Self heal neccesary?

[andy87]

Why cant we just target ourselves, and heal with " heal life ", do we really need to have self heal???

[mmatto]

I fear that limitation is necessary with current skill system even if it feels stupid. I felt quite strongly about it first, but later it seems justified. Everyone can learn heal spells and healing is rather powerful (even if nerfed). So, ability to cast heal on self would make everyone almost invulnerable and separate healer would be only an xp leech in team.

[philu]

Self heal used to be part of a "Self Magic" (or something like) skill tree during beta. You could gain XP in combat by healing yourself. They took the skill tree out long ago.

Self heal does make perfect sense as Mikos said. IIRC back in the self magic days, self heal didn't have a timer so you could keep yourself alive more. If you could cast heal on yourself, you would indeed be invincible and gain XP from it. Wouldn't make sense. Having a seperate, timer controlled spell makes perfect sense IMHO.

[petej]

Self magic used sap/health/time credits (iirc) so you were never invincable sooner or later youd run out of credit and you could fail to heal yourself also , it was far more flexible than the current system and id like it back tbh :/

[akicks]

Why cant we just target ourselves, and heal with " heal life ", do we really need to have self heal???

Yes - yes we do. If you target your self AND heal yourself, you won't ever need a team.

THis is an mmorpg. MMO.

M-M-O.

Guess working with people is more important in this type of game.

MMO

[mitijea]

...you won't ever "need" a team.

Why does it have to be "need" and not "want"? Just seems limiting to me.

Personally I enjoy teaming and soloing equally, depending on my mood, time commitment, and goals for a particular game playing period. Just because there are other real people in the game, as opposed to only NPC's, doesn't justify being forced into such close cooperation with them. One of the best things about a MMOG is having a world with other characters in them that are not programmed scripts. It's nice coming across others that can be interacted with beyond a small set of very limited responses (if there are any at all). With real people running around, you never know what type of contact you may have.

All this doesn't nescessarily mean we need to band together with them to succeed as seems to be implied by a narrow definition of MMOG. I would like developers to take a much wider approach to this genre and give us the freedom to choose. Grouping would not lessen extensively as some fear, but instead would improve as those in the group are there because they want to be "in the group", rather than "need to be to succeed in the game". Then grouping together becomes a more socially interactive experience for all those involved. The chances of finding a better group (without resorting to always playing with those in your guild) will increase substantially as the likelihood of grouping with others who feel forced to group for advancement reasons and not for the enjoyment of cooperation/interaction will (mostly) be elliminated. This would only increase the formation of better random groups, and foster community building, not the opposite as some fear.

Who wouldn't like to find more people to have GOOD groups with? The chances of finding random people who will group well together, I believe, will increase if the ones who don't want to group at the time are allowed the ability to succeed without doing so. In the long run I cannot see how this wouldn't improve both the groupers and the soloists experiences.

[sehracii]

I sort of fear for increased solo-ability.

It will make "unnecessary" skills even harder to level.

Take defensive affliction for instance. It's almost impossible to solo (only way is to do elemental or melee with it at the same time and split XP, and usually more going to the damage dealer). It's often viewed as not being important to a team. I often find teams solely by hooking up with an ele or melee who is soloing so I can heal them out of fight and eliminate their down time. If they can heal themselves faster somehow, they'll be less likely to want to team with me if they're already having no trouble killing things.

But in a perfect world, I'd love to see the game more solo friendly just to keep more people happy. A repeatable self heal ability (or consumable) that can not be used in a combat situation seems like a good fix to me.

But what about the support skills that already have a tough time?

[varelse]

Why cant we just target ourselves, and heal with " heal life ", do we really need to have self heal???

This was in the beta as a separate branch on the magic skill tree, but was taken out before release, due to exploits of the 'zero cost' spell to level magic at no risk and without any outside help. Or at least that was the reason I heard about. I'm not sure why they never tried to adjust it to remove the 'level up at zero risk, zero cost' problem, but instead chose a timed power stanza to replace it.

Adding self heal back in to the game would also add more strategy and skill into PvP, but it could be that they have higher priorities than reworking this feature. That was certainly true on release.

[alexrowe]

Self heal was cool on the beta if you are solo lvling, and I agree with Kali on the pvp will add more strategy to it.

[akicks]

Why does it have to be "need" and not "want"? Just seems limiting to me.

MMO! (That's right.)