I Have An Iron Hope That We're Gonna See A 'Templar'

Good luck to both Intrepid and @Ironhope for the next stream.

Twitter's image was really well chosen, so props to whoever selected that.

I'm hype to see something 'additional' (a BossFight) but definitely will be rooting for all involved to have a great experience either way.

We're definitely past the point where we can expect anything we say in threads to influence the footage if it is the Cleric/Templar/Apostle style reveal I'm betting on, so let's have a different controversial conversation instead. How well should Clerics/Bards be able to DPS if they try?

My obviously biased vote is '70% of an average DPS character spec'.

The reason is because while I believe in 'Trinity' play, I see it moreso as pillars of play, not restrictions. You must have A healer for hard things or eventually you die due to effects uncleansed. You must have a Tank for hard things or eventually you die due to damage taken. You must have DPS for hard things or eventually you die by attrition.

Some games solve this by just giving everyone 'enough of each' and I disagree with this because it's stupid to balance (if you are in healer gear why should you still have enough damage to not die by attrition?) but I also don't think it's necessary to give each one 'very little' for this to work, in my experience.

I perceive good DPS as having enough additional Utility beyond just 'I do t3h damage' that I don't even think of 'Total Damage' as the real important thing in that 'slot', so I obviously favor 'being able to spec for damage and get up to near a Defensive Spec Fighter'.

I figure that any Cleric showcase will get us 'arguing' about this anyway, so head-start? Maybe it'll get us some extra tidbits of data on the live portion of stream.

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Nova_terra

So let me start by saying that I as an MMO player, I have slowly found myself gravitating to healing over the decade/s as it is always "in demand", and I feel like I enjoy the management aspect of it and I am obviously just one voice of many, but I find that in my experience when you have "more dps than actual healing" it turns into this weird void of "well am I even a healer". I will use FFXIV (not the best example of MMO Healing/ gameplay) but I think covers my fears/feelings well. In that game in 98% of content I am spamming my AOE damage spell and then dropping a heal every 20 seconds?? It feels very lame that I wanted to go the route of healer and then I am asked to basically be a DPS+ type player.

Now the flip side of this is healing in any non "good" pvp/top tier pve environmenst of years past is horrible as leveling/questing and even basic mobs tends to be a grind due to lackluster damage and while you will never die it ends up taking forever to make progress.

My hope for how these classes will work regarding dps is that you can basically use a "sliding scale" via abilities/weapon focus or abilities chosen (think NW... shudder) to make yourself anywhere from 100% healer/support to 30%healer/70% dps/tank via passives/actives etc.

Now there is a totally different question of what is viable/meta in this type of environment but I am hopeful that there will be room for creativity. BUTTTTTTTTT to get back to your question I am very much with you at the 70% of DPS area if they are "really trying"/spec'd that way. I also like the idea of raid parties/groups/what have you being like a stew with a lot of variability in terms of X is running some off tank 70/30 dps/tank build, Y is running 100% healer, Z is running 50/50 healer dps and A, B and C are also running variable "loadouts" as opposed to the more recent you need 4 dps, 2 healer, 2 tanks in GF to do this raid or whatever.

Edit: Got too excited. I am really hoping for some Templar coverage as I have a sneaking suspicion that is my "#1 heading into A2" as far as classes go, but overall any cleric coverage is extremely welcome. also wanted to echo that you and me are in agreement that I am excited for all that are involved tomorrow and hopefully we see some difficult-ish group content like a Boss.

Ace1234

The reason is because while I believe in 'Trinity' play, I see it moreso as pillars of play

Agreed, this specifically is less used for balance and more about gameplay and fun, basic combat revolves around attacking, defending and sustaining yourself, regardless of your class, so from an individual player experience perspective, everyone should have tools to do those things to a certain extent in order to engage with the full combat system. For example, (in extreme cases) if your character has no reason to be defensive, then you will never have to strategize around when to block, so you will miss out on a portion of the combat gameplay, which dumbs things down and is less engaging.

