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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.
Viability of Secondary Archetypes performing their roles
theonegargoyle
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Hi Ashes Support team !
I've read up all the info on the main site and the wiki, I've asked this question in the forums, I've submitted this question for the livestream Q&A's, and I've had a one-on-one PM conversation with the lovely Toast, all to try to get an answer to this one question, but haven't been able to get an answer to it yet, so I'm now trying this FAQ support channel.
The question I'm trying to get an answer to is this: will secondary archetypes be able to perform their role function ?
Examples: If I choose a "X/Tank" class, will I be able to tank for a group ? If I choose a "X/Cleric" class, will I be able to heal a group ?
Of course the secondaries will not be as good at it as the primaries, I understand this and would not expect them to be. What I want to know is, will they viable for small group & easy content stuff ?
You may not have made a final decision on this, if so, that's totally fine, could you please just let me know that this is still in the works and you'll make a call on it later ? I promise I will wait patiently :-)
You may have made a decision on it and not be ready to disclose it yet. That's fine, you can just tell me that too and I will wait.
But if you do have a design/plan/intention on this that you are able to tell me, I would really appreciate knowing. I have a gaming group that might be interested in playing Ashes and this is key for me/us/them.
Please let me know !
Thanks in advance,
Gargoyle.
I've read up all the info on the main site and the wiki, I've asked this question in the forums, I've submitted this question for the livestream Q&A's, and I've had a one-on-one PM conversation with the lovely Toast, all to try to get an answer to this one question, but haven't been able to get an answer to it yet, so I'm now trying this FAQ support channel.
The question I'm trying to get an answer to is this: will secondary archetypes be able to perform their role function ?
Examples: If I choose a "X/Tank" class, will I be able to tank for a group ? If I choose a "X/Cleric" class, will I be able to heal a group ?
Of course the secondaries will not be as good at it as the primaries, I understand this and would not expect them to be. What I want to know is, will they viable for small group & easy content stuff ?
You may not have made a final decision on this, if so, that's totally fine, could you please just let me know that this is still in the works and you'll make a call on it later ? I promise I will wait patiently :-)
You may have made a decision on it and not be ready to disclose it yet. That's fine, you can just tell me that too and I will wait.
But if you do have a design/plan/intention on this that you are able to tell me, I would really appreciate knowing. I have a gaming group that might be interested in playing Ashes and this is key for me/us/them.
Please let me know !
Thanks in advance,
Gargoyle.
3
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
**Edit
However I this is more of an assumption based on other games and this is subject to change depending on skill sets available and how abilities augment.
Eg. Archer / Tank may not be as viable as Fighter / Tank or Cleric / Tank however could still potentially work.
Hi SickBubblegum, thanks for the thoughts, yes I absolutely agree that other games have done this in different ways.
However my question is about how *THIS* game is intending for that to work.
So I'd like to hear something that answers it one way or the other thanks.
Tryed timestamping it but it's not working for some reason. The question starts at about 1:09:18
Similar to what has been said on Q&As and interviews I would say the second arch will further augment the primary archs abilities so if your primary arch type is more of a DPS roll then having a 'tank' for secondary arch type might add additional resistances when preforming said action or giving minor buffs which may aid in additional forms of survivability but not to the extent you can tank a raid.
Keen to see the response tho i'll follow this thread!
Thanks TopCat, yes I understand how the augment system has been described. I guess another way of stating my question in terms of what you've mentioned would be: will those secondary augments blur the line enough for you to actually perform that role somewhat ?
Ie, in the example you give, if Fighter/Cleric (Highsword) augments just give you some self-healing when you attack, then the answer would be No. If Highsword augments give you a bit of splash healing to everyone when you attack, and change on of your big attacks into an Attack + Big Heal on Lowest Health Party Member, then the answer becomes Maybe, or even Yes.
The example Steven has used a few times of a fighter/mage (Spellsword) don't help me answer my question because both of those archetypes have the same role (DPS).
Make sense ?
Yes, you have understood my question perfectly !
I wouldn't expect a Fighter/Tank (Dreadnought) or Mage/Tank (Spellstone) to be a good choice for a Main Tank for a progression raid of 40 people. That would be silly.
