Comments on: Paging Doctor Bob

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 18:29:33 +0000

I still remember having 10 people in Plane of Fear, pulling mobs off the druid who ran a group of them around, and not having anyone else there who could heal. Pre-Kunark, Ahhh those were the days.

Try playing on a PvP server. NOBODY wants to play a healer, they all MUST BE THE 1 CLASS THAT EVERYONE PLAYS. It’s so annoying. The very first EQ server I played PvP on I made a cleric because I knew I would be in high demand. Sad part is I was in such high demand that it wore me out, and I wasn’t having fun anymore because I was “responsible” for everyone when PvP started and if anyone died it was my fault for not healing them faster than those 12 people were blasting them.

It takes someone who “likes helping people because they’re really stoic” blah blah, and there’s about zero people like that in PvP.

By: Jezebeau

Jezebeau — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 22:55:19 +0000

City of Villains cheated somewhat, though. The most successful (not counting framerate) instance-runs I’ve had were large groups of masterminds. They’ve got reasonable amounts of both melee and ranged damage covered, loads of tanking and, with some variance in secondaries, large numbers of buffs, debuffs, and some *very* powerful heals. They’re bards, really… yet useful.

By: Rand 'al Thor

Rand 'al Thor — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 19:51:25 +0000

“poor implementations lead cleric/fighter combos to be the most powerful melee in the game, and they were second only in healing to pure clerics”

That sounds exactly like an Adventurer in Ao :P

By: winter

winter — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 22:22:30 +0000

I’m playing an end game priest in WoW at the moment and I think Blizz have done quite a bit to make the class interesting. It is however still quite boring. Then again, I found my rogue to be boring too, but required more effort.

Andrew mentioned adding different ailments that you had to cure, yep Blizz added that and then the community developed decursive so you didn’t even have to think, you are back to pushing one button over and over again…. As an experiment I tried not using decursive for the Chromaggus fight on the weekend. Was a bit more interesting, but it is still more closely linked to a game of whack a mole than anything else…

By: illuminarc

illuminarc — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 01:24:33 +0000

2 things I like about D&D are clerics can wear full plate, and multiclassing. In the early days of Neverwinter Nights, a couple of poor implementations lead cleric/fighter combos to be the most powerful melee in the game, and they were second only in healing to pure clerics (which meant a couple less slots for heals). Even with the later fix to clerics they are still a very powerful melee multiclass option. And I like the idea of them standing in the thick of it, wrapped in steel, rather than the weak ‘clothies’ of most MMOs. (I reference NWN, because in traditional D&D the DM has a lot more control over how powerful/enjoyable healing is) Also if spells get interupted in D&D, you lost the spell, not an ezymode delay like WoW, which makes positioning a lot more important.

However, it is still the problem of ‘fun because the healer can dps’ not ‘fun because healing is fun’

By: Lauren

Lauren — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 22:09:49 +0000

I didnt play GW very long but solo’d every step of the way buy hiring the NPCs. It was really fun and interesting as a Necro/Ele to lead my own groups. They aren’t as good a real players who know what they are doing, but if you play conservatively, you’ll do fine.

I’m trying to level a preist and so far I find it fun. Currently at level 42, I’ve solo’d 97% of the way thus far. But I’m getting tired of grinding so I think I’ll do a few levels in groups/instances and see how I feel about it. I’m actually looking forward to healing in the big 5 and 10-mans at 60. I’m not convinced that priests are any worse off at the end than any other class. We are all just spamming a 2-3 select spells. As Warlock it’s rare that I get to go all out anywayz. It’s usually controlled damage combined with being the COE, Soulstone, Healthstone and Taxi biotch. I dont think healing will be any worse. :-)

By: blueeyes

blueeyes — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 15:18:59 +0000

A lot’s changed since i5, both mentally and in-game. People figured out how much weaker fortitude (Empathy’s +defense/+damage buff) became, and ED smacked Empathy pretty hard. Fewer groups can or even want to fight enemies well into purple (no more +5s in normal groups), so that probably changes things a bit too.

I find it hard to find places where an empathy defender is USEFUL, nevermind needed. An inefficient AoE, a weak rez (only recently fixed), and very short term mez protection just doesn’t bring that much to a fight.
No offense to those who tried the build.

I guess it was more popular before I5/ED, when between the old and overpowered Fortitude, permanent +regeneration and recovery auras, and six-slotted heals, you could probably keep a team nearly immortal… but so could a tank, and a Storm Defender or Dark Defender would add a hell of a lot more to team damage and sustainability. NowEmpathy’s considered pretty subpar by anyone in the know (although it remains popular from folks who insist on the holy trinity).

And /Dark Blast is a very poor soloer for anything but Storm Summoners. It just doesn’t have much in the way of damage, either single-target or area of effect. Energy, Radiation, or Sonic Blast are pretty much the only way to go.

By: Oz

Oz — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 13:34:16 +0000

Funny that you mention CoH. When I played it, which was my normal first few months of release playtime, I found most instances to be impossible without a Defender (the main heal class). So much so, that the Defender I rolled got much more groupage than my Scrapper, who was much more fun to play. Despite the fact that my Scrapper could solo AV’s, the Defender was the one in demand.

Again, that was many months ago. Last time I played CoH was during the free “come back!” period when the halloween/wicca themed island was released, and I only played the weekend so I could get my new pointy hat and finish the quest series there. It entirely possible that the game has been rebalanced since there. There was, I recall, much debate on the boards about how overpowered a Bubble defender was, or a Empath defender could effectively half your mission time and difficulty.

I was Empathy/Dark, which I thought would be a “sexy” combo, wbut wihch turned out to be semi-laughable unless I really got creative. I soloed very slow unless I was careful (avoid Freakshow, for example), but I rarely lacked for groups or TF’s.