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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
My experience is actually quite the opposite. When healers are killable by most equally skilled DPS in 1v1 (without it coming down to randomly who has the better weapon or slightly better crits/armor because they both run out of resources) the game becomes solo-ish and then people dislike how ineffective healers are at keeping OTHER people alive in various content.
Then the game ditches the 'Healer' concept entirely, gives everyone a 'little' healing and tries to balance based on that.
Same for Mages. If a Mage has NO ability to throw out 'big burst damage almost on demand', people will just look for the class that does. You can see this multiple times throughout games. The 'setup mage' is shunned (relative to other classes).
I like the 'slow prep healer' and 'setup mage', so I'll be fine with that, I just don't need another 'eh might as well just let everyone have LifeSteal' game.
But I do agree that healers should come to a stalemate with a mid-power dps. A burst dps class should be able to kill a healer even w/o mana gameplay, if they get lucky enough on a crit right after some kind of CC.
Balance would be where the healer can win in a duel. That means being able to keep themselves alive if that's their sole focus, but in danger when they try to go offensive.
Someone mentioned healers healing by doing damage, I've seen it tried in a bunch of games but never done well. The issue that always comes up is a stat split between damage stats (to increase damage) and healing modifiers (to be competitive with other healers). They usually end up okay in PvE where boss' are debuffed but useless in PvP where people have mitigation.
I guess it could work if the amount healed doesn't depend on the damage done, which is the root of the problem.
Play archeage, 1 of the inspirations for the game and your thoughts on healers and mages will make complete sense. Please don't compare it to ESO like someone tried too. Pretty sure I never heard Steven talk about emulating ANYTHING from that game.
I am assuming you play tank as your main.
You would be assuming wrong, I actually am playing Archeage atm, and am playing a healer, started as my main, now she is justa alt but still is a 12k gear score and without really even trying she has over 130 kills, so I think it's safe to say healers can kill in that game.
My other Class is a Archer if you're wondering. And while a archer can kill a mage if they get the jump on them. Mage damage rules all in this game, stupidly out of tune.
DPS that is spec'd anti heal should be able to kill a healer, DPS are not just a dps bot they should have other skills as well to interrupt, cc, reducing healing strength, etc.
There should not be a game where a class is just unkillable from everything because of a heal...The game is being balanced for PvX so it needs to make sense for both pve and pvp.
The degree of specification provided for classes in Ashes would allow me to build a dps with the stated objective of bursting a healer down. Doesn’t mean I’m spec’d to win against every class, but intentionally designed to kill a healer of class x.
Having a blanket rule that independent of spec a healer of equal skill cannot be killed 1:1 is a ridiculous notion for an ow pvp game.
Agree, the Augments I think are really going to change the way we look at what healers can or cant do, now a cleric/cleric I could see being quite difficult to take down, but that one makes sense, others not so much.
Really hoping we see everyone in the group doing their part to make the machine run. Just going to take a lot of feedback from all of us, and put our bias's aside (mine included) especially from the past 20 years of gaming which have really strayed away from team and group combat with 8 man groups.
ill play cleric btw
Exactly. My objective as a rogue on my 3s team was to disrupt, contain, and murder healers. I didn’t have the longevity to go toe to toe with a sturdier dps, let alone a tank. Don’t get me started on how dumb Bears were at the beginning of SL.
-I do understand what you mean, this is reason why I think CC should be as important as in WoW, WoW is not balanced game 1v1 or 2v2, but if theres multiple healers out there in 10v10, WoW shines in content like that, because it is strategic, and not everyone can play it properly because it is too complex for one to do everything perfect, just look at wotlk 5v5 arenas and you will see what I am talking, or 3v3 RMP vs almost any other comp, RMP is most OP because of high CC imput and high burst, but they are squishy compared to any other melee comp where you just go on 1 target and stick to it until he dies, because of high sustain dmg you dont even need CC with many comps, but with RMP you need to utilize your CC and movement spells so well that it becomes too complex and only good RMP can be OP, if average player plays RMP they will lose almost every match just because how hard it is to play it. Just look at how many variation of CC RMP has to put in to kill 1 target, it is insane how hard it is to utilize perfectly. I know that for a fact because I tried that comp and it was impossible for me to play it like some rank 1 mages and rogues, you need perfect communitation and even with so people survive 4 out of 5 times, so its not all black and white when it comes to RMP, most players dont understand that. (RMP - rogue,mage,priest comp in 3v3 arena WoW).
