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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.
Rogue, Ganks and Time to Kill
Cold 0ne FTB
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I posed this question to Jahlon during his live stream today and we had a bit of an interesting discussion about it. However I would like to get the wider community's opinion of this too. In the past Steven has stated that the Time to Kill for PVP to be in-between 30-60 seconds. I feel like 30 seconds is too long for a gank to be effective. There should be enough time for people to react but part of ganking is catching somebody off guard. Having 20-25 seconds at the minimum to prevent a gank seems really biased against rogues. Jahlon (correct me if I am wrong, I am going off memory) brought up the fact that we do not know how rogues will interact in AoC PVP yet, that they will not receive true invisibility and that part of this point comes from a bias informed by how ganking functions in other games.
But what do you guys think about this? Should rogues be able to gank as they do in other games or should they operate in another capacity? Perhaps they could act as a distraction, apply short term debuffs that potentially hurt or cc key backline rolls or perhaps they can flank the enemy as the main force attacks and create a pincer like attack.
But what do you guys think about this? Should rogues be able to gank as they do in other games or should they operate in another capacity? Perhaps they could act as a distraction, apply short term debuffs that potentially hurt or cc key backline rolls or perhaps they can flank the enemy as the main force attacks and create a pincer like attack.
That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.
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Comments
I am personally of the belief that if a class NEEDS to meet certain conditions to be good, then the class is bad. If a Rogue is ONLY good in PvP if they get the opener, it makes them too vulnerable. I feel like ambushing should give the Rogue a clear advantage, maybe even applying a debuff to the enemy which makes them take more damage, but it should only be an opener to the fight, you should not be able to fully burst someone strictly from your opener, nor should it ever take more then 50% of your opponents HP.
No.
I don't want to see rogues 1 or 2 shotting people but I could see them bursting players doing in ~15 seconds if the situation is right.
At the same time, a rogue that is built like this to be vulnerable to classes that have ways of mitigating their damage and surviving their initial burst. I imagine it being very mana inefficient so if they can't kill there target fast enough, they will go oom and most likely, dead soon after.
Personally I agree with that numbers. Either this or some kind of debuff or cc. Maybe have what they fixate or create change depend on what secondary archtype they take. The other thing that would be important to look at it is what happenes when you have rogues in mass either focusing one target.
To answer your question, it's kinda like the invisibility that predators from the Predator movies use. It creates a distortion effect that is visible. if somebody is far away or not paying attention they might miss the rogue but if they look hard enough they should be able to see it.
Care to elaborate on your answer?
That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.
No.
But I will anyway.
There should never be a situation where players are unable to fight back in PvP.
Since your question was if I think rogues in Ashes should be able to gank like rogues in other games can, and in many other games rogues can kill many players (mages, in particular) in two hits, my opinion on that is a solid no.
I am also of the opinion that if a class has stealth or invisibility, it should have exactly zero CC abilities available to it. Not even a 10th of a second stun. Burst damage abilities on such classes should also be limited to 5 minute cooldowns or longer.
Being able to not be seen is the single strongest thing in PvP, such classes need no other benefits.
They can be seen in ashes. There is a distortion effect that makes them quite visible when they move. However I agree that a two ability one shot is too much. I think being able to chunk a sizable portion of somebody's health is necessary. Otherwise there is no real reason to play the class, as stealth alone doesn't offer a raid much outside of potentially being able to scout.
I also want to add that AOC combat is balanced around group combat. The problem with the rogue archetype is I have seen instances where it doesn't make it into group play because the class is too selfish. It doesn't provide enough of buff to the group to warrant investment
That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.
So you want to be able to kill as many people as quickly as you can with no penalties? If that is what you want, the average time to kill should be put up to 3 minutes. Then it can be a good fight.
If you want to have Rogues be a good addition to a group, then keep it as it is.
For this discussion I was hoping on focusing on the no corruption system pvp. So gvg, node combat, etc.
That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.
There is also the chance that with the flagging system, you would want to gank people for valuable resources and taking the corruption risk is worth getting some extra drops.
I don't think anyone likes being one shot.
(P.S. Alpha/Beta testing might change this, so we will have to wait and see)
What do you define as one shotting? Because if somebody's rotation takes longer than 10 seconds to kill somebody than that isn't a one shot in my eyes.
That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.
Not carebear.
If I am going to kill another player, I'll be sure they see me coming.
