Traders and Team Heals

[______________Skitch]

I agree with Serena....

The actual number of PvP'rs is far lower, probably even as low as 10% of the player base.

You always see the same people over and over in PvP with the occasional kill or random engagement from a passerby going to a mission or just there to watch.

I'd like to see them setup a dedicated Dimension for PvP instead of the lame setup we have now. Maybe take a lesson from Asheron's Call with their PvP only server.

They also have a nice way for the occasional PvP on the carebears with a quest to turn Red and you can only engage other people who are Red thereby leaving those that DO NOT want to PvP in peace...

Just my two credits...

[_________________Mor]

Originally posted by Serena


Ah no more like 80% have no interest in it.. Only those that like to pvp think its greater than that and want it all their way.

You hate me for something I said in another thread. So what you say has zero value (bias). What others say (about if they like or hate PvP) matters more.

Now the thing is, if anyone dislikes people who like to take part in the story by fighting Omni or the Rebel players, they must hate OE changes in patch 14.2 then... because it will allow more people to be able to take part in these battles and make a difference (more PvPers). Which to some may be a bad thing.

The truth is alot have PvPed, like when the rebels attack some omni place in a pvp zone and they wanna help their side, but may not do it often. The reason alot of people may not PvP often, is because of the oe-nonleveling-supatwinking people. People don't wanna fight a battle they have zero chance to win in. Whether or not you wanna consider them "PvPers" based on how "often" they PvP is another story.

[Gromph]

All I know is that every trader I know is quitting when this happens. The change is far too extreme and I wish for once that FC would listen to its player base. We all said that we think that Trader healing is too powerful but I think the same people would agree that the proposed change is infact too great of a change.

With the critical buffs being lowered Traders are already goign to be weaker in PvP. Most traders I know have aimed and fling shot as their specials so they don't have a soldier "Alpha Strike". Now I don't know what most people's opinions are but I am of the opinion that in 15 seconds the PvP match is going to be over. 15 seconds is simply too long. Please rethink this change or I don't think there will be any Traders left when this occurs.

[Bionitrous]

Almost nobody said Trader healing was overpowered except a few Docs. What we all were quizzical about was how the 'tradeoff' was so negligeable.

There's no such thing as overpowered when the person wielding the power is standing right next to you as your comrade. If I could give the Soldier in my group a BFG, then I'd say 'kudos' to him.

This is about two things: a bug, and petty jealousy.

You fix the bug (1/2 PvP damage to self and non-stacking DoT's) and ignore the jealousy. That's called professionalism. That's what we demand from someone we send money to every month.

It's not just Traders. It's the whole playerbase who sees this as an example in incompetence.

[Kuro]

Originally posted by Wolfen

...
The first problem is solved just by excluding damage-causing spells cast by yourself from the PvP damage reduction. This WILL increase the damage taken when casting your heals no matter what you are fighting. As it stands this is the correct thing to do as the Nano was intended to do that amount of damage. If this damage is later found to be to great or to little it can be re-balanced at that time. This doesn't seem to be a big problem and they are fixing this.

Why get all complex? Just change the nano to double the damage and that compensates for the bug. Odin's Missing Eye suffers from the same bug I hear.

Originally posted by Wolfen

The second problem is more tricky, and it seems to me that too little thought was put into the line when it was developed, as though it was thought that no one would dream of re-casting this Nano before the DoT had expired.

If you are free to re-cast at will, and the DoT doesn't stack, then you are quite literally getting away with murder from the developer's point of view.

If you are free to re-cast at will and the DoTs stack then I can see a lot of dead Traders who miscalculate the DoT damage (especially when casting under heavy lag). After all, you will be capable of running up a DoT stack of hundreds, if not thousands, of HP per tick in heavy combat This option also requires a re-write off the Nano system to allow the same Nano to stick on you repeatedly, I see a lot of major bugs arising from that (wahey! stackable HoTs! stackable buffs!)

If you are restricted from casting until the DoT ends you say your heal per minute won't be high enough to be a valuable healer, even with the DoT duration reduced to 15 seconds?

They have suggested that a second, or even third, heal line could be produced to allow DoT stacking. Would that help?

