TCG General Discussion

Re: Healing specs not really healing?

2911765 — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 01:27:44 GMT

1279444:

So maybe we should be given cards that care about how many hitpoints people have.

"If you have exactly 10 points of damage, draw 3 cards"

"If you have no damage on you, search for an ally card and put it into your hand"

"Destroy all allies that cost more than the amount of damage your hero has"

etc...

That way, the heals are there to simply heal, but to control the flow of the game.

I kind of like the idea of monitoring health. Most of the time it just seems like "If I'm taking damage that won't kill my hero or an ally, I don't care at all".

This brings up another idea. I think it'd be cool to see some kind of berserker deck that gets more powerful as its hero takes more damage.

Re: Healing specs not really healing?

889305 — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 01:10:17 GMT

2012483:
The problem with the idea of a heal based deck is that the focus is away from threat removal and on damage removal.

This means that the opponent could simply play a few allies and attack for a few turns without playing more while you are forced to play a heal or two each turn to remove the damage.

The opponent will in the end always have card advantage and can keep playing threats while you will eventually run out of hand and face a board of 5 or so allies that will smack for 10 or more damage a turn.

As soon as you start to replace heals with threat removal cards for various types of abilites, allies, and equipment, you will suddenly realize your pool of heals has shrunk to a handful of cards. (As it should be)

that's why I said they could have done it ala Shaman's Echo of the Elements (just using an example), which deals damage (thereby removing an ally threat) when you heal. Now had it been an ability that could target heroes as well, it might be a viable winning condition too.

another example would be an ability that prevents your allies from being destroyed/removed from play as long as they have do not have any damage on them (kinda like a mini WotF). give it to say a Holy Priest with Lightwells and you could potentially have a near invincible army!! the closest thing to this UDE has designed was Resto Druid's Gift of Nature, but since that only offered protection from fatal damage, its use was very limited.

and as you said, while healing decktypes focus on removing dmg instead of removing threats, like I suggested earlier, this can be remedied by adding removal effects that trigger when you heal (ala Benediction's draw effect). we can even include interrupts while we're at it.

some of you may think it may be overpowered (healing + getting an additional interrupt/removal effect), but from a design perspective you still need 2 separate cards (a healing card + "enabler" that only triggers when healing occurs) whereas classes like Warrior or Mage need only a single card to do the same job.

furthermore, there's always Talent spec restrictions to curb a card's power if needs be.

Re: Healing specs not really healing?

2012483 — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:42:38 GMT

The problem with the idea of a heal based deck is that the focus is away from threat removal and on damage removal.

This means that the opponent could simply play a few allies and attack for a few turns without playing more while you are forced to play a heal or two each turn to remove the damage.

The opponent will in the end always have card advantage and can keep playing threats while you will eventually run out of hand and face a board of 5 or so allies that will smack for 10 or more damage a turn.

As soon as you start to replace heals with threat removal cards for various types of abilites, allies, and equipment, you will suddenly realize your pool of heals has shrunk to a handful of cards. (As it should be)

Re: Healing specs not really healing?

1781532 — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:33:35 GMT

2429108:
I made a feral druid

I think we should have a new forum drinking game where everyone takes a drink everytime Sapphire says "druid".

We'd all be hammered sun up to sun down.

Re: Healing specs not really healing?

1381330 — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 11:44:49 GMT

You can't JUST heal...obviously in the TCG your deck needs to be able to do stuff, including winning. So they can't make entire specs all heal.

Re: Healing specs not really healing?

2429108 — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 10:25:45 GMT

1406143:
I do think it's pretty funny that mages and warlocks are the main healers in the TCG.

On the other hand, I have seen two resto druids dueling in the online game and I'm glad that doesn't carry through here ;)

you think a wow tcg game can't take 3 hours ??
I made a feral druid (horde I think ) with all what is prevention and healing without breaking forms => I had heart of the wild , bear form , 1 armor for each slot and the +1 to all armor while in bear form and the staff of braxis and sapphirons drape + lifebloom .... needless to say a poor alliance mage used his deck 3 times over (blue leaf tubers ) and I was still alive and decked him XD

you can be very resilient here as well
you just loose to bringer of death ... and he had none , fortunatly for me

Re: Healing specs not really healing?

1279444 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 20:57:39 GMT

1406143:
I do think it's pretty funny that mages and warlocks are the main healers in the TCG.

On the other hand, I have seen two resto druids dueling in the online game and I'm glad that doesn't carry through here ;)

You think that's funny, remember when Wraith Scythe made it so that Warriors were the best healing class in the game. Now THAT was all types of lolz.

Maybe the reason it feels like Healing isn't really working is because we aren't using it the way actual healing classes use it. Every try fighting a Holy Pally in online game? Its kind of like stabbing a tuna can with a feather. You know it wont kill you, but damn its hard to beat.

