[TERA PC & Console] En Masse is closing, but TERA lives on! We will continue to support TERA PC (NA) and TERA Console until service is transferred. Stay tuned for more information.
[TERA Console] The Grotto of Lost Souls update (v85) is now live! Read the patch notes here: https://bit.ly/TERACon_v85
[TERA PC] The 64-bit update (v97) is now live. Check out all the changes delivered on August 11 here: https://bit.ly/tera64_patchnotes
[TERA PC & CONSOLE] Summerfest Part 2: The Beach Bash is on from August 11 until September 1! Participate in event activities to earn tokens redeemable for costumes, consumables, mounts, and more! Details: https://bit.ly/tera_sf20
Comments
There is no mmo 101 rule, MMO's can set any precedent that the developer/design team can imagine. So to say that because every mmo ever to date has followed this so called "MMO 101 rule" does not mean that all mmo games have to. This is what makes mmo's boring, they copy each other instead of creating new advancements. So really all it takes to change your "mmo 101 rule" is for a mmo to simply not follow it. Everyone who has posted here isnt actually saying anything important or profound, basically your just as bland and boring as these copycat mmo's. You repeat what your told to repeat, and for that reason alone games have not had to change or make new precedents because the people playing them are like completely content with the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
In one old mmo I used to play you could build a "tank priest" by putting your points in REC (how tough you are and how much agro you generated) instead of WIS (healing).
Sure your heals were worse than a standard priest, but it was a fun build to play and very useful in pvp as you weren't dead.
If im not always in the danger zone I would rather wear lightly so I can get away faster too. Have you ever seen any archer, gunner or field doctor wearing heavy armor in real life ?
Why are you trying to find logic fault in a fantasy setting anyway ? It's freaking fantasy.
Way to bring up the whole +15 > +12 thing, Do you even know if the guy is even in slaughter?
As for the OPs example of getting shot at with a wedding dress on LMAO you would be dead either way it's not the same. A better example if you really want to compare the two would not be getting shot at out of no where you know the boss will be attacking because it's your choice to run the dungeon there is no "out of no where ambush attacks". Think about it like this instead:
You are walking out of a bar and you KNOW beforehand that some gangsters are outside. You stay out of sight or at least out of the way while your friend is getting shot at. The gangsters aren't aggro'd to you because you aren't attacking them. You can then throw your heals at your friend and if you manage to [filtered] off one of the gangsters you can (for the sake of comparing to dungeons as no attacks that you can dodge are "faster than a bullet") dodge their attacks at you and there you go! Both you and your friend survive the attack completely healthy.
So I guess if you don't want to be one shot and become a lazy healer just work for the op cloths :P if you have a problem with them being clothed go play a leather or metal class. All magic users are clothed as they should be, and quite frankly it would be pretty boring to be able to tank hits as it gives you no reason to actually try in the dungeon you are running. Literally all healers do is debuff, give mana, and heal. Sorry to say but this is just a case of "get good or reroll" if you can't handle using your iframes to avoid damage... then again if you can't bother to use iframes then you wont be any better on DPS or tank tbh
What a well thought-out answer!
Still doesn't change the fact that a heavy-armor healing class is an oxymoron.
Concept of healers: Cloth is used for anything magical because of old folklore that magicians always wear robes and stuff. It allows for a greater mobility and things like teleporting will require less mana than if you would use metal or leather as your combat armor.
The funniest thing about people complaining about healers wearing no armor in this game is that you shouldn't even be hit by most of the attacks unless you have bad positioning. With the option of an easy swift crystal (since you don't really DPS you don't really need dps crystals), you could literally walk out of AoEs provided you know the exact moveset. Most unskilled priests who don't have tanking experience will not know this.
Giving heavy armour defeats the purpose of a healing class completely because you aren't supposed to be hit in the first place, and in a fantasy setting requires way more effort to move. It will also not make sense to an average player and it just doesn't feel immersive to the average RPer. If I am given a choice to use all possible types of armour in any class, I would dare say that my healers will all still use cloth.
The best survivability for a healer is to not get hit to begin with. Game just feels more fun to reward proper positioning and surviving attacks.
I think this is really where this all stems from and is on the mark.
You could have an MMO where any class could wear all three types of armor, but there'd be some sort of trade-off. So for example, your healer could wear heavy armor in exchange for a cut in their heal potential. But the whole concept of having various classes in an MMO is about trade-offs. All of the times people complain about a class being out of balance, it's because they didn't properly manage the trade-offs.
Even though the trinity is basically a genre trope, the fundamental concept is so that the choice of class actually makes a difference in the game.
Now, I honestly don't know enough of Tera's lore to say for sure, but I could totally see there being a devout group from Kaiator who healed but wore heavy armor in service to Kaia. It would just be a matter of whether BHS wanted to do something like this.
I remember Silkroad Online has the same system where you can wear whatever you want, but you got bonus speed and mana reduction if you use full leather (10%) or full clothes (20%). It also allows people to put skill points in whatever they want, but there's a upper limit of how much points you can split (ex: at lv 50 you can have maximum of 100 masteries to put into any class, with 50 being the maximum mastery for 1 class so you can either fully build 2 classes at once or focus on 1 and split the rest...). However because of this system there's a big emphasize on soloing (since you can pretty much do everything on your own) and PvP (huge number of builds countering each other), and not much for PvE which the whole holy trinity revolves around.
IMHO, I think with action based MMO like Tera, it's better to emphasize differences in gameplay between classes rather than builds. It's not tab targeting where the most important factor is when to use which skills, what combines with what for maximum effect,... We have fast-paced class, slow heavy single burst class, chain reliant class, aggressive tanking, (used to have) evasive tanking, pure defensive support tanking,... to put up with different types of dungeon like iframe heavy ones, block heavy ones, stationary bosses, spinning bosses, unavoidable dmg (healer carry) mechanic, positioning heavy (tank carry) mechanic,... which is far superior compare to the "which build should I follow, when and which marco should I use...".
This kind of MMO is generally much harder to balance (since it relies a lot more on player's skill and not build), however it's not a good excuse for the poor job BHS is making with new class. Too bad we can't do anything about it.