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(In fact, in some situations, such as where the tank takes more than half her health in damage each second, WoW raid healers will not even abort heals, because the cost in terms of mana is not worth the risk of a damage spike occuring just between the time you aborted it and the time the heal would have landed.)
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It was the same way in Everquest, especially during the golden age of raiding when 72 people or more were needed, and the plurality of them had to be clerics chain casting Complete Heal. On some fights you needed a Complete Heal landing on the tank every second. Whole chat channels were set up for raid clerics to call heals in order to let the next cleric in the chain know it was her turn.
[SIZE=1][COLOR=Yellow][U]Virtue Heroes (Serenity's Children):[/U] [B]@Eek a Mouse, The Devil's Mark, Outlaw Sniper, Gas-Soaked Rag Man, Amazon Prime, Friday's Child, Hot Blooded,[/B][B]Flower of the Moon[/B], [B]Rouge Demon Hunter[/B], Stimulated Emission, Animatronic Wench, [B]Lennie Small[/B]
[U]Virtue Villains (Serenity's Orphans):[/U][/COLOR][/SIZE][SIZE=1][COLOR=Yellow] [/COLOR][/SIZE] [SIZE=1][COLOR=Yellow] [B]Eek a Rat[/B], [B]Bomb Blondeshell[/B], Babe Brute, Jeanne Dark, Fallen Angle[/COLOR][/SIZE]
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(In fact, in some situations, such as where the tank takes more than half her health in damage each second, WoW raid healers will not even abort heals, because the cost in terms of mana is not worth the risk of a damage spike occuring just between the time you aborted it and the time the heal would have landed.)
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It was the same way in Everquest, especially during the golden age of raiding when 72 people or more were needed, and the plurality of them had to be clerics chain casting Complete Heal. On some fights you needed a Complete Heal landing on the tank every second. Whole chat channels were set up for raid clerics to call heals in order to let the next cleric in the chain know it was her turn.
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Those were the days.
I was thinking of a new defensive powerset a while back based on what could be called "pre-emptive healing". It was more of a damage shield (or in Everquest terms a "rune") which would absorb damage until a limit had been reached and then it would fall. The powerset was planned to be similar to Force Field and Sonic, but with a different mechanism.
Force Field protects by causing attacks to miss through high defense
Sonic Resonance protects by reducing the amount of damage taken through high resistance
Damage Shield would protect by absorbing a set amount of damage before collapsing.
It would be kind of like healing, because the shielder would only need to re-apply the shield to a player who took damage. It would be pre-emptive because you would set up/refresh your shields before you started a battle, re-applying them as they go down.
Frankly, it is what I always though Force Fields should be. Most of the time in fiction, force fields are all or nothing. They protect 100% until they have been switched off or beaten down. Not like in CoH where a force field blocks a portion of the attacks while allowing the rest to come through for full damage. The Damage Shield would block 100% of damage (probably based on type to require multiple layers of shields) until it failed, and then need to be re-applied.
[SIZE=1][COLOR=Yellow][U]Virtue Heroes (Serenity's Children):[/U] [B]@Eek a Mouse, The Devil's Mark, Outlaw Sniper, Gas-Soaked Rag Man, Amazon Prime, Friday's Child, Hot Blooded,[/B][B]Flower of the Moon[/B], [B]Rouge Demon Hunter[/B], Stimulated Emission, Animatronic Wench, [B]Lennie Small[/B]
[U]Virtue Villains (Serenity's Orphans):[/U][/COLOR][/SIZE][SIZE=1][COLOR=Yellow] [/COLOR][/SIZE] [SIZE=1][COLOR=Yellow] [B]Eek a Rat[/B], [B]Bomb Blondeshell[/B], Babe Brute, Jeanne Dark, Fallen Angle[/COLOR][/SIZE]
FF acts like personal shields in Dune. A Field of Force which causes objects and energy with momentum to be pushed away.
The fact that we have energy shields that behave in an ablative fashion in scifi was always a mystery to me 
Given how magnetic forces behave in reality the dune/CoH force field makes more sense to me.