This is all true, but I would expect scouting in Ashes will play a much bigger part on the game than it has in any other MMO.
If the best scouts in a game that values scouring are also your best single target PvP killers, and are also able to stun lock many classes as per many other games, I fail to see the worth of anything else in PvP.
Rogues as a class will be desired in PvP purely for stealth - in that sphere, anything else will be a bonus. As far as PvE is concerned, they should be able to DPS enough to make them worth the spot in the group, but are also a viable class to give fairly powerful debuffs to (especially if those debuffs take the form of poison).
I was gonna ask who hurt you man but I think it is quite obvious rogues did.
"There should never be a situation where players are unable to fight back in PvP."
- agreed. Obviously no class should be about making you not play the game. Boring and practically overpowered. Even if the skills are on an hour long cool down you just get to pick a poor victim every hour for a free kill.
"Since your question was if I think rogues in Ashes should be able to gank like rogues in other games can, and in many other games rogues can kill many players (mages, in particular) in two hits, my opinion on that is a solid no."
- Yeah... you said that in the first sentence but okay. Agreed.
"I am also of the opinion that if a class has stealth or invisibility, it should have exactly zero CC abilities available to it. Not even a 10th of a second stun. Burst damage abilities on such classes should also be limited to 5 minute cooldowns or longer."
What is this mindset. Obvious bias against not just the class but the types of people who play them. So if you were in charge you are saying that rogues would have no real dps, long cooldowns and no cc because they can watch people when invisible. Seriously if you are not biased then you are just trolling. What a lubricious position.
"Being able to not be seen is the single strongest thing in PvP, such classes need no other benefits."
- not with the way you designed the class. Hit four buttons and then go watch a webshort cause now your useless. You blew all your damage and maybe you got the kill. Regardless now your only job is to wait quietly in the corner as skills reset. You are refusing to put in thought into what you are saying just because you personally dont like the way rogues fight. Not just how over tuned they might be in other games but because you dont like them. Utterly foolish position to take.
- Rogues should have tools to make stealth useful. Despite what you might think of stealth it does nothing by itself if you dont have tools to make use of it. If you disagree maybe steven can give you a special class that can stealth and basic attack and thats pretty much it. apparently you dont need much else.
-How would I like to see them is very much in style with the archetype established over decades of RPG's. Stealthy ambush classes that rely on traps and sneak attacks to debilitate and defeat foes. Rogues never needed the OMG damage to be effective. Stealth is strong in of itself. Designing tools they can use from stealth is key. Traps that apply special debuffs and effects to enemies. Damage that can burst a target but not from the get go.
Ideally the rogue should be trying to set up a situation where they are extremely favored to win. Debuffs that reduce your damage and increase damage you take or reduce healing. Skills that reduce movement speed and force you to face him. Effects that build into untankable damage over time requiring the rogue to be in combat for sustained periods to seal the deal. Traps to punish carelessness. Trap and skills that cant be directly targeted should be the most powerful skills a rogue has. In solo situations the rogue should be focused on observing his target and setting up a locale that when entered will be the hardest to survive the ambush from. Otherwise a vanilla backstab initiation should just put the rogue on par with other classes in terms of TTK.
The rogue should be forced to manage debuffs and skill effects as should the target. Clearing off vital effects that lead to your death and forcing the rogue to react accordingly. The rogue should be slightly favored when facing targets with weak defenses that focus on damage like himself and slightly unfavored when facing targets focusing on their own ability to survive. His prime targets should be ones that heal or buff others. His secondaries should be other damage dealers and the lowest priority should be tanks and enemies who manage status effects or damage really well.
Ideal scenarios are such.
-1v1 rogue was initiated on.
The rogue should have to choose whether to escape the situation where no one has a clear advantage or press in for the kill.
If they choose to run force them to use a skill like smoke bomb to go invisible. This skill should have a long cooldown and should be purely for escaping bad situations. It should be more effective with less damage taken in a given time than say trying to escape death with 10-30% health left. If used at the start of a fight it last a generous time and you are completely invisible. Where at less than half health it should be basically useless. Not lasting long enough to put serious distance between you and the foe but maybe giving you enough time to drink a potion before combat resumes.
If they choose to fight then the rogue should start loading his target with an assortment of weak on there own debuffs and DOT skills. The rogue should be killing based on momentum. By layering skills like bleeding and reducing the targets damage output or increasing his cooldowns on skill should he use them while under the effect of the skills.
