There have been many gripes about SWTOR thus far and a lot of them I agree with. In some ways, it’s because the game is new and BioWare still needs to make some tweaks and changes for everything to roll out properly. In other ways, it’s just because gamers will forever complain about PvP until the end of time. It’s the nature of the beast. But some recent complaints I’ve heard about healing in PvP don’t make sense to me. I’ve read it on the forums and this user Darchseraph on Reddit posts:
As a healer I find myself missing a lot of heals that result in people dying because I simply can’t click select my heal target. Yes, you can choose directly from Op screen, but sometimes there are multiple people getting low, but only 1 or 2 actively taking damage.
I have to look at both screen and pane to determine who I should heal at that moment. If you have your bar littered with something like “Egggriddle Baconskillet, Knight of the Republic”, and you stand in a group of people with similarly long names, it’s difficult to quickly determine what your actual “name” is and click the guy in my ops panel to heal you. So please, when you enter a Warzone, turn off your title and either turn off or convert to legacy bar your legacy last name. It makes it much easier to heal you in times of crisis.
Signed, a frustrated healer that keeps losing patients because their name is damn long I can’t tell which one of their 3 part name is their actual name to click on my ops panel.
Thanks!
EDIT: Oh wow so many downvotes. If you have a counterargument, please post it O.O
So my first thought was… Um, you’re doing it wrong!
I can completely understand the frustration at trying to click-heal players with long names but why in the world is this player trying to do this in the first place? I have played a healer in many MMOs and I play a healer in SWTOR, and I PvP some every day.
The most effective way to heal, especially in PvP, is NOT by mouse clicking on the names. This would be the same as trying to click your abilities with the mouse button in a duel. You’re going to get owned because there is too much delay time in the process.
First, in PvP, you’re moving around a lot. The players you are healing are moving around a lot. It’s often chaos. You do not want to try to click on the players themselves to heal them. You need to use the raid screen to target and heal the players who are on your team.
This is why the tool is there in the UI in the first place. I don’t even look at player characters when I’m healing. I’ve been known to turn my back to them even. I just heal using the raid window. You can see the percentage of health of the player with the health bar so it’s easy to see who is lowest and who needs the heal the most. It greys out when the player is out of range so you don’t waste time trying to heal people who are not in your area. You don’t have to physically see them or their names.
In fact, I usually don’t pay attention to who I’m healing at all unless I’m PvPing with guidlies. I just heal whoever is low.
There’s your solution: easy peasy!
Now the real complaint about PvP healing should be line of sight (LOS). I can’t tell you how many times I have been trying to heal someone, even mid-cast and they run out of range or run behind something. /facepalm
