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
You did notice how I said those changes can be very useful, right? I'm not discounting that they make a difference. What I said is they're not going to change how I play the class. Changing how I play the class or changing how I use that activated ability in a fight would be a "significant change".
Neither of those are a "significant change", I'm still going to use the same abilities in the same order I just now get some extra goodies... And yes I said etc etc because I didn't want to write more... You can add shock and frost to your abilities and sure it may synergize with other classes better but I'm still using the same abilities in the same order for the same gameplay, nothing is changing...
@Noaani change 25 to 50. My argument still stands. The augments that have been given as examples don't change the class play.
Maybe they will once they start releasing more of them, but for what's out right now... Not really.
Balance is by Primary Archetype because that makes it easier on the devs.
Rather than trying to balance by class combos.
Balance is by the 8 Primary Archetypes - hence the term primary.
Ashes is an RPG. There should be a wide variety of ways to play differently, spec differently and look different.
Tank/Mage can also be an Evasion Tank. Py'Rai Tank/x might also be Evasion Tanks. Thieves Guild Tank/x might also be Evasion Tanks.
I suppose you could call a Rogue/Tank an evasion tank if you want to but, it does not fit the mindset way better because Rogue/Tank is primarily a Rogue. So what you actually have is a tanky Rogue.
What? If you want to main Tank, you play a Primary Archetype Tank.
If you want to primarily Evade, you probably play a Primary Archetype Rogue or a Primary Archetype Mage.
If you want to be an Evasion main Tank, you choose Primary Archetype Tank and pick up augments that allow you to Evade.
If you want to primarily Evade, but also off-tank, you choose Primary Archetype Rogue or Primary Archetype Ranger --- possibly even Primary Archetype Fighter --- and then pick up augments that allow you to tank.
If you want to play a Ranger who also does some "fighting", you choose Ranger/Fighter. If you want to play a Fighter who also does some "rangering", you choose Fighter/Ranger.
A Tank\x does not necessarily have to wait 25 Levels to begin gathering Evasion augments and Evasion gear.
You can mostly likely get Racial augments that allow you to Evade before Level 25, if that's really the path you want. We also don't know what Level(s) we can start acquiring Thieves Guild augments.
I'm not aware of anyone saying "the game may be harmed".
You can't really sub-class out of a role. You could theoretically dual-class out of a role. But, Ashes doesn't have dual-classes. And they aren't going to have dual-classes because that would be too difficult for the devs to balance.
I by no means think that a tank/cleric or cleric/tank should be able to tank AND heal. OR, I've been very clearly saying OR.
I've been saying this because I don't believe that archetype is the only choice in building your character, the only thing that primary archetype gives you is all of your base activated abilities. From there your character grows and development can still vary depending on which secondary augments you choose, or social, or religious, or node, or racial, augments, what gear you put on, how you distribute your skill points, tattoo system(?)... With all of these options it's possible to have a cleric/tank play half a dozen different builds what's wrong with one of those builds being a tank?
(Plus a lot of what I saw from alpha one looks like it was harder to kill a cleric than kill a tank, 😂)
I don't think it would harm the game at all, I think it would make it better if it worked that way... Call it a meaningful choice.
You can have a Summon that is more of a Tank type a Support type or DPS type.
Primary Archetype determines your primary role through the Active Skills.
Your character can grow and develop in lots of ways to make how you play that primary role fairly unique, but... none of that will switch your primary role to some other role. You have lots of choices with regard to secondary roles...but those roles will remain secondary to the primary role.
A secondary role cannot become primary.
Cleric/Tank is by definition a tank. Just don't expect them to be main tank for an 8-person group.
Because augments are secondary compared to Active Skills. Active Skills are more powerful than augments.
The primary role of a Cleric/Tank will be Cleric.
What? Can you point to where it actually says summoners are a support role?
because I read this and came to a different conclusion that Summoners can play all roles.
"The way Summoning works is:
Players have Active abilities as a Summoner to Summon a particular type of Summoning. And those types of Summons you can Summon will be adherent to the Trinity class system. So, you'll have a more Tank-oriented Summon available to you, as well as a more Support-oriented Summon and a DPS-type Summon.
So, you'll want to choose which one you're going to want to use at any given encounter, based on the necessity of the encounter."
---Steven
It's on the central class wiki page
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Classes
but the cited source mentions nothing about summoner specifically.
https://ashesofcreation.com/news/group-dynamics
This is where it links to when you dive into the source cited. It should really be removed from the page unless they have a proper citation.
That does not state that they are a Support role. The whole concept is that they can take on the role that is missing in a party. That is not what a Support role does.
