Tree of Savior Forum

Food for Thought: What if... clerics can't heal?

General Discussion
#32

Yes, but that’s another issue related to the way this game is made.
Because remember, when it was actually difficult people cried they couldn’t solo everything and IMC stupidly agreed to their complaints… “Ewwww, we actually need to party and have a healer with us ! I want to be full DEX and be able to solo magical undodgeable group of mobs !” :tired:

@Nekorin
Honestly, I think IMC doesn’t fully know what they’re doing. I think the current devs lack the experience or/and the imagination.
There are other games that made it the opposite of a lot of games: the higher your level is, the less HP/defense you have.
As a newbie, you have extra of these, so fights are a bit easier for you while you’re learning how to play your character. The more you level, the lower your base survivability is and the stronger the enemies hit you. So you have to be smarter, to know your skills better, to learn when to block, to be careful, to use your own buffs, food to increase your base stats, etc…
This and your HK example are why I’m saying that IMC feel unexperienced. They’re in a pure “damages” point of view. The higher the boss or mobs level is, the more tanky they should be and the more damages they should deal. And it works the same way for the players. They keep adding new ways to improve your attack and defenses, they don’t think about adding new mechanics or ways to fight instead.

It’s not like you truly need Heals to start with in TOS.
Removing heals would remove the identity of the Cleric class, and it won’t bring much anyway since you still have those ways to increase your damages and defenses to insane amounts.
I think it’s actually the opposite: it’ll be even more of a DPS check game (kill before you get killed), making it even less interesting.
Anyway, I don’t think heals matter in this game. What matters the most on TOS is #1 damages, #2 damages mitigations (Ausrine, for example), #3 Healing. You heal when you’re “desperate”, if not, you use it to deal damages.
In a party in CM, my Sadhu may be a glass cannon, but she barely ever uses Heal. Why care when you can kill everything fast enough ? One little CC, good DPS, and you don’t even need any heal :confused:

The only thing I hate about Heal is that it’s best healing skill of the game and… it comes with your base class ? Cleric is the newbie class of the tree, they shouldn’t have this amazing healing skill right away. It should come later.

@Asriel
While the Cleric is also a holy warrior (like every holy classes), what makes them different from the other classes is the fact they can effectively support and heal their parties.
All kinds of classes can buff and have a few heals - even archers sometimes have some - but the “main healing job” goes to the Cleric tree. If there is none it indeed goes to some other magical class, but that’s different.
Note that I’m using “tree”. I’m talking about TOS’ case and the fact Cleric here is the starting class of the healing/supportive classes line. The fact other games have 5 different holy/magical classes and can give the healing abilities to a “Priest” rather than a “Cleric” is irrelevant.

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#33

games powercreep, moving away from this sort of gameplay is just a natural progression of these kind of games, people want to feel fast and do things quickly, the devs responded to the people.
otherwise this game would have died long ago if they stuck to making it too slow.

biggest example of this is path of exile, back in its early days its exactly what you would describe as a “hard game” which required lots of meticulous thinking and planning on difficult encounters, now its evolved into a speed clear fast kill fast loot killing spree, which is far more appealing to the general populace than what your saying here, the same thing is destined for ToS imo.

#34

^ This here is where you get the point of “Healing” in ToS, you get buffed from Lv 1 and go all the way to Lv 230 without expending a single HP pot in a grind mode without dungeons.

And it’s more evident if you are already a veteran and have good gear to pass to this Alt char, you can reach Lv 300+ without expend a single pot.

This by no means is something I would call fun and challenging tbh.

Now as for buffs from shops, I think it should scale with the char Lv in some way. What I thought about it was:

  • From Lv 1 to 50 the buff would act as if the Shop had only 200 SPR.
  • From 101 to 200 it would increase to 250 SPR.
  • From 201 to 300 it would increase to 300 SPR.
  • Then hitting 301 it would unlock the full potential of the shop to use all the SPR, then again, it would go into nerf again after hitting 400+ Lv following the above pattern.

Of course, the numbers above might need rework, it was just an example and someone might come with a better solution to that.

