Heyas,

I just wanted to take a moment to address something that has been a hot topic among the community, the infamous "heal ball".

Healing is an important role in Dreadnought, and we will continue to support it as a fun and tactically critical component of our game. Nonetheless, a combination of community feedback, collected data, and our firsthand experience is telling us that in their current state, our healing mechanics are not generating the fun, strategic experience that we are after. This is especially prevalent in the higher tiers of play due to unique combinations of modules and access to Officer Briefings.

The goal of Dreadnought is to offer amazing counter-play when players utilize diverse builds and strategies: this is one of the fun and challenging aspects of the game. In general, a variety of different ships should be required to execute any game-winning strategy. Healing in its current state, however, does not encourage evolving strategy or have any strong counters. As a result, ships that are closely grouped with multiple Tactical Cruisers can be nearly impossible to attack or defend against.

To that point, I sat down with some of our devs to discuss our options.

We are actively working on a variety of counters to this tactic while taking care not to hurt Tactical Cruisers’ playability. In the short term, we'll be making adjustments to a variety of existing officer briefings and modules. In addition, we're investigating a wide range of new features that will provide counter-play for healing. We're working on adjustments to how the Tactical Cruisers' beam weapons currently function, which will better define their individual roles as support classes. We'll also be introducing new abilities that reduce the effectiveness of incoming healing on a target for a period of time.

Just an FYI, this will take some time but I want to assure you we're on it.

Thank you for your continued feedback and support,

Finally! Some action against the "Heal Ball"!

What about weapon switch macros that "double" one's DPS by allowing "simultaneous" firing of secondary and primary weapons; what does Mike D. have to say about that?

Not another healer nerf...

Bring back nukes. Tac are already ram fodder.

dont nerf heals again, buff counters. right now the only effective counter is rammers or raw burst dps. buff nuke salvo again (not what it used to be but enough to crack a heal ball) gice us options otherwise it'll end up being 4 man tacs squads instead of 2-3 right now.

I think limiting the number of tac cruisers per side may be a potential option as well. Just my two cents as Im not sure exactly what the devs are planning. Hopefully they dont get hit too hard. As a dreadnought main I am all for keeping the tac cruisers as playable as possible.

I still vote that Adrenaline Shot be changed to a fixed amount of energy gained instead of scaling with the amount of healing. That will let you make it a fun and useful amount without allowing the ridiculous levels of stacking that show up in certain loadouts and comps.

Sounds like you guys are putting a lot of thought into the situation; that's reassuring.

I would like to ask that you involve the players(' feedback) before everything is 'set in stone'. Give us time to play with and adjust to things while they're in motion so the changes don't feel like we're getting slammed by a truck. This should also hopefully help in finding the 'sweet-spot' without overcompensating.

(Instead of something drastic like "All tactical cruisers now use an ammo system", add the system to one or two ships first and see how the players react, then the entire ship line, then all tac cruisers.. if the results 'prove' to be desireable.)

Personally I find healer b@lls (forum is blocking the word b-a-l-l-s???) to be QUITE EASY to break, all it takes is a half decent team. A healer b@ll is by definition, a tightly grouped pack of healers. A single purge nuke will usually hit all the healers at once, thus elimating the repair auto beams and energy gen which makes the healers so hard to kill. Combined with a team focusing fire, it is EASILY enough to break a healer b@ll. Likewise a single purge ram will usually effect the entire group of healers if the rammer is worth his salt. Also, lets not forget about armor breaker ammo. I have gone into a match several times as a 2 man against a 4 man premade squad, and simply using a dreadnought with purge nuke and armor breaker ammo on an enemy Koschei or Ohkta allows my buddy to "one shot" them in an onnager with power to weapons, storm missile them in a destroyer or hit them with the Goliath Torpedo, etc. There are tons of counters currently in the game that allows for easy breaking of a heal b@ll but all of them will require team work. It should NOT be the case where an individual working alone can break the combined team work of several players working together. This should also not be considered as a problem with the game as the goal should be to encourage teamwork, coordination, friendly competition, and creativity to develop new "Builds" that allow for the systematic slaughter of the "heal b@ll."

Please don't nerf adrenaline shot either. The problem isn't that it's too powerful, the problem is that teams sometimes use too many healers at once (although truth-be-told, this usually makes the teams firepower laughable and is generally counterproductive). If a single healer is healing a dreadnought, the energy gain from adrenaline shot is good but not overpowered by any means especially when compared to the power gain from "Get my good side".

The problem is also not necessarily with healers themselves. The problem is unskilled players going into a match "solo" up against a premade squad of skilled players and expecting to win. If the skilled team were to go as four rammers, you would have people in here whining about overpowered ramming settups which keep them perma-scrambled using module reboot and desperate measures.

Agree with me or hate me for my opinion but this is just my 2 cents. Cheers and good luck on the battlefield.