Maybe the different heals could have different downsides. This one DoTs you, the next Nano drains you over time, a third debuffs something for a short duration (Nano skills, combat speed/skills, etc)

There's another option that hasn't been even considered: Eliminate the DoT and make it full damage all at once. I'd rather have a heal availible when I need it than not have it availible. It's my teammates and my hp. It should be my concern over whether or not I'm willing to sacrifice myself. As it stands a 15s delay between executions leaves the team very vulnerable to AoE attacks.

Originally posted by Wolfen

I understand fully that any lessening of the heal lines' capabilities will be seen as a huge nerf. But these are BUGS, and FC seems intent on fixing them, so there is no getting away from some changes here.

I agree the bugs should be fixed. But they're not trying to just fix the bugs. They're trying to fix the bugs AND balance the nano without any solid evidence to backup the amount of balancing necessary. We know originally:

1. Delayed Health Payments were intended to heal the team immediately.
2. Delayed Health Payments were intended to extract more HP from the caster than was given to the team
3. Delayed Health Payments were intended to extract the 'full payment' over the span of a full minute

Item 1 works as intended. Item 2 is bugged. Item 3 is either a bug or a bug AND a tremendous design flaw. If it were originally intended that the traders were to be unable to execute another Delayed Health Payment while the DoT was active, then it was originally intended that a trader could only execute a team heal once per minute. This would place the use frequency of Delayed Health Payments, including the QL 1 version, beyond that of any nanoformula in the game including team heals that restore full health. This would be both bug and design flaw. Fixing the bug portion would be to make it so DHPs weren't capable of execution during the DoT for the intended length. The bug being in the fact that the traders were capable of reexecuting the nano during the DoT. The design flaw would be in thinking that anyone would find the entire line of nanos useful for more than pretty nano effects.

The other option for Item 3 is that the trader was supposed to be able to reexecute the nanoformula during the DoT. The only way for Item 3 and Item 2 to work together would be for the DoTs to stack, leaving the trader vulnerable to hours worth of damage from stacked DoTs. Fixing this bug would require making the DoTs stack.

To do absolutely nothing but fix the bugs in the nanos would mean making the nanos do full damage and making it impossible to reexecute for the full 60 seconds under the current implementation. Or it would mean making the nano do full damage and making the DoTs stack so the 'price' of each individual nano was done over its intended time. Neither is being taken so the nano is 1) Having the bugs fixed and 2) Getting balanced at the exact same time without any observation to determine necessary effectiveness.

And this is exactly where I have a problem. I futher have a problem because people with actual experience concerning healing nanos and the frequency of their use are saying the time is barely worthwhile on their healing nanos, yet Traders are facing an already proposed length of twice as long (Martial Artists). And I have an extreme problem with having to PAY for all this with my health while others can use their heals twice as often with only the nanopoints as a cost. The level of problem I have with the su****ious coincidental timing of the announced bug fix and the amount of Anti-Trader posting on these forums cannot be measured (truth be told, Letah may not have advocated nerfing traders in her words but she definately advocated that in her choice of titles).

Originally posted by Wolfen

And on the subject of it being ok for a Trader to be a better healer than a Doc because the Trader has 'concentrated on healing'. The problem is that, right now, A trader that pumps his healing ability is superior even to a Doc that puts just as much into HIS healing. That clearly isn't right to me. Sure, a Doc that goes with good healing, some combat skills and other stuff vs a Trader that goes flat out to be combat medic should maybe favor the Trader, but a Doc that goes out to be the best Doctor he can be should beat any other class hands down at healing.

Wolfen.

This is a particularly sore subject. Some Doctors want to rate their entire profession by "How much health can they restore per nano execution". They want to do this because their profession is called "Doctor". If all my RL Doctor could do is slap a bandage on me if I were bleeding, I'd have to be bleeding so much that nobody else could use that large of a bandage. Or I'd have to find another Doctor to watch over my health. Perhaps you, and people that play Doctors, need to expand your definition of the role a Doctor is supposed to play in a team.