But, if I have a few friends doing a small group dungeon which we are at-level for, or maybe even a couple of levels over-levelled for, and have good gear, would one of those be able to tank well enough to get us by ? Or can they not do that at all ?
THAT's what I want to know.
With the way the Tank abilities are currently described on the Wiki, it is full of ways to increase your block, mitigate damage, increase threat, etc. If secondary archetypes are only going to augment current abilities and not add new abilities, it seems to me that tank/anything will always be better than anything/tank. Without all of those ways to control the damage and control the fight, having tank as a secondary isn't going to make you a tank.
However, will anything/Tank be able to tank smaller dungeons? I believe they could. It's all about holding threat and healing the damage, so as long as you have those two things covered then I think you're good. I believe we've all seen cases where fully geared DPS were capable of tanking (and sometimes solo clearing) dungeons. Raids, though? Nope, you need a dedicated tank for that. Or some really bomb-ass healers.
It all comes down to fine tuning, and I think it's just too early to say how all of the niche circumstances will play out.
Confession: when I wrote the OP, I thought that the Ask a Question went to the Intrepid folks, I didn't realise it was an open player forum thing *blush*
Ideally I really am looking for something official on this rather than us discussing our own hopes, thoughts, dreams, etc amongst ourselves.
Until then, since we're here and talking about this anyway, I might as well explain a bit more what I mean (for anyone who is interested that is).
** LONG POST WARNING (skip to end for TLDR) **
At the moment I'm cautiously optimistic about Ashes. I've been following it for about 2.5 yrs, watched every LiveStream avidly, have a gaming group that I've been playing MMO's with for over 20 yrs who I'm keeping updated about the progress of Ashes, etc. And in general, I love what I see coming, but more than that, I love *HOW* the Intrepid team are going about doing it. Most of my concerns & doubts have been dispelled along the way.
My one reservation left and the final thing standing in the way of me being unreservedly optimistic (possibly even wildly optimistic) about it is this - will secondary archetypes be able to actually perform their role, ie, if you choose a class which has Tank or Cleric (healer) as your secondary but *not* your primary, how well will you be able to perform that role, or will you even be able to perform that role at all ?
My concern is that it might be a bit of a deal-breaker (at least for me, and possibly for my gaming group). So why do I think this is such a big deal?
The main reason is that my group and I have played games extensively where only a small number of the classes could perform essential holy trinity functions (hello Everquest!!), and there was zero flexibility around that. This led inevitably to a huge scarcity of those classes and an excess of the "dps" classes, making grouping hard, wasting lots of time, making dps classes feel devalued, etc etc.
Other games have found many, many ways to solve this problem, respeccing, dual-speccing, broad/blurred/nuanced role fulfillment, etc. Games like Rift & ESO any class could do any role, FFIV you just swapped weapon and it swapped your whole class, even Wow introduced dual-spec fairly early on. You still had to have a spec for the roles you wanted to play, and maintain a gearset, and of course, learn how to actually do it, and all these were significant investments and tradeoffs, but those were player choices that you could make if you wanted to. And all of these work to solve the fundamental problem so that people can make groups work !!
In the more than 2 decades of MMO's, this is now an old problem, easily solved IMHO, and there really is no excuse in my books for recreating the frustrations of old of sitting around for hours waiting for a group to form, travelling to somewhere you can finally play, then someone goes LD or has to log off and you're back to square one. These days I have young kids and I don't have time for that stuff, my limited play time (and even more limited patience) simply turn me completely off those sorts of games.
As a friend of mine so eloquently put it, any barrier in a game to me actually playing the game, is enough for me to say no thanks.
So, that's the main reason. There is also a lesser reason that for me personally, I think it makes the game far more interesting if you have more complex choices for builds that you can push the limits of and be creative with. If I can experiment with secondary tanks & healers while also being to do some dmg, then I will probably be far happier levelling those characters (many games tanks & healers are painful to level), have fun trying unorthodox builds and unorthodox uses for builds, etc.
