The Gift of Life - Cleric Alpha One Preview

MargaretKrohn

💖 Can you master the balance between life and death? ☠

Meet the Cleric and learn more about the power they wield from level 1-10 in our Alpha One preview: https://ashesofcreation.com/news/2020-11-02-the-gift-of-life-cleric-alpha-one-preview

https://youtu.be/7AHwGp-t27M

winner909098

The abilities of the cleric were just released, and I wanted to ask how people felt about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AHwGp-t27M

Wreyna

I really love the Chain Heal. The Divine Censure animation is on point as well. The Devotion animation seemed a little odd.
It seemed there was an equal amount of damage and healing opportunities for the cleric. So far so good I would say.

VmanGman

I am a bit worried that the abilities seem to do too much all at once and that they are not varied enough. Multiple abilities have both a healing and damaging component and I’m not seeing many abilities that affect the character’s status (stun, silence, knockdown, stun removal/invulnerability etc.). This dilutes the abilities’ importance and can easily create a combat experience where you spam abilities as soon as they come off cooldown (as much as your resource/mana allows).

It’s very important that different abilities have different situations when they are useful. Did the opponent use an offensive cooldown, did they use a defensive cooldown, did they charge at me, are they about to stun me, are they about to heal, etc. Each situation should call for different skills because different skills are helpful in different ways. This creates a higher skill ceiling and allows for skill expression and outplays.

Keep up the great work, but please be mindful of diluting your abilities and not allowing them to have situational utility.

PlagueMonk

Humm, I like all the DPS healing attacks. Gives me some hope to play a melee healer type.

For Judgement however I really really wish they would use some sort of divine hammer animation similar to the DAoC Thane's "Thor's Hammer" (also a bit of nostalgia from the DAoC days )

Winnugami

I want to point out that they did say it was just the 1-10 abilities. It is not like these are the ONLY abilities the clerics get. To that point, they seem like solid foundational abilities that cover most of the basics. I didnt see a heal over time but maybe I missed it.

Warth

@vmangman
@Wreyna

There is 2 things to note in my opinion:

• These are just the Level 1 - 10 Abilities. Just 8 of like 25-30 choosable abilities in the end. Its understandable, that there wouldn't be much status heavy abilities right away. Judging the completeness of the set will probablly be easier once we see the the other abilities. Situational abilities aren't given to the player right in the beginning, they are provided periodically over the progression phase. You have to give them the bread and butter, before you can put the jelly on top.
• The "convoluted" Ability are an interesting observation. I wonder if certain augments (especially as a cleric) are meant to take away/weaken the offensive/defensive capabilities of a spell, while improving on the other. Considering that the Cleric can fulfill both the DPS and the Heal aspect, it would make sense that (let's say) certain mage school of augments would rather reinforce the offensive component, while Cleric/Bard/Tank school of augments focus more on the supportive aspects of the abilities.

I don't think, the base ability being prone to do both would be a negative thing if it was set up like that. It would merely provide the baseline to customize in the direction you want to go. With a limited amount of base abilities to choose from, it does make sense, as having half an ability tree to customize into either direction just wouldn't work with a small-medium sized Ability pool.

With that being said, i do also think, that dual-use abilities can be troublesome, especially if implemented poorly. Its a narrow path to walk, but one that can pay off handsomely.

Leiloni

vmangman wrote: »

I am a bit worried that the abilities seem to do too much all at once and that they are not varied enough. Multiple abilities have both a healing and damaging component and I’m not seeing many abilities that affect the character’s status (stun, silence, knockdown, stun removal/invulnerability etc.). This dilutes the abilities’ importance and can easily create a combat experience where you spam abilities as soon as they come off cooldown (as much as your resource/mana allows).

It’s very important that different abilities have different situations when they are useful. Did the opponent use an offensive cooldown, did they use a defensive cooldown, did they charge at me, are they about to stun me, are they about to heal, etc. Each situation should call for different skills because different skills are helpful in different ways. This creates a higher skill ceiling and allows for skill expression and outplays.

