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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.
On The Front Line - Tank Discussion
Khronus
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
For those brave souls who plan on choosing the least played class in Ashes of Creation. I am curious about which archetype you are most excited to play and what you are hoping the playstyle shapes up to be? What made you decide on tank over the other choices?
I am most excited to explore a Tank/Summoner. I decided against a summoner main for a tank to ensure my guild has the most success when raiding and pvping and not having a raid night where the tank doesn't show. However, I am still excited to see what opportunities I will have as a tank/summoner. I'm hoping that I will be able to summon some beefy minion that may assist with CC on the battlefield or possibly be able to protect an ally when they are near death (charge to a healer and prevent death)
I am most excited to explore a Tank/Summoner. I decided against a summoner main for a tank to ensure my guild has the most success when raiding and pvping and not having a raid night where the tank doesn't show. However, I am still excited to see what opportunities I will have as a tank/summoner. I'm hoping that I will be able to summon some beefy minion that may assist with CC on the battlefield or possibly be able to protect an ally when they are near death (charge to a healer and prevent death)
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I hope it feels like gaining 300 pounds of body weight, then running over a sea of little kids while wearing full plate armor, as they helplessly bounce off of you or are trampled underfoot. Are they going to slow you down? Sure - but they're not going to completely stop you.
Giant slab of muscle rushing in to crush my foes. While sowing as much chaos and malcontent as possible on our enimies.
I do not forsee myself playing a tank, but if I did I would probably be doing the tank/summoner as well albeit with a different idea of how it works.
My thoughts on a cool summoner tank would be something similar to a "mechsuit". Basically while mounting your summoned creature any damage taken is instead taken by the summon and you have empowered or unique skills to use while riding it. If you decide to dismount the summon you get your ordinary skill set, but have the augments focus on escape/remaking a fallen summon. I think the best way to describe this would be D.Va from Overwatch, or a mounted combatant using a unique kind of large beast/creature that is extraordinarily tanky. The flavor for whatever this summon and archetype can be so many different things so this is why I am mentioning mechsuits and beasts as examples when they would mechanically do the same things.
Basically, whatever tickles the fancy of the designers working on it and fits the game.
I can imagine self healing to be pretty effective on a class designed to take damage. And i always loved to play Paladins in other games.
Kinda curious how Paladin would work in a game like this. I don't see how it's possible to fill the Paladin fantasy as it was designed in D & D and most other games that have them. While healing is one thing Paladins always do along with some form of support. Doing damage from the heavens is another aspect of the class that is pretty important.
I'm wondering if they used the wrong class name for that specific combination. Paladins in reality are a knight that fought for the church essentially. That gave them virtually no healing capability whatsoever. They just murdered people. xD
Paladin sounds more cool than Templar so it might be better to swap em. xD
U.S. East
while I would like that as well the balancing behind that would be a nightmare
Because Sec. Archetype dont make new skills , i think the Tank / sum. will be a fulltank . I think Def. Skills give him extra HP / def like a summ. Armor or something. i dont think he will have minions. he maby have a flag that he can put into the ground and gives some Buffs in this aera. maby 1-2 protektion Skills but in my opinion his main Fokus is to CC / Tank and break the line in a battel, and the sec. archetype just support one of his roles.
I would be alright with that. A battle flag would be pretty awesome to stab into the ground and provide something to the group. I'm looking forward to my CC options the most in pvp. I want to annoy the piss out of anyone crazy enough to get near me (or in range of my harpoon!).
That does sound like fun!
I find myself agreeing with this.
I haven't really seen any class mechanics as of now. It just seems to be a series of skills you can push without much regard for anything else. Doubtful there will be any resource management or particular burst windows or anything of the sort. Hoping that gets improved on as feedback comes in.
I have a mind to have an Tank alt, and I also tend to lean Paladin or Knight. Spellshield is another possible interesting combo.
first of all sorry for Necroing this from April but it hits at the crux of what I'm thinking for a Paladin. Most expect a Paladin to be a Holy warrior, however Ashes opens up another avenue with Cleric Death augments, think more Death Knight. Which to be honest is where I would probably go with the class. I prefer Debuffs and DoTs over minor self heals
US Navy Submarine Force
Absolutely, you could call it an anti-paladin to keep things simple. I would love to see this variant of paladin too.
@Nytehawk I completely agree. Debuffs/dots to me have more substance than minor healing. Healing will always have strong value but without huge numbers, I don't feel as useful compared to giving the party/raid the ability to deal more damage to a player or boss.
US Navy Submarine Force
I personally hope that we don't have to waste augments on being better at maintaining threat. I would really like to be able to explore unique options to customize my playstyle and be forced to use proper ability rotations for threat management. I would assume we won't get many dots to use considering how much cc we already have. Hots....definitely.
x/Tanks will probably want some augments that generate threat. Just as x/Clerics will probably want some augments that heal.
x/Clerics might have to think about how much threat their heal augments generate if they stack a lot of heals, but we don't know that they will be able to heal enough that it will be an issue.
We'll have to wait to see what augments are available before we can weigh in meaningfully.
It's quite possible to also have a Paladin have a lot of buff augments or auras instead of the healing that most people think of.
We know that two of the Cleric augment Schools are Life and Death, so we should expect Paladins to be able to deal damage from the heavens, likely in the form of angels and spirits. We should also expect some form of Enhancement School.
As it is now, I'll probably be Tank/Tank. Can't tank harder than a Tank/Tank.
Based on your interpretation of the information out there and the live streams? How would a threat school add anything to existing base line threat mechanics the tank class already has?
So, a Guardian would be able to add Threat augments to abilities that don't already generate threat (same as any other x/Tank) and may be able to use Threat augments to stack threat on abilities that already generate threat.
It makes me wonder if Tank/Tank will be required for main tanking in raids. Steven has said in multiple podcasts that their goal is to leave things up to the players, from class augments to 'this set is the class set because we (the players) think it's probably best'. But players adapting a 'by-the-numbers' approach might stick to more traditional roles in mmorpgs. I'm leaning towards making a tank/cleric for the paladin aspect but don't want to miss out on tanking opportunities if I am 80% as tanky as a tank/tank. It's possible that players just gravitate towards Tanks tanking, healers strictly heal, dps strictly dps and CC if they can.
Augments are icing on the cake.
"Healers" cannot strictly heal anyways because many of the healing abilities also damage and some of the damage abilities also heal.
I support their decisions in leaving things up to the players and giving them the tools to do so - like making some healing spells deal damage, some damaging spells provide healing.
I think my worry is less with what the design team will do, I trust them, but if players will ignore the options for the small percentage increase to survivability/cc/threat generation by rolling tank/tank. I think we will just have to wait and see.
I cannot imagine having to organize 64 different "classes" but hopefully they are able to while still making it a unique system that is challenging and fun at the same time.
But, how you apply augments onto Active skills and place points into Passive and Weapon skills, will significantly change how you main tank.
Tank/Tank will add to their own survivability by using Damage Mitigation augments while Tank/Cleric will do so via Life augments. We can expect a Tank/Rogue or a Tank/Mage to be more of an evasion Tank, rather than relying as heavily on Damage Mitigation as a Tank/Tank.