Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Thanks ^^. to be honest I thought I was overselling it
On the PvP part, what I like with the Templar is its resilience. Having a decent amount of self-sustainability and CC, especially the grab aww yiss ! The way you play it is around your very long CDs, it gives you a huge power spike to get the job done. It has decent dps and huge burst capabilities.
I can say its strength is also its weakness since you burned up your CDs it becomes a running croissant, you can still do pretty well but your efficiency is reduced a lot. That's why thinking many moves ahead will ensure you keep being efficient during your current fight and the ones that will come next. Basically having good "skill management" is what will make you a good Templar.
On the other hand in actual combat, I like the way you need to prepare the best timing to use your skills to burst down your target. You make your target use its CDs by controlling the flow of the fight with CC and regular skills, then you all in !
To guarantee a proper dps and the use of the full potential of the class, it requires you to switch weapons between greatsword for the maximum damages output, extended greatsword to hit from a longer range when the target is kiting hard even though the stats are reduced a lot, it's necessary to hit since the movement speed in Aion is very very fast, if your follow is not on point, you can end up a fight without hitting your target once. And lastly extended sword/mace & shield for the counter skills and CC provided by the use of shields.
More generally in Aion, to be efficient you need to learn "weaving" that consists in auto-attacking between skills, note that by doing this you need to take into account the animation duration of your skills, if you weave between long skills, it will reduce your dps, so chaining skills can be better. Some skills also have short very animations and waiting for the auto could again reduce your dps. Another thing to keep in mind is that some skills animation are very similar to each other, so it's preferable to chain those skills to make your character gain some time between skills and increasing your damage.
There are also some techniques like slideshot, jumpshot, jumpcast that guarantee more mobility, most of them consist of bypassing the immobility that some skills forces upon the player. In the case of the slideshot requires you to use the skill then the jump (this is a very rough explanation). The execution makes you relearn the way you use your skills and doing it in pvp is very hard, but succeeding in it is godlike once you master it. I won't describe in detail how it works neither the other techniques, but you get the idea.
In the end what I like is Templar but in addition to how Aion is played as a whole.
Thinking of my ideal class, I guess it would look somewhat similar to Templar in some aspects, as long as it has a grab, it'll be nice. If Tank classes are being what they are supposed to be then I'll be pleased.
To be honest, a mixture of these three classes would probably be pretty OP, but with enough balancing and a high skill cap it could work.
Glad to see so many healers in the forums. My second choice is that of a high crit Assasin.
If I had to determine my ideal playstyle? Some kind of shapeshifter (jack of all trades style) would be really cool. Something where you could change your physical characteristics. You would basically throttle strength, dexterity, & constitution at the expense of each other. It would allow you to play a tank, dps, or bruiser, and fit any of the primary physical toolkits.
One thing I like seeing in classes for MMOs is making a class that can work on it's own, but excels in a group/team. Basically, meaning that if you plan on doing solo stuff like grinding, you won't feel like your class is working against you. This doesn't mean that a healer needs to have a massive amount of damage inflicting skills, for example, but they should have a small handful that aren't carbon copies of each other with an elemental difference. Basically, if you decide you want to spend the day going out and grinding for XP or resources, you shouldn't feel like you need to get an entire party together to do so.
I've played ArchAge in the past (I'm sure you've heard of it), and I really like the way the class system worked in that game. I understand you already have a plan for Ashes' class system, but one thing that would be nice is if you could have some skills from the secondary class be usable as they are. Not the entire list, just like one or two predetermined ones. I play FFXIV as a red mage, and while I'm pretty sure getting something like that class here is impossible, I would still be nice if, in a spellsword-style class build I could have the option of flinging ice at far away opponents should something happen and I can't move right up next to them instead of being limited with all my abilities being melee only.
Some might argue with me on these points, but my main worry is really that, be it in big fights or small little restock trips, I don't like extended periods of time where I can't do anything. I'm not really picky, and what you guys have made looks amazing so far, but I just figured I'd share my thoughts.
I've played everything. Rarely top tier player, but eventually top of my BG, raid, party, friends, no matter what class played. Tank, healer, dps. My ideal class would be a fighter/mage (spellsword) or (battle mage). Battle mage always sounded cooler to me, even back in morrowind.
