest experience I can think of is prefering white mages and defensive characters in RPGs, but that doesn't quite feel the same. Funny enough, I recall hearing things in late Overwatch 1 of them completely reworking Mercy to have more offensive options. A part of me always thought that was strange. But the way you broke down the medic in this video helped me realize why being able to do more than just heal really good can be a good thing.
A well-designed healer character lets you act as a force multiplier for your team. Providing extra longevity for your offensive members, especially those who might have a strong output but low hardiness. I suppose I didn’t immediately think of Mercy or the Medic when thinking about contemporary heal-focused characters in games - my experience has had more well-rounded healers who might be better described as supporters anyhow. Restorative healing, preventative healing (shielding), de/buffing (lower incoming attack efficacy, increase ally defenses, etc) are tools I see packaged together more often for engaging healer characters. Heck, some can offer good damage in their own right! My to-date most fun healer character experience has been playing a Warriorpriest in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. An active, front- or mid-line healer who waded into battle with hammers (and occasionally tomes). The ability to rock up to enemies with a sledge and wail on them while *simultaneously* healing yourself per hit, and thus go toe to toe with hardier or glass cannon careers was excellent. Moreso, running alongside a friendly heavy character and healing them up with your hammer blows, shoulder to shoulder. AoR placed more emphasis on direct+gradual heals, so laying down HoT’s on your party during a PVP scenario or a Public Quest made keeping others up more manageable. Playing a tank’s pocket-healer was grand though, even from more of a distance. Shout-out to Dungeons and Dragons Fourth Edition “Leader” classes as well! For people who hated/resented playing Clerics in prior editions of D&D, being relegated to pure heal-bots who didn’t get to contribute directly to victory? 4e heard you loud and clear, and Leader classes were all competent in combat and each had their own support-niche they focused on in addition to a relatively standard healing progression package. Clerics laid on extra HP when healing; Artificers dished out temp HP (shielding) and bonuses to hit & damage; Warlords granted bonuses and additional attacks; Bards could slide allies to reposition them and save allies the action economy + opportunity attack provocations; etc. Leaders were a grand way to have one of four class roles dedicated to healing, while still making them engaging to play and giving them each some niche protection. I think the idea of a “dedicated healer” whose sole, or overall purpose is restoring lost HP, is perhaps outdated - or at least, it doesn’t fit the gameplay goals of a lot of modern combat-focused games. Undoing damage alone won’t be enough of a purpose/toolkit for a lot of players, especially in multiplayer scenes where healers & supports are taken for granted. Healers with a more diversified kit strike me as a productive adaptation to the archetype, even if their healing/supporting role remains their primary tool.
Funny thing is Mercy isn't even a good healer. She's used for her damage boost and revive. 55 (or 60) hp per second single target heal is awful if consistent
Honestly, I think for more modern games, the bigger reason to not really focus on old school healer roles (at least in pvp) is because well-played healers just made the Time To Kill (TTK) extremely high, and average match length much longer. So forcing kills was all about coordinated limited windows of opportunity. More modern games tend to go for shorter overall match lengths and shorter TTK. But there can still be supports who act as force multipliers in more modern games too, they don't necessarily need to be healers.
I remember licking to play as a engineer in Planetside 2. That game had a medic class, but the engineer could heal the max class (power armor class that is more heavily armored and armed then a normal class) and vehicles. It was kind of fun jumping around. Making sure i was not in the way of my team mate in the tank (vehicles could run you over). It was fun being small and important.
For me, its not that i hate playing the healers, its that the impact is intangible compared to dps or tanks. You know exactly how much you can do as a dps or tank, but on support you dont know exactly how good your allies are because you arent them, and your impact is directly tied to theirs.
I typically don't play any kind of support role in any game that I play, but for Lost Ark, I really enjoyed playing the Bard class. There are great things about the 3 support classes but there are also game design problems that come with the way Lost Ark handles how the supports are utilized. This is a more active playstyle that, imo, devs should use as inspiration to implement into their games because it keeps the player more engaged. On average, being a decent support is harder than being a decent dps in Lost Ark. There are 3 things you are constantly keeping uptime on throughout the entire fight. These apply to all 3 support classes. 1. BRAND - Your debuff on the boss that gives your party [10% extra damage] 2. ATK BUFF - [Increase your party's atk based on 15% of your own base atk], alternating between two skills to have this buff up 100%. 3. SHIELDS/ MINOR DMG MITIGATION - Alternate between two skills for 100% uptime, as well as landing these skills on YOUR party members (Max 3 players) PLUS the boss. The more the skill hits, the more gauge you gain for another separate damage buff that you can manually apply (Usually 10% damage). -In between those 3 things, you are also watching out for moments when you need to mitigate a large amount of damage that a party member might take OR purposefully take in order to deal more damage to the boss. -As a Bard, you have to pay attention to your party's HP so you can decide to either heal them or use your [10% dmg buff] from identity gauge at proper dps windows. The better your uptime on your skills are, the faster this buff can be applied again. For Bards, you have to pick either heal or damage buff because it consumes almost your entire gauge when you use either one, and this is the only way to heal your party memebers. -Depending on the fight, you may need to provide more utility for the raid so your skill choices also matter. -While maintaining all of this, you also have to do mechanics that happen at certain points in the fight.
I remember Healer was important on Ragnarok Online. They sought after by people. Like you're a healer, people will flock around you. Also, you can build it as a solo fighter because it has self sustain. There was a time, giving people heal or teleporting, or reviving will earn you money in RO. Like everybody always has a healer on his/her account. That, or a merchant. By i mean healer, it includes Priest, Monk, Crusader, and Soul linker. And to some extent Alchemist.
Hello fellow pyramid 4 turn undead priest. My job as a crusader was to follow the guild leader with sacrifice devotion and reflect shield perma on xpp, what a job! Everybody had a second account with a healer or support like bard.
I remember the really early RO where healers would be outside dungeon areas with a sign like "100k per hour healing" or something of the sort. You could make a lot of money like that. I loved being a healer in that game.
I remember RO, healer was the first class I went for when I started, but then I learned that dancer exists, the idea of using a whip as a weapon and flinging arrows with it was amusing to me, and while they can't heal they can at least buff allies with dances.
I love playing healer, I quite enjoy working to keep the team alive and ensuring that they have their moments in the spotlight. Though maybe I'd feel different if I played on public voice chat, I always either play with VC off or with my friends
Yeah, the teammates are the biggest reason behind why people don't play healers (To me). I always tell people that playing a healer is as if you could save your teammates from dying, but you make your teammates act like theyre invisible, run alone into the enemy team, and then blaming the healer.
Would love to play a rpg where the mc is weaker than his party and has boost and heal abilities for the early game if it's on the switch. Yeah healers and boosters aren't one anyone wants to play. They are great in party and you can feel the effects when they are gone but not getting the appreciation in long battles. It's probably why "I got kicked out of the hero's party" manga exist where the booster healer leaves and the hero's party immediately collapses in a sense. Bur yeah i feel to fix this problem. Make the healer have Mutiple effects in one power like heal team boost attack or attack enemy heal ally all in one powers. That way if you play them and rather do stragety you can make a party keep attacking
Final Fantasy XIII's paradigm shift system offered an interesting perspective on healing, in that Healer (and the other support-oriented roles) were all part-time tasks that you switch to when needed. It allowed for various strategies like having a tank setup to switch to with a classic healer and tank setup, or a high-paced constant DPS setup mixing healers with one of the damage classes, or even a full healer paradigm for burst healing in a crisis situation.
There were two games where I actually enjoyed being a healer. Final Fantasy 14: It was simply fun to play as a White Mage when I got tired of being a Lancer, the benefit the game had was that you could change your class just by equipping the weapons for that class (once you completed the job quest to gain that class in the first place) Warframe: I enjoy using frames like Wisp and Trinity, most of your damage generally comes from the weapons you have equipped since it was only recently that D.E. reworked enemy health. Before the most recent update, enemy health pools could get so big that the damage from Warframe powers wouldn't keep up with the sheer damage output from your weapons. With this game though, you can swap between frames between missions just like how you can swap your class in FF14.
I think Sharla's other issue in Xenoblade Chronicles is the fact that most of her arts are very poor in chain attacks and don't synergize well with the other party members.
@@maxspecs Okay, and? While she's okay, you generally would want someone else in the party who could do better than her. She was doomed the moment they made her Talent Art, Cool Off.
Future Connected proves this. In that, the chain attack monster Melia is the weakest character due to her squishiness and lack of aggro management moves - there are no Chain Attacks in that story. Kino (Sharla in all but name) becomes invaluable as your only tank is Nene (Reyn) and you need the heals.
One thing that Battlefield constantly gets it right are how they approach the Medic/Healer class and makes it geniuinely fun to play and gives new players the necessary ropes to work together with your teammates. Basically just give them decent (or in some cases outright disgusting firepower like BF4 assault medics with AEKs but every class in BF4 is disgustingly OP if you play your cards right) attacking power necessary to push forward/hold back against enemies and rewards aggresive healing/revive playstyle to help your team push to capture objectives
In pokemon there are ways heal in combat without items through the move called wish, where it staggers the healing by one turn in which you can switch in a pokemon that needs the healing
I like how this role kind of becomes a main piece for multiplayer fights in EVE Online as an exception to the rule. In a game where loosing your ship is a financial loss to your character's wallet, you would expect the name of the game is playing a bunch of high damage ships and blast everyone else into pieces before you explode. it's more than that, you actually need people to hold tackle of enemy ships, people playing disruption roles and then logistics which are basically the healer spaceships. "Logi" is such an important role in the battlefield you see it from the smallest gang to the largest fleet battles that make it to the news.
I love healing, but I can't stand to play the generic soulless healing class with its doctor motifs and angelic vibes and straight-up making numbers go up gameplay with no nuance. Which is to say, I never thought I'd be a healer until I became a Scourge in Guild Wars 2, and then suddenly that was some of the most fun I've ever had in a video game. Scourges are a subset of Necromancer who animate sand instead of corpses, and their healing tech all revolves around using that sand to protect and shepherd the party. You can give them sand armor, sink through the sand and reappear somewhere else for better positioning, or even drag the wounded body of an ally toward you on a blanket of it so that they'll be right under your next heal. The sandabilities are endless! ⛱️ It also, of course, gives you a +1000 stat boost against Anakin Skywalker.
13:37 Describing Chansey’s Softboiled gave me flashbacks to my Elite Four clear in Pokemon Silver where I didn’t want to keep wasting turns on potions during the fights, so I brought a Chansey and used her to heal the team in between rounds, then healed her back up with a max potion.
When I played Xenoblade 3, I actually controlled Taion since I didn't trust the AI to do the healing effectively. I was also able to do some offensive stuff with him so that was a bonus. More offensive healers are definitely needed.
In the early days of LoL, I mained Soraka because being in the back lines as a healer meant that I did not have to deal with much of the craziness of the front lines...or worse, having the responsibility of being a jungler. Since I am a more analytical person, holding back allowed me to take a more wide-angle view of the situation and move to where I was needed.