Editted for formatting

[ryack]

This is a particularly sore subject. Some Doctors want to rate their entire profession by "How much health can they restore per nano execution". They want to do this because their profession is called "Doctor". If all my RL Doctor could do is slap a bandage on me if I were bleeding, I'd have to be bleeding so much that nobody else could use that large of a bandage. Or I'd have to find another Doctor to watch over my health. Perhaps you, and people that play Doctors, need to expand your definition of the role a Doctor is supposed to play in a team.

So please explain to us doctors what we are supposed to be doing during a fight. We are doctors we have concentrated on healing. We are supposed to be healing during a fight. I think that if a doctor concentrated fully at healing he should at least be the equal of a trader. Well at this point in time he isn't.

So it's either, up the abilities of the doctor (which they won't do) or adjust the healing nanos of the traders (which they are going to do because it's the easiest thing to do). How they have decided to fix the nanos is something else.

[______________Wolfen]

Why get all complex? Just change the nano to double the damage and that compensates for the bug. Odin's Missing Eye suffers from the same bug I hear.

Fair enough

I'm assuming that EVERY nano that causes damage to the caster has the same bug and will be fixed as well of course.

There's another option that hasn't been even considered: Eliminate the DoT and make it full damage all at once. I'd rather have a heal availible when I need it than not have it availible. It's my teammates and my hp. It should be my concern over whether or not I'm willing to sacrifice myself. As it stands a 15s delay between executions leaves the team very vulnerable to AoE attacks.

It seems that this was considered, and is a no-no from the dev's point of view.

From the official post.

Why not inflict the damage from the team heal as a single hit rather than a damage-over-time? That has been considered. The reason why the team heals got a damage-over-time was so that the trader had a chance of avoiding killing themselves instantly through using it. Because the damage would be applied over a period of time, the trader could then use a first aid kit, a health drain, be healed by someone else, etc to offset this loss of health. If it was done in a single hit, this could not be done. Inflicting the damage in a single hit could possibly kill the trader in a single hit, which is not something that we really wanted to do. The damage inflicted on the traders by the single-target heals is low enough that they did not warrant the same sort of treatment, so the damage from single-target heals is inflicted in one blow.

Having played a Shaman in EQ since release I agree with you, it should be the player's choice whether to sacrifice themself for the greater good of the team, but this doesn't seem acceptable here. Maybe the limiting factor of the DoT is more important to their plans for the line than they make out.

My personal view is that Trader heals should be left as-is for the time being and ALL healing nanos should be re-evaluated for a future patch.

The classes that can heal should be distinguished by the WAY they heal as much as by how WELL they can heal, Trader heals show that this has already been thought of.

I feel that making the current Trader heals uncastable while their DoT is already on the Trader is the right way to go, but that this SHOULD NOT be introduced until this review is complete and that a second line of heals should be given to Traders (maybe causing damage in a single big hit as we have discussed) to fill in those dangerous times.

This is a particularly sore subject. Some Doctors want to rate their entire profession by "How much health can they restore per nano execution". They want to do this because their profession is called "Doctor". If all my RL Doctor could do is slap a bandage on me if I were bleeding, I'd have to be bleeding so much that nobody else could use that large of a bandage. Or I'd have to find another Doctor to watch over my health. Perhaps you, and people that play Doctors, need to expand your definition of the role a Doctor is supposed to play in a team.

There's no need to be so dismissive, the implied insult that Docs don't know how to play their class and so should STFU about Trader heals is unnecessary.

When it comes right down to it in combat, the key things are how much healing/second the class can do to offset the Mob's DPS, how long can they keep it up and how fast the class can react when a heal is needed. Out of combat other factors can add to the class's suitability as a healer and there is room for more 'flavor'.

The dev's think that Traders should be joint third in overall healing capability, along with MAs and behind Docs and Adventurers. I they stick to that then I can see them trying to balance MA and Trader heals to have the same combat effectiveness. Personally, I think the MA self heals should be better than Trader single person heals and Trader group heals, since they require the Trader to damage himself, should be better than MA group heals. But all this will require a lot of balancing that isn't happening while the only changes being made are to Trader heals.

One thing I think we agree on is that this change shouldn't be happening now, and that it shouldn't even be considered without a full review of every classes healing capabilities (yes, even Fixers, sad as our HoTs are next to you guys )

Wolfen.