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(In fact, in some situations, such as where the tank takes more than half her health in damage each second, WoW raid healers will not even abort heals, because the cost in terms of mana is not worth the risk of a damage spike occuring just between the time you aborted it and the time the heal would have landed.)
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It was the same way in Everquest, especially during the golden age of raiding when 72 people or more were needed, and the plurality of them had to be clerics chain casting Complete Heal. On some fights you needed a Complete Heal landing on the tank every second. Whole chat channels were set up for raid clerics to call heals in order to let the next cleric in the chain know it was her turn.
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Those were the days.
[/ QUOTE ]That sounds horrific. Glad I waited for CoH, before getting into the MMO shtick.
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FF acts like personal shields in Dune. A Field of Force which causes objects and energy with momentum to be pushed away.
The fact that we have energy shields that behave in an ablative fashion in scifi was always a mystery to me
Given how magnetic forces behave in reality the dune/CoH force field makes more sense to me.
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Ablative shields, great term! I wish I had remembered it.
My problem with Force Fields is that they can be overcome with.... accuracy? Is the bad guy shooting at the point where the FF hits the ground and hoping the bullets ricochet under the field? Aim really well with that flamethrower and you can get through my shields?
In traditional sci-fi, the force field is 100% protective until it gets shut off or overloaded. Sue Storm can hold anything back until the effort gets to be too much and there is a catastrophic failure. Star Trek: "Forward shields at 37%, Captain!" (although I guess they are more like Sonic Resonance because *some* damage gets through even when shields are still up). In many video games, enemies with shields usually just take more hits to kill them.
Ablative shields would reflect that. Do enough damage to them before they are reinforced and they fall. The perfect implementation would require that the damage come in as a single attack, but that would be either annoyingly overpowered or incredibly useless.
Of course, none of this explains how you can shoot out of a force field, but are protected when inside.
Anyway, the only reason I brought it up was that I was reminded of it by "pre-emptive healing". This would have been the closest thing to it. "Here, have 1000 health. I'll give you more when you've used those up."
[SIZE=1][COLOR=Yellow][U]Virtue Heroes (Serenity's Children):[/U] [B]@Eek a Mouse, The Devil's Mark, Outlaw Sniper, Gas-Soaked Rag Man, Amazon Prime, Friday's Child, Hot Blooded,[/B][B]Flower of the Moon[/B], [B]Rouge Demon Hunter[/B], Stimulated Emission, Animatronic Wench, [B]Lennie Small[/B]
[U]Virtue Villains (Serenity's Orphans):[/U][/COLOR][/SIZE][SIZE=1][COLOR=Yellow] [/COLOR][/SIZE] [SIZE=1][COLOR=Yellow] [B]Eek a Rat[/B], [B]Bomb Blondeshell[/B], Babe Brute, Jeanne Dark, Fallen Angle[/COLOR][/SIZE]
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Of course, none of this explains how you can shoot out of a force field, but are protected when inside.
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The field is based on repulsion. If you expel something from inside the field, it gets pushed away, which would actually assist in damage.
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On some fights you needed a Complete Heal landing on the tank every second. Whole chat channels were set up for raid clerics to call heals in order to let the next cleric in the chain know it was her turn.
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That sounds horrific. Glad I waited for CoH, before getting into the MMO shtick.
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It was pretty monotonous, especially in the Shadows of Luclin days when a single boss fight could be an hour or more of chain healing. Melee was autoattack, and many enemies were 100% magic resistant.
Melee characters turned on autoattack and read a book.
Wizards cast their one unresistable spell and then waited for it to recharge two hours later.
Mages summoned mana rods for the clerics
Clerics pressed their heal spell and waited for their name to pop back up in the rotation to cast it again.
I have to admit, though, that not much could compare to being the Main Tank on a boss fight seeing the entire legion of healers focusing everything on keeping you alive. The thrill of being backup tank and watching the main tank fall and thinking "I'm up. Hope the healers shift to me fast enough."... Taunt!