Keep up the great work, but please be mindful of diluting your abilities and not allowing them to have situational utility.

I completely agree with all of this. When an ability does too many things none of those things feels very impactful, nor does my decision of what skill to use at any given moment feel terribly impactful at that point, either. A skill doing 2 things is fine but more than that and it starts to feel really watered down. I want each ability to feel powerful and fun, and if I can just do everything all the time with all my skills, it just feels boring and unfun. I understand that we have skill points to modify and improve the skills we want to use, but if skills are poorly designed at their core level that's a problem.

Edit: This is something that I don't like about GW2 and ESO's skill design. Please don't look at those as good design.

Erdun

I really don't like the spear thing.

that's more for a fighter class than a healer.

Enleiv

The visuals are very nice, and I look forward to getting the chance to test them in person. It's more important, in my view, for the game mechanics to be enjoyable to interact with, than for the animations and graphics to be 'satisfying'. The notes about how the cleric is expected to play are encouraging. I hope the cleric's gameplay loop is satisfying and if not, that we can provide the right feedback to make it so.

T Elf

Looks amazing! Can't wait to try it out. The Kaelar look so much better.

daveywavey

'Damnation' and 'Judgement' look like they should be useful.

'Divine Censure'
"Any time the target is attacked, the attacker has a chance to get healed."
I'll be interested to see the duration and the percentage chance of this one.

daveywavey

Sholer wrote: »

I really don't like the spear thing.

that's more for a fighter class than a healer.

I imagine if you go "High Priest" (Cleric / Cleric), you can augment it with extra healing. And, it's a Cleric, rather than a Healer!

Cold 0ne FTB

I think it looks great. CCs haven't been added to the game. We likely won't see abilities that cc until then. We also don't have any numbers so we can't make much of a judgement when it comes to the buffs/debuffs. I am curious to see how they balance the resurrection ability.

Tyranthraxus

Would personally like to see Mayors of Religious nodes be able to control the weather. Have posted in another thread about wanting Religious nodes to offer more-bountiful crops and resources from your Freehold's resource-harvesters.

What if Clerics could travel to other players Freeholds and "bless" their resource harvesters to put out more bounty, for a period of time?

Damokles

I like how all spells have either a healing effect or a debuffing effect.
All in all, it reminds me of a mix between the Holy and Discipline Priest from WoW.

Sathrago

Sholer wrote: »

I really don't like the spear thing.

that's more for a fighter class than a healer.

Turn it into a lightning bolt and it would be perfect.

apmax

I know they aren't final, but the animations seem relatively over the top and I think it would be better if they were toned down a bit.
It's the fireball problem, jumping in the air and doing a whirlwind every time you cast a relatively common ability is way too silly in actual gameplay.
Especially with the time to kill being 30s to 1 minute, casting one of these over the top jumping animation skills more than once in a fight seems likely and is just conceptually very silly.

George_Black

Loooool FIGHTERRRR NEEXTTTTT

George_Black

It feels like most of the cleric abilities in the future will not animate weapons.
Hope that's not the case for melee warrior classes.

I am hoping for a swift away from the 64 classes and ability flavours, towards 15 or so unique classes, with their defined identity and solid animations in conjuncture with equiped weapons.

Let's see how A1 and A2 go.

Vashramire

I'm intrigued to see mob debuffing to such an extent and at early levels for the cleric. I thought maybe they would shift that more to Bard or Summoner so I'm curious how much more is added so the archetype doesn't just become a heal spammer.

oheyspun

I just really hope that most of these abilities don't force your character to stop moving. They have such long animations and getting killed in an animation lock is no fun.

oheyspun

Good stuff

Sathrago

spun666 wrote: »

I just really hope that most of these abilities don't force your character to stop moving. They have such long animations and getting killed in an animation lock is no fun.