What I want is a class that performs mid to close range, is fast (designed to ENTER AND EXIT combat, not sustained combat) and flashy (procs and aoe). Give them moderate melee, but instant cast/movement cast/quick cast spells, for quick teleport, small aoe cc, or hamstring and exit melee to kite. Minor things to mess with enemies, get some hits, then jump back out.
[wow] vanilla through bfa: I enjoyed shaman in vanilla wow, getting weapon procs and flashing damage gave that Oh God Yes feeling, felt good more often than not whenever procs didn't happen.
Being a warrior and relying on damage to compound my damage and healing, made becoming a wrecking ball very fun. The adrenaline of constant combat made up for the frustration of no ranged abilities.
Mage magic AoE, giant fire balls, always good.
Rogue darting in, blowing cool downs and running away. Never was good at this but admired others who did it well, and more so others who effectively countered it.
Otherwise my backup is summoner, but lots of summons. lots lots lots. I want an army. Beastmaster (wow), demonologist(wow), sorcerer (eso), druid (diablo). Even on my death knight I'd use chance on hit items and activate items to summon 4+3+1+1+army of the dead=Oh God Yes. Even though they didn't do good damage I enjoyed the army. And when they did do good damage... no words can describe the joy. But that joy is short lived, I prefer a fighter/mage combo.
Cheers!
Stoked to play all your games, beautifully done.
I've never had more fun on a healing class than when I played my Chlorlock in rift, both in PVE content and in PVP. The class that came second for me was probably my Druid in GW2. The druid in GW2 had a couple of different weapon loadout options. Staff was the primary healing weapon and gave the druid some healing/support skills and from there it was player choice. A lot of players chose to go with a throwing ax and warhorn to remain a ranged class, but I preferred running sword/warhorn because I felt like being in the thick of things in the melee was a lot more fun for things like their Mini-Dungeon/Fractal content and open world. Having the option to be ranged or melee as a healer really added to the appeal of that class. Healing was sometimes frustrating because most of the heals were either aoes around my toon or targeted skill shots on the ground which meant they could sometimes miss players. It was also fun having a pet! Really added to the druid feeling.
I played a Resto Druid throughout the WOTLK expansion and raided Heroic ICC. I did enjoy the druid, I like a hot based healing class sometimes but it was less about the healing and more about what the class was. Having the ability to shape-shift is what really added to the appeal. The druid in WoW just had a lot of quality of life improvements compared to some of the other classes, mostly due to shape-shifting.
When I look at all three of these healers Hots/Dots/Pets/Naturemagic/Melee option really sum up the things I enjoy most in healers. As of right now, I'm playing a Scholar on FF14. Originally I enjoyed it because of its dot damage and fairy pet. Unfortunately, SE has removed the ability to control the single target heals of your pet and also removed all but 1 of the SCH dots. I'm much less interested in playing it as of now.
Rooting for you Ashes. Can't wait to see your healer designs.
It's religious/spiritual person.
Monks(esp. Friars-Daoc analogue) are not often found in fantasy rpgs(not in MMO)- mb only in classical type rpgs(isometric mostly) - but they are iconic characters.
He is rather complex character(maybe most complex character from iconic classes) ; monks are very disciplined warriors, they are kinda clerics(blessings), they are brawlers and acrobats, they are kinda mages, who uses some energy(ki-chi;seems like fantasy version of jedhi) to perform certain "spell" and they are kinda controllers(mellee range).
In this dualistic system very hard to implement monk class( in triple-arch. maybe "aka - cleric-tank-mage" or "cleric-fighter-mage" etc.).
Of course im not count games where monks are usual DDealer(mostly) in leather armor.
+SwordSaint(Magus form DnD) or Knight-Enchanter(DAI) - agile magic fighter who can enchant his weapon, offencive/defencive capabilities or even create kinda ethemerical/astral weapon(or armor/barrier).
The key for me will be the number of combat arts/spells that they make available for a class at any given time. There are also a lot of games that have minimal spell books and combat mainly being point and press 3 buttons.
Would love a good amount of sophistication in the number and diversity of spells, making it easier for skill to be an equalizer in a type of game where people that play a shear greater number of hours are already heavily awarded in much better gear.