Some games solve this by just giving everyone 'enough of each' and I disagree with this because it's stupid to balance (if you are in healer gear why should you still have enough damage to not die by attrition?) but I also don't think it's necessary to give each one 'very little' for this to work, in my experience.

Due to the fact that its relative to the enemy's capabilities, (balancing wise, all else equal) - it doesn't really matter whether they can do "a little" or "a lot" of each role, its just about how much they can do in that role relative to the enemy.

So, based on the premise that each class should be able to engage with each role to a degree, this means it needs to be viable to actually perform in each role to a certain degree, so the classes would need to have at least a "fighting chance" in each of the "dps, tank, sustain" aspects.

My idea of a "fighting chance" is through having a reasonable amount of wiggle room to out-skill the opponent in each combat role. This is done best when skill is really the only factor which happens when classes are perfectly balanced, which is ideal for the most engaging combat (which would be more akin to fighting game balancing), but then every character feels very similar at the end of the day. Giving the classes identity an advantages in each area makes them feel unique and different, but does create imbalance to an extent. You can account for this by allowing counterpicking to be more prevelant in the process, or adjusting how drastic the advantages/disadvantages are. If the advantages/disadvantages are small enough that a reasonable amount of out-skilling the enemy can make up for it, it can still feel well balanced, if that gap is too large it becomes more of a hard-counter system where counterpicking is more meta than your actual combat skill.

So, from a balancing perspective I don't really think the percentage matters per say, in terms of "a cleric is 70% dps, therefore it is a dps based class who can kill other classes before it gets killed" its more of what that percentage is vs the other classes with that type of role. So (all else equal) a cleric with 70% dps focus vs a fighter with 85% dps focus would be the end same result as a cleric with 15% dps focus vs a fighter with 25% dps focus, in terms of performing that dps role.

Obviously the clerics dps output can influence the clerics ability to out-tank/sustain when combined with its dps, but then tanking/sustain would be its actual role at that point its just using dps to achieve it, so its not actually performing a dps role, it just can do damage and engage with the offensive aspect of combat.

So, when looking at what roles each class should perform, I think we would need to look more at how they are relative to each other in each role, to get an idea of how well they can perform each role in practice. Basically my opinion is that each class should all be cabable of performing every combat role through a reasonable amount of out-skilling the opponent, but with each class having an easier time doing this in its own specific role- and that this is determined relative to each of the other classes overall combat capabilities in that role.

I say "overall combat capabilities" because this also isn't just a numbers based thing, since the combat is action to an extent, its not just number crunching that determines your offensive output, defensive output, and sustain. Your combat spacing and timing through the combat mechanics (block/movement/hitboxes) is now a huge factor in your end result of efficiency in each role. So we would also have to look at each classes efficiency in each of those action combat aspects and combine that with the hard numbers, to get a better idea of how the classes stack up against each other relative to each role- and at that point I think its best to keep that gap very small for each role, in order to have the most engaging combat thats still balanced well.

Im sure you already are aware of this and chose the 70% because of it being a good "starting point" to begin to make those relative adjustments and tuning, in which case that would be reasonable, but kind of pointless to discuss because it just depends on how many class builds there are to tune and balance relative to each other, and will require a lot of iteration to balance well. Interesting topic nonetheless though!

Azherae

Ace1234 wrote: »

I'm sure you already are aware of this and chose the 70% because of it being a good "starting point" to begin to make those relative adjustments and tuning, in which case that would be reasonable, but kind of pointless to discuss because it just depends on how many class builds there are to tune and balance relative to each other, and will require a lot of iteration to balance well. Interesting topic nonetheless though!

You've pointed out to me a flaw in my post so I've edited it to say '70% of an average DPS character spec'.

I too, was thinking of it in terms of relative function, not 'how much of their build needs to be put into DPS abilities', but I failed to make that clear so it's clarified now hopefully.