Oh yes, I remember Genshin 2.4 when people were crying that shielders got nerfed because they introduced mobs that lowered your health based on your energy recharge instead, I remember people complaining about the mobs that ignore shields and apply bleed. I remember that some bosses have a perma bleed unless you cleanse yourself and I for sure remember people complaining that not even full HP Zhongli can't tank Fontaine's local legends and Natlan's call of war. Nah, Healers have their place, most people just don't know how to build them and dodge attacks, I'm surprised they know how to i-frame. On HSR, I main Aventurine and I can tell that if the boss is sufficiently strong (SU) in the DOT and CC department, I'd bring Lynx along. Just for that full team cleanse.
Plus in genshin healers are more than healing. They have things in their kit that stand out. Baizhu with his application + healing + interuption resist + buffing of reactions. Kuki with electro application + healing + ability to hold freedom sworn and being a monster in hyperbloom teams. Mika for physical dps buffing and atk speed [but I use him in yoiyima's team too for the healing and atk speed so she can keep up with yelan and xingqiu's hydro applications during her E skill and get more healing off consistently by mika] Benny, not a great healer and often times gets you into bad situations due to his self application pyro so overload, vape and such unalive you, is one of the few with intense buffing but also just flat out bad for being the reason you can't stay alive
@@nobody-xh6ii Wait, wait. Did you said Mika in Yoimiya Team? That's something I haven't heard before and now I'm considering giving him some chance of being actually built to be used (got him at AR60). Instead of Yelan in the comp, do you think Shogun would work? Asking because I usually use Yoimiya and Shogun together.
This popped up in my feed... but I LIKE playing a healer. I HAVE pulled for Genshin healers! I pulled for Kokomi on her first banner because pink mermaid girl! I waited SO LONG for my sea slug bunny girl, and I LOVE HER!!! BUBBLES!!!
![The Psychology of How Cynthia Traumatized a Generation [Game Designer Explains]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/lxS6T0yJE9M/mqdefault.jpg)
![The Psychology of How Cynthia Traumatized a Generation [Game Designer Explains]](/img/tr.png)
![The Psychology behind Volo and Giratina, Pokémon's Coolest Final Boss [Game Designer Explains]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/GHc2EmvKOBg/mqdefault.jpg)
I love playing healer. I just hate how others constantly tell me I'm worse at the game than them because I do.
Just don't heal bro, they'll know your value
I love building glass cannon dps,so my teams usually consist of buffers,shielders,and/or healers
What I love even more is when those games have coop and you can punish people for thinking your supports are a weak choice,”I only chose to not bring my dps because you didn’t want to play healer,I get to decide if you should live”
In my experience running healer in FF14, I've kind of come to the opinion that the DPS is the easiest role to screw up. It's obvious when you're doing bad as a healer and tank, and obvious when you need to improve. DPS too often blame others for not performing their job correctly tho...
@@itsame7491It's not about the value though, healers are obviously valuable, especially in mmo raids etc, that complain is about perspective on the skill, like if you a healer main you're just worse at the game, which is personally i can't argue about bc never mained a healer in any multiplayer game.
@@Engitsu good or bad you respect your healer.
the "healers are bottoms" stereotype is funny because they're the backbone of the entire team. most Top position you can be in
Nah, just a power bottom
@@philbuttler3427that's the tank tho
I'm tough-love healer mama :3
We’ll see who’s the bottom when the attackers start begging you for heals 😌
Ive always been told TANKS are the bottoms, their whole purpose is to take it right? XD
One big thing that makes healers feel unfun is the tendency for designers to make a healing specialist who is ONLY capable of healing, and is terrible at everything else. If your healer can also do some damage, throw up mitigation like shields, and apply some status effects they will be much more interesting and fun than 'spam heal move forever' healers could be.
What healers should really be is the utility class. Something for them to actively do to support their team or weaken the foe, and heal their allies as their reaction. They're utility characters, and the healing is just the common secondary to all of them. It's why dedicated healers often don't work outside of situations like SRPGs.
The problem is if you make healers *too* good, everybody becomes tank/support/dps all in one and cracked players become basically unstoppable.
I think instead of making healers less one note, let's remove him and give other classes utility.
The dps applies a debuff that restores health on hit for all allies
Tanks store damage in a buffer and can apply a healing/regen buffer in an aoe for a % value
Mages apply shields on a spell for each target hit
Something like that
And depending on specialized role you get more or less utility
Sure an assasin has all damage but no healing
But the 'stalker' class might get a aoe burst of shield applied on unaware enemies or on backstab, something like that
Discipline priests from WoW...
Honorary mention to Ankama's "healers"
@KingTwelveSixteen Exactly, healers should have different way to mitigate other people's damages, whether it is in the form of pure healing, temporary shields/HPs, %Dmg res or any payoff that depends on effective HP. Giving everything to everyone is the (most often shitty) design choice that ruined the role in a lot of modern games.
Ok so I really REALLY agreed with the part about healers (and other supports more generally) being insulted by extremely toxic players being a reason for people to quit the game.
For context, I used to play League of Legends. My sister and I started playing at the same time, and often together, so we kind of gravitated towards bot lane where we could have fun together and coordinate a little easier than if we were on opposite sides of the map. I will admit, she was a better support than me (I generally had little to no situational awareness so naturally I was the perfect low elo ADC player). She perfected healing me and/or the entire team, throwing out any snares or immobility moves, she was really better at support than I was at trying to DPS anything. The number of times the toplaner would take a bad fight, die, and then immediately show up in chat to talk about how shit the Soraka was because he died (HER BURST ISN'T UP ALL THE TIME) was just ridiculous. To be entirely honest, the few times I got to be the carry, I would not have been able to achieve it at all without the Soraka or Lux or Leona or whoever she chose to play at the time. She was really probably only in a lower elo because of me tbh.
In our last couple of months playing League, we switched roles so now I bore the brunt of the insults. Now I will admit, I was not the best support, so I did mess up quite a lot, but the amount of flak I would catch for something that was not even remotely my fault sometimes was just amazing. We both quit a couple of months later, because having a 0/15 Yasuo in chat type to the other team about how you don't even have a braincell is not something either of us enjoyed.
Support main here. If people flame you and it makes your experience worse, just mute chat.
People are idiots and insulting other players is the easiest cop out for their lack of skill, they shouldn't be paid any attention.
I hope you'll give League another chance and that your experience will be better ❤
@@MattHatter360 Another chance, not after vanguard
@@MattHatter360I tend to main support in games and I am not ashamed to admit that when someone is toxic I find great joy in being even more toxic towards them.
Refuse to heal or buff them and laugh at them while calling them noobs when they die.
Don’t forget to be supportive to the rest of the team so they back you up when toxic gamers strike back and finally say that you while start healing them if they apologize, it doesn’t often work but it makes them very angry.
I think if more games add the same mocking taunts that tf2 has then a lot more people could enjoy my brand of support.
IMHO, it's good you two quit League, don't go back. I quit league long ago and never went back as well. It can be fun, but it's overall not worth it.
Regarding getting blamed and such, it's almost always the other person's ego was triggered. Like they made mistakes, played bad, etc, so they find someone else to blame so they won't feel as bad about themselves. So if you can, don't take any of it personally (but that can be hard to do, especially if you're new to such things). Like the harder they go at it, the more you can pity them, cause it's usually an indicator for how much the person actually hates themselves. This can apply to IRL and the workplace and such too, it's a pretty effective skill set to learn in the long run, cause you can use it to help de-escalate various situations.
Fellow support main and enjoyer here, I 100% felt this fr. People start insulting you even before your start the game. Whenever I played seraphine I liked to take tp instead of heals, it’s unconventional but it’s something I liked having. It was my style. And I was a damn good support btw. But man I still remember one game where I was paired with this random VLAD adc (a frickin VLAD bro) and the whole time the team was just flaming and nitpicking everything I did. Mostly by the mf that picked Vlad adc. It’s crazy bro
"I don't heal, I control whether you live or DIE"
I am exactly the same way. I hold you life in my hands. Go on your solo crusade, I got other people to heal. ❤
That's how I play healer too. I'm a harmacist get it right
Healer ❌
Judge deciding who will live and who not ✅
This, i love playing healer cause i like to choose wether my team deserves to live or die. I play the other role when i decide if the other team gets to live or die :3
Lol, until, they realize letting the tanks and dps dying is just denying themsleves the clear.
Strangely enough, Honkai Star Rail has some of the most creative designs for healers. You got healers whose powers scale off ATTACK stats, healers with AoE attack, healers that tanks damages, healers that raises your crit rate, and so on and so forth. And I think that's what the other games are missing: healers who can do more than just heal.
Why doesn't genshin learn from their own games ;-;
I suppose the ocean hued set can give atk but other than the set there's not exactly much healers who scale of atk only one being Bennet.
this is also true in the sense that healers are the archetype that get debuff dispel in hsr, and shielders dont, so in scenarios where you want to get rid of a impactful debuff healers are better than shielders
@@katsukibakugou5013 because theyre not directed by the same guy
Qiqi, Charlotte and Xianyun found dead in a ditch.
Healers with AoE or tank capacity is no to strange, at least in TRPG
And any in many games the magic attack stats boost the healings
But yeah, we need more healers with other tricks
I often enjoy playing healer characters because I know they're less played/appreciated. People are usually in demand of a healer so it feels nice to be wanted.
I enjoy the feeling of helping my teammates be the MVP of the game. Watching others succeed is fun to me, as I don't mind being a more background presence.
Really, the only negative experiences I've had being a healer is the perception some players have that healer players are inherently less skilled at the game. I've even heard it called "The Girlfriend Role" (which has its own set of extremely negative stereotypes). So sometimes, I've been accused in lobbies for picking a healer because I'm "bad at the game" and can't play a "real character". But those have been few and far between, and overall I find being a healer to be a mostly positive experience both from the game and the player communities
Im a healer main too and i am self admittedly not the best at video games. But i dont get why some people are so elitist about player skill. Im sorry i didnt grow up with fps and dont have fast reaction times. Thats part of why i am playing healer. Im going to be playing either way so would you rather me play poorly at a high skill role i suck at or play well at a "low skill" (healers just use different kinds of skills) character i am good at
@@zenmaster8 they're like that because they want to feel better than SOMEONE at this game. they perceive skill at this game as being an important goal, and by not being skilled, they're just a worse person. I know the idea, because I used to be like this in these games. I used to feel like I was awful just for not being really good at things. I never dogged on healers though, I love healers, always have. but their response is to find ANY reason to be perceived as better, even if it's just stupid or silly.
True. It feels like you're actively increasing the chances to win when you play healer.
@@zenmaster8the most important skill in any video game is learning to acknowledge strengths and risks, and improving them for yourself and your team.
Healing does not require quite the same diversity of skills as other roles, but it absolutely requires a mastery of the ones it does.
You are skilled because you know how you work, and never let anyone convince you otherwise. They can gab all they want but they can't make you feel inadequate unless you let yourself agree.
@@Mechan1calMag1c1an yeah, like first of all it's okay to be worse at the game so it's stupid that people get mad at you for that, if that's what they think they should be happy you didn't pick a "harder" dps role where they think you'd cause them to lose. But also being antagonistic towards the "weak low skill healers" is how you get mile long dps queues with nobody wanting to heal, or just teams with no healers and everyone dies? So antagonising your healers for being bad at the game just screws yourself over
Being a healer in MMOs is the worst. You are literally useless if you don't have at least 2 party members. If you fail to heal your team, they will instantly ditch you and avoid you like the plague. If you are really good, they will literally stick to you like they have a crippling addiction and your heals are like drugs and you unknowingly became a dealer, and they will rely on you so much that they will always assign you party leader and eventually push you to become a guild leader and now you have more things to do aside from healing to the point that it's not fun anymore and super stressful that you just want to quit.