The Entertainer in Star Wars Galaxies was phenomenal. Combat was a secondary focus of the class, where most of the class kit was designed around the social experience of an MMO. They made cantinas lively, people had to talk to entertainers to get essential buffs to take into the field, and appearance changes were done through this class, as well. An extremely versatile class that while it could fight in the battleground as a support role, it also showed that there was more than just hitting people with a stick to an MMO.
Then I moved onto Everquest II, where the Conjurer quickly became a favorite. I loved the variety offered at the time with your summoned elementals. They each felt unique and impactful. But EQII did something special with their classes where you started as a basic class and refined your abilities as you leveled. You unlocked a Subclass at level 10 and your advanced class at 20. Once you got to your advanced class and got iconic features, it felt very rewarding. Eventually, I moved onto the Enchanter, though. And this class was focused almost entirely on support. Notice I said support, not healing. They are different beasts. Many games forget this and support classes just don't exist outside of straight heals. I understand this mechanically, as it makes solo content rough, but I still had a blast playing it.
I played many other games, but none of them really had a class that stuck with me. So my ideal class? Support. As I said earlier, it is a difficult thing to implement while keeping the solo player in mind, but so worth it if done correctly.
As a side note, not really sure if it counts for the sake of this discussion, but crafting classes have also always been a passion of mine IF they are separated from combat classes. I shouldn't need to be a level 50 paladin to learn how to sew better. If I can get my mitts on the materials, let me craft with them. EQII was fantastic for this. I had multiple characters level capped on crafting while being level 2-5 in their combat professions. I freaking loved it. Please let me do this. Combat shouldn't be the only focus in an MMO. Sorry about the long ranty post.
Ill try to keep this quick.
I more liked the idea behind their gameplay and origin.
Ritualist could summon ghost spirits tethered to the ground by chains. But i loved the idea that the Ritualist himself was weak and feeble, wrapped in mummification bandages. The spirits were an army that could act as a temporary defensive wall to attack, disable, trap, or consume life that could be transferred back to the Ritualist or Party. The twist to the Ritualist though, was that summoning too many spirits could deplete your mana or your health faster with the more you summoned. Real RP.. u could consume the Spirits and amp up off their power.
Ritualist are a light armored tank class; it was a twist on what a tank could be. Rits could use their spirits as placement markers or area denial pawns; a smart Ritualist could control the field of play.
They were an offset to Necromancers. A light armor class
Dervishes invoked the spirits of the Gods to fight within themselves. Now thats overpowered, but what if the Dervish gained skills in a set that completed a God/Goddesses skill pack, based on your characters deep faith of a particular deity.Think about the RP in a mmo with a Religious system of government and Dervs who are the protectors of the religious faith for a Deity.
Most of their regular skills were Holy Fighting skills or Dark Fighting Skills. They needed to invoke the spirit of a deity and fully invoking that spirit took time. But you guys could push that type of gameplay. Dervs were hard to play because without the spirit, they only could primarily support.
Much Love. Happy V Day. Im in a MMO drought.
I always preferred branching classes like linage 2 that had multi branch paths. I'd be happy with a new branch every 10 level that further refined the class. Example would looks something like from lvl 1-10 got a few skills that could be used with 10 different types of weapons. At lvl 11-20 choice between 2 class 2 paths that had some overlap and that gave you ~2 skills that could only be used with 7 types of weapons (still able to use the skills from lvl 1-10), at 21-30 another choice between 2 classes that gave ~2 skills that could be used with 5 types (with lesser overlap) and etc. There even could be overlap at some point between all the different main arch types. Say a started as a rogue and after a few branches I became a Archer/mage, The same branch could happen if you started as a mage and after a few you because a Mage/archer. They would have different starting skills but got to the same class.
Formerly T-Elf
For DPS, something I've always wanted, but never got, was a true battle-mage. I always wanted to be there in heavy armor, swinging a Warhammer and cutting a line through mobs with a lightning bolt. Some games have attempted to do this, but I always felt they fell short. In truth, I wanted to be Gandalf. There he is in the middle of a fight, with sword and staff, then he suddenly would remember he was a wizard and do wizard things.
But in 1v1 ranger make me feel useless.
So I'll will take the opportunity that gave AoC and go for Shadow guardian or Nightshield and hope that one of them gave me some stuff to respond to rangers.
