Dancer Archive
Thread: Combat Balance Issues for Dancer: Ent Healing, Bards, and our Future in the Game
Ok, so, as I've admitted before, I don't know what an EQ Bard is. I don't like Fantasy, Ren Fests make me break out in hives, and I'm not a paper and pen RPGer or MUD player.
So... I looked it up on EQ Diva.
My impressions:
Neat support class, different spin on magic for many of the same roles... no real performance elements, no more (or less) social than other support classes, insanely level based (which we don't
have in SWG)... doesn't have any relevance what so ever on our blue healing crisis. 
So I thought, "They sound like Squad Leaders to me, why would Holo be opposed to these things in the game? What does that have to do with us being Social? What does that have to do with giving
or not giving us Performance Enhancements? What does that have to do with our healing? Why would he say that? It sounds like a partial fix created the blue healing problem more than the desire to
keep us from being support still to me. What's going on here?"
So I did a "bard search"... and looky looky:
On 09-04-2003 Holocron wrote:
We don't plan to allow medic types to heal mind, because it opens the door to lots of exploits for them, as you point out.
Your idea is interesting, but it does make entertainers more bard-like, which I am not crazy about (but perhaps some entertainers
are?). The Squad Leader alternative is also interesting.
Frankly, this situation is a bit of a loophole in the design. We did not catch the medic exploit until too late, so we removed
the mind pool heal from them, without creating an alternative. Mind is not supposed to be the determining factor in a combat.
Ok, so I have been reading it correctly, it was a boo boo and not intended... woot! Go Pan!
So what is this bard phobia and what does it have to do with the Blue Healing Ent role?
On 03-18-2004 Thunderheart wrote:
FWIW, remember that this is a socially driven profession. Things like the EQ Bard professions are more combat oriented (since
everything in the game is combat oriented). The Entertainers, Musicians and Dancers are meant to be more socially driven, since
thats what they playstyle for the class is.
Now, contrast that with Holo's other quote:
On 09-05-2003 Holocron wrote:
I'll be honest and say that bard types were left out specifically because they were not very Star Warsy. Having musicians other than
John Williams playing during a lightsaber battle just felt wrong for the setting.We tried instead to give the typical bardic
role to Squad Leaders.
Notice no mention of Social, no mention of Dance, no mention of healing, no mention of making Entertainers "useless" for battle, and zero mention of performance and shows.
There was one other Holo quote on Bards... in that same thread. Someone asked about giving Ents HOTs, Holo was open to that too.
I'm going to run a poll next week, I had already decided to do it from the feedback on the "Plan for World Peace" thread. The options will be:
(1) We get solutions for the in battle blue healing problem
(2) We ask for a new Dancer Class that can do "in battle patch em ups" while they stayed dependent on us and Cantinas for complete healing
thereby strengthening Ent as a real game system presence (read, Dev time, hello )
(3) We play dead and let Medics (or maybe SLs, they are getting a CB vote) have it and concentrate only on Performance Enhancements (which will
be ignored because we will have less impact, it will still hopefully one day be picked up as a novelty project *shrug*)...
Don't vote now, we need more time to talk about this. Our role as Healers is being threatened by the CB. If you guys are ok with us losing potential Dev attention, so am I. I would be doing you
a great disservice as the Dancer Correspondent though if I didn't make sure you were seeing everything that I am and the lasting impact it will have on us.
I trust you, which ever direction you decide to push me in, I'll go in there swinging with both fists. Let's just make sure we all understand what's going on here. 
Note: This is not my agenda. I'm not pushing for any one answer here. The Blue Healing change is coming, it will impact us. We need to make sure we are
prepared for whatever happens and don't get left crying in the dust like we did with the Holo System.
The time to talk about it is now, not four months down the road when we are crying because the Cantinas are empty and we have no one to watch us. 
Since I don't have the original posts available to read, I'm going to guess that the squad leader comments and such are about healing the mind bar? Combat medics can already do this (although it causes them mind wounds). I hadn't heard anything about how the Combat Balance is going to threaten dancer healing (could someone enlighten me?).