That is the thing many miss when we talk about a class, we aren’t only looking to a single class, but the tree as a whole thing, while Cleric and Priest are the main healing classes, we can’t forget the others after, or at least a few of them, where they will boost the healing ability of the first 2.

One thing I would find interesting is:

  • On Priest, Mass heal instead of instant heal the allies, work as a HoT, and, while under it’s effect, the chars can’t use the heal tiles, or course we would need to rework on the healing power on Mass Heal to make that viable.

  • On Plague Doctor, Healing Factor could either:
    – Changed to HP recover speed and the value readjusted to not become OP.
    – And add an attribute that when taken/turned on it would apply to all party members but it’s effect be halved.

  • On Diev:
    – Statue of Goddess Zemyna instead of decreasing SP cost, could be SP recovery, again, readjusted and the SP Rec Speed increased by .2 secs per Lv starting from 3 seconds (would go up to 6 secs max at Lv. 15).
    – Carve World is my opinion but, would be nice to have 2 effects separated based on situation:
    –> If in PvE: It would cause confusion stats (or other debuff effect we could apply there) for 3 secs every 10 secs.
    –> If in PvP: The actual stats, then again, I’m not sure how it really works actually, if it does apply the whole duration during a PvP event, I think it should be lowered by 90% (I’m assuming the original effect duration is the same as the statue, 42 secs at Lv 10) and a effect CD of 10 secs or lower after the debuff fades.

I could go on on the changes to the tree but it’s too much of a hassle and I know IMC couldn’t care less about our opinions too.

Indeed, I was one of them, but not to the point where it is now.

But unfortunately for some of us, me included, who don’t want anything to do with guilds, and even people in some small guilds, would have a hard time doing anything in the way it was presented first, and even in the example I gave, why? Because we barely have any players to party with in the fields.

People now mostly login to do mainly Saalus and Raid when there are people willing to do, dungeons are only used to get that last spur of EXP to reach the Lv cap now and don’t provide any real good reward for doing it aside from minimal EXP after certain Lv.

Actually, ToS is a game that is the least rewarding in the working hard aspect, aside from Saalus for the necessary shards and Raid for the recipes.

Fields don’t give much things to incentive, of course aside from Challenges, but then again, you can only do it once a day or two.

In all honesty, I stopped caring about content now simply because IMC still trying to reach the proposed Lv cap (500) and I know content wise, this game will receive very little attention, I know that we will get more classes and probably items, but if you look at the game in a whole, that is only a small part of the content.

#36

It’s interesting too, it could also be applied into Challenge Mode, but instead of EXP, it could change the drop rate or drop quality (the second probably better since we can increase the rate a bit with Loot Chance).

Also, with this, healer would be more necessary to at least progress a bit faster than going without one, that is, if it’s possible to go without one, since it looks like the mob would rip a group without heals in seconds lol.

#37

why not just give all other trees some form of healing too. since clerics can deal damage like everyone else anyway. i don’t really see why not.

#39

What is archer?

#40

:thinking: :thinking: :thinking: :thinking: :thinking: :thinking: :thinking: :thinking:
#41

do we play the same game?

#42

You’re not telling me that Cleric support>Wizard support,right?
Archer&Swordsman don’t have any magic so of course they don’t have support…

Archer can CC/debuff while Swordsman can take aggro and debuff, every tree has debuff skills (which are mainly a way to increase damage induced or reduce incoming damage).

There are only 2 skills in the Archer tree that can be called support (Overestimate and Swift Step), the rest of the skills are debuff-based [e.g. Aiming, Circling, Growling, Devaluation], so I wouldn’t put them in the support category [as there is no direct beneficial effect for the whole party].