In fact the rogue should be given a skill called stun. On its own it does practically nothing but extends slightly cooldowns of skills the targets uses while under the effect of stun. However the more debuffs and negative effects the target gets under the more effective stun would become. Resulting in increasing further cooldown recovery all the way to flat out stopping all recovery of skills.
As the rogue engages in combat he should be setting up a situation that results in the death of his opponent from a thousand cuts. You used some of your bread and butter skills and now are waiting an extra 30-50 percent from stun increasing those cooldowns. You are dealing reduced damage. Have reduced movespeed and healing. You are taking damage from bleeding and have so many negative status effects its become clutter on the screen. The rogues damage is starting to build and once certain conditions are met the rogue uses a finishing skill to end the fight when you dropped below 30% health and had numerous bleed stacks.
Given how I went through that how would any one deal with it? Ideally you should be forced to pay attention on what is happening in the fight. The rogue has you under stun so you know anything you use will have extended time on cooldown. So either wait for the effect to fade or clear it before committing to core abilities. Negative status effects are starting to hurt your over all output of damage so you should have to use skills that CC the rogue or a mobility skill so you can get a breather from them all.
What should dictate who wins that fight is skill. Knowing what the rogue can do and what tools you have to manage them all should be key to preventing the rogue from killing you quickly. As the rogue you should have to be aware of what skills your opponent has he can use to counter your kill path and react accordingly to reduce as much as possible any lost DPS while also maintaining key debuffs and DOT abilities like bleed to maintain dps so you can get your target below thirty percent health for a finishing move. something key got purged reapply it right away. keep movement speed debuff on target to prevent easy escape via mobility or cc.
Scenario 2 ambushing the target.
If the rogue chooses to ambush a target with a vanilla pop out of stealth style ability like backstab then all he should gain is a slight advantage in momentum. Starting the fight with movement speed debuffs and maybe a stack or two of bleeding and some damage. Being ambushed should put you at a disadvantage but not so much you dont have any hope of surviving or winning. Otherwise the fight should play out like above.
Scenario 3 ambushing the target with preparation.
In this scenario the rogue should be given some tools like traps and mines. These skills should take a few seconds each to setup and require your target to walk into them on their own because you predicted where they would move to next roughly 10 or so seconds ahead of time. Like watching a gather go from ore node to ore node. You would be able to easily predict where they went next by simply going to an ore node up ahead.
If the fight starts by the target walking into the traps it should give massive momentum to the rogue. Not a single trap needs to do damage to be effective in this way. At its simplest just applying a bunch of the rogues key debuffs and DOTS before the fight even began would be enough. You hit the traps. Now you are suffering from multiple stacks of bleeding, stunned, slowed, random 1-3 skills automatically go on cooldown. things like that. The rogues most powerful tools should come this way. The traps should reduce a rogues normal time to kill by about half or more. Still requiring the rogue to react to what his target does to survive but also giving him a major advantage in the fight. A target should be solely focused on escaping in that scenario rather than fighting.
Group fights.
The rogue in group fights should be setting traps as the fight goes on and assisting with securing kills. Executing low health enemies and jumping on to targets to help with appling debuffs and Dots. He should be on the prowl for people out of position mainly healers and other dps. Rogues should have the ability to detect other rogue traps and have the greatest ability to detect stealth-ed enemies when stealth-ed themselves.
IMO this makes rogues an interesting and fun class to play while keeping us away from instant kill hell without neutering the rogues style of dirty fighting and damage. Almost all classes should be built in such a way as to require strategy to fight. Not just rogues. From skill combos to stacking debuffs and effects.
I could go all day but I think you got the point. It is very much possible to keep a class in check without neutering the play style for everyone who plays a class whos archetype you dont like.
It was only posted about 90 minutes before you posted though, so it is probable you were typing the above post out as I posted my post.
My first two points you agree with. Cool.
The next point - the fact that stealth is powerful - you disagree with.
However, you seem to be disagreeing with it from a single player perspective.
In Ashes, 1 stealth player that is able to scout out the enemy is able to make 500 players stronger.
If you are doing that, an argument could very easily be made for stealth characters having exactly zero damage dealing ability - as if used correctly, they are already the most powerful class in the game due to a single ability they have.
While you are right in that stealth does nothing by itself, the most powerful ability to pair it with is VoIP.
