Thoughts on Healing as an ability.

[azurie]

Hi, I'm a new Hammerwatch player and last night I played through most the game with a few friends.  Typically I wouldn't offer input with such little experience, but there is one thing that really stood out as an issue to me.  It is the design of the Paladin's Heal ability.  As soon as my friend unlocked it and bought it last night, the first thing he said was "I'll try my best not to cheese this." 

This is because we all knew that we had the sudden ability to heal to full HP between every wave if we were willing to wait for the Mana Regen.  Even though we actively tried to ignore this possibility, there were times when we were out of lives and low on Health, and we just couldn't afford not to abuse the ability.  I feel the tension of having a low health party moving into a deadly room is one of this game's greatest qualities, but that tension is completely undermined by the Heal ability. 

From what I understand this ability will be later moved to Priest (which I think is a good idea) but even then I feel the possibility for unlimited healing, even if players choose not to abuse it, will give a sense of safety at all times.  I love the challenge and pace of this game, and I hate to see that wasted by an unlimited heal that totally distorts the pace. 

My suggestion for Priest would be to somehow limit the amount of healing they can do, but in turn make it so it is very effective.  Maybe Priests don't regen Mana, but they get Mana back whenever the team picks up money.  This way their healing will be effective as long as the team continues to make good progress, but the healing will taper off if the damage the team takes outweighs their progress.  If you don't like the idea of changing core mechanics for them, maybe they could get a healing bar that fills up through different actions.  Or perhaps they could use their own HP to heal, so you could keep fueling heals as long as you pick up all the foods and manage some Combo Healing.  Just a few ideas.

Really, this is a fantastic game that will likely get a lot of replay in my circles.  I'd just hate to see us have to ban the Priest because we're the type of gamers that don't want to cheese through challenges.

[FFSnipe]

Very nice. Well thought out indeed. I think you are correct btw. with tactics like luring and standing next to a corner and killing enemies in a line comming at you, and the dash ability on the paladin, AOE of the wizard attack, etc etc, it makes things a bit easy at most times. With the priest, it would be a nice mechanic if he/she ONLY gained mana by doing damage. I think gaining mana when you pick up money is a lil much considering money is plentiful. If the mana regains by doing damage, it would force the priest to actually do something rather than sit in the back doing healing and nothing else.

[azurie]

I agree that giving the priest something to do other than sitting back and healing is important.  My only fear with damage dealt = mana regen is that teams will find other ways to cheese gameplay.  Like reducing mobs to just a few enemies and then sitting back as they wait for the priest to clean them up and regen some mana.

[FFSnipe]

i understand. that would be a cheesey way to do things. but if you have the regen NOT based on damage but number of hits? perhaps based on your combo counter. only mana regen while combo is ACTIVE. that would solve that problem a bit. plus you could upgrade it in the combo vendor. more more regen per second while combo is activated.

[azurie]

I like the idea of comboing for mana regen, but there'd have to be other ways to regen mana, too.  I say this because players could choose not to buy combo abilities.  I'm hoping a dev will happen upon this and chime in on their opinion.   

[Hipshot]

I never liked the fact that the Paladin can heal level wide, it's opens up for major exploits and is a reason why we have had to nerf the pally-heal constantly. What's most likely is going to happen is that the pally-heal will only heal himself in the future and the priest will get a buff/heal combo or something, that needs to target players, something like that (a dream would be to be able to have a beam like the one you have in team fortress or the shaft in quake, might not work due to our controller scheme).

Myran hasn't even started working on the priest yet, the graphics is being made as we speak, but it's gonna be a while before we know any details around that class. The thief (was rogue) however has it's graphics and more or less all skills so we can start testing it.

[azurie]

Very cool.  Thanks for the reply.