And because most Classes in TOS don’t really utilize a subweapon (except Archers) the value of Overestimate is pretty low [it even has a downtime], not to talk about Swift Step that only boosts the parties evasion (since most Archers are only Archer C2, you’ll get 100-120 evasion boost, which is ± the same amount you can get with a Forecast scroll) as the critrate bonus and the movement boost while attacking are for Archers only…

Now about why Cleric support is so bad:

  1. you can get the most useful buff-/debuff skills from Pardoners, either via buff shop or skill scrolls
  2. the Cleric buffs are situational and only worthwhile against HP sponges with lots of defence [e.g. Blessing]
  3. there is no point of buffing up and debuffing if the damage afterwards is still lower than an Archer/Swordsman just using 1-2 attacks without utilizing these mechanics

Another point I’d like to make:
most Cleric buffs are counter-intuitive.
E.g., what benefit does Sacrament have for people that don’t autoattack? 10 skillpoints wasted just to give autoattackers another attack line.
Revive: If you’re in danger to die, chances are high that you will come into the danger to die again, and since Revive has such a huge CD time, the subject will really die;
However, if the subject doesn’t die, the buff is completely useless.
Ressurection makes it easier to die again, because people ressurected have only a part of their HP and lost all defensive buffs.
Ein Sof is basically an advancement of max HP, you still have to heal up to that point or the skill does nothing [except a cheap way to boost %-based recovery skills; the attributes help recover more HP or SP].

These are some examples of how Cleric support is worse than Wizard, excluding Swordsman and Archer.

Full CON: the future of ToS builds?
#43

Please either play Cleric or play the game longer.

Both Cleric and Wizard support are amazing in general, just because you don’t autoattack doesn’t mean that Sacrament is useless for other people. I honestly don’t know how you honestly got the idea that cleric support is bad. You can’t let support skills be an end all be all. Like your example with Revive, it’s already a 100% uptime second chance for your allies, preventing them from dying once in its’ duration, plus it gives invulnerability for a short period that allows whoever is dying to recover from damage or reposition or whatever, you’re using it to prevent deaths in the first place, just because it doesn’t proc means it’s useless.

  • Krivis extends buffs/shreds crit res and boost crit damage/AoE regen or Fire Prop atk boosts
  • Priest has a plethora of abilities that let your party survive(Mass Heal/Revive/Aspersion/Stoneskin), or deal more damage(Blessing/Sacrament/Monstrance).
  • Diev has Cooldown/SP Cost reducing statues for utility, refreshable invulnerability for defense, and AoE silence that prevents mobs from attacking.
  • Bokor has Hex debuff that boosts your ally dark damage dealer’s damage.
  • Paladin has defensive buffs via Barrier/Sanctuary/Resist Elements and HP Regen boost with Restoration
  • Sadhu can transfer their stats to an ally with Prana
  • Pardoner can extend debuff durations and boost magic defense, for those planning to incorporate it in their builds.
  • Oracle at c1 already has all you need from the class, Magic dispelling Counterspell/Debuff blocking Prophecy/Ability to see hitboxes(albeit a little buggy) and chance to null attacks completely with attributed Forecast
  • Druid has 50/67% uptime invulnerability via Sterea Trofh
  • Plague Doctor lets your party spread spreadable debuffs, block debuffs, and Healing Factor.
  • Kabbalist has damage boosting Gevura/Double Chance and Max HP boosting Ein Sof, making the one buffed nigh unkillable.
  • Taoist boosts Lightning/Melee damage with Storm Calling and allows breather areas with Dark Sight.
  • Miko boosts Melee damage and allows extensions of Dievby Statues.
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#44

I’ve made this comparison many many times. Before the damage rework the game was actually dark souls with one wrong move getting you killed ( see: winner wall maps) now its much closer to dynasty warriors with worldbossing being a gear/base camp check than a “difficult” engagement.

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#45

It seems that you don’t think beyond the numbers, about the underlying logic of Cleric buffs…

Let me rephrase it for you so that you may understand me.

Let’s compare e.g. Cleric and Wizard buff effects.

Take for instance Ein Sof and Haste.

Ein Sof increases the maximum HP limit of your character.
To have e.g. Haste have a similar effect, Hastes effect would have to change to increase only the upper movement speed limit from 60 to e.g. 90.
So, the buff Haste by itself does nothing, it just allows you to go beyond your 100% limitation.
This would only benefit players that can break through the limit with skills/items/etc.

That’s a reason why I say some Cleric buff concepts are bad.
Ein Sof by itself does nothing.
If I don’t have a healing/recovery skill in the party that can fill up those extra parts of the HP bar that are initially empty, chances are large that you don’t really have a benefit from the initial skill effect (even if prolonged with Melstis to 91 seconds duration at level 17, you can only use 3 alchemist HP pots and 2 NPC pots to fill your extended HP bar during this time, which will in many cases not be enough to fill up the extra 340% HP-bar).