Maybe we should try building solo-ish decks that, instead of using armor to mitigate damage, we use heals? I know, I know, sounds dumb. But linking good card effects to heals will just push control to the brink of overpowered.

So maybe we should be given cards that care about how many hitpoints people have.

"If you have exactly 10 points of damage, draw 3 cards"

"If you have no damage on you, search for an ally card and put it into your hand"

"Destroy all allies that cost more than the amount of damage your hero has"

etc...

That way, the heals are there to simply heal, but to control the flow of the game.

Re: Healing specs not really healing?

2557606 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 20:17:14 GMT

2415247:

Paladins are receiving Blessing of Kings (uber in game, uber in the card game) but I think your suggestions would put Druid, or any healer in the overpowered category, especially Paladins. If you would interrupt an ability while healing, the card will probably have to cost a bit (3 or 4) to be viable for play.

BoK is prot.

Re: Healing specs not really healing?

1406143 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:40:17 GMT

I do think it's pretty funny that mages and warlocks are the main healers in the TCG.

On the other hand, I have seen two resto druids dueling in the online game and I'm glad that doesn't carry through here ;)

Re: Healing specs not really healing?

2415247 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:56:19 GMT

while I appreciate that some healing specs get new awesome talents to make them more competitively viable (Holy Priest's Searing Light, Resto Druid's Omen of Clarity, Resto Shaman's Tidal Mastery),
I find it rather disappointing that these talent specs rarely actually support healing-based deck types.

Oh they are healing, and quite well. My restoration druid, in a non PVP setting is able to heal massive amounts of damage. In a PVP setting, I can combine an ally rush with buffs and some healing, although restoration focuses more on massive "singles" healing and HOTs. I figured Restoration Druids were really good with buffs and HOTs.

Paladins are receiving Blessing of Kings (uber in game, uber in the card game) but I think your suggestions would put Druid, or any healer in the overpowered category, especially Paladins. If you would interrupt an ability while healing, the card will probably have to cost a bit (3 or 4) to be viable for play.

Re: Healing specs not really healing?

1948341 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:22:02 GMT

Just because it is in the Holy/Resto etc tree doesn't mean it heals. In the MMO all the abilities somehow buff healing, Omen of Clarity allows the free cast of heal, Tidal Mastery increases Crit chance of Healing Spells, Searing Light admitetly (spelling) deals damage as that is what happens in the MMO. The only reason that a Talent is in the tree is because it affects a spell in the school.

Re: Healing specs not really healing?

2429108 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 10:37:06 GMT

it's no secret that "healing specs" have other tricks as well
druid always (from the first set ) got talents that cheapen cards and let you play BIG things early , or many things in one turn
priest is mainly a healing class in it's own right (except shadow ) yet discipline has a lot more gimmicks (draw cards . ready resources )

being a healing spec (especially in PVP ) doesn't mean you are limited to spamming heal ... you can crowd control and do many other things like raid buffs and so on

I personally prefer the non healing talents , especially because healing in itself isn't a wing condition yet ... you simply can't heal more then your life , and some decks can take all of that in ONE turn (gorehowl + rak = GG )
and needless to say if you have no cards in hand , no field pressence to protect you and no quests , a simple voidfire wand lock is the end of you

Re: Healing specs not really healing?

2326196 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 07:32:01 GMT

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE TH MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

Side effect heal will be awesome. Place a resource one maybe out of priest concept. I think heal and "this turn your ability can't be interrupted" is great. How about this > 'Avatar of the Light' > Form(1). Cost 3. When this card come in to play you may discard an ally and ability card, if you do this card is untargetable. Exhaust-> Put an ability which has a word 'heal' from your graveyard into hand. When you heal 3 or more damage from hero or ally you may ready this card. When you ready it draw a card.

Re: Healing specs not really healing?

2557606 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 06:45:02 GMT

i would think omen of clarity makes a nice healing talent. its allows you to play all those big druid heals for great resource per health ratios, imo its a great raid or match healing ability.

Healing specs not really healing?

889305 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:53:30 GMT

while I appreciate that some healing specs get new awesome talents to make them more competitively viable (Holy Priest's Searing Light, Resto Druid's Omen of Clarity, Resto Shaman's Tidal Mastery),
I find it rather disappointing that these talent specs rarely actually support healing-based deck types.

I'm talking abt cards like Echo of the Elements (which would've been awesome if you can target opposing heroes as well), Life Cycle or even Benediction (any of you still remember it?). how come most of the healing talents don't actually support/boost this kind of playstyle?

I mean there are tons of way of doing it:

e.g.

- place a resource when you heal an ally back to full health
- remove abilities in your GY to heal target/each hero/ally (kinda like a Cannibalize/Undercity)
- interrupt effect when you heal
- place a counter each time you heal. remove X counters to do <insert effect like draw a card, destroy ally, abilty or equipment etc.>

what does everybody else think? should be fun to see decks that focus on healing its heroes & allies, and yet still pose a serious threat to opponents in the meta :)