[SIZE=1][COLOR=Yellow][U]Virtue Heroes (Serenity's Children):[/U] [B]@Eek a Mouse, The Devil's Mark, Outlaw Sniper, Gas-Soaked Rag Man, Amazon Prime, Friday's Child, Hot Blooded,[/B][B]Flower of the Moon[/B], [B]Rouge Demon Hunter[/B], Stimulated Emission, Animatronic Wench, [B]Lennie Small[/B]
[U]Virtue Villains (Serenity's Orphans):[/U][/COLOR][/SIZE][SIZE=1][COLOR=Yellow] [/COLOR][/SIZE] [SIZE=1][COLOR=Yellow] [B]Eek a Rat[/B], [B]Bomb Blondeshell[/B], Babe Brute, Jeanne Dark, Fallen Angle[/COLOR][/SIZE]
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Damage Shield would protect by absorbing a set amount of damage before collapsing.
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I'm blanking on the name but doesn't one of the Ice Domination powers already do something like that except it behaves like extra hit points? Frostworks?
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Damage Shield would protect by absorbing a set amount of damage before collapsing.
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I'm blanking on the name but doesn't one of the Ice Domination powers already do something like that except it behaves like extra hit points? Frostworks?
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Frostworks is simply a grantable +hp buff. It increases maxHp. Iirc, there isn't a way for the devs to actually put a shield like that in game because of how the game engine works. Frostworks is about as close as we'll get.
Yeah, there are a lot of game mechanics changes that this idea would require. It's one reason I haven't worked up a formal proposal for Suggestions and Ideas.
[SIZE=1][COLOR=Yellow][U]Virtue Heroes (Serenity's Children):[/U] [B]@Eek a Mouse, The Devil's Mark, Outlaw Sniper, Gas-Soaked Rag Man, Amazon Prime, Friday's Child, Hot Blooded,[/B][B]Flower of the Moon[/B], [B]Rouge Demon Hunter[/B], Stimulated Emission, Animatronic Wench, [B]Lennie Small[/B]
[U]Virtue Villains (Serenity's Orphans):[/U][/COLOR][/SIZE][SIZE=1][COLOR=Yellow] [/COLOR][/SIZE] [SIZE=1][COLOR=Yellow] [B]Eek a Rat[/B], [B]Bomb Blondeshell[/B], Babe Brute, Jeanne Dark, Fallen Angle[/COLOR][/SIZE]
OK, I got a little agitated at the flaming that was going on in the first page so I wrote this rant... it's not really pertinent anymore, but I'd hate to have it go to waste:
To all you obstinate preemptive healing naysayers out there, I don't really understand why you've gotten into such a heated debate over fact versus opinion. That has nothing to do with it! The real disagreement is your interpretation of semantics: Some of you believe the term "pre-emptive healing" refers to healing before the damage is inflicted, whereas some believe that it means *beginning to heal* before the damage is inflicted. Personally, I interpret it as the latter.
While healing is obviously inherently reactive, it's not too hard to predict a tank/scrapper will take a heavy alpha, and get a head start on your healing animation. Maybe you'll only shave off half a second, but we all know that can be the difference between life and a team wipe.
And no, it's not in any way "dumb luck" whether or not a pre-emptive activation will be helpful-- it's entirely based on skill (timing). A good player who is experienced with empathy powers shouldn't have too much trouble pulling off this kind of timing.
Miraj (and a few others), for what it's worth, I think you were really rude to Kahlan_ earlier simply because you refused to accept a difference of opinion in definition. By saying "So you may disagree, but you're wrong," you are being incredibly arrogant and presumptuous. Before jumping on somebody's case about being flat out wrong, people should take note of the ambiguity of terminology and accept that there may be multiple interpretations. I'm not trying to rekindle the flame, I just feel like Kahlan_ was unfairly assaulted.