Yes, I've been on that cycle for how many times already.
Depends a bit on the game. Healing defiantly can be a very awful grind if you are solo. Games that offer summonable pets or companions make it a lot better. But even better are games that let you bypass solo mob/quest grinding entirely and focus on other mechanics you enjoy more. For instance in EVE there is no level grinding and in ArcheAge I always just leveled via trading once I unlocked it 1 day in to my character's progression.
In SWTOR I quest grinded a lot with my companion before I got sick of it and did all of the rest of my leveling via PvP arenas.
As to being forced into being a guild leader. If you don't want to do that just attach yourself to someone who likes to lead so you can convey the authority they want to force onto you onto them. Guild leaders love nothing more than someone who plays a useful role and supports their authority.
I like playing healer. I hate playing babysitter.
"Being a healer in MMOs is the worst. You are literally useless" not in guild war 2
True except for ff14 online. Healers are just DPS with more responsibility
I know exactly what you mean
Thankfully I like being the guild master too and the responsibilities associated with it so I end up having a lot of fun
Healers usually: "Stop running away and let m-... Every freaking time."
Meanwhile, Hunting Horn users: "Bow before me mortals!" * Whacks fire-breathing dinosaur on the head with bagpipes *
I can't wait for Monster Hunter Wilds to just be able to kill a massive beast by shredding the horn(?)
Honestly, this is the real reason I even play bard in MH. The team buffs are a nice bonus; I here so I can smash dinosaur skulls with oversized anime bagpipes. Only if they introduce accordions as a new weapon type in a future entry will anyone be able to top that 🧐
Monster Hunter: fear my glorious melodies peasant!!!! (Yelled at a dragon the literal size of a mountain, it was never going to be a fair fight ....for the dragon.)
@@anarchyandempires5452 Me, in my head: (Monster the size of a mountain"... Uhhh, I guess that narrows it down, but there's still a quite a few it could possibly be... there's Raviente, Dalamadur and the Shah variant, I guess Lao Shang Lung and the Ash variant counts, then there's Jhen Mohran, Dire Miralis, Zora Magdaros....)
Me: "🫡 Thank you Mr. Hunting Horn Main Sir! You shall have my hammer for whatever you choose to hunt next, cuz!"
@@SerDerpish "Welcome to Monster Hunter, where you can now become murderous Weird Al and strangle a wyvern with an accordion!"
I have fond memories of being the group healer in a team way higher level then me, allowing me to still play with friends and still be an important contributing member of the team. I think that's where my enjoyment of player healers started from, as it felt good getting thanked even though it felt like I wasn't doing as much as others at first!
There was a realm vs realm game I used to play, where the max lvl was 50, but I played a full support healer, purposely stayed at lvl 35 (where I maxed my healing tree), and also purposely only ever wore lvl 17 armor (I liked the way it looked vs max lvl healer clothes lol). I would get targeted all the time, but it was actually beneficial, cause I could bait the enemy and just let my random realm members kill them as I kited around.
In some games, when one character heals or revives another, they say thank you. I know it's just common decency but it's so heartwarming.💖
I used to do that a lot in " RWBY: Grimm Eclipse"
And then there is Imperius from HotS who basically says something like "Do you expect me to thank you for doing your job?"
@@ef3001man I did not expect someone reference rwby grimm eclipse online ever, what fun and janky game that was
And then there's Demoman:
"I didn't need ya help y'kno"
yeah, games that have those are instantly bettter feeling for healers and supports, bc even if you know it's automatic, having sb (in this case the game devs) acknowledge your actions just feels nice, it's wild what little positive feedback can do to make the healer experience much better
I used to hate healer class bc men would always assume that was what I mained as a girl. But now I know it isn’t an “easy” role, it’s essential for most team comps and a good healer can carry a team through raids and other challenges. Plus I love the kitten ears on some of the white mage robes.
Many times, playing a healer just felt like being a babysitter.
Especially for PuG/Pick-up Groups where you are just thrown into a run with some randos. You don't know each others' skill levels, how you like to play, nor even if they understand the level/have any experience with it whatsoever.
So... I'm often just hard-carrying a group of idiots that refuse to listen or learn or prepare for the run in any way, shape, or form. And they are just legitimately terrible at understanding their class specifically and role in general.
It's like being stuck babysitting a bunch of drunk people at a party. You don't really know these guys except for the fact you very much do NOT like them... but you get this feeling if you leave them alone they're just going to get themselves killed. And since no one else is stepping up to take care of these idiots... you sigh and commit yourself to keeping them from choking on their own vomit, drowning in the pool, stumbling off the balcony, etc.
It's a very thankless job, especially since the idiots never learn a damned thing and often blame you when things go wrong. But you know what? I learned to take even that in stride. I gained so much 'experience' as a healer salvaging disaster runs with terrible randos that I could then take into more serious runs with my guildies. If nothing else, there is this rush of accomplishment when you hard-carry the short bus to the finish line. They'll never thank you... but you know goddamn well what you just accomplished.
Sounds like the men in question were right about you, and your only real problem was letting the feminists tell you how to think. (Especially given how cute you find the kitty ears :P)
@KopperNeoman or people just disliked being stereotyped by randoms even if it's true, also that last part was unnecessary and had nothing to do with the topic
As Dr. Ludwig himself once said...
Ze healing is not awarding as ze hurting.
I mean, you get to decide who lives or dies. Particularly in MMOs, being a healer can potencialy trigger a player's god complex.
@@legeul does it satisfy you more than hitting a random melee crit on ze man who killed ze man you were healing?
This right here. If healers would have the same killing capacities as the other characters, like they do in Battlefield or Apex Legends, more people would play them
Medic has an Canon name?
*Mr. Ludwig
He did tell the story of how he lost his medical license!
i love playing healer. i hate being swarmed by the enemy because my team let their guard down for like one millisecond. your team may overlook you and take you for granted but at least the enemy seems to think you're important
It's a bit of a skill issue. No amount of positioning can save you from your own team, but I've found that teammates tend to be very appreciative of seeing the hit points come back in clutch situations.
The concept of overheal is a good marriage of shielding and healing. You are given an incentive to use your healing skills even when the party is in good shape, and it's the same defensive benefit of mitigating incoming damage. I recall unlocking an overheal passive for a healer class in Etrian Odyssey 5 and it changed the way that healer class was performing.
Yeah.
Or overhealing as buffing.
In Genshin overhealing is incrdibly important if you want to use one of the best buffers of the game, Furina. You can only get her full buff if she is overhealed. Not to mention there are damage type that are actively causeing damage to your own charcters. If you don't have a healer, you end up dead pretty fast (bloom, hyperbloo, burgeon)
@@pepita2437 and the elusive burning that will probably become more mainstream now that emilie and kinich exist
@@Vickiraytive Yeah. :)
Dehya is finally good now. XD
@pepita2437 I don't have her yet. Only been playing since April and I picked tighnari for the selector
@@Vickiraytive You're lucky you picked Tighnari.
For Dehya/burning to work, you have to have some dedicated characters like Emilie, who doesn't really work in any other team.
Fun video! As an ex edgy dps main turned dedicated supporter I loved hearing about the game design angle. I just want my friends to have as much fun as possible so I heal whenever it's needed and the joy of being there for others completely offsets any downsides.
As a jrpg enthusiast I vastly prefer having a good healer, I am a slow methodical player rather than being the best at making plays that dish out damage and a good healer is essential for my playstyle. I remember basically getting to a stalemate with the final boss in Bravely Default 2 because i had a hard time doing damage but i outhealed her constantly and suddeny i get the message that the boss si out of mp for their attacks and I was like "Did I just stall out the final boss??"
Mate just wanted to say woah gg i freaking love it , you must has been shocked but also excited this is really cool
@@mynameisjugemu-jugemugokon3345 not the flashiest way to win but ey slow and steady wins the race! thank you!
NGL, I cheesed the last half of the game and had everyone be the pet class for that sweet max stats
I feel like if you manage to stall a boss until they're out of MP, that you should get some sort of line from them along the lines of "Why won't you JUST DIE ALREADY!
In Bravely Default I used the generic method? which prevents all combat damage where you would Brave everyone to the maximum amount and then use the spell that prevents all damage from being done for two turns. In the same way, in JRPGs I find using gimmicks that damage dealers have for lifesteal or spell vamp, or good timing on interrupts or similar tools to avoid damage entirely rather than rely on heals.
MTG has this where nobody uses temporary increases in toughness to survive combat because of the insane amounts of exile and destroy in the meta now. As in the video, there's a lot of difficulty in designing a game to need healers while also making healers optional, as majority of players are less geared towards healers.
I love being a support player, but I admit sometimes I wish healers had more going on than just heal.
I remember going to Paladins and finding my place with Furia. A character that could both heal and still be a decent DPS, and recently in Marvel Rivals, I loved playing Loki with his mix of both healing and misdirection.
I think giving a player the feeling of contributing more to combat outside of pure healing is the key to making a healer fun to play.
Also, Gallagher is the peak rpg healer. I will not elaborate.
"Go forth my minion! Unleash death upon this realm and bring me blood for my mercy!"
Me, every time I heal, in any game.
Not really on the same levels as MMOs and such, but I really liked how Battlefield Bad Company 2 made the healer the only class able to use machine guns. You became a solid support class that both healed your team and laid down heavy suppressive fire.
21:40 "sorry, forgot about Baizhu"
Mika found dead in a ditch 💀.
Kaveh, Gaming, Wriothesley and Neuvillette also heal, but only themselves (and every catalyst can heal the party with proto amber, but it's only really viable for Neuvi)
Even on neuvi it's a garbage weapon. I don't get why people like PA is the holy grain when it's literally just a terrible option no matter how you look at it unless you are f2p and coping hard
Every sword user can also heal for themselves, with the Black Sword from the BP. I use that at times in co-op at times for my Chiori, as between that and crystalize, she can happily self sustain.
@@Axterix13 Lol, that's kinda funny.
I'm fairly in the weeds in terms of game knowledge, theorycrafting and such, but because I'm f2p, I don't even know what BP weapons do. But yeah, malenurse army grows!
Mika can heal!? I thought he was just a normal attack speed buffer. I never realized he was also a healer
@@GoldenOwl_Game Yeup. He was one of the characters brought into the conversation with Furina's release and ends up being a really good option for wanderer and some other main DPSs if you have her.
Eula's best team is Furina-Mika-Raiden now, I believe, so one of the big arguments for not C6-ing Bennett went out the window.
It wasn't as much of a deal as it was for characters like Jean or Noelle, but yeah, chocoboi got a moment in the spotlight recently.
I like that Gallagher’s in the thumbnail. He’s one of my favorite examples of a healer character, who essentially says to his teammates “Look, I CAN heal you, but you’re gonna have to attack the enemy if you want it. Don’t even bother building me with the usual healer stats, I’m just gonna keep attacking until they’re weakness broken.”
