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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.
Theory Crafting a New Profession
Drunkninja
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
MMO's have always had similar professions in one way or another. In this thread I suggest a new profession unlike any other!
I call it the Mirrorsmith.
Here's the idea. Your profession skill lies within the realm of copy catting class abilities. The core craft would be creating items (maybe runestones) that would be a consumable that when used you replicate the class ability that was embedded into the runestone.
Sounds crazy powerful? Yeah, it could be. You balance it with cooldowns of appropriate timers. But using a cool off class ability once or twice in a fight could be a lot of fun.
How would you farm your materials? Besides the over lapping economy needs from different professions, your unique collection action would be having the desired abilities used against you while you have a profession skill active to collect that class abilities "material".
Perhaps as an extra for actually being a Master in the profession, you gain an ability on cooldown that mirrors and reflects an ability used against you in a pvp encounter.
How would YOU build and balance this profession idea?
I call it the Mirrorsmith.
Here's the idea. Your profession skill lies within the realm of copy catting class abilities. The core craft would be creating items (maybe runestones) that would be a consumable that when used you replicate the class ability that was embedded into the runestone.
Sounds crazy powerful? Yeah, it could be. You balance it with cooldowns of appropriate timers. But using a cool off class ability once or twice in a fight could be a lot of fun.
How would you farm your materials? Besides the over lapping economy needs from different professions, your unique collection action would be having the desired abilities used against you while you have a profession skill active to collect that class abilities "material".
Perhaps as an extra for actually being a Master in the profession, you gain an ability on cooldown that mirrors and reflects an ability used against you in a pvp encounter.
How would YOU build and balance this profession idea?
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Comments
Sounds like Crafting augments.
And Ashes already has a variety of paths to acquire augments.
- are the mirrored runes one-time use or multi-use?
- Do the runes have a limited life span (3 uses or 30 mins)?
- Is the mirrored ability a 100% copy of the ability (using your stats) or is it like a 50% amplitude?
- Are the runes BOE? Can I sell them?
- Would it be for literally any ability / augment?
- Is there a max number of runes a non-mirrorsmith player could have ‘active’ or ‘inactive’ at any time?
Part of me thinks this would be so OP that any pvp-minded player worth their salt would me a mirrorsmith. So two balancing questions:
- how would you keep mirrorsmithing from becoming a required baseline META profession?
- how would you constrain mirrorsmithing from making class differentiation relative to augments completely irrelevant? Seems like classes would just turn to oatmeal with everyone able to do the same things.
- I would say the runes are one time use and stackable in their appropriate groupings.
- The mirrored ability should have some sort of restriction on it compared to the original. Probably 50-75% if it's an active buff you can apply or maybe 100% if it's a skill based dexterity reaction and you have to activate it at the right time. Really depends on the full design.
-I would say most if not all runes would be BoE so like all other professions you could profit from it.
-I don't think replicating all abilities would be good. Leaving out the most powerful class abilities would help balance most likely.
-I feel like one active rune at a time would be the appropriate number if the class ability had a duration and also there should be a reduction on duration as on par buffs with the original class would be a balance issue I feel.
-For answering the Meta profession question I'd like to reflect on other professions we're all use to.
Alchemy as an example has always been a powerful profession in many games. It grants players the ability to do things outside of what their character could usually do. Including heal, regenerate different resource amounts such as stamina and mana, even deal damage and so on. And yet it's still an accepted profession and by all means a favored one at that. Would you call the Alchemy Profession meta for someone wanting to be an economic power house as potions tend to sell very, very well.
Another type of Profession to look at which has almost always been the polar opposite from Alchemy are the Armor and Weaponsmithing professions. These have tended to produce a lot less profit in games, but if in the recipes they can produce items needs to help kill game Bosses, would they be considered PVE meta?
A question I would want to discuss would be, is it bad if certain professions are preferred by certain gamer mind sets? Is having a preferred pvp profession a bad thing? Out of all your questions we could probably get the most discussion out of this one.
-For the last question, I think keeping augments relative would be easy. The mirrorsmith copies would not have any sort of augment copied, simply the base ability. The use of the runestones would be balanced by cooldowns. An example would be say you use a runestone that copies a Fighters charge attack. After use all your rune stones go on a 3 minute cool down.
Hope all that provokes so deeper thinking into the idea.
All the professions would probably give some minor but equivalent benefit (like WoW or maybe not) to the player but this profession would be too powerful compared to all the other professions combined. As a result, everyone who would focus PvP i.e. 100% cuz AoC is PvP focused, will have to master this profession to just level the playing field.
Its a straight NO from me. This would work in games where there are no such things as classes and players can carry spells because here each players ingenuity comes into picture. In AoC, if you love and want to use a spell so much, play their class or make alts.
PS: Tbh, I am not worried that IS will even consider this idea cuz imagining a tank who can go invisible or a rogue who can be a healer or a healer summoning a demon is so ridiculous, its not even funny.
You didn't answer the meta question in a reasonable way.
You're equating health pots to being a healer. That's a big stretch. One could also say that the player's ability to regen health outside of combat means they are a healer. Just silly.
Can you answer the question without pointing fingers and screaming "But look at them!!1"?
My opinion is that this would be:
Nearly impossible to balance
Waters down classes
Makes itself mandatory
.. and thus a big waste of resources.
DENIED.
I think like most games a meta will form from existing, planned professions with or without new additions. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, just an eventuality due to the combined testing and opinions of the internet.
If anything, the more I think about it, the more I think the inclusion of this profession would have the opposite effect of creating a stagnant meta and create a rotating one that comes about from pvp players making strong combinations and then other players countering those strategies.
The key to balancing it is proper cool down timers. Perhaps even diminishing returns on other ability cooldown timers as well. In a fast pace encounter the idea is you would get to use only one out of class ability (so a pvp setting) and perhaps 2-3 times in a prolonged engagement (a boss encounter). Limited use like the equivalent or longer than potion cooldowns should be adequate for balancing purpose.
The only part that really stands out to me as possibly broken was the idea I suggested of a reflect power cooldown against opposing players. That’s easily scraped as a reward for becoming a Master of the profession and just replace it. It was just a throw it out there idea.
Thank you for your replies and opinions
My apologies, I should have responded with Consumables not BoE, but the ability to sell and trade those Consumables
@CROW3 asked "- how would you keep mirrorsmithing from becoming a required baseline META profession?"
Instead of answer how you would prevent this craft from becoming meta, you seem to imply the goal or outcome would be to create a 'rotating meta'.
The biggest flaw in my view is that this craft rests on basically stealing class unique abilities. Don't like it. It weakens classes, and cheapens base class knowledge and preparedness.
A good player knows his class well and has put forth the effort to examine how he can tangle with every other class, and than this one craft muddies the waters JUST to muddy the waters.
I think it doesn't lend itself to some tryhard philosophy but more of a 'haha you thought you worked hard to strategize my defeat but I have THE HOLY HAND GRENADE OF ANTIOCH!'