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archetype trinity and aoc classes | main tank and dedicated healing
delghinn
Member
Only having one class be a viable main tank and another for primary healing would seem likely to cause considerable contention for those two classes. something that happens in many other games.
has there been any discussion from devs on this?
possible solution would be for larger group raid content to be best to have tank class in main tank role and cleric for main support however all smaller group content is viable for more hybrid classes to function in those roles.
has there been any discussion from devs on this?
possible solution would be for larger group raid content to be best to have tank class in main tank role and cleric for main support however all smaller group content is viable for more hybrid classes to function in those roles.
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This means that if you have one tank and healer in Ashes, they are able to run 6 DPS though content, whereas in WoW or similar, they could run 3 DPS through content.
Essentially, this means Ashes needs have the tanks of other games.
I just hope the rogue tank doesn't tank and dos better than a tank tank like in some other games.
Sure tank tank should have the most damage mitigation because they chose that route but it doesn't mean noone else can tank. You might just have to be more creative and skilled to pull off other classes.
The tank tank usually sacrifices damage and therefore can take longer to gring out levels so they should be rewarded for that work by being the top of the tank list. Its in their name, twice.
The same goes for Tanks. We don't know yet if taking the Tank as a secondary class will give you access to threat generation abilities and taunts. If they do, you might very well be able to tank effectively as a Fighter/Tank or something similar.
And raids are always going to be a clusterfuck. So it should be as fine as it can be.
As for healer they said Bard has some heals but nothing like a cleric. But i am curious to see if there are any other "healing" related augments from guilds / religions / citizenship / wherever other augments come from other than your 2nd class. While Cleric/Cleric and Cleric/Bard might both be viable dungeon / raid specs for group content, im not sure the others will really add to the cleric to make them diverse enough. Like a Cleric / Ranger or Cleric / Fighter i see as more of a healer who can hold their own in PVP and solo content but not contribute a ton to group (still contribute but just not in the same way).
But i think it's still a bit too early to talk about some of the balance since as far as im aware not all of the classes are implemented yet, at least not all of the classes have any sort of released information on them.
if that proves the case it'll be the same as many other games with extreme class contention for classes to fill the tank and healing roles.
Yoy caught me slacking
We've had enough rogue tanks in other MMOs. Let the people dedicated to tanking tank. We have enough we give up in killing stuff slow and questing slower.
I'm sure there will be bosses where you want a mage tank or something so some reason.
8 out of 64. which is really one class (out of 8) as it's only the base primary that matters as it's apparently the only class that can fill one of the three trinity archetypes. there's also the matter of only being one class that can perform another of the trinity.
it is not like we dont have numerous examples of similar games that all have the same issue with there being so few viable tank and heal/support classes.
8 Classes to Heal, 8 Classes to Tank. I would consider these numbers to be very generous. Few of the other MMOs I have played have had 8 Tanks or 8 Types of Healer...I do not see the concerns.
out of 64? that's the some extreme class contention for one of the trinity roles. same issue with clerics being the only viable main support/heals.
dedicated tanks and healers are not popular enough to only have one class serve the class trinity role. evidence by every single other game that goes through all the drama of the community begging to get people to run classes in a spec to do so or ever far worse in the situation that aoc is in that only has one class each to perform two of the trinity archetypes.
my solution:
tank/* can main tank
*/tank can main tank
cleric/* can main support/heal
*/cleric can main support/heal
tank/tank is just the most thematic classic armored board and sword tank
cleric/cleric is similarly just the most thematic classic armored mace wielding healer
neither being most effective at tank / healing, they're equal in capacity just most aligned in classic concept
It is not clear what Tank Secondary will enable but it should allow people to take more Damage (I assume). Tank is a more specialised role than the Support Classes in some ways.
If a summoner/* is unable to provide main support/heals than as far as people putting groups together to take on group content they may as well not do any support/heal at all. Cleric secondary having the primary class gain access to mostly self heal/support (regardless if that's in defensive life heal or offensive death life drain) doesnt mean anything to anyone else as far as group composition.
I recall the same discussions that state basically the same thing you're restating. secondary class only augments in limited ways the primary classes abilities.
my point is they are making a mistake. tanking and primary healing roles are always undeserved. restricting the ability to do each of those roles to a singular class is going to be make matters even worse.