I've always thought that dancers could have an interesting role in combat if they could use their technique line for defense (such as Distract and Dazzle etc). Nothing offensive that would cause damage, but instead something that maybe screws up the targeting of an opponent (like, you use Dazzle and can't be targetted for a short period of time).
Battle fatigue healing in a camp would also be nice for higher level dancers.
The old mind pool exploit was that medics healing their own mindpools expended far fewer points from that pool than they gained fromhealing it, and hence were able to to perpetually heal others by healing one's own mindpool when it got low.
We've never been able to heal mind *damage*, and continuing to be unable to do so even if another profession is granted this ability does not at all marginalize the entertainment professions. (Yes, CM's do it currently at great expense to themselves.) I've never heard any talk of allowing any other professions to heal either mind *wounds* or battle fatigue.
I agree that BF is really our thing, the Blue Wounds and Buffing can already do "outside of the Cantina" service which just strengthens our "healer role"... it isn't really our main interaction like BF should be (used to be).
What I'm scared you guys are missing here is that I'm not taken very seriously when I talk about BF in the Corre Forum or in emails. I have screamed and yelled about BF. The hologrind AFK explosion coupled with the easy availability of Doc Buffs have made BF pretty wimpy. Before that, the TK Meditate line was being dabbled in heavily to avoid BF consequences.
What we might have here is an opportunity to strengthen our role as healers. I don't know that we would even be seriously considered for a Blue Damage healing option. I'm certainly not going to ask for it even unless it's what you guys want. However, the asking alone would hopefully buy us enough attention as Ent Healers to at the very least allow us to talk about BF.
I don't think our Blue Wound Healing and Buffing is private property. I think BF is. I think neither one is being considered a whole lot from the Ent point of view in the CB. I don't think it's being considered at all.
Just like the Holosystem wasn't considered at all from our point of view... and wasn't that fun?
Leonae wrote:
Hmm... I must confess I had always assumed everyone was speaking about wounds and BF when talking about "blue healing". We can't heal mind damage as far as I know.
I don't want to sound like a noobe here, which I'm not , but . . . huh?
What am I missing?
Panthu, last night all the PvE players were complaining about increased BF and the entertainers in our cantina were noticing a rise in the amount of healing xp they were receiving. Now, this may be addressed in another thread (haven't gone into the main forum yet), but was this a change or a bug? If not a bug, do you have any insight to this change and how it might affectthese concerns?
Entertainers heal mind wounds and BF, but not mind damage - we clean the mind bar of black rot, but not paint the white stuff blue.
The only ones able to heal mind damage are combat medics (or a sip from aitha).
Leonae wrote:
Entertainers heal mind wounds and BF, but not mind damage - we clean the mind bar of black rot, but not paint the white stuff blue.
The only ones able to heal mind damage are combat medics (or a sip from aitha).
Am I embarrassed.
Where do I go to turn in my dance shoes? 
hmm lets see here maybe i should ust be quiet here but ia m going to speak up. acually i have regular patrons coe to the cantina. i have people sendingme tells becuase i tend to wander cantina and even trveling to the adventure planets to speak with me.. yeah talk while i dance.
why becuas ei talk to them i make rounties. i aint no bot whih i think as far as peole gudingly goig to cantinas is all about. even mastersdancers have buff bots set up while they go afk telling people how they can get a buff. sad sick but true. it does take the entertainer to go out ofthere way.
I have had people tell me that containca i would spend weeks in with Cm tossing mind disease around to who ever wants them for no reason other thent o have an excuse to sit and talk to me. get the toehr entertainers to talk when they are not AFK. all it takes isan enteratinerthat is there to pack a house up.
yeah i would like to see BF harm combats alot mroethen it does. peoplel with 500 BF laughing saying oh well its nothing. htye are right.alt of people look at xp and max and jut dont care ehalers dont care that the heals are not as good andt he only reason dcotors care sis becuase people greif them for having paid forhorrible buffs.
even have a few bar room brawls int he cantains i amin. the dancer profession isnot as useful as it could be so its up the the player to really make the profession work. we dont need any chages the game mechanics needs to be changed i think.BF needs to be more harmful then it is. Exotice 1-4 need morethen jsut 4 floruishes.becuase everyone sees to think masters do only extoic 4 and anyone doing something less is nto a master.
hmm its late i am rambling probably taking the threed off base.. but anyways.. AFKers should stop spamming tips and they work for a living and people should talk more. .. stop gridning.. the funnest timesi have iswhen 3 or 4 masters drop to say poplock 1 and tlet someone learning dancer do band flourishs... but toomay masters are wanting that buff tip. i have made more money with 6 or 7 in a group doing the same dance and chatign then us all off on our own doing whatever.