In AoC I'll be looking to be a personal bodyguard.
I loved my PvP Derwish in Gw1!
Subclass Assassin for the teleport, Avatar of Grenth and multiple slows/dots. It was magnificent.
And never forget the one shot turret strat for ritualists.
The Tactician could create a variety of short-lived walls that had different effects, and then 2 turrets that could have various modifications/effects on them. The walls would act as a tank might in traditional MMOs, grabbing the attention of mobs and allowing damage dealers to do their thing. The turrets would DPS of course, but if I recall they would do some debuffs as well.
Meanwhile the Tactician would spend their time repairing the turrets, replacing expired walls, and they could also knock mobs back from the walls giving them time to do repairs/re-walls.
In effect they sort of acted like a tank with a bit of self-healing, debuffs, and damage.
I know in today's MMOs the stationary play-style wouldn't translate as well, but I think if a similar class had a shorter set-up time it could work well. In many MMOs today combat is fast and mobile. My dream class would have constructs that could be placed/re-placed/moved relatively quickly. Maybe they would be resistant to the attacks that everyone is constantly fleeing out of in today's MMOs. The player would still have to keep themselves out of attacks and do the normal dodging and moving, so having the constructs either resist special attack damage or making them very easy to set back up would be required.
This sort of theme could be represented in numerous ways. Like the Lugian Tactician having walls and turrets. A magic user that summons golems that he buffs/heals/repairs. A nature class that has animals and/or plants (The Animist from Dark Age of Camelot does something similar). An engineer that has steamwork contraptions. A necromancer using various summons for different uses.
In all cases this isn't the typical "pet" class where the class itself is doing most the work and the "pet" is just a tiny dot or has very minor effects. It's a reverse of that. The "pet(s)" are the main focus, doing most/all of the work and the class assists the "pet", having very little ability by themselves.
My next dream class would be a tank that is all magic. They don't have sword, shield, and heavy armor. They use magic bubble/shields, displacement effects, mirror image type spells, grasping tentacles that erupt from the ground, etc. Same mechanics as a typical MMO tank, just wrapped in a different style basically.
My Favourite off all times is the Tank, as far as you can make it something special in terms of states or the combination of equipment, like going as far Tank, mixed with Crit-chance as possibe, or things in this manner.
for me personaly, i would love to see a class, that is build like and Utility-allrounder like "Adlet Myer, from the Anime of Rokka no yuusha". That would be a spicy class to play. here a link for quick Reference:
Much Love and Power to Intrepid and our glorious community!
Also having a lich type of caster would be cool. Using shadow and frost spells would be quite awesome.
I usually start with a more tanky class in order to survive easier when starting out and learning the combat systems. Usually its my first character and "main" that I first get to max level first, farm gear/materials, and then shelf/make a crafter later. I enjoy tanking, but usually see it as more of a starter class to ease into combat by prioritizing staying alive and use it to find groups to play with.
Usually once I have a grasp on the combat and can survive comfortably due to skilled play instead of innate class survival I move on to playing my real passion, damage dealing. I like playing a variety of damage types, but favorites are probably single target burst damage classes and damage over time specialists. I'm not really a fan of mindlessly spamming aoes unless I'm grinding pve mobs and prefer to focus on one target at a time. Also, like I said earlier, I'm a bit of a damage whore. If given the choice between something like a safer ranged specialist and a more risk/more reward melee specialist, I'll go melee without a second thought. I might have fun playing an archer or a mage for variety, but I always feel most powerful right in the middle of the action making myself a target by killing one enemy after another up close and personal.
With that in mind, my favorite classes are those that are high damage, melee, and single target specialists. Some fun to play takes I've seen of this playstyle in previous mmos and rpgs have been berserkers, rogues, and bruisers, the one I like the most being the berskerker.