Groups will be balanced and one tank can take 7 others in a group. The group size is bigger than other MMOs but not the biggest I've seen. Therefore, less tanks will be needed overall. They need to make the 8 tank classes unique and pleasant to play. Not double the tank options to 16 variations. Primary Archetype matters.
The best case scenario would be to balance the classes where clerics and tanks are slightly lower priority than traditional mmos while the other 6 archetypes have and elevated priority when making groups. This, however, is very difficult to design effectively.
there's not enough interest in tanking and healing for there to only be one class to perform each of those roles. that's proven out numerous times and will be proven here as well if they go live with only one viable main tank and healer base class. some of the limitless sea dps classes must be able to perform those roles just as tank/support classes should also be able to dps.
not every class needs to be able to perform multiple archetype roles however every class shouldnt be locked to one either. And for the ones that can perform more than one of the trinity they need to be just as viable in both or all three roles than classes that only perform one.
classes should be structured around their archetype theme more so than justifying their existence by meeting one of the game mechanic trinity roles.
People just don't like that everyone wants to DPS so its harder for them to find groups. Well they get to kill more in PVP and geinf exp easier killing faster. That's the trade off.
This game is obviously catering to the aging MMO crowd that doesn't want the game handed to them on a platter.
We.know how grouping works and how the trinity system works and we like it. Let us have our nostalgia. There's enough games for people who want their character to do all roles and have their quest node trails.
Just be happy you don't have to actually /chat to NPCs and figure out the key yours to get the correct reply. 8 tank and 8 healer combos is more than enough.
that's 8 out of 64. that's the same ratio as 1 out of 8. We can just simply count the base classes. So that's a total of 1 tank and 1 healer out of 8.
also that's quite a strawman conflating ease of other content with efforts to alleviate the excessive to extreme wait times to participate in pve content for most all the classes but two that have proven time and time again to be far less popular. However no matter how less popular they together provide a whooping 2/3rd the trinity. It is obviously a game breaking experience for most everyone else. And that's not even going into how typically classes that fit into the dps trinity role are always interchangeable while again the other two roles must be met by either very few possible classes or in the case of this title only one single base class for each trinity role.
and that's not to dismiss your grievances. tank and cleric base classes should have more varied and enjoyable experiences in pvp content and while general leveling. though at that point we're at best discussing abandoning the miserable trinity grouping mechanics or at least freeing up any base class to augment into any trinity role.
the 8/64 'classes' are all kinds of a mess
That makes no sense. If one class should be able to perform all tasks just as good as a specialist, why even bother with specialists? Not very special, is it.
My assumption is that tanks will not be as strctly necessary as in other games. With 3 fighters in the frontline, they may be able to keep the backline safe anyway, it just wouldn't be as good as having actual tanks.
Who knows. It's all speculation.
Agreed. A generalist's strength should be flexibility and adaptability, rather than potency. Thus, if a Summoner can perform multiple roles 'adequately' (or even sub-optimally), that's already a benefit in terms of group dynamics.
If you're doing a raid that has certain fights that are especially demanding in terms of collecting and controlling adds, a Summoner should be able to slot in there. If it's then followed by a fight that puts a massive burden on your healing team, the Summoner (presumably) should be able to slot in there to lighten the load too, even if they aren't as good as a true healer. Why? Because they're there, and they can do both.
There is a reason that we have the phrase "Jack of all trades; master of none". Not being able to compete directly with a specialist in their area of specialisation doesn't limit the value a Jack can bring, because we've got no fast travel (outside of families), and that means swapping in alts to a raid is going to cost time; time in which another raid could show up to contest you.
I would love to see Summoners in a place where they can perform the role of a tank or support, but not at the same capacities as true tanks or supports. That would just lead to obviating the need for Tanks, Clerics and Bards.
Balance does not mean "all things must be equal in all aspects". Balance is about give and take. Giving up something to get something else. Ashes isn't balanced around a 1v1 scenario. It's balanced around 8 person groups, meaning that the development goals are for all archetypes to have their own niche to fill in a party, in a way that makes them competitive with other options, even if they're not mathematically equal.
Making everything perform equally in all roles would lead to the same cancerous homogeneity that's infected games like WoW, where things like 'Class Identity' are little more than flavour text at this point.
