It is just a obvious fact that dedicated healers can’t keep up with the DPS leveling wise unless we do ALL crafting or respec to DPS until 60 and then respec to healer… I often find especially at portals, juggling healing my teammates and trying desperately to get in damage doesn’t give me enough “contribution” to get credit for said portal. I am a level 37 healer doing portals at my level with the standard dedicated healer setup. Lifestaff and Ice Gauntlet. But don’t worry New World devs I have a solution that I feel is both balanced and fair.
Whatever is calculating contribution to mobs, whether it be bosses, portals, etc. add in a smaller value for healing.
For instance, if you have to do 2k contribution to have “contributed” (just a random number) make it so that if you had at least 2000 points of healing (decreased in contribution value by 50%) that would translate to 1000 of the 2k points needed. The rest can be made up with damage.
It just appears so much more tedious to grind out a healer and it shows. The server Im on has hardly any.
Please consider this and make it a priority. This is an entire group of people in your game just struggling to keep up with no “great reward” at the end.
As a level 52 healer I have some tips for you when it comes to portals:
HUGE blob running portals? Go away, it’s not worth your time.
The swarmer’s that spawn (those mobs with no legs that crawl on the floor, you know?) they DON’T count for contribution, you need to hit the other mobs or even the veils, yes…those also count for contribution.
Group up with some DPS, being alone is harder.
Also, you don’t need to deal massive amounts of dps for it to count. After I learned all this stuff it became way easier for me to keep up with people and getting rewards for most times.
You are 100% right. Leveling as a healer sucks. You can’t share quests as a group and you don’t get credit for healing outside of a group. It’s a tedious slog compared to watching people stack up mobs and aoe them down.
The unfortunate (partial) solution to your problem if you enjoy healing, is not to heal randoms unless their dying prevents you from accomplishing the goal. Put an amber gem in your off weapon, tag the mobs with your life staff then swap. And then you still may not get credit for kills if there are Great Axe and Hammer users around.
Hopefully the upcoming void gauntlet will improve the situation, assuming it still scales partially off focus. But I do like your idea of half-credit for healing.
While it’s usually not that difficult to get into a portal group while there’s a zerg running, I do agree that you shouldn’t have to be in a group just to get credit. Typically, you’re not doing anything differently anyway. When I’m in a group I can’t even see where my group members are in the zerg. There’s sometimes dozens of people there and it doesn’t seem to emphasize group members health bars over the others. You can see them on the side of course, but that’s only slightly better than being completely useless.
Everyone just gets healed by AoE heals anyway. I should get portal credit whether I joined a group or not, I’m contributing the same either way.
I’ve levelled up to 40 with the life staff (maxed) and i’m at the point where my patience has run out. If it wasn’t because of a small group of friends still playing I would have moved back to GW2 where i enjoy healing/support in that game.
And yes it sucks in blob corruption portal runs. The damage dealers all get credit but the healer will often miss out for not doing enough damage. It’s bad design and i dont know if they are even going to fix it.
In the other threads on this forum you have PVPers complaining that the life staff does too much damage and I have no idea what they are talking about - even with 250+ focus I barely do half the damage on my life staff as opposed to stacking 250+ strength on a hammer, and with no alternative weapons available for focus, it’s like I’m stuck with a terrible weapon to solo with, and not even rewarded for healing in groups.
Knowing what i do now i would not recommend New World to anyone that want to come into the game to “heal”. It’s simply not worth it.
Surely takes time but hey, I’m a level 52 healer, been healing since Closed Beta where I got to level 37 and never had any issues with that. Might be slow to kill stuff, sure, but the sustain you get is amazing, making it probably the best build to solo stuff since you can even take on stuff higher level than you which a solo DPS might have problems.
Serious Healers (Healers who concentrate only on leveling the Life Staff mastery, no other weapons) can solo most enemies without having to worry about Health Potion cooldowns. But, you do have to buy hundreds of mana potions, specifically, Common Mana Potion. To be a damage healer, you’re gonna want to focus all your attribute points on Focus. Focus points give damage and healing power (healing based on your weapon damage). To deal high amounts of damage while healing go with Sacred Ground, Orb of Protection, and Beacon (All must be maxed to fully utilize their abilities). Orb of Protection and Beacon can both be shot at an enemy while still applying buffs and healing to your allies (only those in range) or yourself (when soloing). Sacred Ground is mainly used for the 50 percent healing buff. How do you deal high amounts of damage as a Healer when there are groups of Damage Dealers who kill them before you can get a shot in or Tanks who aggro them away from you, making you miss your shots 90 percent of the time? The answer is, bring them to you and land all your shots. This trick only works if you have mastered your abilities and know your limits as a Healer. So, put all ‘attributes’ on Focus. Put all ‘gear stats’ (blue attributes Str/Int/Con etc.) on Constitution (if there is Focus and Constitution then that will do but mainly focus on getting Constitution stats) Go all Heavy Armor for max Physical Defense and Elemental Defense. For your Main Weapon, put the highest Carnelian gem you can find on it. Carnelian gem applied on a weapon will add the taunt passive to it and will activate when you attack an enemy. It can be replaced when you have found a better one. Now, on your hotkey 1-5 or 1-2 if you’re a beginner, put the max amount of a common health potion and a common mana potion (the higher tier the better). If you’ve unlocked 1-4, add Health Potion, Mana Potion, Health Regeneration or Mana Regeneration (situational), and Food (if you’re confident you won’t die, then equip the Mana Regeneration meal. The higher the duration the better). You’ll be acting as a Tank more than a Healer but still healing in the process. If you’re a master Healer, you’ll know what to do. If you’re not, you’re gonna want to master the abilities I’ve suggested and test out the limits of your healing output multiplied by the pressure of having enemies attack you while waiting for your abilities to cooldown while also waiting for your mana to regenerate and potions in your hotkey to finish its cooldown. So you’re both a Tank and a Healer. The only downside is that your damage is lacking but if you’re patient then it won’t matter as long as it works. You can pickup your damage by equipping gear with high amounts of Focus but that’ll drastically put your Health down since you’re switching it with Constitution. From there, you’re gonna have to change your strategy. First, by not having a Carnelian gem on your Main Weapon. The rest is up to you to figure out.
Level 60 Dedicated Healer with 300+ points in focus and I can solo a lot of content. my problem is I don’t get rewards in the level 55 corruption portals as I don’t do enough DPS but I heal like crazy