Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Comments
If a Rogue/Tank is synergizing with an x/Rogue, the DPS can balance out.
Well I dont think a Dps/Support or Dps/Tank should have same dps as Dps/Dps. But they should have more sustains. Otherwise it doesnt make sense if Support and Tank have same dps as the dps themselves.
Listen man, I am just going to have to wait until my ideas are tested before any further input you give, regarding my ideas, becomes valid. Otherwise everything you say doesn't have much meaning.
Remember when I said the thing? About opening a can of worms... Lol
Lol
Not even a letter
As with all things, players can look at the systems as proposed by Intrepid, and state with some clarity how they will make best use of those systems.
As such, player input at the conceptual stage is as valuable as it is at the implementing and tuning stage.
A perfect example of this is the family summons. The simple mention of it made Intrepid back-track. It was stated as being a feature that would be in the game, and is now something they may test to see if it fits (I don't expect it to even be tested, honestly).
Or we can look at daily quests, Intrepid were going to have them in the game, and didn't think anything of it. Players basically all said hell no, and Intrepid have said ok. We didn't need to test out Intrepids version of daily quests to know we didn't want them.
The same can be said with class design, it is foolish to think otherwise - though many of us here have come to expect nothing less from you, so have at it, I guess.
Which is the primary point.
Nah man, that point has no meaning
I'll say it right away, I don't know much about MOBA, but what you're saying reminded me how what Dark Age of Camelot did with its classes.
There were 3 realms. Each realm at the same number of classes. Each realm had access to somewhat the same skills effects, but which class had which was varied. In Albion's tank was also a melee dps. Hibernia's tank had debuffs. Midgar's Thane had AoE spells. It gave such a different feel to each realm.
If the augment system could bring this much diversity it would be awesome. The role of the tank would be the same, but how the job is done could depend on the secondary.
Through this chart, I try to explain that picking your primary archetype is the most important decision when it comes to your trinity role in group content. However, the more you augment your abilities towards a certain role, the more effective you become at that role. A Tank/ DPS will always be better at tanking than a DPS/ Tank, such that a DPS/ Tank will always be better at DPS thank a Tank/ DPS.
Also it might not have come out clearly, but there is also a scale to how much you venture away from the pinnacle of your trinity corner. You can augment a couple, many, or all your abilities to venture however far away from your trinity role that you prefer.
First I would like to say I love your picture you did a good job on it. A couple holes in it, but overall it looks real nice.
Second I would wholly agree if primary and secondary archetypes turn out to be the only choice and factor that went into determining a role.
What I want to see, and hope their system allows for is if with the proper gearing, skill point distribution, auxiliary augments (racial, social, religious, etc) that you can push pass the solid boundaries you have and that there would be some overlap between the red or brown regions for example...
Normally it would. But I was wondering if it was the case in term of building like the primary archetype.
Like Mage/Tank or Cleric/Tank Build building Prot and wearing Plate/Shield. To have different type of protection.
Just to have a different set of starter abilities. Im curious to see its its duable and if its worth.
Cause im not really a fan of the tank abilties. But i could be for Mage or Cleric but still want to be a tank.
If its duable but hard could be really fun to see the combo people can come up with
I'm not meaning to restart anything... I just stumbled across this other quote while I was looking up resistance gear, so I'm sharing it... interpret however you wish.
STEVEN:It's an 8-member party.
It doesn't mean that you have to have the 8 members in order to accomplish content, but it means that the way we balance combat is around an 8-person party. And there are certain modifiers that are applied to the party in-coming experience based on the more players you have in the party, so it begins to equal out a little bit. The best balance you could have as a party is incorporating all 8 Base Archetypes into your party. So, that's going to be you best bet for completing content.
QUESTION:Archetypes as in classes?
STEVEN: Classes are different. Classes are when you combine with your Secondary Archetype and that creates a possible 64 classes. When we say Archetype, we're really talking mostly about roles. So, essentially, you'll first choose one of the 8 Archetypes and that's going to be the Archetype that you can't change.
So, that's: Tank, Ranger, Rogue, Fighter, Cleric, Mage, Bard and Summoner.
Now, when you hit half-way point to Level 50, when you hit Level 25, your going to select your Secondary Archetype which will combine with your Primary to create your class.That Secondary Archetype isn't going to give you new Active Skills. You're only going to get Active Skills from your Base/Primary Archetype.
However, what it's going to do is it's going to give you augments.
There is overlap, in that Secondary Archetype allows you to slide closer to another role.
It's not balanced for you to be able to swap roles. Nothing stopping you from trying though.
You might be able to come up with a build that allows you to swap, but that's a MIGHT be able to swap ; not a SHOULD be able to swap.
Like Mage/Tank or Cleric/Tank Build building Prot and wearing Plate/Shield. To have different type of protection.
Just to have a different set of starter abilities. I'm curious to see its its doable and if its worth.
Cause i'm not really a fan of the tank abilities. But i could be for Mage or Cleric but still want to be a tank.
If it's doable but hard could be really fun to see the combo people can come up with
[/quote]
You can have a different set of protections. Any class can wear any gear.
That doesn't change the set of "starter abilities".
You could try to find augments and gear that would allow you to main tank as well as a Tank/x. The devs state that an 8-person group will want to have a Tank/x. And Jeffrey said that he can't think of circumstances in a dungeon or raid where you wouldn't need a Tank/x.