Even a badly built gallagher can easily do insane dmg when he break weaknesses, he's just built different.
My friends, indulge yourselves (in that free healing from doing damage)
Seriously, I use him a lot, and it’s hilarious seeing him do a load of break damage. Harmacist type beat
Gallagher is my second best sustain after my E1 Aventurine
I've really enjoyed the moments in TF2 when I've been able to heal many as Medic. To me, being able to tell my self, "I did a good job helping the others stay alive in the match today." is satisfying and at least can hold me over until I actually get proper thanks from teammates.
You know what I personally love myself? Healers that can just get in there and beat up the enemy themselves. They're an independent man/woman and ain't needing anyone to cover for them, but being in a party is still appreciated for both themselves and the rest of the group due to the supportive capabilities they bring that enhances group perfomance as a whole... and often things go more efficiently even if they can take care of themselves if there's teammates.
I like to insulting those who talk shits to me. Look who is win. I am a healer btw.
Basically all supports in Paladins!
@@edvingjervaldsaeter3659 In Paladins one of my favorites would actually be Khan who is *sort* of a semi-support lmao
Haven't played that game in awhile though, servers were unplayable last I recall and people kept getting kicked back to lobby without warning
@@cyanthedragon6462 Well, glad to announce that the last 10 times I have played, I haven't had any problems on EU, even yesterday went about as smoothly as it can go with my... less than stellar internet connection, but still went really well
A Korean MMORPG I used to play, Dungeon Fighter Online, have character classes (the Priest class and specifically the Crusader subclass) that can dish out a fair amount of damage while providing healing, buffs, and revives.
The game does split the classes into genders though so there's particular differences between the Male Crusader and the Female Crusader; mainly, M.Sader can be built up as a battle medic with a variety of attacks and attack/support skills. F.Sader does have offensive options but her kit encourages being more of a buff medic than the girl swinging a fuckhuge cross hammer into the enemy.
Still doesn't stop people like me from building my F.Sader into a wrecking ball, but yeah.
I think the best approach to a healer is not just making them only healers, but also giving them their own way to dish out damage or do other useful things like dish out buffs. That way when healing is not needed a healer can do other things. I've played some games where the best choice for a healer can also turn around and hurl out devastating debuffs and has their own kind of limited bag of "I came to heal but I am all out of bubblegum" nukes to drop when push comes to shove.
This for sure
My absolute favorite is when healer and buffer classes are merged into one and they become insanely bulky support for my fast glass cannons of dps.also whenever a game gives you an ability or item to convert hp% to dmg
Your comment made me remember of Hotarugusa in Onmyoji and her healing basing off her ATK because she functions by sucking the hp out of the enemies to heal herself on the basic move. I dreaded seeing one with a set that allowed her to counter-attack.
Arknights has an alternate form of Reed who can deal devastating DPS to groups of enemies by either spamming spinning fireballs on two characters to burn enemies up close or striking enemies to put up a special debuff that makes them explode and spread the debuff to other enemies hit by the explosion to trigger a chain reaction. This also gives her a ridiculous amount of healing based on the damage she deals
Any good support can support themself to godhood.
Amplifiers from pgr
I feel like Genshin recently managed to break this curse with some fun design choices. It feels good seeing Kuki trigger a bunch of hyperblooms, and it feels good to use Jean’s burst knowing that it is fulfilling furina’s ult instantly and you are getting a bunch of damage out of it.
Bennett's already been doing that since day one man. Expanding on the Bennett-fication doesnt mean that Hoyoverse hasn't done it. Its just that nothing in Genshin deals enough damage to warrant just a straight pure healer and your healers or shielder better be bringing some other party buffs to the table alongside their healing.
@@matrinezkevin11492that's also consequently why Genshin doesn't put pure healers in their game. Every single healing character since Barbara has been able to offer something else teams want. Grouping, shielding, buffing, etc. Genshin is self aware enough to know that pure healers are almost always unnecessary and not balanced for the 4 team slots you have.
Some team like the one that has Furina and many fontanian hp drain character actually needs healer, Gaming constelation grant him more damage when he gets overheal
Hello. Healer main here.
I’m not much for online team competition games, but I have played a few.
When I played overwatch, I started with playing Hanzo and Reaper, but the main I settled on was Lucio. In Pokémon Unite, I was an Eldegoss and Blissey main.
Ultimately, I like being the back line support. I don’t find it as stressful. UNTIL my teammates are complete ass. Occasionally in Overwatch and too many bloody times in Unite, I had the highest K:D. The fucking CLERIC had the highest K:D. It was the most tilting thing ever that I just stopped playing both games.
In Dragalia Lost, I also liked playing Clerics in multiplayer lobbies. Again I found it more relaxing and that was actually successful for awhile……. Until the meta became blitzing offense and tossing clerics to the wayside. I then became good at ranged dps instead.
Lucio AND Eldegoss? A true person of culture. From a fellow healer main, I shake your hand and share the pain of having a bad team. I remember too many god damn times when people would leave me to guard a lane all by myself and then fight for my god damn life as no one comes to fucking save me.
I felt that last one. Up until a certain point, healing was actually pretty viable in DL, but then blitzing fights became the norm, and then Grace came along and made healers near obsolete due to her life shields. Of course, she would fold soon after the whole Curse of Nihility addition to later fights, which completely broke her back along with many others. Sigh, the game wasn't the same after all that.
@@ernestoportillo5136 that was the MOSt annoying. How am I 1v3ing bottom lane as Eldegoss and yall are STILL losing top. And nobody is helping me kill Drednaw!!!!! The real kicker is that I was able to stave off the 3v1s somewhat successfully, especially with Blissey. It almost felt like I was rewarding my team for abandoning me on bot lane. That’s mainly how I got ridiculous K:Ds. By just surviving the hell that was solo bot lane. Meanwhile Lucio is just fun even if my team sucks. Not having to consciously think about healing is great and of course healing myself. I had multiple games where I was surviving waaaaaaay to bloody long just bobbing and weaving through gunfire pushing the cart. And being able to speed boost parkcore back into combat after death was really fun. Never really mastered the art of pushing people off cliffs tho. Lastly, I swear every single Juckrat had my number. If I ever heard a Junkrat Ultimate, I just knew, no matter where I was, I was about to die in 5 seconds.
Ahh... Dragalia Lost. Good times. That game was a mix of fun and frustrating, but I left with overall positive emotions.
I remember Heinwald was really fun for his offensive and proactive approach to healing. That said, the game suffered a lot over time because so much of the design shifted to instant-kill attacks if the party failed to dodge some things, which required a lot of effort and memorization. Too much effort for what's supposed to be a casual experience.
@@wastelandkingI freaking hated the Curse of Nihility. It made a bunch of the early game units dead weight EVEN IF they play flawlessly.
One thing you failed to mention is when healers are TOO needed. When the skill of the healer can be solely responsible for a team losing, it is very daunting to try out playing a new role. You are not allowed to be bad at your role and that is always a detriment when trying to learn something new. Non-healers need to be at least a little bit self sufficent in their survivability and be able to compensate the healer's lack of skill, however this has the danger of healers becoming unnecessary. It's a tough balance to strike, especially if you do this by creating entire game mechanics like alternative healing sources.
They don't necessarily; as long as the healer can properly learn his role, there's no harm in relying on it so heavily.
getting that "nice heal bro" in games is what makes me play as healers
As a genshin player, i just like healing more than shields. They are just weird to use, hard to build to be strong, and doging is hard as a mobile player.
In D&D the major problem I have with healers (and healing in general) is that even the 'Dedicated Healers' are better off just killing the enemy rather than healing.
However, in the Epic Battle Fantasy series I can certainly say healing is vital; although the main Healer's role as the Dedicated healer is a bit less pronounced in the later games when certain skills become equipped skill usable by a few member as opposed to the first games when they were all pre-set.
Heck the White Mage from Final Fantasy 1 can learn buff spells as early as level 1 which makes me think that said effects should be more prominent on the healers, healing and buffs are kinda cut from the same cloth in my opinion; positive consequences to ally members to help them do their job more consistently and sometimes outright better than normal.
Ah a fellow Epic Battle Fantasy fun
in dnd healing is more useful for picking downed members up. Which is why healing word stays very good. On any given turn you're likely to average more damage than you'd do healing.
@@tatri292Yeah, I remember doing the math on two similar spells, cure wounds and inflict wounds. At the low levels, cure wounds is likely to heal 7 or 8 HP (4.5 for average die roll +3 from mod). Inflict wounds deals 8-9 (4.5 x 3 for average dice rolls at a 60% chance to hit adding an extra 4.5 x 3 x 5% crit). With the added benefit of inflict wounds is taking care of the problem causing you to need the healing. Which removing combatants is a form, and is the best at it, of damage mitigation. Thus, its typically better to do damage than it is heal.
@@slydoorkeeper4783 cure wounds in particular isn't a very good spell. Heals a bit less than double what healing word does but is so incredibly worse in all other ways. It has one of the most efficient spell slot/healing ratios outside combat if resting or items aren't an option I guess but packing a better spell you wouldn't need it :wink:
@@tatri292 As I said, I selected those two because of how similar they are. Touch, slot use, action use. I know there is healing word, I was just trying to be as 1 to 1 as possible to show just how poorly designed healing is.
Neat video. never watched your stuff, but as someone who's thought a lot about healers in games myself, I felt compelled to watch. I think this provides a pretty good overview of the general issues healer design runs into, even if I don't agree with *everything* you said.
However, I did want to bring up an element of healing in games that I don't often see talked about, but I think is a relevant element. Put simply, I think a fundamental issue that a lot of devs have to consider when designing healing is that healing often doesn't scale well with player skill, especially when compared to your traditional DPS roles.
This is somewhat connected to the points you made regarding healing being more "reactive." Damage taken is often a controllable thing for players, and the usefulness of a healer is directly tied to that. A character's healing can only ever be as useful as how much damage players take. You mentioned that this can often result in healers being unnecessary; but even in situations where the healing is needed, like when players take a static amount of damage every fight, it puts a natural cap on a player's expression of skill.
For example, in FFXIV, there are many people who are innefficiant at playing a healer in the game, and will often spam medica 3 or whatever to keep the party alive. If we ignore the healer's DPS output and focus solely on a players effectiveness in healing the party, as long as the party doesn't die, that player is just as effective as a healer as a world-first ultimate raider. Even if the player's skillsets are vastly different, they would be functionally the same. Compare this to a poor DPS vs a good DPS, where skill is clearly expressed through a nice shiny DPS number that makes the boss die faster.
This whole issue is actually a major reason why the green DPS meme exists in FFXIV. When players hit the natural skill ceiling for healing, they're going to look to something else to optimize. That's why players have been fighting against the FFXIV dev's insistence that healers are only there to heal since 2.0 (though, thankfully CB3 seems to finally be starting to change their mind on this).
Just some food for thought. I don't think this is an unsolvable problem by any means. You could go the route of giving healers other things to do when they need to heal, you could make it so that the game requires efficient healing through resource management and prolonged fights. There's probably a lot of solutions. I just think it's something important to consider in all this.
