Re: Healers Discussion

@ToastedSarnieSunflower has been my favorite plant since GW1 and still is. She was my 2nd grandmaster plant (Acorn was 1st) and I love playing her. I 100% agree that healing should provide more XP, and of course so should reviving, helping with revives, and a few other things as well. Maybe all they have to do is adjust a couple of her abilities like they did with blossom so you can't combo like I do in my builds for her. I used to have that blossom/cocoon build before the change and that was really strong, but my 2 builds for her still give a lot of self-healing and survival.

I've seen several concerns voiced over her self-healing more than her ability to heal others which is why I mentioned that at all. There are several abilities that can one-shot, or nearly one shot characters, especially lower health ones like her, so maybe all they need to do is tweak some upgrades and call it good.

Ok.. I am going to try and be as diplomatic as I can but doubt I will manage @ToastedSarnie  diplomacy, which is why I have avoided commenting all day. When I saw first saw this thread this morning I was triggered super bad... like SUPER bad.... like my head nearly exploded at the thought.

For a start.... sunflowers are targeted left right and center in every game should you choose to play her, which is one of the reasons most people don't... if you choose to play sunflower then you do it for the team... many games have no sunflowers at all because that's not how most people play this game. God forbid it messes with their k/d ratio!!!

As for the scientist.... while his healing may not be as versatile as the sunflower his damage capabilities, his healing thingymabob and his warps sure make up for it and make him a force to be reckoned with... which is why we generally see more scientists in a game than sunflowers.
Indeed, as has already been pointed out, I have often seen scientists on the podium and not for healing as many (not all) play him offensively and do very well with him.
Sunflower in contrast, however, is a healer primarily and struggles big style when up against some characters, if you are caught on your own you have no chance of survival. Not the case for the scientist who can warp away to safety, let alone his superior fire power.

Honestly super scared about this.... especially with the wizard coming and his (from what we know so far) super effective abilities.
The zombies are already a strong force... with a number of super strong characters.... they have superbrianz, space cadet and station, engineer and his turret, electric slide with her electric and tornado, pirate and his barrel and strong parrot, all star and soldier....
while the plants have what... nothing so strong, maybe nightcap who has low health and requires an amount of skill to play well and survive... and maybe the snap dragon if you are skilled with him... other than that Rose with her homing, which is touch and go and the goat thingy (easily avoided) ... a skilled cactus... maybe acorn and a skilled player....
you need a good strong, coordinated team for the plants to be successful while the zombies can get by with their primary fire and abilities even on a lower skilled, less coordinated team.

I know many people may disagree but honestly if they wreck the sunflower then it may ruin the game for me completely I will be so annoyed.
The fact that this is what they deem to be an issue to be looked at when we still have the space station dominating and other other ridiculouses going on blows my mind.

@asabaidaYour arguments makes me reconsider my views on SSU. For me, my #1 issue with Sunflower is her Healing Hand. Healing Hand heals too much and plays a big role in Survivability problems with Sunflower, especially with the right upgrades, like Blossom, Full Bloom, and Sunslinger. By herself, she isn't too difficult to kill, and her damage is ok.

@asabaidaTo be honest, I have no idea what they're looking at exactly when they say they're looking at healing and overhealing. The number one change healing needs is more XP. It's just way too low right now. I also have no idea how well balanced Sunflowers and Scientists are against each other. I'm not playing a ton of PvP right now (will be playing more once 12v12 returns and if the weekly events are going to stay fun like that have been), but when I do, I don't see the Scientist kill teams like we had for awhile, which is a good thing. I still prefer Sunflower over Scientist and I always have since GW1.

If they do reduce her self-healing, she's going to need to be compensated in some other way, that's for sure. Scientist has 3 warps, which aids evasion, whereas she has the solar beam which can be nice but of course you can't heal while planting yourself. You can drop sun drops before going into the turret but teammates may grab them on the way through. They need to be very careful when changing our only healers so as not to ruin either characters, although like you I'm more worried about Sunflower than Scientist.