[Turin]

Originally posted by tngaijin
It makes more sense to me to fix the 50% Dot thing in PvP and make the Dot stackable. Isn't that logical?

Not unless you also bump up the min/max healing for doctoars so we heal better than traders.

[Turin]

Originally posted by Bionitrous
This is about two things: a bug, and petty jealousy.

You fix the bug (1/2 PvP damage to self and non-stacking DoT's) and ignore the jealousy. That's called professionalism. That's what we demand from someone we send money to every month.

I agree the change is TO harsh. BUT, do you REALLY think traders should be able to heal better than a doc? You REALLY think we are jelouse because what we are supposed to be, we arent( the unpresidented MASTER of healing)? If so, well, I cant convince you otherwise. But you would be wrong, regardless of if you think so or not.

[Turin]

Originally posted by Kuroshio


Why get all complex? Just change the nano to double the damage and that compensates for the bug. Odin's Missing Eye suffers from the same bug I hear.



There's another option that hasn't been even considered: Eliminate the DoT and make it full damage all at once. I'd rather have a heal availible when I need it than not have it availible. It's my teammates and my hp. It should be my concern over whether or not I'm willing to sacrifice myself. As it stands a 15s delay between executions leaves the team very vulnerable to AoE attacks.



I agree the bugs should be fixed. But they're not trying to just fix the bugs. They're trying to fix the bugs AND balance the nano without any solid evidence to backup the amount of balancing necessary. We know originally:

1. Delayed Health Payments were intended to heal the team immediately.
2. Delayed Health Payments were intended to extract more HP from the caster than was given to the team
3. Delayed Health Payments were intended to extract the 'full payment' over the span of a full minute

Item 1 works as intended. Item 2 is bugged. Item 3 is either a bug or a bug AND a tremendous design flaw. If it were originally intended that the traders were to be unable to execute another Delayed Health Payment while the DoT was active, then it was originally intended that a trader could only execute a team heal once per minute. This would place the use frequency of Delayed Health Payments, including the QL 1 version, beyond that of any nanoformula in the game including team heals that restore full health. This would be both bug and design flaw. Fixing the bug portion would be to make it so DHPs weren't capable of execution during the DoT for the intended length. The bug being in the fact that the traders were capable of reexecuting the nano during the DoT. The design flaw would be in thinking that anyone would find the entire line of nanos useful for more than pretty nano effects.

The other option for Item 3 is that the trader was supposed to be able to reexecute the nanoformula during the DoT. The only way for Item 3 and Item 2 to work together would be for the DoTs to stack, leaving the trader vulnerable to hours worth of damage from stacked DoTs. Fixing this bug would require making the DoTs stack.

To do absolutely nothing but fix the bugs in the nanos would mean making the nanos do full damage and making it impossible to reexecute for the full 60 seconds under the current implementation. Or it would mean making the nano do full damage and making the DoTs stack so the 'price' of each individual nano was done over its intended time. Neither is being taken so the nano is 1) Having the bugs fixed and 2) Getting balanced at the exact same time without any observation to determine necessary effectiveness.

And this is exactly where I have a problem. I futher have a problem because people with actual experience concerning healing nanos and the frequency of their use are saying the time is barely worthwhile on their healing nanos, yet Traders are facing an already proposed length of twice as long (Martial Artists). And I have an extreme problem with having to PAY for all this with my health while others can use their heals twice as often with only the nanopoints as a cost. The level of problem I have with the su****ious coincidental timing of the announced bug fix and the amount of Anti-Trader posting on these forums cannot be measured (truth be told, Letah may not have advocated nerfing traders in her words but she definately advocated that in her choice of titles).



This is a particularly sore subject. Some Doctors want to rate their entire profession by "How much health can they restore per nano execution". They want to do this because their profession is called "Doctor". If all my RL Doctor could do is slap a bandage on me if I were bleeding, I'd have to be bleeding so much that nobody else could use that large of a bandage. Or I'd have to find another Doctor to watch over my health. Perhaps you, and people that play Doctors, need to expand your definition of the role a Doctor is supposed to play in a team.