Ur definitely right when it comes to active and passiveness towards the role. If I'm playing healer, I want to be able to do something the entire game rather than react with my abilities. And as much as I love playing some healers in multiplayer games, sometimes I know that I am way better as than the current person playing tank or dps. Supporting a bad teammate means you have 2 useless people in a battle rather than just 1. It's often the most unappreciated, most important, and least rewarding role to play.
Agreed
I feel like a lot of the issues I have with poorly designed healers is that they don't have a 'win condtion' they have a 'not loose' condition
Or no real gameplan.
I unironically loved support moonstone twice in league, because the poison meant 1 attack leads to 3 healing bursts and I always had to keep up the passive effect to keep the numbers big
But like soooo many healers just wait for a good moment to heal or buff
Yeah, in general, it is rough to not have good teammates as a healer, but at the same time, depending on the game, that kinda also makes the game more fun. Like say healer in FF14 pve, it's actually more fun to heal if you have bad teammates, lol, or new players and such. It's pretty fun to see them also learn and improve over time.
In pvp though, there are various things you can do as a healer in pvp games because healer is often the highest priority target for the enemy team to kill. So you can bait a lot of things as healer to benefit your team. Healers can have a lot of tactical control in matches, but it's generally nowhere near as direct / straightforward than playing a DPS.
I view healer in team games (pve and pvp) as a sort of buffer to allow your team to play how they want, no matter if they're skilled or not as skilled. The more skilled you are as a healer, the larger the buffer you can provide for your team. As in, you can allow your teammates to have a much larger margin for error.
I've had this exact feeling. Kinda why I don't like role queue in overwatch. I'm more that aware that I could do better than the dps on my team because I play dps tanks AND supports. It's very irksome.
I love being a healer in games where healing is a role that actually makes a difference. I also enjoy when someone is being toxic towards the healer, and the people who want the healer eject that toxic butthole.
An interesting contrast for me is the healer vs the support. Supports are actually useful proactively, increasing damage, reducing damage taken or doing the opposite to enemies, supports are generally the busiest member of the team since "supporting harder" isn't really a thing generally so they support more by doing more things and getting better role compression so everyone else can work at their best.
Generally, healers are the first thing to be cut from a team as the players get better since you can't heal harder than people are taking damage while supports are generally the first thing to be put in and then the team is built around them so they can support as well as possible, reducing overlap in areas covered and making sure that everyone can make use of their buffs and debuffs.
This is why dedicated healers are just bad design. Healer shouldn't be a class in itself, it should just be support/tank/dps that also have some heals in their kits, so they can heal when needed and do their thing when not.
Medic: Healer
Engineer: Support
@@adisca2k Big time.
One of my favourite Genshin Impact characters to play is Yaoyao :) She's a great healer and she can deal a bit of damage too. Whenever I had trouble beating a boss in the early game due to skill issues I'd make a team with both her and Barbara, which left me with more healing than the bosses could cause me, and with no one to heal Yaoyao damages enemies and I'd just run and dodge with Barbie's ring while Yaoyao's skill + burst did their thing :)
I appreciate this comment so much 🥰 yaoyao is my daughter, she’s too adorable
In party based RPGs I think one of the issues I had was definitely the opportunity cost problem only in reverse. Basically in games like Tales of Symphonia, Chrono Trigger, or Skies of Arcadia, you only have a limited party but you also get a steady stream of new characters you want to use with potential new synergies.
But I always had to have an active team slot for the dedicated healer, reducing my options for fun experimentation because It’s more cost effective to have a Raine, Marle, and Fina on at all times with their greater suite of healing spells than to have one of the other characters that are more utility/offensive with less healing spells that are also usually less effective.
So you don’t really have a party of 3/4 you can customize and play with, in reality you have 2/3 to work with unless you want to completely rely on healing items and that may be tenable in Pokémon but that’s slightly less so in the other games I mentioned.
While I generally agree with your point (I can add Bravely Default and Octopath Traveller to the list where healers in some capacity feels mandatory), I have to point out that Skies of Arcadia is a bit of a weird example here, for multiple reasons.
The biggest one have to be that the party is shaped by the story more so than player input. You literally can't customize the party until the very final segment of the game, and even then, three of the four party members are locked to Vyse, Aika, and Fina, with only the fourth slot open to one of the remaining three characters.
Secondly, while all her super moves are healing or support, it feels weird to call the girl with the highest magic damage a dedicated healer, even if damage is the worst use for magic in that game. And although Fina does have more defensive super moves than most, all characters do have their own defensive super moves. It's just that Lunar Light in particular is overtuned, healing, and happens to be Fina's final super.
Also, the regular healing and revival magics and items all heals fixed amounts and can be learned/used by all characters, so anyone can be an effective healer. In fact, the less magic inclined party members make great (out-of-battle) healers since they probably aren't using their MP otherwise. I also like to use Aika for healing in emergencies due to her speed, as it really hurts when a heal fails because the target already fainted.
Regardless, I love to see a Skies of Arcadia mention out in the wild. Sorry for rambling.
@@VTEySAG oh yeah that’s completely fair. I haven’t played Skies in a very very long time so my memory is fuzzy in certain respects including Fina’s complete role. I just know I had certain options in terms of who I could bring along and I don’t know if that was a GameCube difference or it really has just been way too long. I completely defer to your perspective.
@@MousaThe14 Makes sense, it's old game, and it's an easy mistake to make. I certainly don't expect everyone to know every minute detail of one of my hyperfixations, hence ending with an apology and appreciation.
@@VTEySAG No harm done, it’s a good hyper fixation to have, it was a great game, one of the all time greats that I still need to take the time to revisit.
Definitely interesting to listen to, as someone plays mainly healers, although preferably with other supportive roles.
When you mention the medic in TF2 and how they can make major breakthroughs, I'd argue that in games like HSR and Genshin, many other healer characters do similar things. In that, the medic can provide buffs through his healing and that highlights (in my eyes) that healers don't always have to solely be able to heal.
At the same time, I am a Furina main and absolutely adore how her playstyle is built around HP change, the more HP you lose/gain, the higher the damage. It creates an interesting dynamic and she actively encourages the use of healers.
However, very *very* different when playing multiplayer games... definitely cried a lot when playing a healer in Val... never going back to that game.
I think one thing some games do to allow healers stuff to do is by making the Support class not just about healing, but applying buffs to teammates/debuffs to enemies so that there's always something.
Supports usually take on tasks that the other 2 do not. They can stand behind their team making calls or stand between their MVP and the enemy. Wards, area control, baiting are some other tasks that supports tend to be better at when they are with their teammates.
having just healing isnt that bad, forexample Necrophose from Dota, his Q heals, his W amplifies healing, his E provide healing and mana regen, his ult gives him burst of healing and mana plus pernament hp regen... he is a tank assasin
I recently played ff13 and I love how classes work in that game. Instead of having dedicated healers, multiple characters can switch to the healer role on demand if needed.
Meanwhile I have that one friend who loves healer and support, he's actually sad if there's no dedicated role/class like that
And I have to say, he's really good at doing his job, in co-op games we simply perform so much better with his support. He's so good I never want to play co-op games with healer/support roles without him haha
I stopped playing games without the ability to heal others. I enjoy it so much. I can relate to your friend a lot
Please name a few co-op games you've played with said buddy? My brother and me are always on the lookout for more games to play together.
I used to have TONS of fun playing a healing ship in Dreadnought. Came up with a crazy, dynamic playstyle and it was great.
Notably, the game's "tactical cruisers" also had the only hitscan weapons, even with low damage, giving them a secondary niche of dealing with small, fast ships.
I'm not sure how or why but playing Xenoblade was probably the first time I ever had fun playing as a healer. Even though Sharla quickly gets outmoded, something about her role was just fun for me
When I played Xenoblade 2 i played a healer the whole time because i liked being in charge of when to heal. They're fun in 3 as well, especially with some classes like Signifer where you rapid fire buffs or playing Crossette in XB2 where her healing scales up her damage
@@tsunderemerc2963 should we consider crosset an healing blade by now?
And funnily enough xenoblade x has only 4 healing art because monolith soft thought the player would not used it.
@@tsunderemerc2963same for xc2, though for me I mostly just resented the AI and couldn't trust them to heal correctly. Let me tell the AI to stay on the healer blades please, stop swapping for no darn reason.
X wss kinda designed to be played without healer and soul voices were supposed to keep you going but not heal you fully. Every class had a survivability art that costed TP. It was really interesting. But overdrive broke everything and you can just become invincible with a few tricks...
You can tell by playing Future Connected that it's really Chain Attacks that make Sharla weak. If they didn't exist, she'd be the team MVP and Melia would be the useless one... yep, just like in FC.
I love being the healer, it is satisfying to know that you were a contribution to others' success.
As mentioned in the video, TF2 Medic is a blast to play, especially with a Heavy. However, my favourite is playing a Templar in Elder Scrolls Online. You have some incentive to do things even while your allies are at full HP, by maintaining their buffs. But in big fights, damage is constant, and maintaining AOE heals and Heals Over Time is a must.
I liked the explanation used in Log Horizon anime. One of the "healing" class characters is actually preventative.
The other thing I always remember is the healing class video for FF14 frim Jocat. Damage prevented, damage done to enemies between heals, acts as pre-healing.
Log Horizon’s class system was based on Everquest 2, which did a pretty good job providing different styles of healing. Clerics had reactive heals, which provided a certain number of charges of healing that proc when you take damage. Shamans specialized in wards that absorbed a certain amount of damage. Druids had regenerative healing, which healed for much more in total, but over a longer duration. Each class also had different focuses on offensive and supportive abilities, like Shamans having strong debuffs and Druids powerful elemental nukes.
As a healer main that played every role in FF14, honestly, the big downside of healing in FF14 is that you need to do DPS, heh. As a healer, your "DPS" generally only consists of spamming 1 single button and using your OGCDs (off-global cooldowns) to heal between your single spell DPS GCDs. So it's quite boring, unless it's Savage or harder content.
Great video! Logically I understand all the reasons why people don't want to play healer but as someone who has to be dragged kicking and screaming from my healing/support builds in most games (god eater, monster hunter, mmos, hell I even play single player shooters as a healer when I can), it's always a shock when people tell me they hate it.
Your point about how a healer becomes less useful the more you have ways to mitigate or avoid damage was definitely one of the first things I thought of. Turn-based games usually make taking damage inevitable for several reasons, whereas more action-based games have scarcer healing sources and tend towards making healing effectively a punishment for not dodging/blocking properly.
I'll bring up Etrian Odyssey again, because parts of the community have a bit of a stigma against using the dedicated healer and tank classes. I don't mind using them, myself, and they can be built to have a fair bit of flavor, depending on the game. But I can see why some prefer not to use them, since having a tank do nothing but throw up shields and a healer do nothing but heal isn't engaging and can even feel like a waste of party slots. In EO's case specifically, teams without healers or tanks can be viable if one focuses on lockdown through binds/ailments or just does big damage, though that requires substantial knowledge of the game to be effective and usually takes up limited item slots on healing/revival items, so it's considered a more advanced playstyle that opens up team compositions.
