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Influence of Classes and Gear on viable Combat Roles.
Hakaiju
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
Combat Roles are represented as a triangle with the Main Roles: Tank, DPS and Support.
With Classes being the primary source of combat skills (active or passive) and Gear being the primary source of combat stats, the question arises how big the influence of each one is regarding your Combat Role.
A Bard might be able to hit you like a truck because their Gear is primarily focussed on Offesive Stats.
A Class with no traditional support skills (such as buffs, heals), such as the "Tank-Archetype" might be a viable support class, if there are gear pieces available that trigger support effects on damage taken or succesfully supplied CCs.
So how much influence should a Class and the available Gear have on the Combat Role of your Character?
With Classes being the primary source of combat skills (active or passive) and Gear being the primary source of combat stats, the question arises how big the influence of each one is regarding your Combat Role.
A Bard might be able to hit you like a truck because their Gear is primarily focussed on Offesive Stats.
A Class with no traditional support skills (such as buffs, heals), such as the "Tank-Archetype" might be a viable support class, if there are gear pieces available that trigger support effects on damage taken or succesfully supplied CCs.
So how much influence should a Class and the available Gear have on the Combat Role of your Character?
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A body armor that shields surrounding allies for 10% of incomming heals.
An arrow that slows the enemy for every critical hit.
Boots that give a boost in movement speed for every DoT applied by you (or against you).
If there are loads of items like these available for every gear slot, then it would be possible to make your character deviate from their original Combat Role. You could obviously also have effects that further enhance the identity of your character, so for example making a healing character also generating shields.
I hear you. Part of the equation here (at least in a healthy group setting) is the loot distribution for the items you noted above would be given to those players to augment the combat roles they want to play, which is reflected in the class they chose to play as well.
If I'm a Ranger and want to be the advanced scout for my group, I want the tank to get the beefy shield, and she wants me to get the longbow +3. There is mutual benefit in provisioning gear to folks based on their desired roles instead of assigning roles based on their gear.
Given that basically everything will be tradebable I think this would'nt be a problem either way. As long as you get a fair share of your parties loot (value wise) you could just sell that gear and buy the stuff you need to fullfill your desired role.
Obviously a healthy group would not require you to do this and just distribute the suitable items to the respective player.
Exactly. In an unhealthy group, I might be expected to heal just because someone gave me Demeter's staff of Cure Pretty Much Everything. I'd just give them the staff back. If they insisted, I'd just leave the group.
And gear facilitates that shift.
But, you should expect to always primarily be the Trinity role of your Primary Archetype and secondarily some other Trinity role... if that's the path you wish to pursue.
They might also provide some abilities.
Any class can wear any gear and wield any weapon, so... you could have a Bow-wielding Py'Rai Tank/Tank in Heavy Armor or a Ren'Kai Bard/Tank in Medium armor wielding a Battle Hammer.
And, yes, a Cleric/Tank could also be generating shields.
i really like this description in relation to the question since it is how i like things to pan out
im pretty certain steven said that your class choices are going to be the large majority of your identity, but who knows in the end for armor since we havent quite seen how the class stuff works yet
Control as a role; requires NPC mechanics be good and threat not ultra-basic. If NPCs are intelligent and can do a lot of CC themselves and/or be mobile then stuff like Tanking involves Shielding, Control, and Freedom.
Picture is whatever but something other than a triangle is what I was going for lol. Damage is bigger because I think chaotic battles that are hard to control would make the game high lethality thus Damage is the best control.