@Iron_Guard8  I just hope that the devs make sound adjustments to the upgrades that overwhelmingly affect healing/overhealing. As it is right now, Sunflower is the undisputed queen of preservation. I'm not sure about Scientist since I don't have all of his healing upgrades. Just to be clear with everyone, I don't want healing/overhealing to be nerfed to oblivion. I agree that healing- related XP needs to be increased. I don't get how reviving someone doesn't grant the same amount of XP as vanquishing someone. They're two sides of the same coin! Lastly, I think that Sunflower/Scientist should be able to revive allies at a faster rate. 

@mikepal19  The technique is interesting, but it looks really wonky and awkward to use. Are you utilizing aim assist in the videos that you posted? Regardless, I'm impressed that you're able to rack up vanquishes in such a way. The nightcap deserved to be vanquished under your superior tactics.  

A question to all of you (credit goes to @Pheesley for bringing this point up):

• How should healing per second (HPS) compare to damage per second (DPS)? Should HPS = DPS or HPS be slightly less than DPS?
  

Another thing that needs mentioning is that Healing takes off 80's Tags and Corn's Butter Beacon Highlight. I dont think it should do this because it completely denies a huge part of their class kits.

With Healing, Can't Missile does almost nothing and Corn loses his Damage buff

@Positronic-Rift  Healers basically raise the (TTK) time it takes to kill the player they are healing. Even a player being able to take a little more damage can be a huge factor in the outcome of a matchup. 

I think it's good to compare the TTK of killing someone without Healing to the TTK of killing someone with Healing. I haven't tested Sunflower healing too much other than my observations playing as and against Sunflower in PVP, but I believe in Sunflower raises that TTK too high. It takes too many shots and really too much of a commitment to kill the plant she is healing. And if you take off the pressure to reload or take cover while the Plant is still being Healed, the plant has already gained too much health back to make the previous damage worth it, plus the huge constant Healing output that makes killing that Plant take so long.

I think the player base has slowly caught on to that, which is why Healers get targeted so much.

I'm not sure if Scientist needs a Healing Nerf. In my experience his healing definitely can't keep someone alive as well as Heal Beam, even with upgrades like CPR and Power Wash. Out of combat Healing Hose still heals at a fast rate, which is good because an effective Healer should get their teammates back in the fight as quickly as possible.

I don't think Healing needs to be nerfed to the previous Sunflower and Scientist healing (remember how slow Healing Hose was? And I also would argue that the Sunflower's previous Heal Beam had a good output of Healing, at the time it was way too good because of the game's overall super high TTK and it was still better than Heal Beam in the GW games. ). 

It is HPS vs. DPS, but I think the clearer question is "by how much should Healing increase the TTK?"

Popcap needs to find the right Healing-Per-Second that doesn't raise the TTK too high to where its too much of a commitment to kill the person being Healed, but just enough that a player can take plenty of additional damage to still make a difference in a fight.

Popcap should definitely look at how good Healing is at saving someone at low Health because this can be a good example of how ridiculously strong Healing can be. Sunflower's Heal Beam makes it difficult to finsih off a low HP Plant, especially with certain upgrades.

I don't play a whole lot of pvp as I usually do a few rounds of ops and call it for the day so I mightn't have as much knowledge on the subject especially on the upgrades but in most team based games I prefer healers and in the GW series, sunflower is my fave and I wanted to to state my opinions on the healing abilities in this game.

Healing Hand: I do think it does heal a bit too much as it can replenish someone from critical to full hp before their self regen kicks in. In GW1/2 the healing wasn't even half of healing hand's strength and I always found it greatly increased even a peashooter's survivability noticeably so by comparison, healing hand makes them unkillable by substained damage. As for the blossom upgrade, I don't think it should target the sunflower herself as she already has pocket protector and revive reward overhealth for extra survivability so I think it should only target another ally and if they do reduce heal rate maybe bring the cost down to 4 again because as it stands now the cost would be too high considering the time it takes now to heal to allies to full health.