It means I (& everyone else too) would have "interesting choices" to make in terms of balancing these character builds, just how much defense & aggro mgmt does a build need to be able to tank effectively and still be able to level happily ? How much healing/buffing/support does a char need to be able to keep a group alive and still be able to kill things ? These sorts of interesting choices are the key to enjoying the theorycrafting & "character building" side of a game for me. It would be a huge shame in my eyes to chop all that out and take such an overly simplistic "there is one and only one tank, one and only one healer, and everybody else is irrelevant dps builds" approach.
Soooo ... I know that was a bit of a gratuitous unrequested essay, and there is still the likelihood that I might be over-reacting, but there you go, that's why I think the answer to this question is such a big deal for me.
YMMV of course.
TL;DR: if classes "X/Tank" can't tank and "X/Cleric" can't heal, I'll be far less enthusiastic about the game.
How about you all ? Do you feel the same ? Or very differently ? Does that even make sense to anyone else ?
You would be excited about a game that has 15 different tank options but will not be for a game that has 8 tank choices? Your posts sound to me that you are already over the VAST number of potential classes and augmentations to those classes before the game is even in Alpha.
I plan on tanking. I'm playing a tank to MT for my guild and I am extremely excited to have 8 different playstyles to choose from. If they were to allow the other 7 classes to potentially tank (in any regard) this would devalue my class, create an insane amount of balancing issues, and ultimately would FORCE cookie cutter specs for every single class. Now my tank/cleric becomes a healer instead of a tank that can self sustain or potentially group heal with certain spells. My tank/rogue is no longer tanky....I do dps. My tank/bard is now a harder to kill support? come on..........
Your issue with the holy trinity is not entirely the class designs that are responsible. Statistically, throughout MMO history, players have flocked to dps, less to healing, and lowest to tanking. People want to get in there and kill things. It's a game after all. Those of us who enjoy tanking, cc'ing, leading the charge are going to get into groups immediately and hold guilds together. If your team you play with has this issue, someone needs to recruit a tank or healer that enjoys that style......or stick to pvp and just pew pew while everyone dies without heals (which is a massive issue in many games haha).
On a side note. DPS classes feeling devalued goes only as far as the capability of the player. When I played a hunter in WOW...when WOW was an actually decent game, the guilds around the server would invite me to their raids to help teach them boss fights and to help their hunters out. I spent entirely too long learning rotations and min/max gear choices and it paid off, albeit in a nerdy way. I enjoyed it and never felt the issue of not finding something to do as dps. People these days want to face roll a keyboard and top dps. A lot of people I have spoken to have said "ROGUE INVIS PVP KILL KILL KILL" when I ask them what they plan on playing. The rogue class will be abundant in AoC based on my findings.
I'm rambling at this point. To answer your last question, no, it doesn't make sense to me what you are suggesting and would in fact turn my entire group away from this game. Balance is paramount.
It's not just for tanking, it's for healing too. If you have a holy trinity system, and only 1/8th of the classes can tank and only 1/8th of the classes can heal, then you have 1/4 of the classes covering 2/3rds of the roles - you don't think that can cause problems ? You haven't played any games where this is a huge problem ?
Haha, I wish ! No, I'm saying the opposite, that I know hardly anything about how the augmentations & classes will work and combine together. And while I don't think a lot of this is anywhere near finalised yet, I think (hope?) that they might be at the stage where they have a plan/strategy for how those things are going to fulfil the roles, at least loosely. Call it a "design philosophy" :-) And if so, I'd love for them to share that one little bit of their design philosophy with us, now, or maybe soon, if they are able to and ready.
Now this I think is the really interesting part of the discussion. Have you played any games like Rift or ESO where any class can tank ? Or ones where multiple classes can tank ? Most of the time when classes can do multiple roles you have to choose which one you want to do, build your character to do it, spec for it, collect and maintain a gearset for it, learn how to play it, hone your player skills, etc. There is an investment and a whole swag of tradeoff choices that you have to make.
So, you're saying that having other classes able to tank would devalue your class. Why does it have to be that way ? Why does having other classes able to tank make one class less valuable ? Especially if having Tank as it's Primary Archetype means that it would be hands-down the BEST tank in the game, why does having some secondary tanks or off tanks available devalue the primary tanks ?