So i guess it would be cool if some classes like assasins get some kind of good CC like stuns that dont break upon dmg, but other classes like enchanters or summoners / mages, should get soft CC that breaks upon stun, that will make big impact on how you play group content and it should be like that, to counter that we should have some kind of trinket or engineer item that breaks any CC on 1min CD, it should be in game because we all saw how WoW team does it and they do it very well compared to other MMOS or any game just how complex their combat is. As I said some classes in WOW like feral druid have so much healing that they die hard 1v1, but there is possiblilty of killing them, idk how it happens but it sometimes happens, but some classes perform better in group content, like rogues, 1v1 rogue will hardly kill feral just because how feral can outplay it with healing and big armor in bear form.
in MMOs today the biggest mistake is that devs design classes to be similar because that means they will be balanced, I think thats the biggest mistake one can make, every class should be unique, for example ranger class should have big dmg output and high burst when he has range, but when someone gap closes him, he should not attack with bow or gun but with melee weapon that deals half the dmg, mages should be squishy and have CC and high mobility, enchanters should have the least dmg output but the highest CC in team, bards should not deal good DMG but they should buff allies and debuff enemies so much that it has big impact on how they perform, like 20-30% dmg increase buff or mobility speed or to break CC with songs etc... Warrior should be the tankiest of all classes and have slows and aoe kit cleave, healers should not deal good dmg, so much that they cannot kill target at all, but heal and survive, they should not be mobile at all, because if someone sticks to healer and gets through team and get to them, they should need others to peel for them in order for them to get away, they should not have mobility kit at all, but defensives to reduce dmg and heal output to survive at least 2 targets at once, 3 targets should deal with them fairly quickly, problem in AoC is that healers can survive up to 7 targets, imagine that in siege and other healers healing too, they can survive then 30-40 targets at once, its crazy and should not be like that at all. (maybe I added too many, but you see my point). Rogues should be real assasins and as I said they should deal dmg while others are CCed, mage however should not have that kit, rogues should be unique to that, because you risk of dying if you target healer and stun him because of how deep you went into battlefield to risk your life to potentionally burst healer. Rogues should have some kind of stealth to avoid dmg if neccesary 2min cd at least, also they should have mobility kit to gap close to targets easily, but not escape unless they use 1 (1 CD thats important, if you give them too many like gw2, then you cannot kill rogues at all - thiefs).
So please, try not to make all classes similar, instead make complex combat and many variations of CC, one can be fear from necromancer that breaks with dmg, mages could have transform like polymorph to turn you into a useless sheep that also breaks with dmg, rogues stuns and many of them, even like dirty kick to silence healers for 2sec. Warriors can have shouts to fear as well (AOE only fear in game)... etc... I know it wont be balanced at all, but imagine game as it is now, vs 20v20 - 6 healers on each side, how someone can kill anyone if they cannot CC healers properly? I think its impossible unless someone does some mistakes with positioning...
Result was: I could one shot anyone in the server!! Good times.
Of course there are ways to customize the cleric into a paladin or some dude in heavy armor wielding melee weapons, but then obviously the heals suffer in exchange for higher melee capability/survavibility.
Steven is allowing dual boxing (terrible mistake). What does dual boxing + strong healers that can't be burst by a strong DPS class get you? Well, all you're going to end up with, sooner or later is a war of dual boxers where everyone +1s a Heal/Res Bot. They can't be easily burst, so why not have them around, a bit hidden, safe, ready to res/heal, swap into party to Ress the main healer if they die? You'd be silly not to, because this has been done in literally every Open World PvP game.
In Lineage 2 , when we went to contest Epics (especially Valakas and Antharas), we had to kill main party Bishops and after that, we were forced to PK their 15 Bishop Bots that were outside clan/Alliance so they never flagged until they Ressed a main party Bishop (meaning if you didn't want their Res Bots to Ress all your enemies, you just had to go red and get karma). Ashes isn't going to restrict how many Clerics you can have in a party (very much doubt that), so the moment you allow more than one Cleric, that just means you can take out the flags to welcome the Heal/Res Bot invasion and the meta will be the most boring thing in the world. A class that has the ability to Resurrect SHOULD NEVER BE ALLOWED TO BE DUAL BOXED. EVER in any game, but even worse is allowing them to be so tanky that it just makes sense for everyone to have their own Res Bot to Dual Box. Things like this kill a game for me. I don't want to see videos of 15 characters AFK during a Mass PvP because they're all Res Bots waiting to be used. It sucks, that meta sucks at some point where everyone's maxed it just comes down to who brings more dual boxers. This is absolutely terrible for the game, it sucks to win like that, it sucks to lose against that and it sucks to be forced into that kind of strategy/"gameplay".
