I've been leveling up several characters and I keep seeing team requests with 'have healer and tank' or similar. This is for team requests under level 30. My initial reaction when I read this kind of invite isn't what the team leader wants. I don't see 'healer and tank' and think that the team is going to be really good. When I see 'healer and tank' I see players who haven't fully adapted to Champions Online and are stuck in a 'holy trinity' mentality. I assume their team will be sub-optimal.

The fact is that you don't need a healer in this game. In principle it's not a BAD thing to have someone around to keep you alive. But the Champions Online reality makes dedicated healing a waste of time for almost all content in this game. And it's definitely a waste for all the content available under level 38. In this game, 2 individuals working on their own are better than 1 guy dealing damage and another guy trying to heal him. It's very easy to support yourself and still deal a lot of damage. Having one player spend his time just healing seems mostly counter-productive.

This changes a bit with Therakiels Tower in Vibora Bay, and you can make an argument for the lvl 40 Nemesis mission. But I can't see how having a 'healer' helps for anything else in this game. It seems counter-productive. I'd rather just have another damage dealer.

I've seen it to. It makes me go "bwa?"

I think a distinction should be made between "healer" and "support," sort of how half the Defender community in CoH was up in arms when everyone tried pidgeon-holing them into the role of "healer" when they could do so much more (thus was born the Repeat Offenders).

I welcome a team member that is good "support," has some controlling, buff/debuffing, AND heals available, as well as some damage of course, and uses all of thier options. A well-rounded support character not only has a place on a team, but holds that spot well. A "healer," on the other hand, means 1 of 3 things:

1. The character has basically only heals and depends completely on teaming to get anything done (very unlikely in CO)
2. The character has some heals, but also has enough other powers to dish out damage and maybe other support (most probable)
3. The character has some heals and plenty of other powers, but only uses the heals because they're stuck in a trinity mindset (the most depressing possibility)

Being a dedicated healer is actually difficult in CO, since you only need 2-3 heals AT MOST (1 is usually sufficient), and you need to fill those power picks out with something. Building a character that CAN heal is easy, gimping yourself to take nothing but heals requires effort.

I think a good example of what a good "support" character in CO constitutes would be any of the various "PvP Healers." They have a mix of healing, support, survivability, and often damage as well (gigabolt and sigils come to mind).

It might be that it is hard for people to shake the idea that a tank and healer are needed in MMO's. That that would make them "clueless" with regard to CO is sad, but understandable.

Still, it's so easy to discount most of what I see in Zone chat, anyways (MC in particular). I see tons of clueless there, and not just in lfg requests.

Being a 'healer' in CO does require a fair amount of dedication -- while you don't need that many powers, you pretty much need to be presence super-statted, which does limit your offensive choices, and you probably want to be in support role, which significantly cuts your offense. I play a relatively offensive healer, and a competent DPSer will still do 2-3 times my damage even if I'm not spending time and energy healing people.

My guess is these particular people don't need a healer and tank, but it means you and your buddy can run around in Brawler/Avenger mode willy-nilly and not have to worry about defense too much.

Which granted is a hell of a lot of fun, those coming from the blaster/scrapper mentality.

Less holy trinity, more "I like DPS and big numbers with offensive passives!" laziness.

everyone should dps because that's how i want them to play the game

This reminds me a bit of my first Task Force, back in CoH. It was a lvl 30ish one. I did this just after that had completely revamped how Stone/Stone tanks worked. Someone playing one of these was on team, but wasn't the leader I don't think.

What I do remember was the leader insisted we have a healer before we could start. Not a Defender, but a Healer. We had a Dark/Dark defender and a Bubble/Force defender on the team already. Yet he simply would not start until we had a proper healer.

Finally we convened him to give it a try without and we could find one later if needed.

Anyone who played CoH could well imagine how much buffing/debuffing you can get out a Dark/Dark and a Bubble/Force defender... We had zero need of a healer.

Eventually the leader admitted we could do it without one.

In CO a healer is even less important, because most anyone can take a heal and help out where needed.

You didn't mention pvp in there, maybe for a reason though, whatever.

In t2 a healer will help a bad team dominate.

In tier 1 a healer with another player can beat 5 other normal build players.

In tier 1 2 and 3 (no idea about 4) a healer can keep a badly specced or offensive player alive against tons of damage.

...and will get no kill credits for doing so...

The devs have stated that this was actually intended. Its ina thread soemwhere maybe in the bugs section. At first I was kinda like "what?" but after reading all of what the dev wrote it made a lot of sense and solved a lot of potential problems. Compared ot what healers lost they gained tons.