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Re: Healers Discussion

Ok, here goes nothing 😫
With all modes except Battle Arena & Team Vanquish, the object of the game is not to get vanquishes. The modes are about taking, defending or achieving an objective, so I think both xp & play should reflect that.

At the end of the day, the role of a healer is to heal & prevent their team-mates from dying, enabling their team to do well, so I don't fully understand blaming them for doing precisely that - if you can't finish a player off because they're healed while you reload or take cover, why is that the healer's fault? As for healers being able to negate abilities, just about every character can negate one ability or another - even the summonable AI can do that!

Heal-rate may possibly need bringing down a small amount, but self-defense needs addressing before that is considered, especially with Sunflower who cannot warp out of danger & I sincerely hope that nothing will be changed until we see how much Wizard affects the existing balance.

As far as overhealth goes, as I've already said I'd be happy to see it go. The xp is negligible, many playing heals make the mistake of getting players up to maximum overhealth before bringing others up to maximum normal health & others will consciously not heal until players have reached critical health levels because they know that gives better xp.
There are also plenty of upgrades that provide it anyway, or other health-related ones that are just as useful.

I've truly, genuinely done my best not to make this a rant but sincere apologies if I've messed that up 😖😊

4 Replies

  • brady3176's avatar
    brady3176
    6 years ago
    @ToastedSarnie Don't sweat it, Its okay to rant you know! Its genuinely baffling that easy to fix issues, like the abysmal EXP reward for healing, haven't been fixed yet for no good reason. It's also especially frustrating since I think I can take a wild guess and say most of the complaints are coming from players who don't actually play healers. Like you were saying.. healers are supposed to heal. That healing should be able to keep a team going. A team with healers should always beat a team without healers, but like many people in this thread were saying this creates unfair games since... nobody wants to play sunflower because it's a miserable experience! Constantly being targeted is to be expected for healer players in shooters like BFN.. and that makes sense since they can win their team the game, but the problem is the sunflower has nothing to deal with that.. while the scientist has warp. It also doesn't help that movement in this game is extremely uncomfortable.. and the healers MAIN ROLE is to stay mobile/evasive and keep their team alive... but just doing that is awful because how janky movement is in BFN. It feels unfair and unfun.

    On top of all these issues to discourage someone from playing sunflower, there is just the basic fact that many people just don't like playing a support role, which is understandable. Healers also seem to be much simpler to play on the surface, requiring little to no aim.. and are dependent on their team which some players think that's boring. While there is obviously much more depth to healers than just holding down a button to heal, it's an understandable turn off. GW 1/2 get around this because the sunflower is definitely capable of taking out enemies in those games.. not so much in BFN. I think another great example of games finding ways around this problem would be the Medic's crossbow from TF2. It shoots bolts that deal high damage based on range, they could very well take down an enemy... BUT the bolt also heals allies if you hit them. So it still encourages good accuracy and intense shooting EVEN when healing. Which.. needing good accuracy doesn't mix well with BFN, does it... Hmm... It just seems sunflower was a recipe for disaster with the game's janky movement and uncomfortable aiming.

    But yeah, if overheal is removed or something, sunflower should get some more mobility or new ways to heal. Anything to improve her survivability. Either way, nerfing sunflower without any compensation is just another way to discourage players from playing support... and of course, zombies will just dominate more.
  • Iron_Guard8's avatar
    Iron_Guard8
    Legend
    6 years ago

    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. 

  • Pheesley's avatar
    Pheesley
    6 years ago

    @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.

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