But, that means it's unlikely - not impossible.
And really...you just need to tank well enough to help your group defeat the challenge(s).
If you have a Broodwarden and another x/Tank, or more, in your group, you might be able to succeed fairly easily.
"You will need a tank more or less depending on what's happening in the environment. Certainly in dungeons you will need a tank. I don't picture us creating any encounters that wouldn't need that sort of control."
---Jeffrey
That's the boat I'm in. I love taking, but I'm not feeling the style that the tank archtype abilities roll with. I would love to see certain combos of x/tank bleed into that tank role in party play.
Normally people would think of it as a triangle, but I feel like a bard provides a distinctly different utility than healing. You need a healer to run a dungeon, but you don't need a bard. However, a bard doesnt provide damage like a true dps archetype would. A bard enhances the capabilities of the party, without directly damaging or healing or tanking.
Different archetypes have higher proficient with different types of armor and weapons. If you were primary mage, it might be very detrimental to wear such heavy gear as plate, and a mage might be very bad with a shield. We know they can use it, but it depends on how Intrepid implements these proficiencies.
Yeah thats why I said i was curious to try and see if its duable. Cause yeah it might reduce on certain things but if the playstyle is more fun for someone and still work quite well I wouldnt care
That's probably the way the Ashes Bard will be designed.
We will have to test it to know for sure.
The Ashes Bard will have heals but those heals will not be as extensive as the Cleric. According to the current design.
Well, it's more that a Shield probably doesn't synergize with Mage Active Skills as well as a Wand would, but that also depends on what augments are being used. Shield would probably work quite well for a Mage/Tank or a Mage/Cleric. Same for armor.
I love that the "trinity" has four corners... and that it is also a really good model for this discussion!
That triggers my quirky sense of humor, many thanks!
You're good, I agree with you here. The only real hole is that opposite corners don't touch. You don't have a slide on here for a Bard/tank. Unless you took your map and folded it over a sphere so they wrapped around to each other, and left summer at the core of the sphere.
😉
I think it would be more accurate if it was just a combination of left/ right sliders, and each slider would just be a combination of 2 roles. My chart would be more accurate if you could augment using each archetype as a secondary instead of just one, since you could go a combination of bard with tank and cleric and be somewhere in the blue still. But, since you can only have one secondary archetype, it is actually much linear. Maybe religious, racial, and other augmentations will push it into the more planar model.
Oh I was thinking of it more as a plane and the different colored zones were what role you could fill in the party. Then the various class combinations were a scatter plot on it and then depending on how you kit them out would shift your Dot.
Ya, that was the plan. But as we know right now, a character's plot on the graph has only the option to be on one particular line. If you go DPS/ tank, you can only be on the particular line of DPS/tank. But if you plot the group's composition on a single graph, this could work to see where the strengths of your group lie.
So a Rogue or a mage start off in the corner of brown. Then you choose tank or bard as a secondary and it slides you closer to the red or blue zones. What I was getting at earlier was with enough of the other effects and choices I want to be able to move my DOT into either the red or blue zone and fulfill those roles for the group. have a rogue bard that is fully into being a stealthy support for his team. Or a mage tank capable of tanking...
Getting the slide to move between two at once is probably for the best. I think if they made a class that could be tanky, deal good damage, and heal all at once we will get an op class, or in the attempts to Nerf it inline with others it would become bad at all of those things.
Although I think that your two direction rule could also be broken by using the summoner through the middle. If summoners can summon tank, heal, or DPS minions, you could probably push your character in different directions at once if you tried, although without a focus you'll probably just end up half-assing those things...
A bard/summoner with DPS and heal pet stuff?... Sounds like it would get messy fast.
That kind of falls in line with my worries for a tank/cleric. Put enough self healing into a tank and he will be really hard to kill in the wild... 1v1 even with average DPS, he will eventually win the war of attrition...
It's more of a 'Pyramid'. Four corners on the ground, the Summoner is 'above' at the top, and has to 'choose a direction to come down, or stay up there and only send a minion down when needed'. Everyone else has to go 'up' to get something technically a little closer to the others, but since balance is by Active Skills, it's seeming unlikely that /Summoner will give Bard much DPS from summons (in the form of a DPS minion) compared to others.
As for your Tank/Cleric worries, assume that Healing usually only works when using an ability that hits the opponent. This isn't enough to do it, but Paladins, even if they are the absolute masters of the Mitigation part of the Janken, won't necessarily be able to kill opponents without risking their own lives.
Open world PvP, especially 1v1, is going to involve a lot of running away, based on the 'we are not balancing for 1v1' concept. Mitigation class sees most Attrition classes coming? Run. Attrition sees Cooldown based burst damage class coming? Run. Cooldown class sees Mitigation class coming? They'd probably at least test things out before they ran, but most likely, still run.
They have said that summoned creatures can give you abilities for your action bars, a summoner secondary might be a way to get new abilities outside your primary archtype, in the form of an activated ability from your summons...
That's the thing on tank/cleric, it shouldn't fear burst either. It would have the mitigation to survive the burst and the healing to make it sustain. These classes are always hardest to balance imo...
Although you do bring up another point that makes me curious. How will summoner summons respond to this runaway philosophy you have? Will they stay and fight until I reach a certain distance and then rubber band to me or just disengage and run away with me?