MMO Gamers

     I was reading an interview on Ten Ton Hammer with Evan Michaels, game designer for Funcom, regarding the Priest of Mitra, one of AoC’s healing classes.  You can read the full interview here if you like but I just wanted to talk about a couple of things in particular from that interview.

Ten Ton Hammer: Priests of Mitra, along with the other priests, have the ability to “cone heal” which will provide a moderate heal on the priest, and a powerful heal on all allies in the cone area. How wide is this cone? Will the players in the cone have to be visible for the heal to take place? Is there anything else you can tell us about the cone heal?

Evan Michaels: The default size of the Priest of Mitra and all other Priest cone heals is a 120 degree cone, offset 60 degrees from the center of one’s character. This cone extends 6 meters from the caster, and targets must be in line of sight of the healer at the time the heal is cast. Provided these criteria are met, the heal will be applied to any friendly targets (even ones outside the group) within the area.

We feel that this method of healing is fairly unique to the MMO genre—where single-target healing is the norm—and contributes greatly to the action-oriented nature of combat. In most games, healers are typically forced into very passive role, which really is not an option for us with Age of Conan’s combat system. Executing healing in this manner provides a clear reason for Priests to get up in the fray and experience combat first-hand.

     My take.  Tabula Rasa uses a number of healing methods.  Direct, radial, and cone healing.  With TR’s healing you needed to target using the target reticle for the direct heal.  This was incredibly difficult to do with people moving rapidly all over the place.  Radial healing was easier because it was just an AoE heal, but provided the smallest healing benefit.  Cone healing provide a greater heal and healed all those within the cone.  The problem I found in TR was that everyone thought they were in Quake 3 and were bunny hopping all over the place.  One of the things I hated so much about TR was the lack of cohesion in PUGs.     I don’t think the groups in AoC will be anything like those in TR.  Certainly anything that makes combat more entertaining is a good thing but I’m not sure that cone healing will be any more enjoyable then a good ol’ AoE heal, particularly if it’s dependent on other players to be effective.  How many players outside of the cone will die and blame the healer?

 Ten Ton Hammer: What kind of skills can a Priest of Mitra bring to the PvP playing field? Will their nukes be sufficient to slay their enemies? Will they have a hard time keeping up both healing and nuking?

Evan: When looking at the Priest of Mitra’s skillset from a PvP perspective, one would probably view their large array of crowd-control techniques as a primary point of interest. Once they reach level 80, a Priest of Mitra has access to stun, fear, knockback, snare, and blind abilities—granting them a rather formidable crowd-control toolset. The time gained by proper usage of these abilities should give the Priest the ability to support their group in many ways—be it via damage or healing.

      My take.  I love healers with some crowd control.  For a time I played a Midgard Healer in Dark Age of Camelot and enjoyed it more than the other healer classes I’d tried because of some nice CC.  There was nothing like your group roaming the battlegrounds on the lookout for some hibs/albs, only to stumble across them and throw out an AoE mezz, or shutting down that add in Darkness Falls.  I never expect healers to do a lot of damage so to be given some additional support skills other than just healing is fantastic.