Miko Only Real Healer

Battleborn Open Beta Open Beta General Discussion/Feedback
#161

Eh…This is dangerous ground. The game isn’t meant for people to be healed and not die. Each support is potent in their own way, I feel, and to make killing a character even more frustrating just because a support is around…

I said this before on the heal station change thread. People HAVE to die, damage HAS to be meaningful. If we boost, for example, ambra’s healing effectiveness, we could have a setup where we have those two supports, plus two tanks like montana and ISIC, plus a character like deande/oscar to push out lanes and steal shards. You have two extremely high damage - high health characters who aren’t being pushed out of fights, or even lanes, being massively healed by a miko, who already does this job well, and an ambra, who can now…keep up with a miko? Or even just be a notch or two below him.

Miko is an oddball because he can work really hard to stall a character’s death out, and can effectively refill someone’s health without them going back to base. That role needs to exist in a game, yes, but I don’t think we should start giving every support the ability to just refill health like miko can. Kleese can do it with the only reasonable helix choice at that level, but not really in combat due to his health, and I think that’s fine… But boosting reyna’s heal so she can effectively restore someone’s health back to full, or ambra so she can match or be a notch below miko in mid-combat healing/post combat refills…

Fights have to end, people have to be down if they take enough damage, even if it doesn’t kill them. I think something unique about this game is that you don’t need a “support character”, at most you just need someone collecting shards and building stuff, which is support enough. I don’t have to have a miko, reyna, kleese, or ambra on my team to succeed. And saying that characters need to have their healing boosted to reach miko levels of effectiveness at that one job is…I can’t agree with it. At all.

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#162

I think the other’s heals could be brought up a tad and it wouldn’t be to annoying. For example, I really think ambra should get some healing on her solar wind.

My post was more to address the idea of “nerf miko” or bringing down his heals. If you force an enemy to retreat, your damage done to them was meaningful, even if you don’t secure the kill. What healers currently allow, is for your teammates to not retreat as far to get heals. This absolutely makes the game better, as people are in combat more often.

I don’t think heal stations need a buff, I think they need to be closer to where the fights actually happen (mainly on incursion/overgrowth). What I want with healer balance is for the other characters to be a substitute for miko. Ambra currently can be if your team plays conservatively and uses cover alot.

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#163

If they increase ambra’s heals, they have to decrease her damage too. She’s pretty strong damage wise and if she had better heals also, she would wreck even more. Reyna doesn’t need buff to heals, she’s a shielder not a healer per se.

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#164

She also heals for almost 200 hps already, split between herself and another shield user. Reyna is fine as is. I’d say a good reyna+ miko can likely already make someone nigh unkillable.

#165

Judging by the responses it looks like people are happy with Miko being the only real healer.

Looks like I’ll be waiting for Alani.

PS: Deleted my suggestions as no one seemed to like them :sweat_smile:

#166

Just saw some statistics on a recording of what I believe was the Pax East stream for Battleborn that said 41% of all groups had a MIko. Just something for everyone to think about.

#167

Yeah and i bet 78 had a rath and 99 had a mike. Just because most people use miko doesnt make him is the only healer and far from the only support that can keep the team alive when the game comes out and people max there fav battleborn they start to try new ones and release they just as good

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#168

I agree with you. I played in the closed and open beta and each time, the game turned into who was a better miko. He could single handedly carry games by just sitting behind a Galilea or a wrath or the like. If you had no definite way of getting on him, you just shut out, hard. While I don’t think he’s a horrible champ, I think a limiter should be placed on him. Healing wise, you cannot heal a team mate for more then 3 seconds at time, with a 10 second cooldown. or if you heal a team mate, and they take damage, and you go to heal them again, then they get a 50% reduced heal. (within 10 seconds of the first heal)

#169

Or just have more healer characters…

Most teams have a tank, most teams have a DPS, why can’t most teams have a healer?

#170

Then he would need to be a spike healer, and we already have one of those in Reyna. Miko is a maintenance healer.