EO's dedicated healers typically have several advantages over other healing sources, depending on the game: their skills can heal more effectively than the competition's, they usually have the best or only revival skills, they save money and inventory space over buying items, they sometimes have overheals, etc. They also have amusing quirks of their own: EO1's Medic has abnormally high ATK scaling to pair with a melee move that can stun, as well as a buff that significantly reduces most damage to the party; EO3's Monk can specialize as a bare-fisted fighter to save money on weapons in the early game, even if it doesn't scale the best; EO5's Herbalist can take the Graced Poisoner tree and throw around debuffs, ailments, and magic damage when not healing, though this works best with a Celestrian instead of the default Brouni. But even then, many players prefer classes with less-conventional healing, with EO3's Sovereign being a prime example that heals those they buff and provide party-wide regen if they're unharmed.
It's been a while since I last played EO, I should do that again. I always considered a healer and tank MANDATORY for any party, at least early game. But I remember in most EO games even later game Healers were useful even beyond healing due to often having really strong Utility passives and/or Grind reducers. Could be remembering wrong though, as I said it's been a while.
Action games tend to prioritize in-the-moment decisions for player agency in frames of seconds to fractions of a second, whereas strategy games and turn-bases often place a lot more obvious emphasis on tactical, strategic, goal-setting, and meta-level choices and decisions over longer periods. That means that any individual move is generally less emphasized in such games compared to action games as that is not the primary level of play the game is really played at, which means playing 'healers' is often playing then against the tactical or strategic challenge across a wider scope of time and context than action games are often phenomenologically experienced as. Ie, healers have a higher demand for a dedicated moment-to-moment core game loop that is intrinsically appealing to play or overcome in action games than a lot of other games types, and few action games include much of that.
imagine darkest dungeon without a healer in a party, f that you gonna almost get a heart attack, we need u
2:30 We definitely need a followup video concerning dedicated healer mains, there is a lot to say on the subject
In final fantasy 14, I mostly play healers. My reasons are a bit narcissistic - I feel healer is the most important role for deciding whether a group succeeds or fails. A good healer can really carry a group to victory, in a way a DPS can't (not at that level myself yet but aspiring to be).
It's just a lot of fun. Preemptively shielding a hard mechanic, seeing a few people fail but survive thanks to my shields and knowing my action possibly just prevented a wipe feels great.
And in normal difficulty content I love the hectic moments when half the party dies and I need to insta revive a tank, heal everyone, get the tanks to full HP+shields, then spend 8 seconds hard-casting a revive on the other healer to bring the party up.
Before Pokémon Unite banned me for literally 100 years, I loved playing as Eldegoss because she was the first support I got and she could do a good bit of damage as well.
In some ways I can see what you said was good about medic, in so far as being fast and able to do good damage so you're simply helpless in a fight. In fact, I ran a mostly offensive eldegoss, stacking sp. atk and atk spd to debuff foes' movement and hunt them down if I felt I was able to do so. I was honestly too aggressive sometimes, but being able to chase down squishies running away or flee myself when it started looking rough, it was very fun to be moving and grooving.
The linchpin was how my heal worked. I toss out a ball, it attaches to someone, and after a few seconds, it explodes, either healing or going damage depending on whether foes or allies were in the radius. This meant I could just toss that thing out and then focus on attacking while it cools down, meaning I got a lot more fighting than other healers.
If this isn't really a dedicated healer build, then understandable, but this is the most recent multi-player game healer I've played and I've got a lot of good memories as playing as that puffball because I could scratch my itch to be supportive of my team AND the itch to take names if I get the chance. I felt I could take initiative or stay reactive and I loved it.
Resistance 2’s medic was an amazing healing class imo. You had a beam weapon that linked to enemies which charges a healing secondary blast. And then, you still had sub weapons with a more specialized use case so you could contribute to damage when healing wasn’t needed. The beam still did respectable damage too since it hit every enemy in a horde.
I used to avoid playing healer because it seemed too hard. You have to be watching everyone's hp and in the right position to help them without getting killed yourself. I hardly ever developed that kind of game sense so I usually don't play healers. There are times that I have wanted to though because I think its fun to prevent a teammate from dying. The few games I can somewhat play them, its really fun. Also some healers have really interesting mechanics and that makes them appealing to me, almost none of which were touched in this video though but oh well.
Also, grass type pokemon had been considered the cleric type for a long time, idk if it still is though.
I wouldn't say healing is harder, it's just that it needs a significantly different set of skills compared to other roles
@@MattHatter360 Yeah, I agree, I main healer and it's not really that it's harder, just a totally different skillset, which is what makes it fun for healer mains. So honestly, if a game is trying to make healers more like DPS, it takes a lot of the fun out of the healer role to me. Like I could just play an actual DPS instead of a healer "DPS".
@@MattHatter360 Very much so. I got turned, for the most part, permanently off of healers after a single run doing the healer role as a paladin in WoW years ago. It was my first and only dungeon run acting as a healer and according to all involved, both during and after, I did pretty well. However, I was stressed out the majority of the time and exhausted after finishing.
As it turns out, I apparently have a fairly low stress threshold which I work around by perceiving things in such a way and setting things up that I rarely get much stressed over things in the first place. That strategy does not work well for rapid high-stakes multitasking and thus left my emotional experience of triage as shattered nerves. While part of that was my age and inexperience (and my build was not especially suited to the task, either), it is absolutely a different mindset and skillset to tanking and especially DPSing rather than 'better' or 'worse.'
Healers are fun, when just healing, if you have to invoke triage. As raid healer in TBC classic I had the most fun ever, because raid was getting constantly damaged and you have to quickly decide between GCDs where's the heal needed most. It was quiet high paced and gratifying.
@@eldenarmortem975 I agree, triage is one of the most fun aspects of playing a healer. It applies to both pvp and pve healing as well.
Both MMORPG and RPG games I always pick the most valuable Job "Healer". Without those job all player can't do the hardest content in game.
Xenoblade 2 is a fun case where healers are a semi-necessary class to have for much of the early game, but when you approach endgame and postgame content healers fall off hard, with Advant Guard medals (heal whenever you crit) plus high crit items, you can keep yourself topped up. And then comes the DLC that introduces two healer characters, Fiora and Crossette who are better known for their massive damage potential. Fiora is crits for days while crossette stacks potions collected to deal massive damage and is the crux of speedruns (until endgame HP totals balloon). Two of the higher tier DPS characters, a NG+ earth blade and Dagas (base game), are better known for their support capabilities because one buffs damage to enemies weakness while the other grants a party wide damage buff. And then there is Corvin, another DLC character who is supposed to be a tank, but has really good specials that heal the party. Power creep really confused the power dynamic.
At least Fiona in Xenoblade 3 manages to be, more of a general support than a healer, but still one of if not the most broken character in the game by being _just that good at support._ She's literally a cheerleader, and by gosh she's the best dang cheerleader you've ever seen.
@@angeldude101 Fiora character development from stronk tomboy to loving housewife?
As a genshin player I feel the need to correct one of your statements.
Furina can provide healing, but you'll never use it in battle. Instead you'll use her other stance that brings nice damage and hydro application Off-field ... at the cost of draining your teams HP.
This, in turn, increases the value of every other healer in the game that classifies as a "Furina healer" aka a healer that heals a lot, preferably all teammates and quickly, mostly for her burst.
See, Furina's burst weaponises on the fluctuation of HP (which she drains for the whole party, remember?) to gain stacks and turn them into a damage bonus for the whole party.
In short, she turns healing into damage bonus.
Furina, on her own, has made healers relevant once more in Genshin ...
And then Genshin brought out Arleccino and Clorinde are main DPS that cannot be healed by any other character but themselves (they have some healing ability, and certainly aren't healer friendly) WTF ?
I don’t remember completely, but I think I enjoyed playing a healer in the mobile game Dragalia Lost.
While it’s easy to always choose the cool and fast DPS, as you said, healers are often pretty accepted and mistakes aren’t as critical (though when needed, it does become important).
In that game, you still would need to learn boss attack patterns and you still have to survive (healers could heal themselves but weren’t necessarily way more tanky or less).
It was a nice way to contribute to the team in a meaningful way and (at higher levels, and once you’re more experienced) could provide a challenge too.
Of course there were teams that insisted to go without healers, but when things didn’t go *perfectly* you could tell people were getting frustrated (even though running a healer just meant a slower clear time but still a clear).
You have very explained to me why I have avoided several games that I hadn't quite connected. I prefer healing/support roles, and have ended up avoiding games that fall into the problems you have outlined here.
As a SMT masochist i actually love healers, is just another part of the resource management gameplay, especially when your healer doubles as a buffer or debuffer.
My funniest experience with a healer had to be in Fire emblem 3Houses Maddening, with my Mercedes never missing a magic level up. By the midgame she was dealing more damage than my dedicated magic damage dealer (Lysithea)
Healing and buffs are cut from the same cloth in my opinion, they both help other party members do their job in ways that are slightly different but positive all the same.
As for funny healer experiences, Yuna from FFX is meant to be the healer (outside of Aeon shenanigans) but due to having more Agility AND Magic she's actually better at dealing magic damage than Lulu if she gets a hold of some damage spells.
Healers really are a funny one.
My most memorable experience playing a healer was Ana in Heroes of the Storm. Her skillshot healing style just made a lot of sense to me, and when playing on a team with my friends so I could communicate with them better, I could really feel like I was making a worthwhile impact on the game. Healing for random matched public teammates, though, has always been a thankless hell no matter the game.
I main Field Medic in Killing Floor 2, which is the only game I play healer in so here are my thoughts
1) Medics have insane buffs that the medic can use on himself
2) Anything that potentially heals also becomes poisonous to enemies so no tool is useless when there are no allies
3) Medics have medic versions of all weapons so there is variety
My only real suggestion for KF3 is that they add critical healing (more healing for headshots) or over heal
Killing Floor definitely got healers right. They made them very versatile in KF2 and KF1 it was basically the swat class with healing darts on their guns.
Just wanted to say that preview image is glorious, love it
13:43 wish and aromatherapy are quite literally THE healing support moves in Pokémon, but it's more applicable in competitive than in single player for reasons you mentioned (they are quite good actually, just a bit uncommon).
Uncommon is a bit of an understatement. Wish is one of the rarest moves in the game. I don't think any NPC's actually use this move, and most of the Pokemon that learn it do so by egg move (which is a mechanic the average player is unlikely to even know about, let alone avail themselves of). I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of people who have played Pokemon have literally never seen this move.
No one mention Revival Blessing.
@@maxspecs very important in some competitive regulation G teams
Agreed in that I think there are significantly different implications for healing-focused Pokemon whether considering single player (and largely single battles) vs multiplayer. Double battles (and max raid battles in Sw/Sh) are where healer ‘mons shine the most - providing your hard-hitters with greater longevity through a partner is great, and in some cases invaluable. In Pokemon’s case you can also ensure your healer ‘mons have offensive moves to defend themselves too.
Besides direct healing in moves, say Wish/Life Dew/Pollen Puff etc, you have abilities that can make an offensive partner into a pseudo-healer, like pairing a Toxicroak with Dry Skin with any other Pokémon that can use Surf. It’s not often very viable or practical for the single player story of Pokémon, but the implications on competitive play are much greater here.
Most 'healers' are just walls in singles.
Not many people play PlanetSide 2 or will see this, but Imma say it anyways.
