devtrackers.gg
So, today I read a short post on this sub asking for nerfs to all healers.
And I was basically going to write a long tirade on how outside of two statistically overperforming outliers (Ra and Aphrodite), a quick analysis of the data on Smite.gg shows that the rest of healers are either painfully average, statistically underperforming, or too underpicked despite their relatively high w/l to warrant a nerf.
But honestly, while writing that response I thought that arguing who deserves a nerf and who doesn't was a little bit pointless, as nerfing or buffing gods ultimately doesn't solve major underlying design problems, all it does is to take healers in and out of the meta temporarily.
So instead I decided to write this post, in an attempt to explain what I think is the real problem and how it could be fixed.
And after about it for a while the conclusion I arrived to is in the title:
The real problem is that healers in SMITE have never been properly balanced because there's no dedicated healer/enchanter itemization in SMITE.
Currently the closest things we have to healer/enchanter itemization are Rod of Asclepious (which at this point is more of a counter to the absurd amount of antiheal in the game than a real healer item) and Lotus Crown, (which is more oriented towards itemizing like a tank than an enchanter).
So, it's safe to say that there really isn't healer itemization in SMITE.
Healers in Smite are a very problematic bunch of gods as they are in a permanent state of doing either too much dmg and too much healing at the same time (mage itemization), or being f*cking unkillable through sheer defensive stats and heal spam (guardian itemization).
You either build like yout typical burst mage or like your typical guardian, sometimes like an in-between. You don't build like a healer, because the items to build like a healer simply don't exist. This lack of dedicated heal itemization creates three major problems:
- As I said, healers cannot actually play or itemize towards a healer archetype (aka: fragile and moderate in dmg, yet very high value in their utility), but rather, they are playing as a burst mage that also happens to have a ridiculous heal-utility, or as a tank that happens to have a ridiculous heal-utility.
- This makes healers extraordinarily frustrating to deal with, because when they are in the meta they are just too good at too many things at the same time. So you end up with healers with ridiculous dmg/mitigation numbers while also pumping ridiculous heal output. Heck this happens even when they aren't specifically meta, all it takes is your teammates not knowing how to deal/itemize against them and suddenly you have a Hel/Aphro/Ra being a raidboss top dmg top healing monster to fight against.
- This leads to antiheal needing to be overpowered in order to keep healers in check, which leads to the itemization of everyone being limited. It's very hard to justify not to pick up an item as efficient as Brawler's or Divine even when there aren't any dedicated healers or problematic healing in the game.
The way to fix this, in my opinion, it's to take a page of what League of Legends does with it's healers, which basically boils down to:
- Reduce the power scaling on heals significantly.
- Increase the power scaling of their damage.
- Introduce a bunch of items with low stats but that greatly buff your heals/shields or give them some sort of valuable extra utility to be used in-combat. Examples from LoL: Ardent Censer, Moonstone Renewer, Staff of Flowing Water.
- Nerf antiheal items so they aren't as ridiculously efficient.
This would accomplish quite a few things that I argue would be generally positive for the health of the game and the state of healers:
- When you pick a healer you now have to make a real choice: go the mage route of dealing your typical mage-tier absurd dmg at the expense of high healing and defense, go the enchanter/healer route of high healing and utility but at the expense of your damage and tankyness, or go the tank route of being very hard to kill at the expense of your dmg and healing. Instead of being able to accomplish multiple of these routes with the same build.
- Reduces the sheer frustration of fighting healers as now they have clear strengths and weaknesses depending on their itemization, instead of being overwhelmingly good at too many things when they get out of control.
- Gives most builds 1 extra item slot. Since you are more enticed to only build antiheal as a real counter option, instead of building it regardless of what the enemy team is running because it's just too good.
- Opens up a true healer/enchanter archetype that SMITE lacks, which would add a much needed gameplay variety to the roles like support, which since it's inception has been basically plagued with a guardian-esque tanky playstyle and itemization regardless of which class plays on it.
- More distinct itemization routes will probably make it easier to specifically target which aspects of the healers are too strong or too weak at any given moment.
Mind you, I know what I just said it's probably too much to ask for the developers, as it implies re-balancing quite a few gods and designing/testing/balancing a bunch of new items that could affect multiple roles simultaneously. And I can imagine that would lead to a fairly long period of time of balance ajustments and experimentation that could be a nightmare to deal with.
I'm also not saying that my idea is perfect, for instance, one big flaw of my proposed changes for is that failing to properly balance/design just one of the new "healer items" could lead to having a very obnoxius "full dmg + 1 healer item" build that could ruin the meta for an entire patch.
It's a high risk to redesign and implement so many things at once, and they are not even guaranteed to work, I understand that.
That being said, I think that one way or the other something will have to be done with the state of healers in SMITE, as it's frankly absurd that every so often they jump from sheer mediocrity to meta-warping terrors and viceversa depending on the meta.
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