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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
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Invincible Tank
Unrivalled Dps
Queen of Growlgate
Kraken Tamer
Super Cutie
H8 me cuz u ain't me
I think it's just more of a casual player perspective. Back when I played EQ2 I was a Fury that could either heal or DPS. Depending on the role I was taking at the time, I could be using a lot of my single target heals, or group heals. If I was just being used as a backup healer than I may be using a lot of single target attacks or AOEs. It made for a lot of diversity and the good Furies on the server would be well known if they could handle that diversity well. The casual player doesn't want to have to learn and focus on that many abilities, it's a lot of work. I feel that's important for a good MMO though, but that's not the feelings for everyone I know.
Yeah I agree especially since it takes a lot of time and effort to put in to learn all those skills
Did you ever see specific rotations in GW2?
Some go up to 70 steps (revenant) or even higher (weaver elemental)!
https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Dragonhunter_-_Power_DPS
https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Herald_-_Power_DPS
https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Renegade_-_Condi_DPS (56 step rotation)
And to know these is a normal fact in the higher raiding scene...
So just build up the number skills people have as they progress. That way people get to learn without being overwhelmed
Invincible Tank
Unrivalled Dps
Queen of Growlgate
Kraken Tamer
Super Cutie
H8 me cuz u ain't me
Except a lot of these rotations are just: do the skills once in the right order and then do them as they come off cooldown
And rotations are not really relevant for pvp combat
Invincible Tank
Unrivalled Dps
Queen of Growlgate
Kraken Tamer
Super Cutie
H8 me cuz u ain't me
After some math I'm not hoping more than 20 skill for each archetype, between 15 and 20 .
Each of those base skill will have 4 or more augments.
So a class will have between 60 to 80 skill or even more ...
Steven said once he would like to see skills interact with each other once laughed but has to be confirmed if they are going to do so.
Skills attached to weapons was only for the BR . For the mmo skill may need a weapon type to be cast ( range need a bow to us arrow skills).
Agreed, I originally said around 10, but when I saw the GW2 bar with that many it looked to be too few. I'd say 15-20 active skills at a time is ideal now. I'd want certain skills to be situational and others to be utility.
GW2 actually has at least 15 skills, with skme classes having up to 25 (mesmer and elementalist) xD
So, probably we will have about 15 active abilities when wielding an advanced weapon + augments.
Do you mean how many skills of the class you have to choose from and place on the hot bars? I mean the number of skills you can have on your hot bars at any one time; i.e. 20 hot bar slots filled with skills instead of 10.
You have way more than 20 skills to choose from in GW2 and you can have 15 skill permanantly on your hotbar if we count weaponswap.
5 skills per weapon (3 for mainhand 2 for offhand) and you can have 2 different weaponsets equipped at the same time, and 5 action skills. Then you also have around 1-4 classskills aditionally.
I personally wouldn't get too hung up on the number of abilities until we actually see the classes in action.
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Preparing and Casting Spells
The Cleric table shows how many spell slots you have to cast your cleric spells of 1st level and higher. To cast one of these spells, you must expend a slot of the spell’s level or higher. You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a long rest.
You prepare the list of cleric spells that are available for you to cast, choosing from the cleric spell list. When you do so, choose a number of cleric spells equal to your Wisdom modifier + your cleric level (minimum of one spell). The spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots.
For example, if you are a 3rd-level cleric, you have four 1st-level and two 2nd-level spell slots. With a Wisdom of 16, your list of prepared spells can include six spells of 1st or 2nd level, in any combination. If you prepare the 1st-level spell cure wounds, you can cast it using a 1st-level or 2nd-level slot. Casting the spell doesn’t remove it from your list of prepared spells.
You can change your list of prepared spells when you finish a long rest. Preparing a new list of cleric spells requires time spent in prayer and meditation: at least 1 minute per spell level for each spell on your list.
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Good luck trying to hold anyone's attention for a 15 minute raid encounter with 4 abilities.