Sunny Side Up: I really don't like this ability compared to heal flowers. With heal flower I could place it down in one spot that needing defending and I could go to another spot myself and provide healing in two different locations which is very useful and effective, especially when I'm the only flower. With sunny side up, the heal drops are used up really quickly, can be too scattered even if I stay still and don't last stay around long enough to warrant using as a heal spot. I also don't think it needs three charges, one for yourself and one for your team should be enough.

Heal Hose: I actually don't mind not shooting while healing as much as others considering that you don't have to turn it off to begin firing and you don't have to hold the button down (love this about reviving as well). My bigger issue is with healing sprinters/ hoppers as they run past and away from you, it feels really akward to keep the hose on someone who's moving a different direction than you and they can jump over your hose (I dunno how much power wash helps with this). It recently occurred to me that it would help if heal hose applied a weak heal over time after being touched by the hose similar to Moira from Overwatch.

Sticky Healy Thingy: First of all I find that it doesn't work sometimes but that may be it being outdamged, hard to tell sometimes. Ignoring that, I really like the concept of this ability as it allows the ability to create a  CONTROLLABLE MOVING heal zone that works well with a coordinated team. My big issue with this thing is that it sticks to enemies coupled with its auto targeting. Sticking it to a plant is generally a bad idea because the only other zombies that benefit from melee range is deadbeard and super brainz and what happens often is you try to throw it to an ally but it targets a plant instead. There's also an issue where if the stuck target is vanquished, the ball seemingly vanishes rather than drop to the ground.

All you complaining about sunflower healing abilities  im guessing you mad she messing up  your kills and she denying yall from getting 30 plus kills in the game on the zombies side. Sunflower always gets focus on in the game and her survivability sucks when you have half the zombie team turning their focus on her. Especially the zombies who have one shot capabilities.  Try playing her a week and you will see you will spend half your time running from the spawn area back to your teammates cause you keep dying from all the focus. 

I'm still mystified as to why they haven't improved healing and revive XP by now. I'm especially concerned that you get a paltry 3/6 for base healing/critical healing which is just too low for how useful and important it is. Revive helpers should get an XP reward too to encourage such behavior as well. BfN has a greater focus on teamwork than ever before and yet so many actions that directly help your team are not rewarding enough. Keeping people healthy and getting downed teammates up near/on objectives should be appropriately rewarded and right now it isn't. 

I would make healing 10/20 for healing/critical healing and don't think it's too much as A) critical healing is only on allies that are close to being vanquished so it's a limited XP event, and B) we need to encourage more healers and giving them an incentive to do so would make them more appealing so they'd be played more.

I've pointed this out before but as a prime example of what I mean, Sunday I had a PvP challenge to get 2k damage in a match and got it on Preserve Pastures as Electric Slide so switched to Scientist as we had none on the team. I did this for the last point with the Gargantuars and was healing them and my team like crazy as my Scientist build is all about heals, so much so that I had over 2k healing for just that last point, had number 1 healing on the team (A Sunflower had more so got the podium), but the healing portion of my XP was far less than my damage/attack portion so I was in the middle of the pack. As the team's only healer and still getting that much, it should have rewarded more generously as no one else had more than a pittance from healing zombies summoned. 

This is still my number one issue with XP right now. Healing and reviving for any mode should be encouraged and the best way to do that is with greater rewards for doing so. 

Edit: and yes, if they nerf Sunflower's healing they have to give her some other buff to compensate. 

@ToastedSarnie  @What I mean is that i think Sunflower is a little too effective at saving someone with her heal beam. I still believe Healing should be able to save an ally, she just might do it too well

Ok, so Sunflower is supposed to be really good at keeping one person alive with Heal beam. This would makes sense since Scientist heals for less but can heal multiple zombies. So basically, Sunflower paired up with a teammate should always be a strong combo that is difficult to beat, especially if there is only 1 zombie. I guess a zombie could always fall back or keep their distance, since Heal beam requires Sunflower to walk.