Why wouldn't a caster have to stop to cast their abilities? They are most likely cast times rather than locks, otherwise yes it would be terrible to play with.

Damokles

spun666 wrote: »

I just really hope that most of these abilities don't force your character to stop moving. They have such long animations and getting killed in an animation lock is no fun.

Here is how I would see it (Hard cast means having to stand still for the cast and soft cast means being able to move during the cast):
Castigation - instant no root
Judgement - soft cast
Hallowed Ground - hard cast
Exorcism - channel ability with root
Damnation - soft cast
Devotion - instant no root
Divine Censure - long hard cast
Benediction - soft cast
Resurrection - hard cast

Varkun

Great stuff be excited to see the other classes in the future.

neuroguy

It'll be interesting to see what augments will do to some of these spells that already have multiple components and effects. You don't want to over-complicate single spells when you have a solid number of spells already which seems to be the case with AoC.

pyreal

I'm going to main Cleric and am overall pleased with this, however these are some thoughts:

1: Too much gold. Damage and heal fx should be delineated by color. 'Holy' damage and 'Radiant energy' damage should be delineated.

2: Some of the spell names are, by a wide margin, in the 'generic catholic trope' category. See Exorcism, Benediction, Hallowed Ground, Damnation.
Divine Censure is a good name, it describes the spell but without making you feel like your watching a horror movie about nuns.

3: Devotion has no bearing on healing, healing quickly, nor describes the action of the spell. Something along the lines of 'Rushed/Hastened Prayer' would be more appropriate.

4: Divine Censure has electric sound effects. Too many twinkle sound effects overall.

5: Exorcism's 'ripping at your target's spirit' is not an appropriate description for a Cleric spell. For a channeled spell, I recommend 'Cleansing Malediction'. With text in the line of: "Holy energy overwhelms the target, culminating in a searing explosion. Channeled."

pyreal

I'm going to main Cleric and am overall pleased with this, however these are some thoughts:

1: Too much gold. Damage and heal fx should be delineated by color. 'Holy' damage and 'Radiant energy' damage should be delineated.

2: Some of the spell names are, by a wide margin, in the 'generic catholic trope' category. See Exorcism, Benediction, Hallowed Ground, Damnation.
Divine Censure is a good name, it describes the spell but without making you feel like your watching a horror movie about nuns.

3: Devotion has no bearing on healing, healing quickly, nor describes the action of the spell. Something along the lines of 'Rushed/Hastened Prayer' would be more appropriate.

4: Divine Censure has electric sound effects. Too many twinkle sound effects overall.

5: Exorcism's 'ripping at your target's spirit' is not an appropriate description for a Cleric spell. For a channeled spell, I recommend 'Cleansing Malediction'. With text in the line of: "Holy energy overwhelms the target, culminating in a searing explosion. Channeled."

oheyspun

Damokles wrote: »

spun666 wrote: »

I just really hope that most of these abilities don't force your character to stop moving. They have such long animations and getting killed in an animation lock is no fun.

Here is how I would see it (Hard cast means having to stand still for the cast and soft cast means being able to move during the cast):
Castigation - instant no root
Judgement - soft cast
Hallowed Ground - hard cast
Exorcism - channel ability with root
Damnation - soft cast
Devotion - instant no root
Divine Censure - long hard cast
Benediction - soft cast
Resurrection - hard cast

yeah, see that doesnt sound awful. My other thought is I really dont like getting locked by an animation, or the allowance of animation canceling (when you can still use the ability).

Allowing us to cancel a spell by moving is really nice and adds a nice skill cap to abilities.

Amma

Well, i was not very interested in the cleric until now, but the one thing i love most is healing through damage dealing at the same time, so the most interesting thing is what the cleric augments will do. Can i heal with every other archetype a little bit too through damage (with cleric augment)? If not, then cleric will be one of the most interesting classes for pvp for me. Looks very interesting. I wonder what the next things after level 10 will be.