So, to those of us who disagree on the meaning of "pre-emptive healing" - let's agree to disagree. And it doesn't really matter what the OP's team leader was talking about, since it's already a well-established "fact" that the person in question was on crack 
(QR)
I miss the EQ style "damage shields" that did damage every time the shielded player was hit by a melee attack. The PBAoE damage auras in melee sets kind of give this effect...
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Miraj (and a few others), for what it's worth, I think you were really rude to Kahlan_ earlier simply because you refused to accept a difference of opinion in definition. By saying "So you may disagree, but you're wrong," you are being incredibly arrogant and presumptuous.
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Its is neither inherently arrogant or presumptuous to state a belief that a particular persons opinion is wrong. Especially when you give particular reasons for a your belief in a clear manner. At worst I would consider it being blunt. It certainly wasn't an "assault."
If they had said something like "Your wrong because I've playing this game for five years" or "Your wrong because I've been playing this game longer then you." Well *that* would have been arrogant and/or presumptuous.
Maybe my view is just a matter of perspective. I also play EvE which has towering examples of arrogance and disdain where trash talking both in game and in forums are considered valid tactical and strategic methods by many. Sort of like the PWNZ forum but with nastier intentions.
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That sounds horrific. Glad I waited for CoH, before getting into the MMO shtick.
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That is precisely what I thought when I read it.
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That's the nice thing about facts, they're not debatable.
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A philosophical quibble: facts are indeed debatable, and mutable over time. Might I comment that it was once an accepted fact that the Earth was flat.
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Actually its more like conclusions based on observed phenomenon are debatable. I believe the word "fact" is rather inadequate since it tends to have slightly different meanings depending on who you ask. 
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Point taken. I guess you are looking at it as the "fact" is not the conclusion but instead the reason for there to be a conclusion: the phenomena themselves. The Earth exists, therefore it must have a shape would be closer to the fact. Looking at how things behave on Earth would lead to concluding it is round or flat or hexagonal being based on a fact, but not a fact itself. After all, the Earth is not round (circles are 2D) or spherical (it smooshes out at the equator) but an oblate spheroid.
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Of course, none of this explains how you can shoot out of a force field, but are protected when inside.
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The field is based on repulsion. If you expel something from inside the field, it gets pushed away, which would actually assist in damage.
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Especially if you shoot lasers, since the beams would get pushed faster than the speed of light.
People. Don't argue real science in a superhero game. Your head will explode.
Arguing over 'pre-emptive healing' isn't much better, there's no such concept in this game and buffs are better anyway.
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Of course, none of this explains how you can shoot out of a force field, but are protected when inside.
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The field is based on repulsion. If you expel something from inside the field, it gets pushed away, which would actually assist in damage.
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Especially if you shoot lasers, since the beams would get pushed faster than the speed of light.
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Considering the game assumes we're not operating within a vacuum so that light doesn't actually travel at the same speed as the constant 'c', that's perfectly acceptable.
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Actually my favorite is when I start casting a heal, get slept, heal goes off and wake myself up. Preemptive sleep cure.
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I also loove this little quirk of timing.
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
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That's the nice thing about facts, they're not debatable.
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A philosophical quibble: facts are indeed debatable, and mutable over time. Might I comment that it was once an accepted fact that the Earth was flat.
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It may have been an accepted truth by some people, but it was never a fact.
Eratosthenes in about 200 bc mearsured the cicrumference of the earth, to a reasonable degree of accuracy, about 25 000 miles versus the accepted modern value of 24 902 mile. The precision is most remarkable, because of two errors that a modern version of his experimnet woudl correct, atospheric refraction, and the errors in his longitudinal positioning of the two points he used (Alexandria and Syrene). These basically cancelled each other out.
Various other Hellenic and Egytpian scholars provided other estimates using other methodologies varying from the 25 000 miles, to about 18 000 miles.
Just because the Western world was ignorant in the Dark ages, doesn't make an 'accepted truth' an actual fact.
The Islamic World 'knew' the Earth was round, as did the Indian Civilisation. I belive I once read the ancient Chinese did as well, but cant for the life of me remember where.