Editted for formatting

90% of yourpost was great. Up to the part you ripped docs. You CANT compare this to real life. In real life, your doctor doesnt have control of microscopic nano bots that crawl around in your body to fix you either. In AO we do. Hence, in AO, you have to go buy the GAME rules, and how the GAME is setup, NOT how REAL LIFE works. In in the GAME. Docs are the "masters of healing" Thats all we want to be. Masters of healing. the UNDISPUTED masters of healing. We are not that right now. We are the master of Target heals ( once we get complete heal at lvl 150+ ) becasuse sadly, your Trader team hales, also aout to ANY target heal we have before complete healing. And Alpha & Omega DO NOT count with a 24 second recast time. ( 12 second cast, 12 second recharge ) its more than useless. might as well not be in the game. Docs are jelous. We are justified.

[Gromph]

I don't think that they would heal better than docs if you made the DoTs stackable. It limits how many team heals they could cast at once because eventually they are taking more damage every second than they can heal.

[_____________Calenth]

Originally posted by Turin





90% of yourpost was great. Up to the part you ripped docs. You CANT compare this to real life. In real life, your doctor doesnt have control of microscopic nano bots that crawl around in your body to fix you either. In AO we do. Hence, in AO, you have to go buy the GAME rules, and how the GAME is setup, NOT how REAL LIFE works. In in the GAME. Docs are the "masters of healing" Thats all we want to be. Masters of healing. the UNDISPUTED masters of healing. We are not that right now. We are the master of Target heals ( once we get complete heal at lvl 150+ ) becasuse sadly, your Trader team hales, also aout to ANY target heal we have before complete healing. And Alpha & Omega DO NOT count with a 24 second recast time. ( 12 second cast, 12 second recharge ) its more than useless. might as well not be in the game. Docs are jelous. We are justified.

Doctors are the masters of healing. Traders are the masters of relocation. If they fix a few minor bugs, traders won't really be "healing," they'll just be shifting damage from one place to another. Which is different.

[ryack]

I don't think that they would heal better than docs if you made the DoTs stackable. It limits how many team heals they could cast at once because eventually they are taking more damage every second than they can heal.

Stacking the DoT's is not an option. The way the system works now is that you can have one nano of a kind running in your ncu. You can't have two of the same kind running. So to get the DoT's to stack would require a complete rewrite of the ncu system.

That leaves two options. One is a fast hard hitting DoT that has to run it's full length. Or deal the damage as DD and leave it at that. These are the options they have without re-writes.

As you know FC has chosen the first option. They have also chosen to make the length of the DoT 15 seconds, which is a bit harsh. An 8 second one would do the job just as well. FC has stated that they will probably introduce another team healing line that does a different DoT. This weird sollution makes me wonder if they are able to create a DoT with less then 15 seconds running time. Could be that their system is not set up to do this.

[_____________Calenth]

One thing they *could* do, is have a fast, hard hitting dot of around 15 seconds, and another line that was instant-damage. That would add a little versatility, would allow players to fast-heal if necessary, and would leave the DoT option in play.

[andriaaa]

They actually said something about making another trader heal line just like you say, but they said they wouldn't do it anytime soon.

In other words, after 90% of the newly gimped traders quit...

::sigh::

I don't think they'll ever get it..

[Kuro]

Originally posted by Turin

90% of yourpost was great. Up to the part you ripped docs. You CANT compare this to real life. In real life, your doctor doesnt have control of microscopic nano bots that crawl around in your body to fix you either. In AO we do. Hence, in AO, you have to go buy the GAME rules, and how the GAME is setup, NOT how REAL LIFE works. In in the GAME. Docs are the "masters of healing" Thats all we want to be. Masters of healing. the UNDISPUTED masters of healing. We are not that right now. We are the master of Target heals ( once we get complete heal at lvl 150+ ) becasuse sadly, your Trader team hales, also aout to ANY target heal we have before complete healing. And Alpha & Omega DO NOT count with a 24 second recast time. ( 12 second cast, 12 second recharge ) its more than useless. might as well not be in the game. Docs are jelous. We are justified.

24 second recast time on A&O (not counting the time taken away for nanoinit) vs 15 second recast time on PDHP. A full team heal vs a 1k team heal that does damage to the caster. So should I take out my anger on you or FC for even mentioning this?

