Healing. A blessed point of the holy trinity. Scorned by some while an MMO dealbreaker for others, the job isn’t for every.
A life of dedicated support to a team of attentionless asshats and some uppity tank is a great feeling for some of us. It isn’t always a job of hanging back and staring at youtube while spamming the entire raid because your game has caved to the desires of baddies; the true lust and desire of healing comes from challenging situations with a group that appreciates your life-giving touch.
Or you can play Wildstar and punch your friends in the dick for heals. Medic class. Yes and yes.
The Medic class was introduced a bit late in Wildstar’s beta, but there have been a few fun, mostly polished tweaks that make the game so much fun. Medics use Resonators, a pair of shock pads that can deal damage or support others as you see fit.
Yeah. Resonators are defibrillators. We’re running around, shocking people with defibrillators.
The class runs on a dual resource system, consuming Focus (your mana bar) and a four-point actuator (combo points!). While keeping track of two resources seems like a strange idea at first, the system is fairly simple to get used to.
Emission is your first main healing ability, a pulsing set of cones that grant a few ticks of healing while generating an actuator for later combos. For you career healers, imagine being able to fire a cone of healing that doesn’t just tick on a single group. You can SWEEP AND SWAY YOUR HEALING as much as you want for the blast duration.
Good times.
A healer may spend their time running around, spamming Emission for a while, but there’s thankfully a bit more depth to Wildstar gameplay than that. The PVE content seems balanced in a way that will allow players with decent reaction speed and skill to dodge most things while catching the average player in a few tight spots.
You can of course live within a hybrid lifestyle, either dipping into some additional damage or crowd control in order to make things easier. As a Battle Priest and Grand Cross Crusader from the Ragnarok Online days, I can definitely get behind wearing multiple hats a healer.
Although it’s too soon to say if the Holy Trinity will make support role reduced to yet another DPS slot, there’s plenty of room for crowd control and player rescue. World of Warcraft Priests who have used Leap of Faith to turn a would-be wipe into an amazing rescue will love Extricate, an ability that heals while yanking two of your party members into safety.
If you don’t suck and end up yanking your friends into some Swastika of Death.
Sadly, a few of the more enjoyable abilities share the same loadout position. For support assholes who just want to leech kills off others, you can choose Dual Shock, which isn’t a Playstation controller at all and shocks the shit out of your enemies while dealing damage.
OR. Oooor you could be even more of an alt+tabbed (or just looking at your other monitor. Or phone) healslave and go for Mending Probes to tickle some healing into some guy’s anus. I dunno, fuck. Since Wildstar has a fairly enjoyable balance of challenge and faceroll, I went with Dual Shock to curbstomp some infected wolves for a while.
The choice is partially annoying, but that annoyance is working as intended. It would be great to have all of the good tools at once, but being forced to make choices–while this will scrape against the ideals of some I WANNA BE FREE AND DO WHAT I WANT thinkers–is what makes games good. Frustration is good.
But I won’t go on that rant here.
Outsiders often wonder why healers love to heal. It’s just hanging back and bringing up health bars, right? No, you fucking moron, healing is a CHALLENGE! It isn’t just the challenge of progression content, either. A healer’s true colors are shown when a group of fuckin asshats can’t play for shit and damage is EVERYWHERE.
It isn’t easy at all if the game is worth playing. Why? Because you suck and I’m making you suck less. Since you suck so much, I have to take a vacation from my day job of telling people not to download fake media players just to help your scrubby ass get through basic content.
I love it.
In a new group, you may need to pull out all of your stops and heal while running as much as possible. Maybe even DPS and shit. You might even end up being a heal tank, but GUESS WHAT, KITTENS.
NEW GAME LEARNING CURVE
Wildstar isn’t hard. It really isn’t. It’s fun and challenging. While I understand that many people are getting their feet wet in a game where movement actually matters, HEY ASSHOLE, STOP DODGING MY HEALS.
Seriously. Anyone who has played as a healer in games like City of Heroes as a Rad Rad Corrupter or a small part of Guild Wars 2 will understand the frustration of a dying party member INTENTIONALLY DODGING ALL OF YOUR HEALS
“wtf y i ded shit heelz”
“I was trying to heal you the whole time. You kept running out of it.”
“o thot taht was bad lol”
To be fair, the same mentality is fun while playing Rift. Putting fire on the ground and watching everyone run into everything to get away as you chase them endlessly with harmless flames. Aaaah. …What was I talking about?
Oh yeah Wildstar.
I know, I know. New game. Players are still getting used to the system. Sadly, even the quickest and most skilled gamers fall for one stupid trap; heals that look like damage. I mean, I get it. This game is all dodging shit that looks dangerous. Even though the positive effects are blue or green, hey, shit’s on the ground, gotta roll.
Brace yourselves, healers, for running outta Focus just because your biggest heal DIDN’T LAND ON SHIT. Be ready for people to bitch at you because your perfectly timed(spammed) healing didn’t somehow chase them as they did a barrel roll into a corner to escape your healing enema.
Shoulda rolled deeps, scrub.
Medic is amazing fun for the healer who isn’t afraid of getting into the middle of the action. If you want a bit more safety or have a ranged mentality that keeps you at the fringe of battle, give Spellslinger or Esper a try. Honestly, it’s all pretty good. Let’s just hope that all of these fun features don’t become gimmicks when progression comes around.
The staff is also pretty friendly for this beta. They even helped me with my wasteful, Liberal college aspirations!