Revive and Ressurection are another example. The better your equipment is, the lesser the effect of the skill becomes (i.e. inverse scaling to gear), meaning they are most effective with no CON and naked, while a geared player with enough CON&defence will never face death [unless he facetanks everything in a long battle and thus breaks his gear], so the skill becomes potentially 5-15 dead/wasted skillpoints on the character that could’ve been invested into something else.

Imagine you’re playing any Archer/Swordsman and one of your skills deals only 10000 fixed damage.
In the beginning it would be great, but later the points would be dead/wasted.
It’s exactly the same problem with Revive and Ressurection.
It only covers for someone elses lack of something (HP/defence), so it isn’t support but instead promoting lazyness, wrong stating& undergearing for content, while people who properly play the game have no benefit from the skill.

If we take e.g. Thaumaturges Swell skills for a support comparison, while their effectiveness decreases with everyones gear progression, it still has an immediate effect on attack&defence of the party.
This is a good example of how to scale a useful support skill so that it still is relevant for game progression instead of becoming useless.

Also, your concept of support skills seems a little warped.
In your eyes everything that increases/decreases something looks like a support skill?

Debuffs are not support skills, they are debuffs.
Debuffs can be beneficial in synergetic relationships (e.g. Hexing causing curse ailment, which increases dark property damage), but by themselves they do not benefit the players. If e.g. the party is full of Priests with 1 Bokor[that does not have Effigy/Damballa], the 50% dark property boost does nothing.
How is this support? It’s just an assumption that someone might benefit from this.

Reality is different. It takes a lot of planning and setting up the right party (which is very difficult because people tend to have dozens of different builds that may synergize with one Class but don’t with another of another player and/or his skills/attributes/weaponry/etc.) to get a beneficial outcome for everyone.

That’s where I draw the line to support skills. Support skills are supposed to be always helpful for the party.
These augmentations have to benefit everyone (like e.g. Haste,Swell Left Arm,Spiritual Chain being useful for most content of the game).

The 3 categories of support are:

  1. status boosts
  2. mitigation skills (damage/status ailments)
  3. recovery skills

Since we’re talking here just about the first two categories I have to say that Cleric is pretty bad in category 1 (status boosts) and only excels in mitigation (damage&status ailments).

And, as I said, mitigation is redundant if you play/stat/equip properly. So with continuous progression in gameplay experience and gear, Cleric becomes obsolete as a supporter [“the walking pot”-problem, Cleric being just a convenient addition that covers for the lack of something, with people playing full-“support” builds as subs to run content like e.g. ET or Belcoper Nest more often; maining a full-support build is not viable for farming,etc, but that’s another design flaw of TOS…] and is just a “convenient” addition[e.g. people in shout looking for thauma/Chrono because of the buffs, but instead of looking for a specific Cleric they just want any “healer” so that they don’t have to git gud, improve their equipment and/or spend money for pots].

#46

“You don’t need to think about healing if you aren’t healing in the first place” - A certain monk

#47

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If clerics couldnt heal, this thing shouldnt happen

:tired:

#48

So a skill like kagura dance isnt support because you might have no physical damage users in your party?
Transmit prana isnt support because the stat you transfer isnt always helpful?
Zalciai isnt a support skill because you dont always have users that benefit from critical attack?

I can kinda agree on hexing not really being a support skill, but aiming isnt a support skill? Come on now.

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#49

I take exception with your definition of a support. I don’t think it’s very helpful to draw a distinction between positive status effects and negative status effects and then simply call the former supports and the latter debuffs. Rather, these two sorts of skills are subclasses of an umbrella group known as support skills. It is, indeed, much more helpful to define support skills as any sort of skill that assists gameplay not by dealing damage or restoring health but by manipulating secondary effects. Even your own classification belies this:

If you’ve noticed, despite drawing a distinction between debuffs (staus ailments) and supports (status boosts), you’ve classified negative status effects as support skills.

#50

I main clerics, and I really don’t think you actually know much beyond what is stated on the skills themselves.