#171

I’d just like to say Ambra can be an amazing healer, even better than Miko. Someone mentioned her lvl 12 helix mutation earlier but didn’t go into detail. If I’m remembering correctly it allows her to heal her sunspots for 100 hp per second and at no cost, other then focusing her beam on it, and in return her sunspots will heal at 150% improved efficiency. She can heal the entire team in about the same time it would take Miko to fully heal just one teammate. That’s not even counting the fact she can drop two sunspots. Now this mutation is avaliable at the same lvl as the increased damage to her life steal or heal beam at the cost of her own health though i think, when you unlock it, the choice is obvious.

#172

Because “healer” is a really tiny role as this thread is trying to put across. Also most characters can DPS. All tanks can DPS. The only thing that differenciates a tank from not a tank is their hp pool…which may be another discussion we need to have. But the point is a lot of teams have a “support”, it doesn’t have to be a “healer”. And most supports help people not die, just because it isn’t miko providing a constant health effect or refilling your health doesn’t mean the support isn’t a “Healer”.

Heck, anyone who’s focusing on building stuff and grabbing shards could be considered a support, regardless of the character, and that freedom to fill a role as any character is what makes this game great.

What he was more saying is that miko causes a bit of stagnation because people are seeing him as “the only healer”, and some people consider his impact on the game to be too large. So he’s getting picked. A lot.

I think quite a few characters can deal with a miko hiding behind another character, just send a rath after him for goodness sake. There’s a lot of raths, tell him to go kill the miko. Tell your marquis to take off miko’s dumb flat head. It just requires more thought than “Aim gun at the target I see first”.

I don’t know what to do about miko, if people simply aren’t getting how to beat him. If this was a perfect world I’d just tell everyone to focus more on dealing with a miko. Send your melees, your snipers, any character with CC after the miko. But people don’t get it. He’s a priority target like a marquis, go kill him. Don’t sit there and complain you’re getting plinked, go stop him. Or start picking a character who can stop him. (Rath eats both of these characters, so does phoebe and boldur. Even attikus, the poor bastard, can have his way with marquis and miko)

To answer the original topic of this thread, miko is not the only healer. If we want to get technical, ambra can heal, and can grab a helix to heal pretty much just like miko (Some people say she heals faster). Kleese keeps up with miko in heals, and gives it to everyone around him. But ambra can heal from level 1, she is by all means a -healer-. Kleese functions like a much much better miko ult, and excells at refilling health post battle.

Ambra could be considered the most functional combat healer because she can drop sunspots that heal allies and damage enemies, while healbeaming an ally. They all do different things, miko does what he does.

Should there be more supports? Of course. Should there be another character that functions like miko? Absolutely not. Even oscar mike and whiskey foxtrot do very different things despite literally being clones. Rath and pheobe do different things. Marquis and thorn do different things.

I’m sorry if this post comes off as frustrated, but… I dunno, I find this discussion is getting silly. It’s went many directions, like miko being overpowered, other supports not matching up to his strength, something something heal stations, I just dunno what to really contribute at this point. The original idea has been discussed to completion I feel. Maybe if we want to talk about what healing actually should be in this game, we should break off into another thread and put up some numbers? If someone wants I’ll do that.

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#173

I’d definitely like to see more healer/support-dedicated characters and maybe a bit more healer dependence. I found in my playthroughs, Miko’s healing, or at least his healing beam, was often not needed at all. And this was with an aggressive combat-oriented Miko build.

I’m not suggesting that healing characters should be stripped of their offensive utility, I just don’t think that they are necessarily needed for their healing. I think I play Miko pretty well, but I found I was rarely doing more than topping HP off with healing beam. I found that other players rarely came to me for healing, spent much time around my mushrooms, and were generally running off to do their own thing without having to worry much about their HP pool without a healer’s lifeline.

While I did not unlock Ambra or Reyna in this last beta, in CTT I wouldn’t have characterized them as dedicated healers. Healing in the game feels like an afterthought.