As for another point, we don't actually know YET whether or not a Healer's capacity can be entirely separate from the Action Combat aspect of the game. If Intrepid goes by what I think was the 'majority' of feedback from Healers over the last few years, it seems more likely to me that you'd get the 'basic' Cleric as being a very 'low Action' style Archetype that would have to be augmented to gain mobility.

Of course, that does limit their DPS potential against mobile targets to an extent, but that could also be a 'lever' for balance.

novercalis

"and even basic mobs tends to be a grind due to lackluster damage and while you will never die it ends up taking forever to make progress."

I disagree with you as I think / believe and enjoyed this aspect.
A healer shoudnt be able to solo anything. Most classes shouldnt be able to solo.
Solo content should be severely limited and difficult.

Sow progress is GOOD. Leveling becomes meaningful. Lower level content becomes meaningful. I don't want to race to end level in 3 days, 5 days, 10 days, 30 days or even 45 days. Everything should take time and effort.

Thus the holy trinity - Healers only small narrow route of solo content should be via undead. ALA Everquest - I had few limited leveling zones to go to as a cleric if I wanted to solo, but I had to be a TWINK to do so. If not - it was all about LFG.

Players gotta embrace that an MMORPG isnt a solo game or a lobby game just sharing a world. It's about interacting, cooperating with other places to achieves goals TOGETHER and thus, I hope the cleric is limited in DPS scope and high demand in groups.

Azherae

novercalis wrote: »

"and even basic mobs tends to be a grind due to lackluster damage and while you will never die it ends up taking forever to make progress."

I disagree with you as I think / believe and enjoyed this aspect.
A healer shoudnt be able to solo anything. Most classes shouldnt be able to solo.
Solo content should be severely limited and difficult.

Sow progress is GOOD. Leveling becomes meaningful. Lower level content becomes meaningful. I don't want to race to end level in 3 days, 5 days, 10 days, 30 days or even 45 days. Everything should take time and effort.

Thus the holy trinity - Healers only small narrow route of solo content should be via undead. ALA Everquest - I had few limited leveling zones to go to as a cleric if I wanted to solo, but I had to be a TWINK to do so. If not - it was all about LFG.

Players gotta embrace that an MMORPG isnt a solo game or a lobby game just sharing a world. It's about interacting, cooperating with other places to achieves goals TOGETHER and thus, I hope the cleric is limited in DPS scope and high demand in groups.

While I also enjoy the game type you're describing, I don't really feel it ends up being that way because it tends to affect only Healers and Bards in the end.

DPS just find 'the thing they can kill before their HP runs out in big bursts and ride their cooldowns. Moreso what I'm saying here is that if DPS can solo, Cleric should probably be tuned to keep up. Most people don't jump into playing Cleric 'so they can solo' anyway, right?

I feel that limiting Cleric in DPS scope, or indeed limiting other classes in sustainability (not necessarily healing, but for example learning to hunt very skillfully as mentioned above) leans more into MMORPG elements because it allows more flexibility in characterization for those who RP.

And by RP I mean even just 'RP through their build' which is... kind of the point of a Role Playing Game to me.

I dislike the 'you can't solo but you're in high demand for groups' for other technical reasons as well, but I complained about it in other threads and I feel it'd derail this one, so I'm just mentioning it so you know where I'm coming from and can therefore 'dismiss' my perspective in terms of strength of our disagreement.

Songcaller

I do enjoy slower levelling but I don't want another gimped healing class. Weaken solo heals but don't weaken the dps.

Nova_terra

novercalis wrote: »

"and even basic mobs tends to be a grind due to lackluster damage and while you will never die it ends up taking forever to make progress."

I disagree with you as I think / believe and enjoyed this aspect.
A healer shoudnt be able to solo anything. Most classes shouldnt be able to solo.
Solo content should be severely limited and difficult.

Sow progress is GOOD. Leveling becomes meaningful. Lower level content becomes meaningful. I don't want to race to end level in 3 days, 5 days, 10 days, 30 days or even 45 days. Everything should take time and effort.