The Combat Medic in PlanetSide 2 gets a decent amount of firepower, the ability to restore people's HP and shields, and a tool that resurrects people. The strongest tool the Combat Medic has is a grenade that mass res people in a small area, which is heavily used by players doing a coordinated push/breakout where casualties mount at an astonishingly high rate. A single medic can bring back a team and a handful of well placed medics can sometimes turn the tables in a battle by resurrecting a massive push.
The Engineer is more of a healer for mechanical things, they get a tool that heals exosuits (which is used like the infantry being on foot), they can obvious heal vehicles and emplacements. Best of all, they get grenades that heal a bunch of mechanical things in a group, that grenade is sometimes used when there is a mass breakout/push where exosuits take heavy damage (but to resurrect one you still need a medic).
Honestly, PlanetSide 2 is the few I actively enjoy playing healers. I get a set of weapons kit that allow me to defeat non vehicle/exosuit enemies and take objectives decently well, I get kit that supports my job well, and the game actively encourages the use of medics to ensure that casualties can get up and fighting again.
Expanding on Point 4, Wanting to Stay At Low HP, Final Fantasy 8 (and to a _much_ lesser extent 6) is a unique edge case where there actually _is_ a system wide mechanic that wants you to be at low health. In that game, Limit Breaks are almost always accessible at low health. Because of that, the dominant strategy is to have one character at the lowest sustainable health value for where you are in order to spam limit breaks. Often this is either Squall for his perfect accuracy and ability to hit multiple times per turn with Renzukoken, or Quistis for her utility blue magic (including an instant death spell). However, Zell can take advantage of this decently well with his build a combo limit break, and there is an entire category of items specifically for Irving's limit break. When combined with how the game passively punishes grinding and how you can take advantage of the card mini game to create powerful items and spells early on, this is one of many mechanics that leads to 8 being considered a broken game by many, and inherently kinda fun to speedrun despite being a multi disc PSX RPG. And while 6 has a prototype limit break in Desperation Attacks that can be randomly accessed at low health, it is far more random and less reliable than 8. Not that it matters since 6 lacks a dedicated healer, or the ability to spec someone into one, anyway.
You could make a whole channel around the topic of healers in games. Another type of healers which i found really interesting are medics in Battlefield titles, who get wildly different revelances in their arsenal in every entry.
I enjoy playing as the Healer. Having a passive role in combat fits my slowness I have to react to the fast-paced actions. It's even better in games that have NPC controlling the rest of the party, like in, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch.
I definitely enjoy playing healers, I love hanging back and making sure my teammates are able to get those big numbers. Unfortunately like you explained during this video most games don't need healers luckily playing support and healers in FFXIV is wanted and needed and they make it fun to play as well with some healers doing big damage numbers. I hope more games make healers needed.
In TF2 Nothing is more satisfying to me than out healing a teams top 4 or 5 damage dealers, negating that damage damage done. I have helped hold points while greatly out numbered from good heals. People do appreciate great heals and will for sure give you props for doing your part. Well timed ubers are just a thing of beauty. I typically play any class that the team needs most, but medic is my goto.
One of the games I loved healing in and I've seen many people praise is TERA (RIP), it was an action-combat MMORPG in which only 2 out of 13 classes could heal in a team-wide scale: Priest and Mystic.
Priest was more of your average healer in an MMORPG but the TERA Combat mechanics made Healers extremely important and severely skill reliant on an individual bases. A good healer that could dodge and maintain their buffs up would theoretically keep fighting forever, and a lot of boss mechanics revolved around the Healer being able to disable major buffs enemies would receive. Priests had the unique ability to pull allies at a range to avoid danger and had mostly low cooldowns, which made them cycle through their skills quite often and have them at any situation as long as the player knew how to handle them.
Mystic was this summoner class that could compete with DPS's when handled correctly and used Auras instead of buffs. Buffs had to be reapplied anytime an ally died but as long as a Mystic lived, their auras would remain active. Their thralls (summons) were extremely powerful in both supportive and damage based ways and the mystic had to choose which thralls to pull out to buff the team's dps at any given time or lay low and focus on healing. Mystics could also drop motes of both mana regen and health regen to promote active healing from your allies while not being limited from just directly healing allies themselves. For this same reason, Mystic was harder to play more efficiently, because Players had to constantly think in ways to efficiently heal (as they couldn't do so as widely and often as a Priest) while trying to provide as much DPS as possible.
When played right, Mystics would be better than Priests in many cases and an extremely great boon to any team, while Priests weren't left behind and were seen as a competent, safer option for less skilled teams or first runs through dungeons. This combined with a game that had fast leveling and heavily promoted alt creation and usage, a competent healer main would comfortably have fun with both classes, and that is what made TERA special for me.
Too much yapping but ty if you read through it all ❤
I really like playing healers, so much that i actively try to create healing classes sometimes, one of my favorites experiences was as using a support Sword and shield in monster hunter world and entering SOS missions to help other players.
I always play healers and supports~ in every possible game, ever since I was a kid! I love the role so much... It's a huge part of who I am ❤
Healers require replacing a team member with someone dedicated solely to making up for mistakes(aka losing health), when often people would prefer to prevent the damage from happening, either by increasing defensiveness, increasing skill to avoid damage, or increasing damage to kill the enemies before they can kill you.
The way how I see it is that restoring health and buffing stats are cut from the same cloth so dedicated healers should be the ones who get BOTH of those things; that way they have something to do when no one has any big gaps in their health bar.
Personally, if the healer can protect the party's momentum from otherwise inevitable setbacks and/or speed up their total momentum to the point that it more than makes up for the initial loss of having one less damage dealer then that's a good healer (in my opinion).
It really depends on the game and the way it is designed. Like in Guild Wars 2, it was originally created to purposely get rid of the holy trinity in MMORPGs. Eventually everyone ran glass cannon DPS in pve. Later on though, the game devs introduced healer specs, and in World vs World (the mass PvP mode), even now, every top guild runs healers.
Like in pvp, no matter how good you are, you're going to eventually make mistakes, and your opponents are going to constantly try to force you to make mistakes as well. So healers are like a buffer / allow for greater margin for error, but even top lvl play will have mistakes made on both sides (at least in pvp, where both sides are evenly matched in skill).
That depends entirely on the game. In some games, receiving damage is entirely avoidable and comes exclusively from making mistakes. In others, it is either practically or inherently unavoidable and not from mistakes but part of the rhythm of the game loop for certain segments of the game. Healing is an inherently contextual role, and thus live and die by how well the context necessitates and justifies that role.
I like hearing your game design thoughts!
I used to play support in Overwatch. When I dropped the game and started playing others, I took more of an interest in tanks and attackers. Like Final Fantasy XIV, which shows up in this video at points. At first I took an interest in support and healing because I want to be helpful. But from another perspective, beating the enemy as quickly and efficiently as possible is just as helpful as restoring health.
Tales of xillia has Jude the mc as a healer and he's incredible. He can aoe heal in later parts of the game without slowing down his combat. Probably the best healer I've played
Fire emblem the later games are trying but healers are still very prone to exploding on touch. Lissa Axe in the fates dlc would have made her great in awakening.
But yeah healing makes you feel like you aren't doing anything just spamming a single thing
Most RPG tends to have their dedicated healer doubles as a secondary mage as both usually uses the same resources and benefits from the same stat.
Namely, Tales series (the little girl that uses mainly dark arts is the dedicated healer, Jude is more of a damage dealer with heals), Trails series, Persona series and probably many others
I love how in xenoblade 1 and 2, healers aren't very usefull but in xenoblade 3 it's completely nesesary to have them for the harder boss fights.
I love playing as Eunie with the lapidarist class, critical hit healing + buff spam is super usefull and fun to play.
I believe that is how healers should play similar to this in any game. Make them esencial to the team and fun to play.
Healers have always had an interesting history. That being I've always wanted to try be a healer, but almost never play any team based games. So I never really got the opportunity to be one.
The closest experience I can think of is prefering white mages and defensive characters in RPGs, but that doesn't quite feel the same.
Funny enough, I recall hearing things in late Overwatch 1 of them completely reworking Mercy to have more offensive options. A part of me always thought that was strange. But the way you broke down the medic in this video helped me realize why being able to do more than just heal really good can be a good thing.
idk if you did this on purpose, but thank you for making the video 40 minutes on the dot, it is very satisfying
A well-designed healer character lets you act as a force multiplier for your team. Providing extra longevity for your offensive members, especially those who might have a strong output but low hardiness.
I suppose I didn’t immediately think of Mercy or the Medic when thinking about contemporary heal-focused characters in games - my experience has had more well-rounded healers who might be better described as supporters anyhow. Restorative healing, preventative healing (shielding), de/buffing (lower incoming attack efficacy, increase ally defenses, etc) are tools I see packaged together more often for engaging healer characters. Heck, some can offer good damage in their own right!
My to-date most fun healer character experience has been playing a Warriorpriest in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. An active, front- or mid-line healer who waded into battle with hammers (and occasionally tomes). The ability to rock up to enemies with a sledge and wail on them while *simultaneously* healing yourself per hit, and thus go toe to toe with hardier or glass cannon careers was excellent. Moreso, running alongside a friendly heavy character and healing them up with your hammer blows, shoulder to shoulder. AoR placed more emphasis on direct+gradual heals, so laying down HoT’s on your party during a PVP scenario or a Public Quest made keeping others up more manageable. Playing a tank’s pocket-healer was grand though, even from more of a distance.
Shout-out to Dungeons and Dragons Fourth Edition “Leader” classes as well! For people who hated/resented playing Clerics in prior editions of D&D, being relegated to pure heal-bots who didn’t get to contribute directly to victory? 4e heard you loud and clear, and Leader classes were all competent in combat and each had their own support-niche they focused on in addition to a relatively standard healing progression package. Clerics laid on extra HP when healing; Artificers dished out temp HP (shielding) and bonuses to hit & damage; Warlords granted bonuses and additional attacks; Bards could slide allies to reposition them and save allies the action economy + opportunity attack provocations; etc. Leaders were a grand way to have one of four class roles dedicated to healing, while still making them engaging to play and giving them each some niche protection.
I think the idea of a “dedicated healer” whose sole, or overall purpose is restoring lost HP, is perhaps outdated - or at least, it doesn’t fit the gameplay goals of a lot of modern combat-focused games. Undoing damage alone won’t be enough of a purpose/toolkit for a lot of players, especially in multiplayer scenes where healers & supports are taken for granted. Healers with a more diversified kit strike me as a productive adaptation to the archetype, even if their healing/supporting role remains their primary tool.
Funny thing is Mercy isn't even a good healer. She's used for her damage boost and revive. 55 (or 60) hp per second single target heal is awful if consistent
Honestly, I think for more modern games, the bigger reason to not really focus on old school healer roles (at least in pvp) is because well-played healers just made the Time To Kill (TTK) extremely high, and average match length much longer. So forcing kills was all about coordinated limited windows of opportunity. More modern games tend to go for shorter overall match lengths and shorter TTK. But there can still be supports who act as force multipliers in more modern games too, they don't necessarily need to be healers.
I remember licking to play as a engineer in Planetside 2. That game had a medic class, but the engineer could heal the max class (power armor class that is more heavily armored and armed then a normal class) and vehicles. It was kind of fun jumping around. Making sure i was not in the way of my team mate in the tank (vehicles could run you over). It was fun being small and important.