See I would've thought it was great for the game, b/c it means more flexibility around easier & small group stuff, while still being clear that if you're doing end-game, open-world, large raids, you need serious primary tanks for that. How is this a bad thing for the game ? Keen to hear your thoughts here, perhaps you have had different experiences in other games than I ?
Interestingly, it is actually the other way around in my group. My group love playing tanks and healers, and have done both in end-game raiding in multiple MMOs, and we often have lots of situations where we have different numbers of them on at any time, and what we really want out of a game, is to be able to put a group together with whoever we have on at the time, and go do group stuff together. To do that, we need flexibility in roles, we need to be able to say, ok, everyone have a character about the same level, righto, who wants to tank, who wants to heal and who's going to dps, so we can make a viable group.
I can pretty much guarantee we'll have a number of main tanks and main healers in the group, but they won't always be the right combinations at the right levels to enable whoever is on to group up effectively. That's where the flexibility comes in.
I agree that skill & reputation can mitigate the devaluing to a greater or lesser degree, but that's specific to the player or character. In terms of the view of people towards DPS classes as a whole, well, I'm sure you've heard people referring to them as "huntards" and other derogatory terms. General vs specific and all that.
Hehe, well that's fair enough. It's ok for us to see things differently, and our gaming groups too. I agree with you that balance is paramount though. Maybe we just have slightly different definitions of what that balance is / should look like ?
Hmmm .... that's good thinking there. I think you might be right. Depending on how much info there was about the augment schools (not sure if just the names would be enough .... maybe?) that might enable us to understand their intentions.
For example, let's say there is a Fighter augment school called "Threat Mgmt" or something similar. That would let us know that there is an intention that a Fighter, if they wished to, could build towards having higher threat levels, which would in turn indicate that they would be able to tank, at least a bit. Whereas if all the augment schools are DPS things like "Extra Dmg", "Big Bleeds", "Stun & Smash" & "AoE" then that tells us they do not want them being able to tank.
Yes ok, I think I agree with you that this would probably go a long way to answering my(our?) questions! Nice one !!
Again, interesting thinking there. That would certainly be like how other MMO's solve the problem, just have more than 1 class able to tank and more than 1 that can heal. Tanks and Fighters able to tank (but Tanks are better), Clerics and Bards are able to heal (but Clerics are better) I think for me it would be an acceptable world, but not ideal as it would at least give some build flexibility while increasing what I call "role coverage", having 1/2 the classes covering 2/3rds of the roles, which is much better than 1/4 of them. But to me truly ideal is to have more flexibility than that.
But if it came to it, I could live with that.
Thanks Murdach !
The reason I would prefer multiple, but limited classes for each role is player psychology. Unfortunately, Khronus was right. If Tank secondary makes every other archetype viable to tank, there will be archetypes that go untouched. Example; if Summoner/Tank can main tank, it is infinitely better as the Summon dying has less impact than a Player dying. They would logistically be a better Tank. Similarly a Mage/Tank as MT would have a class with massive AoE be most preferred for bursting down trash mobs/farming. The archetypes like Tank would be relatively useless. Everquest 2 did a good job building specific jobs for their class system. They went a bit beyond the Trinity though. They had mez and control classes. They had buff ripper classes. While they had 1 main healer, there was a class that applied shields, and a third that either applied layered HoTs or gave resistances (I dont remember). This allowed any off Tank class with their own personal HoTs or shielding to progress content without having to specifically find a Cleric. I think it worked out well enough.
I'm not sure if I understand what you're saying. Are you saying:
a) If other classes can be secondary tanks then there would no point having primary tanks ? or
b) If secondary tanks are available, noone would want to play a primary tank ? or
c) If secondary tanks exist, there's no way Intrepid could make primary tanks better than them ? or
d) All of the above ? or
e) Something else entirely ?
To me I think it would be extremely easy to make Tank/X by far the strongest tanks, and X/Tank ok as offtanks or secondary tanks but nowhere near good enough to MT tougher content like world-bosses and raids. Do you not think this would be easy ?
If primary tanks and secondary tanks were both in the game, but primary tanks were far stronger than secondary tanks, don't you think there would be a place for both ?
I'm going to go ahead and close this thread out now, but please don't hesitate to reach back out if there's any other topics we can assist you with in the meantime!