It's my understanding that add-ons are not going to be in a launch (or ever?). Does this mean healing is going to require clicking on a target and then pushing your heal hotkey?
It's my understanding that add-ons are not going to be in a launch (or ever?). Does this mean healing is going to require clicking on a target and then pushing your heal hotkey?
Yes.
If they ever add macros and/or addons (which I think they've said that they will post-launch) then you won't have to click on the targets to heal.
Why am I back here, I don't even play these games anymore
The problem with the internet is parallel to its greatest achievement: it has given the little man an outlet where he can be heard. Most of the time however, the little man is a little man because he is not worth hearing.
I played the demo at Eurogamer. You're able to keybind most things, as to be expected - party member selection is not an unreasonable thing to expect, though I did not confirm if this was available on the demo.
Bear in mind that if you do have to click to heal, everyone else is in the same boat, so don't feel disadvantaged.
Until you start on the hardmode raids, I dont think it will be an issue (or I suppose Rated PvP) so I wouldnt worry, it will be added eventually if it doesnt make it in pre launch
Mate, everyone is going to suck at the game for ages anyway. So don't be worrying.
It's not being at a disadvantage that bothers me, it's just so incredibly annoying to heal that way. Annoying enough to stop me rolling a healer till it's sorted.
IT currently requires clicking.
I just hope they eventually allow addons and a much beloved mouse-over macro.
Addons however I could live without. They seemed to cause more issues then they solved.
Yeah Playing a healer for years with only needing a mouse will make things odd having to go back to clicking but such is life :P.
I could see folks asking for mouse over macros being in the game.
But healing add-ons are not needed, not having grid or healbot or whatever you used isn't going to make much of a difference.
They did say a while back that they were going to have some kind of special healing ui or something for healers, anyone confirm this or has any new info on it?
from the eternity vault video you can see the raid ui varies from character to character. The tank and dps had very small raidboxs (obviously) and the healer had one that was scaled way up for obvious visual reference and ease of use.
The bigger raid frames are nice, but hopefully someone at Bioware has played a healer at a competitive level and realizes the importance of mouseover macros or an addon-based equivalent. Healing is clunky without it. I'll do it if I have to, but I'll be impatiently waiting to be able to heal the real way ASAP.
It would be wise for them to implement hotkey selection on party members with the release of the game, if not for the fact that there's absolutely no point in alienating a potentially large part of your healer playerbase who have past experience using hotkeys to heal and who prefer such a method.
This is Bioware we're talking about. I absolutely trust them to take players more seriously than Blizzard.
---------- Post added 2011-09-30 at 01:10 AM ----------
I do not consider click healing to be inefficient. I've done it for years and it suits me fine. And I don't even use stuff like Clique, which would make it a VERY efficient method indeed.
If i'm staring at raid frames for, say, 25 people, and player 4 in group 3 suddenly shoots from 90% health down to 10%, the difference it'd take me in time to either move my mouse over (and i'm using a Razer mouse with a speed mat) and press number 6 on my keyboard, as opposed to pressing Alt +4 followed by 6, is marginal at best. Assuming reasonable mouse cursor accuracy and speed skills, I can select an appropriate raid frame in give or take half of a second. While I do not deny that loads of people have epic quick finger skills on the keyboard and can probably respond a tad faster, I do not have such a skill and after 10 years of practice I still cannot match my mouse click speed. (I suppose years of FPS games helps a 'lil.)
But this is just me personally. I have no doubt that some people out there are way faster at pressing the hotkey to select the relevant party and group member instead. However, I simply can't see the difference in time saved being so great that click healing is inefficient in comparison. In any event, efficiency boils down to whichever method the individual player feels more proficient and comfortable using - for example amidst a hectic boss-fight I'd personally waste more time trying to recall what the keybinds are to select player 4 in group 3, muscle-memory included. On that bombshell indeed, to call it a fact of life is completely untrue.
Just to clarify I meant what the OP was talking about, which was to click a players frame (I use Grid on WoW) and then use hotkeys to cast heals (or mouse buttons if using AddOns) and I was not referring to clicking hotbar buttons with the mouse, which is in general far less efficient (not inefficient as it gets the job done fine most of the time - just less efficient)
Last edited by Will; 2011-09-30 at 12:22 AM.
Move mouse to unit frame to be healed, click, use healing ability by pressing hotkey
Move mouse to unit frame to be healed, use healing ability by pressing hotkey
Now which one of these is more efficient?
Selecting people by pressing hotkey..eh, just no.
Oh, so that's what you guys meant. Yeah, well in that case obviously the latter is more efficient. 0.1s saved over a typical boss fight where a minimum of 100 heals are casts is saving you enough time to get off at the very least an extra 5 heals, or make the difference between a tank being instagibbed or surviving in the nick of time.
Please understand that the impression I gained from the thread lead me to believe that you were in favour of using hotkeys to select targets for healing. This is because the OP asked if healing would require clicking a target and then pushing a hotkey to heal them, and the nature of some of the replies in the thread (typically the one by philefluxx) combined with the fact that nobody specifically mentioned mouseover healing, gave me the impression that the debate was regarding the selection of a target for healing via clicking in opposition to via keybinds.
In any event, I've always clicked to select my target. I don't heal on a hard-mode level, so quite frankly I couldn't care less about the difference - it is marginally beneficial for the level of content difficulty I play at, at best. Nor would I call it inefficient. Less efficient - yes! Inefficient - hell no. Something doesn't have to be maximum efficiency to be classed as efficient whatsoever.
Last edited by Will; 2011-09-30 at 12:39 AM.
Trust me, your mouse hand will thank you after night of *not* clicking the unit frames.
Yes! I apologise for my misunderstanding earlier and I totally agree with you on that. If I ever do get into hard modes or competitive healing I will absolutely take any solution that increases output at the same time as saves my fingers from falling off I really do trust Bioware to implement something like this at some point.