For me, its not that i hate playing the healers, its that the impact is intangible compared to dps or tanks. You know exactly how much you can do as a dps or tank, but on support you dont know exactly how good your allies are because you arent them, and your impact is directly tied to theirs.
I typically don't play any kind of support role in any game that I play, but for Lost Ark, I really enjoyed playing the Bard class. There are great things about the 3 support classes but there are also game design problems that come with the way Lost Ark handles how the supports are utilized. This is a more active playstyle that, imo, devs should use as inspiration to implement into their games because it keeps the player more engaged. On average, being a decent support is harder than being a decent dps in Lost Ark.
There are 3 things you are constantly keeping uptime on throughout the entire fight. These apply to all 3 support classes.
1. BRAND - Your debuff on the boss that gives your party [10% extra damage]
2. ATK BUFF - [Increase your party's atk based on 15% of your own base atk], alternating between two skills to have this buff up 100%.
3. SHIELDS/ MINOR DMG MITIGATION - Alternate between two skills for 100% uptime, as well as landing these skills on YOUR party members (Max 3 players) PLUS the boss. The more the skill hits, the more gauge you gain for another separate damage buff that you can manually apply (Usually 10% damage).
-In between those 3 things, you are also watching out for moments when you need to mitigate a large amount of damage that a party member might take OR purposefully take in order to deal more damage to the boss.
-As a Bard, you have to pay attention to your party's HP so you can decide to either heal them or use your [10% dmg buff] from identity gauge at proper dps windows. The better your uptime on your skills are, the faster this buff can be applied again. For Bards, you have to pick either heal or damage buff because it consumes almost your entire gauge when you use either one, and this is the only way to heal your party memebers.
-Depending on the fight, you may need to provide more utility for the raid so your skill choices also matter.
-While maintaining all of this, you also have to do mechanics that happen at certain points in the fight.
I remember Healer was important on Ragnarok Online. They sought after by people. Like you're a healer, people will flock around you. Also, you can build it as a solo fighter because it has self sustain.
There was a time, giving people heal or teleporting, or reviving will earn you money in RO. Like everybody always has a healer on his/her account. That, or a merchant.
By i mean healer, it includes Priest, Monk, Crusader, and Soul linker. And to some extent Alchemist.
Hello fellow pyramid 4 turn undead priest. My job as a crusader was to follow the guild leader with sacrifice devotion and reflect shield perma on xpp, what a job! Everybody had a second account with a healer or support like bard.
@@Siropfraiseeu I used to turn undead at GH monastery i think, against those wraiths. Or at guild dungeon. But anyway hiya fellow healer!
I remember the really early RO where healers would be outside dungeon areas with a sign like "100k per hour healing" or something of the sort. You could make a lot of money like that. I loved being a healer in that game.
I remember RO, healer was the first class I went for when I started, but then I learned that dancer exists, the idea of using a whip as a weapon and flinging arrows with it was amusing to me, and while they can't heal they can at least buff allies with dances.
I love playing healer, I quite enjoy working to keep the team alive and ensuring that they have their moments in the spotlight. Though maybe I'd feel different if I played on public voice chat, I always either play with VC off or with my friends
Yeah, the teammates are the biggest reason behind why people don't play healers (To me). I always tell people that playing a healer is as if you could save your teammates from dying, but you make your teammates act like theyre invisible, run alone into the enemy team, and then blaming the healer.
In genshin, Mika is a male healer.
In the "no he's not an actual healer" category are Xingqiu and Gorou.
Would love to play a rpg where the mc is weaker than his party and has boost and heal abilities for the early game if it's on the switch.
Yeah healers and boosters aren't one anyone wants to play. They are great in party and you can feel the effects when they are gone but not getting the appreciation in long battles.
It's probably why "I got kicked out of the hero's party" manga exist where the booster healer leaves and the hero's party immediately collapses in a sense.
Bur yeah i feel to fix this problem. Make the healer have Mutiple effects in one power like heal team boost attack or attack enemy heal ally all in one powers. That way if you play them and rather do stragety you can make a party keep attacking
Sounds like you need to play Earthbound.
Lucas from Mother 3
Also Tidus from FFX starts out with Support moves
Literally Miitopia and you dont even control the other party members.
Banger RPG
The Atelier series comes to mind though they're typically not healers per se.
@@epb9000 been wanting to get into that series but too expensive for me at the moment. Maybe during Christmas
Final Fantasy XIII's paradigm shift system offered an interesting perspective on healing, in that Healer (and the other support-oriented roles) were all part-time tasks that you switch to when needed. It allowed for various strategies like having a tank setup to switch to with a classic healer and tank setup, or a high-paced constant DPS setup mixing healers with one of the damage classes, or even a full healer paradigm for burst healing in a crisis situation.
There were two games where I actually enjoyed being a healer.
Final Fantasy 14: It was simply fun to play as a White Mage when I got tired of being a Lancer, the benefit the game had was that you could change your class just by equipping the weapons for that class (once you completed the job quest to gain that class in the first place)
Warframe: I enjoy using frames like Wisp and Trinity, most of your damage generally comes from the weapons you have equipped since it was only recently that D.E. reworked enemy health. Before the most recent update, enemy health pools could get so big that the damage from Warframe powers wouldn't keep up with the sheer damage output from your weapons. With this game though, you can swap between frames between missions just like how you can swap your class in FF14.
I think Sharla's other issue in Xenoblade Chronicles is the fact that most of her arts are very poor in chain attacks and don't synergize well with the other party members.
Hey, she has Thunder Bullet!
@@maxspecs Okay, and? While she's okay, you generally would want someone else in the party who could do better than her. She was doomed the moment they made her Talent Art, Cool Off.
@@avlynkatabiya2849 you're not wrong. Honestly healing as a concept falls off a cliff in that game once you get your 4th party member.
@@maxspecs True. Terrible party member in comparison to everyone else, but she's still got a place in my heart.
Future Connected proves this. In that, the chain attack monster Melia is the weakest character due to her squishiness and lack of aggro management moves - there are no Chain Attacks in that story. Kino (Sharla in all but name) becomes invaluable as your only tank is Nene (Reyn) and you need the heals.
One thing that Battlefield constantly gets it right are how they approach the Medic/Healer class and makes it geniuinely fun to play and gives new players the necessary ropes to work together with your teammates. Basically just give them decent (or in some cases outright disgusting firepower like BF4 assault medics with AEKs but every class in BF4 is disgustingly OP if you play your cards right) attacking power necessary to push forward/hold back against enemies and rewards aggresive healing/revive playstyle to help your team push to capture objectives
In pokemon there are ways heal in combat without items through the move called wish, where it staggers the healing by one turn in which you can switch in a pokemon that needs the healing
I like how this role kind of becomes a main piece for multiplayer fights in EVE Online as an exception to the rule. In a game where loosing your ship is a financial loss to your character's wallet, you would expect the name of the game is playing a bunch of high damage ships and blast everyone else into pieces before you explode. it's more than that, you actually need people to hold tackle of enemy ships, people playing disruption roles and then logistics which are basically the healer spaceships. "Logi" is such an important role in the battlefield you see it from the smallest gang to the largest fleet battles that make it to the news.
I love healing, but I can't stand to play the generic soulless healing class with its doctor motifs and angelic vibes and straight-up making numbers go up gameplay with no nuance.
Which is to say, I never thought I'd be a healer until I became a Scourge in Guild Wars 2, and then suddenly that was some of the most fun I've ever had in a video game.
Scourges are a subset of Necromancer who animate sand instead of corpses, and their healing tech all revolves around using that sand to protect and shepherd the party. You can give them sand armor, sink through the sand and reappear somewhere else for better positioning, or even drag the wounded body of an ally toward you on a blanket of it so that they'll be right under your next heal. The sandabilities are endless! ⛱️
It also, of course, gives you a +1000 stat boost against Anakin Skywalker.
Scourge: I like sand, it's course, rough, irritating, and it gets everywhere.
Scourge was 1st condi DPS that I liked and good support in fractals even with DPS build.
13:37 Describing Chansey’s Softboiled gave me flashbacks to my Elite Four clear in Pokemon Silver where I didn’t want to keep wasting turns on potions during the fights, so I brought a Chansey and used her to heal the team in between rounds, then healed her back up with a max potion.
When I played Xenoblade 3, I actually controlled Taion since I didn't trust the AI to do the healing effectively. I was also able to do some offensive stuff with him so that was a bonus. More offensive healers are definitely needed.
In the early days of LoL, I mained Soraka because being in the back lines as a healer meant that I did not have to deal with much of the craziness of the front lines...or worse, having the responsibility of being a jungler. Since I am a more analytical person, holding back allowed me to take a more wide-angle view of the situation and move to where I was needed.
Back in college the TF2 Medic was the most fun I could have playing a game while drunk
Sounded more like you were in the spirit of Demoman
@@GoldenOwl_Game He was drunk! _You don't have an excuse!_
Love the Zenless Zone Zero music used in the background
Oh yes, I remember Genshin 2.4 when people were crying that shielders got nerfed because they introduced mobs that lowered your health based on your energy recharge instead, I remember people complaining about the mobs that ignore shields and apply bleed. I remember that some bosses have a perma bleed unless you cleanse yourself and I for sure remember people complaining that not even full HP Zhongli can't tank Fontaine's local legends and Natlan's call of war. Nah, Healers have their place, most people just don't know how to build them and dodge attacks, I'm surprised they know how to i-frame.
On HSR, I main Aventurine and I can tell that if the boss is sufficiently strong (SU) in the DOT and CC department, I'd bring Lynx along. Just for that full team cleanse.
Local Legends have no timer, so 1 dps + 3 sustains is a reasonable strategy unlike Spiral Abyss.
@@Gnidel Yup, it truly is a reasonable strategy. But my point still stands: they have their place, it's just not everywhere.
Plus in genshin healers are more than healing. They have things in their kit that stand out.
Baizhu with his application + healing + interuption resist + buffing of reactions.
Kuki with electro application + healing + ability to hold freedom sworn and being a monster in hyperbloom teams.
Mika for physical dps buffing and atk speed [but I use him in yoiyima's team too for the healing and atk speed so she can keep up with yelan and xingqiu's hydro applications during her E skill and get more healing off consistently by mika]
Benny, not a great healer and often times gets you into bad situations due to his self application pyro so overload, vape and such unalive you, is one of the few with intense buffing but also just flat out bad for being the reason you can't stay alive
@@nobody-xh6ii Wait, wait.
Did you said Mika in Yoimiya Team? That's something I haven't heard before and now I'm considering giving him some chance of being actually built to be used (got him at AR60).
Instead of Yelan in the comp, do you think Shogun would work? Asking because I usually use Yoimiya and Shogun together.
how much hp do their zongli's have? Mine's sitting pretty at 52k and can tank 2 hits from the Capybara local legend at world level 6
I didn't started the video yet, but I love to play healers when I'm with friends, it's probably my favorite for multiplayer modes or games.
This popped up in my feed... but I LIKE playing a healer. I HAVE pulled for Genshin healers! I pulled for Kokomi on her first banner because pink mermaid girl! I waited SO LONG for my sea slug bunny girl, and I LOVE HER!!! BUBBLES!!!