All your post does is reinforce that summoners can take on multiple roles.
Yeah, that information doesn't line up at all with the actual descriptions sited for the class. I bet the only reason they labeled it as "support" on that page is because they needed a singular word for the table and that was the only one that really fit.
TBA is a pretty useful thing to put there ;p
But, Steven's use of the word "more" indicates that there is a "base" that you can make more tanky, more supporty or more DPSey.
What I mean by that is don't expect the DPS Summon (pet) to out-DPS a Rogue or Mage or even Fighter.
And don't expect the Tank Summon (pet) to main tank for an 8-person group.
Steven adds a qualifier rather than just saying, "A Summoner can Summon a Tank Summons, a Support Summons or a DPS Summons."
If the idea is that summoners can fill in where they are needed they will be required to actually be able to fulfill the role. until they change this way of describing summoners this is how I will interpret it.
I'm sharing the observation so you aren't completely blind-sided if it's true that Steven's qualifiers are meaningful rather than incidental.
Actually that's a great point (or rather would be, if I thought you would faithfully answer what I'm about to ask).
What's the point of a Tank summon then?
Is it to 'offtank'?
Does that mean that an 8 person group has situations/locations in which it needs an 'offTank'? Is that the 'thing that the Summoner is supposed to be in the party'?
Why not bring a second Tank? Is it because Summons offer something else? Is it the flexibility?
What I don't know if people get is that having Summoners at all in a game implies strong flexibility in classes or that the Summoner class is going to suck and be meaningfully 'off meta' in some unpleasant ways (game experience wise).
And that, is my main 'stance' relative to Ashes right now, actually. In fact, I can say now, that had I not seen 'Summoner' as a class option, with all the design principles this implies, I wouldn't have committed anything to this game.
The concept of 'we are committing to making a Summoner class' tells you so much about the design requirements of an MMO, that you should be able to predict most of what will happen in a transparent development game that takes actual feedback.
Summoners are the litmus test. Every time you see something implemented that would make them worse, it's a bad sign for meta-freedom. Every time you see something implemented that works well with them, it's a good sign. That's why @JustVine is the one with so much to say, from my group, at least. It's the Summoner who sees the writing on the wall first. The 'canary'.
If Devs don't show you that they can make a Summoner class work, don't expect much in terms of creativity within your classes. And that's fine. Plenty of successful MMOs out there don't have meta-freedom and are still enjoyable for what they are.
But for Ashes specifically, watching the narrative around Summoner gives us a pretty good metric for how much real freedom you're going to get, just by numbers alone.
I'll even go so far as to say this outright.
If Brood Wardens can't actually tank most content, don't expect any serious meta-freedom in this game.
Each Summoner and/or each group can choose how they would like the Summoner to provide Support: more tank-oriented Support, more support-oriented Support or more dps-oriented Support.
People aren't perfect, but it's kinda odd to consistently use qualifiers like "more tank-type" and "more tank-oriented" when what you really mean is straight-up Tank.
Some people would accept a game like this, some won't.
Based on the Summoner Compilation you even have a snapshot sample of this. I speak for no one in that dataset as to whether they would play or not, and there weren't that many Brood Wardens, so maybe they'd all be fine with not actually Tanking.
That wasn't my point though. If I realize 'Brood Wardens can't tank' then I am not going to expect an actual diverse build 'ecology' either, by my standards of 'diverse'.
I'll be clearer. I explicitly expect Brood Wardens to be equal to most Tanks as long as they focus on their Tanky summon. I honestly expect them to be 'different' in a way that makes them explicitly better Tanks half the time.
Now, that might not be what Steven meant, or what Ashes is meant to be, as you keep 'clarifying' for us.
And if it isn't, I'll take that to mean a specific thing. But consider carefully what I'm saying.
If a Brood Warden who builds for Tanking is not as good a Tank as a Tank/X, it will imply that the game's meta-ecology is meaningfully less diverse.
I had to ping pong back and forth how I feel about this. On the one hand I dislike classes that are propped up with a hybrid mindset yet poor execution that leaves them either better than the roles they can fulfill or completely garbage at them. On the other hand I think if we are going to state that Summoners can fulfill all three roles according to how they build their characters, I don't see a reason why they should be lesser than anyone else at tanking.
I guess that begs the question,
What the hell does a Summoner/Summoner excel at if we are to believe that Tank/Tank is the best tank and Cleric/Cleric is the best healer?
Because if Summoner is supposed to be able to fulfill any role, and they become the most summoney summoner that ever summoned... Wouldn't that make their tanking summons better than a regular tank/x? If not, what is the benefit of going Summoner/Summoner?