I like the concept of the risk/reward+success=frenzy berserker. Berserkers that intentionally subject themselves to disadvantages or harm themselves to become more dangerous. Such as dealing more damage the lower their health is or the worse their battlefield position is (such as being outnumbered or suffering from multiple negative effects) and then getting rewarded with health restore, mobility, or bonus resistances for successful kills or big hits to let them continue their frenzy. I really like that feeling of power and risk when you get to act like a monster threat in exchange for putting yourself in a position of being one mistake and a split second away from death. I don't think this type of playstyle will be seen in AoC among the classes already listed to be in the game, but it would still be interesting to see a subclass of fighter that fights harder when closer to death. Just some interesting ideas for abilities/augments could be an attack which deals a small amount of damage to the user on cast, but deals more damage to enemies the lower their health is or having a circular aoe ability that is centered on the user, making it more effective when surrounded.
Though I don't usually play the hit and run style some players like, assassin classes can also be fun with high damage, stealth, and mobility. I think its annoying to fight against and tedious to play a class that hides half the time, but it can be awesome to systematically burst down one enemy at a time before repositioning and picking another target. The main issue is that I think any form of permanent stealth or long term invisiblity is game breaking and ruins the risk and strategy of being a glass canon. When stealth is too strong it turns the playstyle into an easymode gank machine or the cowards favorite class.
The last playstyle I think is worth mentioning that I've seen before has probably lowest damage and is the most tanky variant. Its the "stand your ground" or attrition playstyle of damage dealers that has low mobility, good survival and fair or average damage. I could see the Dreadnought or Knight classes of AoC fit in this type of playstyle. Not exactly a tank, its usually a balance between survival and damage that draws their opponents into melee where they survive while wearing enemies down. Sometimes they deal sustained damage over time that slowly out pressures their enemies healing or apply debuffs to increasingly lower opponents resistances or healing received, but usually is a playstyle that stays in the fight and wins by sustaining pressure to enemies over time.
Though I'm probably going to make my first character in AoC a tank, I'm looking forward to trying the Rogue and fighter and will likely also eventually try the mage and ranger for variety.
My perfect class:
Twin Sword, Heavy Armor Warrior
Pros:
Strong conditional Damage to lock down key targets while enduring combat unlike rogues
Self buffs that give you CC, slow, fear resistances
Counter attacks as CC tools.
High HP.
Off tank PvE for some content
Cons:
Low Magic, physical defence
Not the best mobility
Has to spend resources on second weapon every time there is a need to craft a gear set.
Not the best DPS option available.
My favorite class of all time was probably Brewmaster monk as it launched in Mist of Pandaria. I'm not particularly thrilled with their current state or the state of any of the WoW tanks atm. In mists they had the ability to with cool downs soak some abilities on several different bosses intended to be soaked by an entire raid without dying which could free up the raid to do other things, which was something that would kill the other tanks if they tried it. There were also several raid boss fights in which brewmasters could gain agro on adds, slow them down, and kite them for the 10ish minute duration of the fight which with things being tight enough and constantly needing to pick up agro on new things felt like a fun playstyle.
I highly value movement speed and am likely to play the thing in the game capable of moving around the most efficiently, and if something moves notably slower than other classes, I'll avoid it.
I like to imagine myself playing a Nightshield (Tank/Rogue) because I like the idea of a tricksy tank, I'll have my eye on Argent in case that has an unusual play style. I normally play tanks and I feel like if most of the good tanking falls under the Tank primary archetype I'd be less likely to be forced to reroll main characters (I'll chase whatever tank looks the most fun to play a lot of the time, so if Keepers (Summoner/Tank) become the hotness in fun to play tanks well I'm not past rerolling to chase it.
Assuming 'normal' classes still exist, I like classes that accomplish normal things in unusual ways like:
I think it would be a bit of a tragedy if the classes within a primary archetype ended up not feeling distinct enough from each other. For example, I'd like to see multiple lore npcs that represented each of the different classes and not just the primary archetypes.
It would be nice if each of the primary archetypes that focused on dps had a ranged dps option so people don't find themselves locked out of raid groups from not having enough room around a bosses hitbox.
Healers should be able to solo without it being a nightmare, For instance give them the option to deal increased damage by locking away their ability to heal or give them the option to take and deal double damage in solo PvE, or some other method that lets them be able to play solo somewhat normally while not encouraging a raid to bring mainly healer dps - healers should be able to change their healing style within a class for the situation at least somewhat, say favoring single target, or aoe healing, or healing through dps by switching out spells and gear instead of being locked into a very narrow healing style, but the healers should still all accomplish those things differently.