In Lord of the Rings Online, you don’t need a healer… until you do. And then, who are you going to get? Well, you could use potions, but they have a 1 minute cooldown, are fairly expensive, and don’t heal much.
Only two classes have a group heal — minstrels and captains. The captain has a small heal (about 160 points at the current level cap of 15, vs a player’s typical hit points of 700-800 at that same level), followed by 30 seconds of 6 (yes, s-i-x six) hit points every five seconds. And this wimpy heal is on a one minute timer and can only be cast when a mob has just died.
A captain’s heals are only adequate when nobody really needs a heal.
That leaves only the minstrel with adequate healing for a group.
No other game has so little healing available. LotRO’s close cousin, World of Warcraft, has several — both factions have priests, druids, shaman and paladin, all of whom can easily heal a normal group and specced correctly (in the case of non-priests), some harder instances. EQ1 has clerics, druids, shaman and paladins, all of whom can heal a group (paladins maybe not so much in some encounters). EQ2 has a dizzying number of healing classes. Even DAoC had at least two per faction.
This is one of those “OMG, what were they thinking?” things. And it will hurt LotRO even more than the game’s linearity.
LotRO needs to upgrade the captain’s heal so that they can heal a normal group with their heals-over-time. Leave minstrels the masters of quick, instant heals, but take some pressure off them. In a game with three tank-able classes (guardians, champions and captains), having just one heal class is… insane… and will block groups from progress. Already minstrels are in such desperate need that many instance/epic groups in LotRO just simply can’t continue past a certain point.
As a player with a long history of playing healers, I can say with certainty: that sort of stress will drive people away from playing minstrels and away from the game.
Also, throw some healing the lore-master’s way. A single target heal that drains health from the lore master and passes it to the target, necromantic-like, would be nice.
Okay, I got that LM thing from a LM who said she would like a way to heal a group. So I had bad information. It turns out they do have some heals. It also turns out burglars can trigger group heals but I have never grouped with a burglar and wasn’t sure they existed past the newbie instance.
There may well be healing beyond what I have encountered thus in the game. But none of the fellowships I have been in used anything beyond minstrel heals; one used a captain’s heal but we died horribly. All other fellowships showed no healing. So; if there is healing, it is so obscure or hard to use that it is not used. At least to this point.
The fact remains: Minstrels, rightly or wrongly, are too much in demand for healing, and the Captain heal should be upgraded to a useful heal over time. in my opinion.
11 thoughts on “LotRO’s Fatal Error”
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Link to the thread on the LotRO forums when I posted this article there. A LOT was explained to me 😛 I STILL think the game needs more healing, but opinions do differ and here’s all of them.
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=42885
Funny.. when I was playing last night, I was wondering if folks actually die while playing the game. After reading some of the posts on the lotro forums, it seems to me that in a tough fight everyone will be trying to heal themselves instead of doing their job.
LOL at the thread, so much for civil discourse huh? And it’s always so fun when the discussion degrades into a see-saw between “you can’t have that, it wasn’t in the books!” and “I disagree l2p noob.” :\
I’m not sure I agree with you on the lack of healing (although agreed it needs to be tweaked), but I do think that what you’ve run into really is a problem in the LoTRO design: there just aren’t enough classes in the game. I also think the classes are a little difficult for the average player to get their arms around. When you first start playing a game, do you choose a Guardian, Captain, or Champion? What’s the difference? You really have to do some reading to figure out which one is going to best suit your style of play. Also, it bugs me to no end that “Captain” is a class. It’s a rank, not a class, dammit! 🙂
I have this image in my head of a group of folks watching the forums, waiting for new posts to assault with their very large heads filled with much MMO and LOTR knowledge. They look like large-headed aliens because their brains contain more information than it was meant to hold. The have evolved into something much greater than us – in their own opinion. Famous quote from the large-headed aliens: learn2play aka l2p.
I thought healing was fine, too, until I started doing the hardcore instances without a minstrel. Maybe the people playing Captains are just phenomenally bad players. I’ll get a chance to see this from the other side as I do the same instances with my captain and my minstrel.
The devs did design the encounters to support captain backup healing; usually mobs come in waves with both elite and normal mobs in them. You’re supposed to kill a normal mob when you need a captain heal while focusing on taking down the elite mobs, which is very reminiscent of some high-end raids in EQ and WoW (especially EQ1’s Vishimitar raid, a very long fight where you can choose to kill a mob that refreshes the raid’s health and mana at certain points if needed, or also Overlord Mata Muram, who gives you a five minute rest in the middle of the encounter, which is damn nice of him by the way).