Edit to add; anyone that doesn't see this has never played a stealth character to it's fullest potential.
oh shiz you did meander in the same area. Yeah I didnt see that. I wan invested in my brain storming.
To your point however by that same logic if we just accept it as is....1. it requires a large area to battle in with significant obstacles or distance from each other. You know cause no need for a scout when we can....see you. 2. Once the battle commences the value of anything before is used or useless. 3. Information alone can be gathered at a distance by mounting or spies. 4. Any information gathered has to be effectively communicated and interpreted and then acted on. Any one of these stages can be effected by other people in voip or simple verbal misunderstandings. 5. Being able to relay information isnt actually game play and therefore should not have an impact on gameplay.
In most games where large groups fight in my experience has always been CC and AOE. The most our scouts could do for us was help to jostle the group into a favored engagement. This is something anyone could do on any class. Stealth just makes it less risky.
May need to come up with a new tactic for large scale PvP.
The balance comes back to group play though, a rogue might win most one v ones against squishy targets there is nothing to say that a tank or fighter couldn't counter a rogue. This would make it so people wouldn't predominantly play them.
However I would like to draw you to ESO for example, in the world of ESO PvP the rogue equivalent can kill somebody in less than 3 seconds but when it comes to any form of group almost nobody that knows what they are doing will run them. This is because they are too selfish and don't provide much to the group. Things like stacking hots and buffs makes ganking somebody within a competitive group nigh impossible.
Rogues can heal and they can take on a boomer role but they are significantly out classed by other classes that can do the same thing. But this isn't relevant as in AOC rogues won't be able to act as healers.
So I don't have a problem with a rogue killing somebody quickly in 1 on 1 combat because this playstyle from my experience does not lend itself well to group play.
To address your point about scouting, it really depends on the game. Personally I prefer having an active role in combat and I want to be an important part of that aspect of the fight.
That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.
As such, if gathering that intel is something that should be considered in class balance, then it is obviously something that rogues will excel at - I mean, the rogue/ranger class is even called a scout.
In terms of PvP Rogues often protect the flanks and the rear. I would hope for meaningful PvP than just rapid attrition. Two Rogues should be able to detect each other due to the limitations of the invisibility in Ashes.
It will be interesting to see the tactics unfold. Can't wait.
That's a fair point but we don't know how the other classes will function, we may be able to scout using summons or rangers.
That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.
The Entire concept of a rogue is a scoundrel that uses every cheat and trick in the book to give himself every advantage, whether that be pocket sand or backstabbing. I think it would be a major mistake to take away the class fantasy of the Rogue just because certain players don't like Rogues.
Ambushing players with stealth should give the Rogue a clear advantage in the fight, but if the only thing that Rogues can do is ambush, then the class is going to be hot garbage. One of the main draws for me to playing a Rogue class in MMO's is the control it offers you when taking fights. You decide what fights you take, and if you decide that the fight is no longer beneficial to you, or if you think you might lose, you can escape or reset the fight, either through crowd control, or restealths.
I also think that the crowd control that Rogues generally offer is incredibly beneficial to groups, especially in defending group leaders, and their ability to assassinate key targets in Zerg vs Zerg fights also generally makes them incredibly desirable in PvP, not to mention they would be great scouts, and information is a very valuable resource in PvP games.
One of my favorite Rogue classes in MMO's is the Sith Assassin in Swtor, which has many similarities to the Outlaw Rogue in WoW, I just love all of the conditional damage and random chance procks, but maybe that's just my inner gambler speaking.
Now personally, I am excited for a stealth system which actually allows for players to detect you, I think this will actually be a lot of fun to try to avoid detection, like it will tap into my inner rogue and make it feel like you're actually sneaking around, instead of just always knowing you're pretty much undetectable. I just fear that it might become meta to pair Rogue with ranged weapons since it might be too easy to detect Rogues once they get into melee range.
Really hope that Steven does not cater to the Rogue Haters out there, or if he does, we can expect buffs quickly when they under perform.
I think most of the people fretting about rogues, in a game that hasn't even got a test version of the class up and running yet let alone having the game released - are bad players that would get destroyed by any class regardless, with a good player behind it.
Let's not scream for nerfs yet based on past experiences of random unknown players.
If Rogues are so OP why don't you only see them in the upper tiers of arena in WoW, etc? Just because you can't handle a class that gets to attack first, at any time, doesn't mean they're OP, don't have other weaknesses, or should automatically be changed.