Blessings

I hope my english is tolerable and you understand, what i`m writing

I know it is a bit early to discuss specific things about healing in ESO. Well... I can`t wait

If I understood this right: Leveling is very simple and you have various options:

- You can push your Professions
- Explore?
- PVP
- Play in groups
- follow the Storys

Now here is the Problem:
You are, what you play. If you use dmg spells/swords etc. (during Leveling) you will become better in this built. But what, if you decide to be a full Healer? (What`s with the "harm no one" philosophy of a doctor? ^^)
You have to train your (heal) abbilities and i don`t want to mix my usage of spells with destruction- spells. That would influence the potential to be a full heal.
Do you level up as a "mage" and then train your healing abbilities?
I understand, that ESO whant`s the "individual style" and not a trinity- class system (Heal, Tank, Damage).
So there will be various hybrids. (Heal-Tanks, Heal-Damage). But what if you wan`t only to heal? Shouldn`t there be the opportunity to follow the Quests as a full heal? Don`t you need full healers in the Endgame anymore? Are the Hybrids enough?

The real question is: How will the (level) mechanics work for the healer.
Will there be specific "peacful" quests, where you don`t need a sword or destructiv magic?
Or are the customisation details not so deep and you can reach your full heal/protecion potential even, if you used some dmg spells during leveling?
When you are level 50 and you do some Quests, will the usage of spells influence your actual specc?

Thanks for every input, discussion and comment!
Im looking forward and i know, that ESO will be ... EPIC

Andragon

Probably not. I can't recall any game of this sort where playing with only healing abilities would have been viable beyond anything but a gimmick or straining the definition of pacifism to its breaking point.

Of course that only applies for solo play. You could always find someone to do the killing for you and get a share of XP.

Thirdly, I doubt healing and support abilities will require complete abandonment of damage dealing abilities to max out.

I don't think that if you played solo, that you could avoid having to do damage. And I think that hopefully ZOS will make a "Healer" type class that still can do damage but has more healing and buffs in it's skill list. But then again like "Didact" suggested above you could always play with a buddy and make them do all the damage while you healed. Also something to think about. This games mechanics are not the same as a normal MMO so who knows maybe Hybrids are enough?? And maybe you just might need two hybrids in a group..I'm not sure, there isn't enough information to really give you a good answer. I mean I suppose you could just go and make a "mage" type class and only put skill points into "healing" skills and then just level up your weapon skill and that will give you skills in that without interfering with your class skills.

If you play with only heal spells, i would assume you have a restoration line damage spell available for you.

That brings a problem, have there ever been a restoration line dmg spell in any of the ES games ?

I know there is dmg from healing to undead creatures. And there is a Necromage talent/affinity (dmg more to undead with restoration)

I know there is a possibility to drain life from a target to the caster by with Absorb health (oblivion spell) and Absorb attribute CON should make the enemy go low on HP a lot and then easy to kill with ie other means.

So it should be viable to use only restorarion if the DEVs makes it a possibility.

<3

All specialized healers in MMO has to be able to do plenty of damage to level up and do solo play. Some of the most annoying thing playing in WOW as an healer was then you used dungeon finder and was doing solo quests while waiting, then getting picked unexpected and the other in the team start fighting before you could change to healer mode.
Not sure how this will work here,

I think there are ways to handle this problem and obviously the respec after leveling is one way. However Paul Sage is from Ultima Online and respec was built into that game because it was a skill based game and each player had I think 700 skill points and it was up to them which 7 skills out of it seemed like at least a 100 different skills or more that they raised to 100 which then equals the 700 skill point cap.

Now say you had a character that was a lumberjack so they could chop wood to make bows and arrows, and he/she was a bowyer and crafted grandmaster bows and made a lot of cash selling them. One day something changes in the game and your character needs to learn to fight, no longer is stealthing around chopping wood and making bows going to work you need to learn to fight other players. All you did in UO was set say your lumberjack skill to go down and your one handed weapon skill to go up and start practicing using a sword. You could then raise the weapon skill to 100 as the lumberjack skill would slowly decline, your weapon skill would slowly rise.

So that is another way they could do things, and that kind of makes a lot more sense for the roll players as well.

Elder Scrolls games have always been about having skills that you raise to 100, so I can see this method of respecing being built into ESO, it makes a lot of sense and would work well in an Elder Scrolls game. You would not be able to just run to a respec vendor and instantly change your skill set, instead you would have to work at it and maybe in a months time you could change all of your skills to new ones and have them somewhere back around your skill point cap.