I hate: Enemies who heal

Leave the 'Phoenix Down' at home, kiddos.

Okay, this a sore one. A real personal moment of fuelling my vitriolic tar-black hatred for that repugnant stain within the armpit of humanity that we deign to legitimise with the tag 'healers'. No, I'm not talking about those who pick 'priest' in an MMO, as a former tank I pretty much lived off those guys, I'm talking about the acrid weeping-pustules from the land of NPCs who devote themselves to the healing arts. Screw them, screw them all. May they all be bound, gagged, tarred, feathered, drawn, quartered, defenestrated, dismembered, decapitated, bought back to life, choked, poisoned, stabbed, shot, dragged from rope across broken glass, electrocuted, and slowly dipped into Mount Doom whilst hoards of onlookers clap and shout cutting remarks directed towards them. 'Hatred' doesn't begin to describe my feelings towards them; I loathe them, I despair at their very existence, I surrender all faith and piety to a theoretical higher being in the knowledge that no such intelligent creature would ever knowingly curse it's children with such an unforgivable blight. No sir, I don't like it.

But let's rewind for a second and start at it all over again. Grow ourselves new skin. (Nope. I'm quoting songs as a coping mechanism, again. Have to focus!) Sigh. So you know how it is, don't you? You've just fought your way through a particularly gruelling dungeon, or scenario, and am starting to glow with the self-righteous aura of the victorious. You charge into the next fight, confident in your abilities, only to realise that your might was an illusion, your success a smokescreen, and that everything you've ever loved or will love will wither and die. The enemy is healing from the damage that you've dealt them, in fact, it's even worse because they are out-healing the damage that you're hitting them with. This man is so unimpressed with your concerted effort to snuff out their life force that they're staring you down, dead-pan, eye-to-eye whilst pushing out the bullets that your stuffing into them faster than you can press the trigger. And it hits you; all is lost. Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.

Now first of all, as is the case with this blog, I have to play devil's advocate, because even Lucifer himself isn't foul enough to defend this practise himself. It is the desire of every video game developer to construct the sort of variety in content and gameplay that will lend their game depth and replay value, and that goes from scoring various tracks, to building various environments to, yes, even birthing a variety of enemies. Stagnancy is death, and variety and challenge encourages engagement and passion. 'Healers' are a very typical enemy archetype to find in games as they are rather simple to envision and can greatly change up one's tried and true stratagem for tackling a tough area. Whereas usually they might go for the strategically sound choice of taking out weaker units before facing the tougher ones, (Or the insane 'go-fo'-broke' strat of 'kill the biggest guy in the room') now they have to target healers or risk a much more gruelling fight than usual.

In addition, granting the act of healing to a NPC is rarely beyond the pale of acceptable boons for an NPC to be assigned. I know I'm generalising here, but typically in the sorts of games where you have enemies who heal not just themselves but their teammates, they hail from the sorts of games where such an ability is sensible within the lore of that world, and usually in situations where the player too has access to some healing ability. In the search of a fair challenge between the player and the computer, something which I long for in the games that I play, I applaud games who give both sides access to the same level of tools. (excluding, of course, games when the technology disparity is the point, such as in the 'Batman Arkham' series or the early stages of any Ubisoft game ever.) So there you have it, all the reasons off the top of my head why 'healing' is a good thing for enemies to possess in games. Now let my unreasonable rage take over as I systematically tear down each of my own points.

Variety, huh? Talk about the lowest common denominator of variety. All you've done is attached an elastic band to this guys health bar so that he takes just that little bit longer to grind into dust. Think about it, how many actual memorable video game bouts were made by the healers? Ornstien and Smough? It was the disparity between fast + light and heavy + slow. Dancer of Boreal Valley? It was her gracious fluid movement that was rhythmic and deceptive. The end? Is was the quite patience and creeping stealth. I know I picked out some of the biggest bosses in gaming but who better to learn lessons from? They were enriched by complex variables that challenged the player's actual skill, rather than frustrating gimmicks that kept them hammering away just a little bit more than usual. At it's absolute best, healers are nothing more than an artificial inflation to the length of the fight, at it's worst they are a headbanging roadblock that brings the entire pace to a screeching halt.

Now as for 'fair' competition. This is one that particularly gets under my skin because, as I said, I am a proponent for fair competition. But you see, one of the requirements for establishing fair competition, one of it's key defining characteristics if you will, is that the resources available to both parties be comparable; but that's never really the case in games, now is it? In most titles where the player is giving the ability to heal themselves it comes with some sort of limiter, a balancing device to ensure that the power is not overused. (Shout-out to those folk who charge into the Dragon Age archdemon with 200 potions!)  

Be that a limit to the resource pool available (only a certain amount of mana/magicka) to a hard limit on the heal itself, (miracles and Estus flasks) the laws of balancing dictate that there must be some sort of limiting mechanic. But this is rarely so for NPCs, indeed most of the time their ilk are free to spam spells quite literally forever. This can lead to lamentable situations in which you are stuck in battle and wasting limited bullets, or potions on whittling down enemies only for them to invalidate all of your effort by powering through it.

Now, I'll admit that a good portion of my rage is conceived under the pretence of having been deceived. Whenever I see that health bar start refilling myself I feel like my role as a dealer of damage has been missold to me and that's the sort of injustice that cuts deep into my character. I'm sure there are those out there who feel I'm being histrionic with my rantings, and I most certainly am, but that doesn't change my feelings one smidgen. Screw healers, screw healing; I'd rather such a concept not exist in gaming whatsoever; I am dead serious. (Hmm... that wasn't as therapeutic as I hoped... Well, time to hop on Dark Souls and brutally murder some priests!)