Combat and Restoration

[grizzle]

I don't see why people can't just all heal themselves.

I think one of the biggest bottlenecks in MMO fun is the healer class. Sure, there is a rare breed of player who enjoys playing the pure healer, but they are few and far between, especially in MMOs where pure healers can barely defend themselves and cannot offensively win.

Typically, no one wants to play a healer class for these reasons. I agree that it would be great if all players could heal themselves, but set up their skill tree in a tiered hierarchy, such that while basic healing is natural for all players at toon creation, they can spec into it, to certain degrees, in each tier, which allows them to find their perfect balance between offense/defense/heal specs.

Now, that being said, there is a place for a pure healer, (my fav is the cleric in EQ with Complete Heal - remember that 10 second cast bombastic healicious spell? - utter sweetness), which is in any MMO that has boss mob events. The more DPS a mob puts out, there has to be a way to replace that massive loss of HP, and 40 players stacking on the main tack each bandaging him probably won't cut it.

There are ways around that, such as designing bosses that dish out smaller damage amounts but in AE form, so everyone has to heal themselves, and the main tank takes less overall damage, etc., but there will have to be some really hardcore re-design of the stereotypical End Game Boss Event to make it work, or else design the game without those sorts of end game bosses.