Rip off that Bandaid

Having played a DoK at launch of WAR, it’s a career that I think about often. Even more so, the concept of lifetapping healers is something I think about a lot. I know I’m not alone, but when I heard about Warrior Priests and Disciple’s of Khaine, I was excited for the concept of a melee healer. It was an exciting and heady concept – being able to stay in a fight and heal your group. The best of both worlds, the thrill of combat and the fulfillment of playing a vital role. At launch, the careers were not so hot. It’s hard to remember since the two have been so powerful for so long (regen on off-hand item was the straw), but there was a time, when even healing spec for the two classes was less than optimal. In today’s game, melee healing isn’t a real viable path, but playing DPS and being a back-line healer is. Most I’ve talked with will admit they are TOO good at both, and have never really hit the vision we were presented with.

This stray from the original concept wasn’t intended obviously, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. Instead, I think it was more a result of trying to do a really tough job from the start and please too many bases at once. When people started to realize that what was presented earlier wasn’t reality, players started to revert to traditional patterns of the healer role-fullfillment; sitting in the back, playing the green-bar version whak-a-mole. Beyond that, we saw the people who wanted to be in the combat and to stick with the careers, take that aspect as far as they can with that, and in some cases (DoKs moreso than WP), have become frightening killers in their own right. So, instead of hitting the middle ground of a melee healer, the result was a pair of extremes, neither of which was originally intended.

So, being the type to inexorably tinker and fiddle with things, my natural inclination is ponder on how to push the two extremes back to the middle. I think the first thing would be to completely decouple healing on life-taps from the damage they deal.

Let that sink in for a minute. The reasoning for this is there, but maybe not apparent at first.

The first, and biggest one, is that it creates a more consistent basis for results. So if a DoK is pounding on a Knight, the healing aspect is going to be just as significant as if he was cutting into an Archmage. So, the melee heals will behave like regular heals! It’s not as if a tank gets less health from a direct heal just by virtue of having heavier armor (though tactics like Malkewith’s Bulwark reduces healing receive by player choice). The first argument against this would be that melee healers would no longer have to worry about target selection. Which I completely dismiss as ignorance of game mechanics. The strike will still need to land still for the heal to fire off, with 1.4 and the heavy lean toward defense, and the fact that the pulled guard change will probably rear it’s head again in some form, Tanks will be blocking a LOT. Melee DPS characters tend to have pretty good parry, so you’re going to see the most bang for your buck from hitting light armored casters, so the target selection still holds a place of consideration. And none of that relates to the other abilities a melee healer has at their disposal like heal-debuffs, silences, snares, etc… and how those are better applied to different targets.

Secondly, it mean damage can be easily toned down and healing toned up, independent of the other. This makes tactics like Divine Fury truely a tactic that is there for those who want to fill in the role of DPS (aside: I’m not saying that DPS should be impossible for a melee healer, merely that it should be nowhere equivocal to a true DPS career), and not as a necessity for those who are trying to melee heal. Tactics like Grace of Sigmar/Empowered Transfer can still exist with just a minor tweak – the healing portion of each are increased by X%. The counter-argument for this aspect becomes “But what about stat should we focus on then?”. The answer would have to be another change in tandem with it: heal portion of melee heals gain contribution from strength. If this is possible to enact, this would be an elegant solution, as it wouldn’t shift the desired stat for current meleers, would ensure their strength stays relatively high to land blows consistently.

As I see it, the separation of heals from damage needs to be made. Anything else means that to do good healing you HAVE to do good damage, and combining the two never leads to a happy ending. Separation is the best option I see if these careers are ever going to be true healers who live in middle of the brawl.