Thus the holy trinity - Healers only small narrow route of solo content should be via undead. ALA Everquest - I had few limited leveling zones to go to as a cleric if I wanted to solo, but I had to be a TWINK to do so. If not - it was all about LFG.

Players gotta embrace that an MMORPG isnt a solo game or a lobby game just sharing a world. It's about interacting, cooperating with other places to achieves goals TOGETHER and thus, I hope the cleric is limited in DPS scope and high demand in groups.

I think @Azherae and @Neurath are grabbing onto what I was referencing. But I have no qualms with slow progress/leveling and I do admit that I am jumping into Cleric partially because I enjoy healing but also you literally never have to LFG and I find I am on speed dial for a lot of people often. I mean specifically a DPS can kill X things faster or complete task Y faster just due to bursting things down and "riding" cooldowns so more areas of the game will be affected than just me looking to solo lobby the game because that is just not the case.

Let's say I have some down time and want to harvest hides, it takes me 1 minute to kill the mob because I am a heal bot + small damage effects so it takes me an hour to get 60 units of hide. the DPS can just outright complete that faster (by magnitudes often is the case) so all aspects of play that are combat focused (gathering included) is just incongruently to my detriment. I would love if I never had to do any content solo, and there was always groups of stuff constantly needing me to heal or whatever but that will just never be the case.

At the end of the day I still stand by my statement and am hopeful that I can be self-sustaining as a Cleric, and that my DPS will only be hampered by "mana management" or how I choose to allocate my cooldowns/abilities and not just because I am heal-bot 3000 and I get an auto attack and that's it.

Ace1234

@Azherae

You've pointed out to me a flaw in my post so I've edited it to say '70% of an average DPS character spec'.

I too, was thinking of it in terms of relative function, not 'how much of their build needs to be put into DPS abilities', but I failed to make that clear so it's clarified now hopefully.

My apologies, I should have assumed thats what you meant. I would say 70% of end output relative to dps, would be reasonable, maybe even a bit higher to close that gap just a bit.

As for another point, we don't actually know YET whether or not a Healer's capacity can be entirely separate from the Action Combat aspect of the game. If Intrepid goes by what I think was the 'majority' of feedback from Healers over the last few years, it seems more likely to me that you'd get the 'basic' Cleric as being a very 'low Action' style Archetype that would have to be augmented to gain mobility.

Of course, that does limit their DPS potential against mobile targets to an extent, but that could also be a 'lever' for balance.

Yea, I was more so just saying it as a "reminder" that if it ends up being the case that action is prevelant, then we would have to account for that in addition to just the raw numbers to get an idea of that classes "end output" relative to other classes within a given role.

Percimes

novercalis wrote: »

Players gotta embrace that an MMORPG isnt a solo game or a lobby game just sharing a world. It's about interacting, cooperating with other places to achieves goals TOGETHER and thus, I hope the cleric is limited in DPS scope and high demand in groups.

If you can't do any adventuring without a group, if you need to find partners before leaving the safety of a settlement: you're basically playing a lobby game with extra steps. The city, your friend list and guild mates are the lobby. No, it's not that much of a stretch.

As someone who's often played secondary healers, what I wonder most about healers in AoC is if it will be possible to create these type of characters without having cleric as the main archetype. Doesn't look like it, so the question of their DPS potential is interesting as it may be the only way to get that type of gameplay.

Nova_terra

Percimes wrote: »

novercalis wrote: »

Players gotta embrace that an MMORPG isnt a solo game or a lobby game just sharing a world. It's about interacting, cooperating with other places to achieves goals TOGETHER and thus, I hope the cleric is limited in DPS scope and high demand in groups.

If you can't do any adventuring without a group, if you need to find partners before leaving the safety of a settlement: you're basically playing a lobby game with extra steps. The city, your friend list and guild mates are the lobby. No, it's not that much of a stretch.