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#174

Its far more an issue in PvP than PvE, where in general I found as long as you had a ranged attack you were almost never in any danger. PvP players will take damage and lots of it.

That said, yet another bonus I’d forgot about in Reynas favor is that she and her shield target are totally immune to critical hits while the overshield is up vs miko whos one big critical hit unless his ult has been used recently. I think overall any healer but Kleese are in a fine spot to carry a random team through. He just requires too much cooperation to really shine without a set group.

#175

Holy ■■■■ that was one epic response to my two line post lol. I did not see that one coming.

While I agree with you that other characters are capable of filling a general healing role, when it comes to tanks none of them do it quite as well as Miko. Miko is this games quintessential “healer”.

When you have tanks with 3-4k health and long TTK, dedicated healers like Miko make sense. What is the point having that much health if you just have to keep running back every time you get low? Miko’s tank healing keeps the game flowing.

This isn’t a new thing. Many class-based shooters have a healer like Miko and given the opportunity I always main them. From the Medic in TF2 to Support in MNC… I’m a lover, not a fighter.

While it isn’t an essential position, it is one that is very beneficial to the team. Out of 25 characters in my opinion Miko is the only one that fills this niche. I think it would be nice to have more.

#176

The point of having that much health is the fact that those tanks have high health efficiency. They can mitigate damage, or otherwise make each point of health go further than someone else. It allows them to fight more before they actually need help (and like I said, a discussion about tanks might need to happen, because I don’t 100% see a downside to picking tanks).

Of course it’s not a new thing, it’s been a thing in many class based shooters. I don’t think we need two medics in battleborn though. We already have multiple supports capable of healing, and one capable of overshielding which is an excellent advantage to have. It may be initially “nice” to have more “medics” in the game, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Like I said, even characters who are very similar still don’t do the same jobs at the same efficiency. And if anything we already have a “beam healer” in the form of ambra, you just need to level her up to that point.

I very much hope it never becomes an essential position because the beauty of this game is how flexible it at least seems right now with team comps. I don’t need a healer, I don’t need a tank, as long as we’re working together and understand the objectives we should be fine (Unless we get countered hard by something). I don’t fancy turning this game into one where these overarching roles need to be filled just because they do.

Oh, and the reply wasn’t entirely directed at you. A lot of it was just addressing the thread in general.

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#177

10 seconds isn’t that long. Even as the slowest characters returning has never been an issue. In fact when people don’t return I noticed my team shard levels drop bc no one goes far enough pick up the shards there like I do when I return. incursion is the biggest offender ATM.

#178

The heal stations don’t need a buff. They’re not meant to heal insanely fast. They’re meant only for holding the line against a wave of enemies esp those pushing until you can do a full retreat. Have you ever fought someone at a heal station before it’s not easy at its current state and believe me people do it too much already. Retreating is very important to the game it barely takes 10 seconds to get back into the fight after a retreat unlike actual MOBAs such a Smite or LoL

#179

Alani will be a burst healer though, so probably similar to reyna : a heal on a 15sec cooldown that insta heal a part of the ally’s health bar. So you won’t be able to full heal your party with her like Miko can.

Just to say, compared to other supports, when you take a miko in your team, you’re tradding off quite a damage potential for the sustained health it will gives you. This may avoid peoples using recall, but this is a trade off to get that as well. Compared to Reyna, Ambra and Alani, Miko has only its auto attack (which can become pretty strong but you’re trading healing ability to boost that) + the spore (which is usually kept as a CC when needed rather than to damage deal) on the damage dealing side.

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#180

Miko’s healing beam is amazing.

However using it all the time means a big reduction in DPS because it stops you using your primary attack (kunai).

Ambra doesn’t have this problem. She is also higher DPS and with upgraded sunspots, not far behind Miko in healing power.

(In my opinion Ambra DPS is still OP.)

Anyway as other people have mentioned Miko isn’t necessary for a successful team, you could easily replace Miko with Ambra (or Reyna/Kleese but they would be better if a few players have self-heal).

Although the little mushroom is still handy to have around. :mushroom:

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