You contradicted yourself by saying that debuffs are not support skills, then placed status ailments on support, then calling my idea of support being warped. Having support skills that are always helpful are nice, but wanting to have all support skills benefit everyone in your party is such a stupid idea because everyone would then be building the same build over and over again, which beats the idea of having a crapton of classes to work around with.

Maybe you’re forgetting that ToS let’s you take multiple classes/ranks of the same class, so you have a larger variety of skills to work with, which makes a lot of those buffs have more use(the same tree that gives Ein Sof also gives Heal/Mass Heal, just to remind you). You’re looking at buffs at a standalone point when the whole point of the game was to mix and match your classes to tailor a role. Other games with fewer class options/linear class pathing might work with this logic, but definitely not in ToS because by then everyone is building the same build path over and over again.

Comparing Ein Sof and Haste, two skills that don’t have any sort of similarity to both barring that they are both buff skills is a bad example of comparison, because by then you’re nitpicking the concepts to suit your side.

Might as well add damage amplification to your idea of a support, considering you forgot about that when considering your idea of one.

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#51

I made the comparison to elucidate what I mean when I say Cleric has bad support.

Summary

I took Haste because Haste has an immediate effect on your movement speed, no matter how much you initially have, and it actually increases the status instead of just increasing the upper limit (as movement speed has an upper limit of 60/63 currently, I thought it would be a good comparison of the effects, but it seems you still didn’t seem to get what I mean).

Again, Ein Sof does nothing, it only increases the upper limit of your HP bar.
If you don’t fill up those HP bar%, you’ll still get oneshot by a strong attack that oneshots you without Ein Sof.

It’s like fishing in a swimming pool, if you don’t put any fish into the water you can have the best fishing rod and still won’t catch anything.

I hope this makes it clear what I mean.

That’s exactly the point, looking at every Class on its own. Only if a Class is synergetic/good enough on its own it is good enough to advance into with every build. There is no point in creating Classes like Chaplain that only work with certain Classes (i.e. Priest) without locking them onto said progression [e.g. Priest3 as prerequisite to become Chaplain].
The value/viability of Class and its skills decreases with every Class that doesn’t synergize with its skills, and especially if its own skills don’t synergize with each other.
If you have to combine certain Classes with your initial Class just to make the skills good/viable for playing, it’s actively decreasing the build options you have because you lose Ranks.

That’s why you won’t see many build variations for certain Classes, it’s a direct showcase how badly designed they are.

Of course, that shouldn’t be part of the discussion here, that’s why it is for the best to come back to the main point, which is the focus of the first 3 Ranks on healing skills and the possible impact on Clerics if they are disabled/nerfed for content.

To sum up my point, I think it would not affect Clerics as much as it would affect and reveal builds/Classes/equipments/investments/playstyles that are ineffective/subpar/underinvested.

Every player that doesn’t effectively:

  • know how to play the game
  • avoid getting mobbed
  • use boost potions
  • kite/evade actively
  • invest properly in his character (statbuild/equipment)

would be affected, thus making the game more interactive and character-focused (tree of alts becoming less of a thing with Saalus nerf and free additional entries on dungeons without tokens).

I’d actually like to see this, so that players stop whining about their own inability and start using their builds innate abilities (e.g. Quarrelshooter actually running around while attacking, what’s the point of Running Shot if you facetank monsters because there is a Cleric throwing Heals near you?).

But that’s not what I can see from the current content incoming. Players keep huddling together in Belcoper Nest and just get a Kabba3Priest to solve the problem with heals,Revive and Ressurection.
IMC even boosted armor defence with the latest patch but I still cannot see the players actually overcome the comfort of just huddling with Linker to share full CON, Revive and Mass Heal.

RO had an answer for this with e.g. Satan Morrocs no-ressurection debuff (10 minutes long you cannot ressurrect or be ressurected, you have to start again from your safe point outside the instanced map),
but I guess TOS is too casual to tread that path of increased difficulty.

#52

-Topic was about what if clerics can’t heal
-Slowly changes to Wizard Support better than Cleric Support, then to Cleric Revamp rant

:joy:

#53

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what did I do to deserve this?

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