Also, fellowship skills pop up occasionally, similar to EQ2’s heroic opportunities, and the more people who press the same button within range of each other at the same time, the more powerful an effect will be generated.
So experienced raiders should be able to figure out group dynamics pretty easily. Are these expected of new players? Level 12-15 players? People who have never met before regardless of their MMO skills?
After release, these particular instances will undoubtedly be done with the help of people several levels higher, and so what is done with six people 12-15 will be done with four people 12-17 and two people level 20 or higher — and then the encounter will be trivial and healing won’t even be an issue.
But eventually will come the raids, and then it will be important to have discussed this early on.
You know, there’s also a great option under UI settings that let’s you remain targeted on a friendly (say, your Main Tank) and always be able to heal him, buff him, whatever… but every hostile attack you use while targetting him will automatically be directed at his target. It’s specifically designed for the healer classes, and I don’t think many know it. It’s called something-forwarding or something-something… 😛
It could be reason enough for seeing such bad play among non-practiced Captains and Minstrels, that and the fact that the early levels will weed out the good healers. Even so, I feel like I should probably play my Captain or Minstrel up to 50 because my Kin is going to need them… like you said, you don’t realize how important they are in LotRO until you finally actually need one. Fellowship Maneuvers won’t save you all the time, nice as they are.
BTW, Tipa, thanks for the comment on my blog, I replied back this morning.
I didn’t want to be hostile regarding your story; I know my own fiction writing is subpar and I have spent a lot of time working on it and I still don’t feel it is ready to share (some people have seen some of it). You get high marks just for putting yourself on the line.
I’ll take a look at the “target’s target” thing, that’s just what EQ2 has and I’ve come to depend on it. Thanks!
I spent last night installing the high-res textures. Wake up this morning to see how wonderful everything looks and… meh… don’t look much different to me.
It wasn’t hostile, Tipa. It was honest, and what I asked for. 🙂
By the by, I’ve tagged you for a challenge over on my blog…
http://bildos.blogspot.com/2007/04/tag-im-it.html
I have target’s target on and use it when casting ballads (since at this point I don’t really need the trait that turns them into buff-only spells). It also helps make sure I’m hitting the same thing the tank is hitting so I don’t pull aggro casting on some other mob.
Except I notice it often doesn’t work for cries but only ballads. I keep meaning to bug it.
Also it only works if the tank is in combat attacking the mob. If the tank is just standing there targetting something, it gives the “invalid target” error.
The other thing I don’t like is there is no indication of what the tank is targetting, I am casting blind really.
But it’s a good enough solution for the easy instances so far.
And actually I like having one main healing class, I’m not sure really about the others, but if the others’ healing were too good, they’d probably get forced to heal like other off-healers are in raids in other games. At least now only one class will be forced to heal 🙂
Putting the burden of healing on just one member of the group means the minstrel is Target #1 for every mob in the area. Minstrels switch to healing themselves as everyone else tries desperately to save them. Spread out the healing or at least give Minstrels a good way to dump some aggro… I see Sudden Burning Minstrel Death in so many groups where we’re pushing our limits. So eventually, all the minstrels will change to Hunters or something, and then where will we be? Captain healing is just not good enough, and the self-heals of the other classes that get them are worthless when fighting elites.
It’s LOTR therefore it’s not a WoW/EQ/DAOC therefore the classes of Middle Earth are much more defined and limited when compared to other MMORPHs. In LOTR magic is not for everyone. I personally like the way LOTR is set up atm because it does not give unskilled crybabies a reason to cry nerf.
Basically learn how to play each class or go back to WoW etc… I have seen many morphs ruined by unskilled so-called roleplayers who only know how to cry and whine for nerfs. I would suggest that these balance knights go back to first person shooters where skill and thinking does not matter.
LOTRO is designed to work as a thinking team and not point and click patterns. Healing is fine in the game. Let your Gaurdian pull and taunt then manage your aggro DPS so that the true main tank(gaurdian) can keep the aggro. A skilled captian will mark the main and kill a lesser minion so he/she can cast group HOTs etc… It’s all about knowing your class and how to play in a group.
WoW is easy and EQ2 has too many nerfs, Vangaurd is broken, and nerfs killed DAOC. LOTRO is a different game and it’s not for everyone.
Every time I see Chuck Norris in OCC I tell these children to go back to WoW and stay! Middle Earth is not and should not be compared to WoW etc…. sorry but thats the truth.