I think it is okay to have 'meta within classes' to an extent if your content is diverse and good (which is automatic in PvP if other classes have a diverse meta-ecology of their own, PvE is its own consideration which people are happily discussing in other threads)
If you want to be a full time Brood Warden tank, you chose all your Skills and Passives and Augments to get you to max effectiveness on whatever you specialize in Tanking. Decide that you 'only want to soak up some damage sometimes' as one of the Brood Wardens put it, and you can divert some of those skill points into 'being able to fill in on another thing sometimes'.
If a Brood Warden puts their whole kit into Tanking I personally would expect no less than 'them outperforming any Tank/(Anything other than Tank again) that didn't (not to be confused withTank/X that also go all in on whatever defenses their Augments offer)
Perhaps a Summoner/Summoner would be for players who spend more of their time in solo-play?
So they prefer to be a 1-man army kind-of thing doing solo content, and are a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none who assists in the easier group content?
The ones from my dataset mostly seemed to want either 'strategist position', 'fusing with their big summons', or didn't have any specifics.
It's hard to say what you want to do as a Summoner when 90% of games with this 'class' are letdowns for the people who want to play it. I saw 'please just be not-terrible' expressed an almost-depressing amount of the time. I'd love to pick their brains for my own Summoner designs, but they'd be nothing like Ashes anyway...
(lowkey: I'm pretty sure they all want to summon army hoards)
On that thought - maybe they want to play Starcraft 2 inside an MMO?
No, you're thinking of the two dozen Necromancers.
(Seriously, giving any class that name is asking for trouble or displaying a level of confidence I don't see often, obv I'm hoping for the latter)
This is a terrible way to argue for what we think the class system will be. Can tank....but won't be optimal.....so hopefully someone will invite a broodwarden to the group? Nah, I would instead take a tank. Is there room for the broodwarden though? Nope. I need someone with better dps. How about this mage/fighter? Nope. He is useless when I can bring this mage/mage. The system is set up to have a SHITLOAD of mediocre classes with zero real creativity.
Cool, I can now blink to my enemy as a fighter instead of the same speed charge. What changed? The cosmetics?
Tank - so I can choose to mitigate damage with my meta tank/tank build or I can lose mitigation to heal some of the lost damage by going tank/cleric. Would the healing be enough to make up for the % damage reductions my tank will have by going tank/tank? Will the summon from tank/summon make up for the lost mitigation?
Dygz, you think it's too difficult for the devs to balance a dual class system...but in reality the current system seems like a clusterfuck to design. Try it. Honestly, take some time and try to balance the game with the current system while still maintaining that "most" of the secondary choices will be fun and viable to play. Obviously we won't have 64 viable options but even with half, the system is a failure.
The only positive I see here is the fact that PvP will be the largest chunk of the game. The only reason to take a shitty spec'd player is if you are expecting to meet the enemy on the field in which a tank/tank may not be the best option. It may benefit to have a tank/rogue for the pvp aspect but when nobody shows up and we wipe because that tank is not in the best spec it will be an issue. This is not a fun risk vs reward scenario. This is a bad design scenario. On top of that, it won't be just 1 "off spec". It will be a ton of people. A lot of minor negatives becomes a big problem in the overall raid makeup.
No. It should be (in my strongly biased opinion) 'the person who can flexibly adapt roles the easiest including in battle depending on the phase of the fight and the enemy type. This results in an ok solo class but puts an emphasis on 'amplifying a teams strategy strengths and weaknesses and to help the strategy adapt quickly to something more advantageous.' If it is focused on as a solo class (I assume you mean PvE) it will negatively effect the design because a class that is 'too good solo' can't really be allowed to do well elsewhere for balance. But for this class to make sense the combat system has to be good and the enemies complex.
The answer to 'what is the most summony summoners advantage' and why its not 'tanking better than a tank' is 'they have two/three/four bodies and can position accordingly.' They are more technical and can fine tune to a situation better but have a more exploitable weakness (ie burst damage down the summon or be mobile enough to split it off in a negative way. A weakness less prevalent or possible on a main tank.) This is also dependent on positional advantage mattering quite a bit.
Therefore in an ideal system yes a tanky summoner can absolutely out tank a tank depending on the enemy and depending on the ability to heal a summon probably not as long as a tank/tank.
As for the 'legion' concept you alluded to that's only viable in a system where you can sustain and or quickly replace fallen summons. They tend to be even more glass cannony otherwise which sort of defeats the purpose in my mind but I am no necro so consider that a very loose opinion.