It's good that Healers have a means of defending themselves (Warp and SSU) but I think the only one that needs change is Warp. A Healer should rely on their team to keep them alive. A Healer should NOT be able to be independent like Scientist. Scientist doesn't have to rely on his team as much as Sunflower because Warp is broken and gives Scientist too much survivability. SSU isnt OP in my opinion, buts it still  gets the job done well enough as it gives Sunflower a decent amount of Helath back, plus the sundrops. SSU isnt a Combat tool and shouldn't be too strong of a Defensive tool like Warp, it's there to keep Sunflower good on Health and get her back in the fight when out of combat. Warp kind of works this way since you can teleport in and out of fights, it's just too effective.

I believe the reason she gets killed more often than not is because of poor teamwork and bad positioning. Especially in 8 v 8, Healers can be more vulnerable to a coordinated team. Sometimes Teams either  dont care about their Healers, or are too imbalanced for a Team to protect their healer.

I think some key issues being overlooked is the Game's overall Slow walking speed and possible balance issues on the zombie side (Barrel being to fast, Space Station). Even sunflower and Scientist are too slow, and I admit Sunflower is pretty easy to Snipe. Without faster movement, Healers can't really dodge as well, which makes them hide most of the time when Healing. The movement feels a lot like COD or Battlefield, which it shouldn't especially with the current TTK. It should be on par with GW walking speed.

People may not play Healers because Healers lack combat capabilities of other classes as they should, and these could be the same people who just throw themselves at the enemy and die over and over. I have seen Sunflowers sprint alone into zombies, because they dont know where they are or what they are doing.

A Healer is a Support class, and simply does not work if they dont have a Team to support.

I agree with most of your guy's arguments, so here I go-

As @ToastedSarnie said, I would love for Sunflower to get buffs in terms of defense. I love how powerful her bloom upgrade is, but I also know that sometimes it can be unfair so I guess I would be okay if they weakened her healing abilities. I just hope that these changes will go hand in hand with giving more XP for healing. Especially for Scientist.

Scientist is my zombie main (coming up on grandmaster soon, hopefully.) I love being a team healer, but I also love scientist's playstyle- it seems focused on strategy and not brawn, I LOVE a good strategy game. The problem is, I also love sunflower, but as so many others stated, when she's alone, it's very hard to win a 1v1 fight unless you're stocked up on sunny side up. So most of the time I assign myself to healing, but this takes up most of my time in the match and I end up getting trampled anyway. 

As I said earlier, I would love more XP for healing because of Scientist. His healing sometimes just isn't as effective as Sunflower's, so it's been hard to level him up enough.

My main hope is just more XP for healing, and capable defense for Sunflower. 🙂 

healers worked in gw2 because of class variants and healing choices. Placing a healing spray as scientist or healing bomb mixed with a weapon of choice (dolphin shotgun for me) made it awesome. 

Healing while burning enemies as a sunflower made it awesome for me

as far as BFN goes, I see zombies having the upperhand in many cases, but not in healing. The scientist is just a chore to play with landing the sticky heal and chasing moving targets with the healing hose. Yet I feel like making zombie healing easier would just help zombies who really don't need buffs. People would hate me for saying, but reducing zombie defense and making scientist easier to heal with would feel about right, but also bump up the demand for scientists in groups and I know people don't want to be forced to play something they don't want to play so it's a mixed bag

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@mikepal19 wrote:
@The-evil-jok3rLol I was agreeing with you. I was just changing the perspective as a zombie against a sun flower to expound on your point. As a zombie you have to kill her first.

As for being a sunflower, it's not as glamorous as portrayed on this forum. It's a difficult life to be a sunflower lol. Run, heal, get killed, wait for someone, heal, die, try to go solo, die, run back, find a good plant to stick with, heal, that plant puts you in vulnerable spots, you get isolated and can't do anything but die, occasionally but inconsistently get solo kills, run, wait, survey what kind of zombies you can fight, nope not them, run and find the nearest plant. That's the life of the average sun flower.

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@mikepal19  As a sunflower very often, I agree with you.... who on earth would describe a sunflowers life as glamorous? Only people that don't actually play her 😃