Seriously though, the Docs deserve that 'rip' I gave them. If you think the sum of the Doctor profession is 1 nano line, then something is wrong and it has little to do with the numbers involved. In this game doctors have the ability to manipulate the body to extend life. Whether its by direct healing, buffing the body's ability to take damage, negating an attacker's natural healing (DoTs) or slowing down an attacker's metabolism (init debuffs). The final goal is the same: we live longer. Direct healing is a single facet of the doctor profession.

Now admittedly, the game has not catered well towards the other aspects of the doctor's profession. Init buffs and DoTs are trivialized by 15-30 second fights. And that's where the doctors lost out. Campaigning to have the best heals bar none leaves the profession forever vulnerable to it remaining so in the future. If all you can bring to my team is a team heal nano, I will have to weigh that contribution against another profession that has team healing abilities AND other usefull skills.

Doctors weren't getting passed over for traders because their team heals gave less points than traders. They were getting passed over for traders because a trader could heal the team AND temporarily buff the team for wanted nanos (wrangling a MA into UVC was a popular pastime) AND do damage to boot. 14.2 will remove a lot of that desirability and we trader will have to deal with that, no biggie. Add to it, this change to team heal and the words "LF Doc" will prolly become more popular again. But what will the doctors do when Adventurers, who also can heal the team, are more wanted because they can also turn the team into different animals (easing travel angst and providing combat bonuses) and turn into a pit lizard with +7k hp, with direct damage and AoE nukes? Complain that their team heals are too powerful?

All this change did (and doctors are hoping we're all tragically naive to believe FC's statement about it not being caused by their complaints) was earn them emnity and improve nothing.

Edit for P.S.

And despite how it may appear, I'm not focusing on this single aspect of the trader profession. I sorely want our ability to transfer skills to mean something to a team, giving everyone a fair shake at earning a spot. That means making the drains do something to the mobs and making our transfers 'affordable' for the team (ie: eat less NCU and cause less hassle to the team to keep them refreshed). With the penalties working correctly, I believe the DHP line of nanos would have enough self-deterrence to prevent overshadowing Doctors. With stacking DoTs, traders would be facing long periods of vulnerability to damage which would discourage spam healing. With taking the 'full payment' immediately, no trader in their right mind would spam heal. But neither of these are happening. The nano is getting hard capped on it's usage frequency.

Breaking one of our abilities to improve another profession's desirability in a team is hardly a 'fair shake'.

[Thyrra]

take your anger out on roller rats.

leets are already abused too much; and they are much cuter than rats.

[_____________Kwangju]

Apparently the team heal DoT is only 50% damage all the time, not just PvP. So double all self only DoTs, like Odin's Eye and Trader Team heals, for all nanos for all classes, problem solved.

That's not a fix, but it may make all the whiners happy. A double DoT will make the Traders less apt to do heals, but it's better then waiting 15 sec.

[_______KoreanPornGod]

It seems at least 75% of people posting here think the problem is the fact that traders are only taking 50% damage from dot. THIS IS NOT THE PROBLEM. The problem is the fact that when another team heal is cast it cancels the old dot and adds a new one that doesnt start for 8 seconds(I believe that is correct). So if you cast the nano every 8 seconds you never take any dot damage. The current fix is to make the dot last for 15 seconds and not allow you to cast again until that dot is done...and to fix the 50% problem. They are also allowing traders to cast lower level team heals to help as backup healing after they have casted the Higher level one. To truly balance it out they need to add at least one more line of team heals that have perhaps a 30 second dot/wait before cast again time and are backward compatible like the current one will become. This gives acceptable emergancy healing with 2 lines and and allowing lower levels ones for backup. They could even add possibly a 3rd line that had a dot for 45 seconds so you could save youself from the 15s/30s ones but have to heal with something that doesnt do damage to you very quickly after.

[aaronb]

Originally posted by Turin


Not unless you also bump up the min/max healing for doctoars so we heal better than traders.

You don't have to sacrifice your health to heal the team. There is no reason we shouldn't be able to outheal you if we are giving up our own health to do so (which is what is currently broken).