Battlefatigue is a pretty serious thing and most veteren players know this and get it taken care of when they can. Its usually the 1month masters that have no clue why their attacks aren't hitting for what they should be that are laughing at battlefatigue. It would be nice to see it have a more debilitating effect but then it would definitely force players into cantinas and thats a big no no. If they made more places available where we could heal it would be alot better. Currently we can heal wounds in a scout/ranger camp but not battlefatigue.
I hate that my class is required to go to a cantina to heal battlefatigue. Then again I hate having to ask another dancer for a buff.
CM mind healing is almost a joke. You have to be buffed and/or on brandy otherwise you'll incap yourself after 2 uses. The mind wounds you take for using it once are horrid and affect your healing potential.
kirah_ashlin wrote:
Panthu, last night all the PvE players were complaining about increased BF and the entertainers in our cantina were noticing a rise in the amount of healing xp they were receiving. Now, this may be addressed in another thread (haven't gone into the main forum yet), but was this a change or a bug? If not a bug, do you have any insight to this change and how it might affectthese concerns?
No, I haven't been told anything about this directly... yes, I suspect BF is getting kicked up a few notches (I said this two weeks ago, I just didn't know when). What is so mind boggling to me is that Combat Classes are getting input here and we're not. I see BF as an Ent Issue... it seems the other Corres and Devs (and maybe the majority of players) see it as a Combat Issue.
I can see it being both. I can see it being Ent only. I can not understand it being a Combat concern only unless we just plain aren't supposed to have any kind of say so at all in anything.
A lot of how we operate is just shifting around other game changes: Medical changes, Chef changes, Hologrinding, TK's meditate popularity, AFK leveling being validated, Player Cities... none of this was really our business, no one asked us. They all had an effect on us though. On the way we play, where we play, how much money we make, how much we are valued by the community, and our own morale.
I'm not very comfortable with our passive role in the grand game design... unless that's what we want. Honestly, I think we'll live no matter what. There are plenty of players just like me that don't mind being combat "gimped" for something small and pretty. It won't make sense to me in gaming terms, but I personally don't necessarily demand that. What I do demand is that we make this decision as a Dancer community. I think the Social players deserve a right to say what Social priorities are. Just as much as Combat players do on combat issues and Crafters do on crafting issues.
I think we are fun players that will make do with whatever we have, even if we never got anything new and no one used us for healing anymore. The fact that our one functional area, Ent Healing, is considered a novelty makes me question our tie to the heal cycle. If we are to be truly with out game function, I want it to be because that's what fits our playstyle best. If we are to have functional elements (like BF), I think we should have a say so in it.
The problem is, what is ours? It seems like we keep saying "oh, that's not ours... oh, that's not ours... oh, we can't talk about that... oh, we can't ask for that"... well, I'm scared we are limiting ourselves so much that they might not leave us our corner anymore. When we were needed more, there were more shows. More people watched us, so more people cared what we looked like. No one made people tip Dancers, people did it because they liked us. We are becoming so quiet, so shy, so timid, we aren't even told about BF changes! That's crazy to me.
When we ask about Dance tools and Props and Performance Enhancements, we get a little pat on the head and told to be patient. When the Dancer Corre says "slow buffs are taking two minutes longer", she's told Social players won't mind and the "buff machines" can still do the fast method for higher costs. Oh? Well, I don't mind hosting a Tea Party instead of bringing up real issues like the other Corres do... but let's make sure we all understand what this attitude has gotten us so far.
The game is about to go through some major changes, if we are to sit by and be pretty, well, we do that better than anyone else. If however we want to have an active tie to the heal cycle, now is the time to say so.