If you make everyone a jack of all trades I can heal/tank on my own then you've ruined the class balance of the game and defeated the whole design intent. Steven wants to force you to work with other people and build relationships and not be able to just faceroll through things. If every class can main tank with a /tank sub then what is the point of a tank primary? Fighter/tank will do more DPS and still tank so the meta would shift to that and Tank/X would be useless. Same with Cleric/X. That would also lead to other secondary classes being underutilized in favor of /tank or /cleric so a significant portion of the customization and variety of the class system is lost there as well.
This seems like an awful lot of trouble just to cater to DPS not wanting to have trouble finding a group. An easier solution may be befriending a healer or tank, joining a guild, playing with RL friends that play those roles, or doing something else while you wait like crafting so your time doesn't feel like it has been wasted OR roll a tank or healer yourself.
It's far too early to see how the community distribution of classes will shake out. We haven't even really seen what the skills and augments will be. Yes, I agree MMOs generally have more DPS than tanks or healers but they need more DPS than tanks or healers as well. The survey that was floating around these forums last I checked was actually pretty even with all classes within 2-4% of each other. Cleric was actually the second place most popular choice if I recall behind summoner. In my guild Cleric is the second most popular choice, who knows how things will play out. Your idea however seems like a heavy-handed solution to a simple problem. If there aren't enough tanks or healers people will reroll to those classes in order to meet the demand is my hunch. Perhaps the variety that Tank/X offers in terms of gameplay will lead them towards trying a new role that plays in a manner that they find fun.
Compare that to a game where you have a party of 4 or 5, the disparity in opportunities is not as great.
It’s possible that a tank or cleric might have enough DPS output to not be too much of a redundancy if the group already has one, but we’ll see. Maybe it depends on the second class.
That's a fair point. I do think if you attempted to start your own party you'd find people pretty quickly as a tank though as many people don't want to join a party without a healer or tank already in it because they may have to wait around for a while doing nothing but if the party already has those pillars in it then it's a snap to find DPS.
The only downside to doubling up on classes in group would be the lose the utility skill each class has so which no mages because you have 2 summoners you could lose the detect magic (or whatever their skill is supposed to be) and miss out on some hidden loot or something but it shouldn't be too much of a hindrance probably. I think cleric and tank DPS will be respectable but not efficient in group content probably. That's pure speculation on my part though. I think Cleric/Fighter may be great for solo grinding and questing and a solid healer in group content but as a DPS lackluster when there will probably not be a shortage of DPS or groups will prefer (but not demand) a true dps class in their place.
Heroes Fade but Legends last forever
I see your point and it makes complete sense. With that said if there is 1 tank for every 9 DPS in the game then essentially you should be better off. If I walk into a tavern and there are 30 heroes in there and 3 of them are tanks and 3 of them are healers that is a 1 to 8 ratio for example. I think that is the more likely scenario. When I have played a tank or healer in the past I tend to find more people want me on their "friends" list and I found it easier to find a static group to play with.
Heroes Fade but Legends last forever
The good
Clearly defined tanking/healing roles will make it so there is no question. If you want to tank, you choose tank. Then your secondary archetype determines how you tank. As a tank main, this sounds awesome to me. I also love the idea that everything is balanced around group dynamics.
The concerns
I have a few concerns in general. I'll try to be really clear and hope some of these are already being thought of by the developers:
Classes
Those are just some of my thoughts around it. I think it's extremely unhelpful to look at "only 1/8 classes can be tanks" because it's just a lot more nuanced than that given that players are not equally likely to roll every one of those 8 classes. Tanks are in demand because it's a responsibility in traditional MMOs, thus people don't roll them. No matter how many of the classes "can" tank, it doesn't solve that.
I really like the conversation about Summoners. Having "generalists" in the game is important and I think having classes that can makeshift-tank in smaller encounters (e.g. clearing a quest in the open world) is super important. But I think it's less about "who can tank?" and a more general conversation regarding the trinity and how primary vs secondary archetypes affect it. Intrepid is on record of saying secondary archetypes will help blur the line. But how much? It's an important and philosophical decision that I don't think we're going to fully understand for quite awhile.
TL;DR
Avid tank player. Would really like to know more about Intrepid's long-term vision on classes and how they come together with respect to the trinity. As someone who has MMO-hopped for the better part of two decades now, I'm super excited for this. I would love to be in a world where I can roll Fighter and play as a PvP/Generalist (e.g. go Fighter/Tank for small dungeon groups, but never main tank for raids), or go Tank/Fighter and be able to do decent damage out in the world. But it's more important for me that Intrepid has a vision for it and knowing what to expect going forward.