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
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People. Don't argue real science in a superhero game. Your head will explode.
Arguing over 'pre-emptive healing' isn't much better, there's no such concept in this game and buffs are better anyway.
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Someone truly smart said this.
Seems like there was a term that was coined by a select group of MMO players at some point in history. This term and its definition were not passed along accurately through any viable communication medium to all players of the game, nor future games. The result, at its core, is a debate over opinions and paraphrasing, which, while it is pretty entertaining, is also quite trivial.
Come on Defenders. We're better than this.
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That's the nice thing about facts, they're not debatable.
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A philosophical quibble: facts are indeed debatable, and mutable over time. Might I comment that it was once an accepted fact that the Earth was flat.
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It's interesting to me that much of this thread devolved into an argument about semantics. To continue that...
"Accepted fact" does not equal "fact". "Facts" are things that are true, not necessarily things that are thought to be true. The only facts that are mutable over time are pieces of information about things that are changing over time. I'll concede the point that "facts are debatable"-- people debate over facts all the time. That doesn't mean that it's objectively possible to prove that the facts are on one side or the other: it was never objectively true that the Earth was flat, and therefore it was never a fact.
To return to the topic of this thread, it's difficult to debate whether preemptive healing exists in CoH unless we agree on the definition. There are at least four reasonable definitions I've seen in this thread:
* Preemptive healing is like what you see in WoW, a heal over time. While CoH has damage over time, I can't think of any powers that have heal over time. (Well, unless you think of Amy casting a few Healing Auras while she's out.)
* Preemptive healing involves activating any healing power (even one that takes effect at a single instant) before damage is dealt. It's preemptive in the sense that you have to do something before damage comes in, but reactive in the sense that the heal only does any good if damage is dealt for the heal to do any good. That seems to me to be the only counterargument that this tactic isn't "preemptive healing," and the argument applies equally well to WoW-like heal over time effects. So I'm happy calling this "preemptive healing." It takes practice (and a non-laggy connection) to pull off, but it's definitely preemptive. That said, it's likely not what the team leader the OP wrote about had in mind. (I would also argue that if this skill is continually useful, a change in slotting or tactics might make the game a bit easier.)
* Healing Aura on auto. It's something that you "set up" ahead of time, and provides healing over time. One can reasonably call this "preemptive healing" by the definitions of those words, and so this is likely (in my opinion) to be what the OP's team leader was referring to. It's also one of the least efficient ways to mitigate damage that I've personally used, so my personal recommendation is to ignore the possibility. (Except when you're going AFK.)
* The last one is a bit more of a stretch, but regeneration is an effect that increases the rate of hit point gain. Increases in hit points can plausibly be called "heals", even if they're the result of regeneration. So increases in regeneration rate that are used prior to taking damage might be considered "preemptive heals." Empaths have Regeneration Aura and Adrenalin Boost to accomplish this effect (and when slotted up can regenerate enough hit points to be competitive with more conventional heals.) When I'm thinking about emping (and my primary is an emp, so I've thought about it a bit), I think of Regen Aura as a preemptive heal; the distinction between "regen buff" and "preemptive heal" is more a question of game mechanics than anything else. (How I think of it: Regeneration Aura is a "preemptive heal" that operates through the game mechanic of buffing regeneration.) This last one is the form of preemptive healing that is easiest to use and most generally useful in the game.
Fields of Force in Dune were overcome by training melee fighting techniques against them. If you realize applying force Y in direction Z against target X pushes you A along the X/Y/Z axis to the left, you adjust and end up hitting the guy if you're good enough.
Preemptive healing is inviting a Bubbler or a couple VEATs to your team.
A good empath reacts to enemy animations, not simply the colorful bars telling him teammate health. You don't have infinite heals. The job of an empath, or any defender, is to keep everyone alive during hard fights, not keep everyone at full health during easy ones. The scrappers handle the easy fights.
Scrappers only have two kinds of fights. Easy ones and easy ones that somehow make you die.