Healing classes should be paper. They shouldn't be facetanking, they should focus on positioning correctly and the party should protect them, maybe even assign a tank to put a barrier on top of them and aggro the ones trying to kill them. That's how you get a Healer to survive in a Mass PvP. Letting Healers be Tanky for the hell of it instantly creates a meta where every single Healer will go Tank spec, tank items, everything tanky, and then on top of that with dual box you're going to get an army of Heal bots.
That's it.
Don't say I didn't warn you. It's been done before.
Ashes is designed to be Rock-Paper-Scissors, so there should be a Rock that can break that Healer's Scissors.
Not as much as say a mage or a rogue if they are a melee healer like a Paladin. But 1v1 with their healing abilities, they should be if skilled, be able to stand toe to toe in a fight. This idea that healers need to be just mostly just a healer is backwards. Holy and Evil Clerics had full backing of their God. The more the Cleric aligned with the will of their God, the more powerful they became.
Let's no make limp healers, that their inky role is watching health bars. That's boring and another reason why most don't want to play them.
For reference Dygz, I'm agreeing with you
New MMO's are far from handicapped healers.
Pretty sure New World healers wouldn't fall into the category of underpowered
If I remember right Druids and Paladins were pretty OP in WoW also
Steven wants to bring back the social aspect of MMO's if healers needs help with quests or anything, I'm 100% sure there would be guilds lining up to help them and bring them into the fold. People who play healers should be adored, as it's a difficult role, everyone yelling "Heal Me" and taking the responsibility of keeping the party alive.
In turn it's the groups job to protect that healer and keep them alive, by peeling and guarding.
That's the way it USED to be, instead of watching your group fight, throwing a few AOE heals, being able to tank 4-5 people while healing yourself and everyone else is ludicrous.
ANYONE who is focused fire properly with a assist train should die! that's part of the tactics. It brings back communication, strategy and teamwork.
If Steven truly wants a OLD SCHOOL MMO, then this is the way it should be. If you want to have some damage play a augmented healer. But a Cleric/Cleric should damage like a wet noodle.
Mages
I don't feel mages are too strong, at least in the games that I've played in recent years. As long as they are squishy and rely on positioning, it's fine to me. If a mage is smiling with a friendly tank in front of him and starts crying when the rogue pops out of stealth behind him, they are in a good spot to me. My main issue with mages in old games was not being able to cast abilities while moving. That was the worst. Spellshields are a must for a mage, but they should be short duration, like 3 seconds, to avoid being one-shot by some burst if you time it well instead of being a permanently active buff. The base mage shouldn't have heals, but with cleric as a secondary class, heals/magical lifesteal should be possible, especially when combined with the correct gear for such a build.
Healers
I mean, I played ESO, and there is just too much healing around, like every single person is at least running one heal, good heals as well, like half life back in one button press kind of heals. This makes actually dedicated healers somewhat useless. Like, it's still fine, nobody hates healers, but you would probably do more if you had an all-rounder build, being tanky, having heals, and doing damage like everyone else instead of running pure healers. That's super bad imo. The main bulk of healing should come from healers, and the rest from classes that have cleric as a secondary archetype for some self-healing/lifesteal/magical lifesteal. But these big AoE heals should be a cleric thing so they are actually meaningful to bring instead of everybody going healers as a secondary class and nobody playing full healing classes. I feel like healers should definitely be able to at least level up a little bit without needing a group because they don't have a single damage ability. I like how they are making the healer an actual class that has to pay attention in combat instead of being a healing bot basically.
Mages ? That is the eternal Question now is it ?
Healers ? I'mma gonna be completely honest with you guys here,
Healers "SHOULD" be very powerful -> if Nobody ever stops and interrupts them from healing.
Be it PvE,
be it PvP,
if a Healer is allowed to run around and heal his Comrades - he isn't overpowered. He is just doing his Job.
If People in PvP fight in two Groups -> and one Group has a Healer and the OTHER Group is seeing, that he will do a good Job and they are most likely about to lose this Fight,
they got to get that Healer killed somehow, or should just retreat if they can't. If his tanky or stabby Friends can protect him to well and to good - welp to bad for the Ones who want to kill him. If his Positioning is to good and his Synch with his Group, they are going to win.
What should never be the Case, is that a single Healer is as powerful as several Damage Dealers or other Classes. If a Healer heals twice or triple the Damage that equally geared and equally levelled Damage Dealers make either on him, or the Healers Allys,
this is a Problem. Because the Moment the Community realises playing a Healer is basically a Free-Win-Ticket from like Four of Five Fights or Eight to Nine Fights out of Ten,
then guess which Class most People will play as long as this Imbalance will continue.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
Or learn to run. Really fast.
The stranger's eyes lifted to the blood red cloud on the horizon.
'We have to move. It's not safe here.'
me:
(I mained magsorc for 6 years straight after launch)