I personally think 15 is a good minimum, but that is working on the assumption that consumables do not need to take up hotbar space - if they do, 20.
If we end up with 10 or fewer, I don't expect I'll play Ashes for more than 3 months.
I raided in both WoW and GW2 as a rogue. Combat rogue in Wow and daredevil thief in gw2. I had a 4 ability opener and a 3 ability rotation in gw2. I had a 5 spell opener in wow and a 4 spell rotation. I was still top dps, and i was still invested into the game. What matters is not necesarily the amount of spell, but what you do with them, trust me. Less spells in your rotation lets you react way better to situational thinga, like boss mechanics. Less is sometimes more.
Also, any game with a rotation isn't interesting. If you know the order you are going to use your abilities, the combat system is a fail, even if the game itself isn't.
The thing is that people will always find a rotation for their abilities, even if it is 50 abilities long. (GW2 Weaver elementalist, tank mesmer for one instance).
Every game with spells or abilities that build up a resource or use up a resource will be put into a rotation.
A rotation could be: Cast fireballs jntil you have enough x resource and then cast your big bireblas, repeat. That is already a rotation. All other spells could be extra flavour, i like those extra spells, because they let me react to specific situations, but they are just that. Extra situational abilities.
Add in a few methods of dynamically altering recast timers and all of a sudden rotations are no longer optimal. You now have a system in which priority is key - and not just individual priority, but also priority of combinations of spells and abilities.
This is what made EQ2 combat so captivating at the top level for 10 years or so. The encounters themselves were better than any other game I've played or looked in to, but honestly attacking a training dummy in a small group with the right buffs was more enjoyable than any other combat content in any other MMO I've ever played.
It's all well and good having good encounters, but having a combat system that makes a stick with armor an enjoyable encounter is a sign of a successful combat system - and literally nothing is stopping the developers of such a combat system from also having interesting encounters to go with their interesting combat system.
Again you are getting hung up on specific numbers instead of just looking at the class as a whole and seeing if it works. Also when it comes to raid encounters what holds my attention isn't the number of skills I have but how my character interacts with the raid boss. Even if you have 10 skills in your rotation, after doing your opener hundreds of times and your rotation thousands of times you stop thinking about it anyway.
I don't know about you but what I look for in a combat system is depth, which in this case means being able to use my abilities in lots of different ways for different situations. To be able to choose which skills I use based on the circumstances I'm faced with.
For example, in LoL, "Bard" has the ultimate ability "tempered fate" which is an aoe where anyone who is hit by it is put into stasis for 2.5 seconds. Stasis players cannot take damage, move or use any abilities. The fact that it works on both allied AND enemy players vastly increases the depth of the skill. If it only worked on allies you could only really use it as a defensive tool to buy time or avoid other aoe attacks. However, because it works on enemies too you can use it as a form of engage or disengage or just to lock an enemy player out of the fight.
This makes it much more interesting and satisfying to use.
But if we only have 4, it isn't that much of a choice.
Give us 15 and all of a sudden tht choice that you and I both want is both more in depth, more interesting and more meaningful.
See the above three posts.
If this is possible, the combat system is a failure.
My point is that just because you have fewer buttons to press doesn't mean your combat system lacks depth. I'd rather have a skill that can be used 5 different ways than 5 separate skills that can only be used 1 way. If a class is complete I see no need in adding more abilities just for the sake of it.
Getting stuck up on "oh I want at least 15 buttons to press" doesn't help anyone and will just cause problems further down the line.
Hopefully, we will be assessing which abilities and augments to use based on the abilities augments our allies are using, in addition to whatever our enemies are doing.
Also, we will have weapons with weapon abilities. We can swap weapons during combat, so that provides variety as well.
I would like to see several skills per class that are multi-use, but to me, no more than a quarter.
The reason as to why is a long post, too long to type out on my phone, so will have to wait 15 or so hours.