Thread: Healers aren't just healers!

If you've played other MMO's, you will discover that typically if someone comes close to a character that is capable of being a healer, that's what they will be asked for. It was confirmed that all healing classes in SW:TOR will NOT be pigeonholed into healing, as if they were to choose the opposite advanced class than the healing, they won't be expected to preform the suggested task.

I've experienced this in WoW with my shadow priest, only to deal with dozens of tells a day asking me to heal, only to respond, "I could, but you'll die. I'm specced for DPS". This was, of course, until they released the ability to switch talent specs.

Either way, it will be a definite breath of fresh air to be able to play a Consular for example and not be annoyed with messages to heal for their group.

So, are you saying that my Bounty Hunter of a tank will be stuck with healing duty? Maybe I'll reconsider and pick Sith Inquisitor for my class, after all! LOL

Anyway in seriousness, I played a "healer" type in several games. It definitely was annoying being spammed with, "Heals!!" I know it was my skill...it was just annoying. I mean, you don't spam the tanks with "Hit it!!"

Very much so, even though I've heard people complaining of people asking them to tank when they aren't specced that way. Of course...I've always specced tank or healer if I could because I find DPS to be mindless, so I never really minded people asking

Healing classes, however, I don't like healing for people or tanks that I don't know, just because there are so many out there, so I typically keep my healing toons represented as "DPS".

I grew bored of my first healer in Age of Conan and ended up deleting him. I think the idea of a healer who does more is a great idea, but you still need to ensure that a party gets heals. If not from the healer, then who from?

Well of course the heals are going to come from the healer, but the healer will be able to maintain much more in this game. The point being, they've made the classes attractive enough where there should be a pretty good ration of healers to other roles, not to mention that while being a healer, you could perform other roles if needed (to ensure ease of finding a group).

It's certainly an interesting concept and breaks from the expected & traditional MMO healer role. As I said, my healing experience in AoC was pretty dull, so I welcome the change.

Indeed. While I don't anticipate doing any healer once I pull the game out of the box, I am planning on having my second character be a healbot (it helps when you've played the game long enough to know exactly what kind of healer you want).

This is probably the route I'll be going (I'll leave the getting beat up part to JD ), and it sounds good that I won't bored, or annoyed with people bugging me.

I wasn't really a big fan of keeping a "healer" as a healer. I'd always make sure that I put enough points in things like destruction spells so that my character wasn't just the one spammed for "heals!"

Reading through guides at other games though, it seems if you don't put all of your points into talents that make you more effective as a healer, you are doing nothing more than gimping your potential. Have you had problems with that, Mandalore?

It depends on what game you're playing. For example, one game I had an equipment set for when I had to go into "healing mode." I also had another set that I would use when I had to solo or be a "tank" (that is when I was lugging around newbies .

There have been a few instances with me on WoW where there was some difference-in-opinion about healing and dps specs. It happened after patch 4.0h my God! and resto druids lost their constant Tree of Life form. I was in a PuG (All good stories start this way) and since I was not in tree form (and lol @ healing heroics in end-game gear, 1 rejuv and /afk) and decided to speed things along by spamming Wrath (basic damage spell). The tank took this as a sign of "Oh this guy must be a balance druid and not know about Moonkin form. Herp derp."

Long story short, he and I got into this HUGE debacle and it ultimately ended when my ToL came back up (2 minutes later) and I SHOWED him I was restoration. So it was a mix up, but in the opposite direction.

I personally enjoy the healer abuse. Idiots spamming me to heal this and that, meanwhile I'm just sitting back pretending to be afk. It's nice to feel needed.

Downside: As soon as someone dies "HAEL PLZ!