As someone who's often played secondary healers, what I wonder most about healers in AoC is if it will be possible to create these type of characters without having cleric as the main archetype. Doesn't look like it, so the question of their DPS potential is interesting as it may be the only way to get that type of gameplay.

I have thought about this and have concluded that Bard will feature healing (unsubstantiated opinion) but unless the Cleric class features a monumental amount of build options/abilities one "type" of healer seems to shoehorn cleric as "heal-bot". On the other side of the coin, it's possible that there is just a very low amount of healing in AoC in general and that even clerics will be some form of heal/dps hybrid.

Azherae

Nova_terra wrote: »

Percimes wrote: »

novercalis wrote: »

Players gotta embrace that an MMORPG isnt a solo game or a lobby game just sharing a world. It's about interacting, cooperating with other places to achieves goals TOGETHER and thus, I hope the cleric is limited in DPS scope and high demand in groups.

If you can't do any adventuring without a group, if you need to find partners before leaving the safety of a settlement: you're basically playing a lobby game with extra steps. The city, your friend list and guild mates are the lobby. No, it's not that much of a stretch.

As someone who's often played secondary healers, what I wonder most about healers in AoC is if it will be possible to create these type of characters without having cleric as the main archetype. Doesn't look like it, so the question of their DPS potential is interesting as it may be the only way to get that type of gameplay.

I have thought about this and have concluded that Bard will feature healing (unsubstantiated opinion) but unless the Cleric class features a monumental amount of build options/abilities one "type" of healer seems to shoehorn cleric as "heal-bot". On the other side of the coin, it's possible that there is just a very low amount of healing in AoC in general and that even clerics will be some form of heal/dps hybrid.

I'm hoping for the 'low amount of healing' but NOT the 'likely heal/dps hybrid' because my preference for the threat-type of MMOs is not 'damage taken' but 'crippling effects stacked up'.

There's lots of reasons I could rant about as to why I think this is better, but overall I'm definitely hoping for a bit lower on the Actual HP Healing scale if they can balance their other intentions well enough relative to it.

Nova_terra

Azherae wrote: »

Nova_terra wrote: »

Percimes wrote: »

novercalis wrote: »

Players gotta embrace that an MMORPG isnt a solo game or a lobby game just sharing a world. It's about interacting, cooperating with other places to achieves goals TOGETHER and thus, I hope the cleric is limited in DPS scope and high demand in groups.

If you can't do any adventuring without a group, if you need to find partners before leaving the safety of a settlement: you're basically playing a lobby game with extra steps. The city, your friend list and guild mates are the lobby. No, it's not that much of a stretch.

As someone who's often played secondary healers, what I wonder most about healers in AoC is if it will be possible to create these type of characters without having cleric as the main archetype. Doesn't look like it, so the question of their DPS potential is interesting as it may be the only way to get that type of gameplay.

I have thought about this and have concluded that Bard will feature healing (unsubstantiated opinion) but unless the Cleric class features a monumental amount of build options/abilities one "type" of healer seems to shoehorn cleric as "heal-bot". On the other side of the coin, it's possible that there is just a very low amount of healing in AoC in general and that even clerics will be some form of heal/dps hybrid.

I'm hoping for the 'low amount of healing' but NOT the 'likely heal/dps hybrid' because my preference for the threat-type of MMOs is not 'damage taken' but 'crippling effects stacked up'.

There's lots of reasons I could rant about as to why I think this is better, but overall I'm definitely hoping for a bit lower on the Actual HP Healing scale if they can balance their other intentions well enough relative to it.

It will probably boil down to how "close" to the trinity system will they stay faithful to. I am good either way and would not mind low healing in the slightest if it provides other ways to remain engaging like lots of bleeds/effects to manage or buffs/utility to add and manage but if it again just boils down to "I cast AOE damage spell x50".. oh "I should put a shield on the tank". Then it will just be bad design.

Excited either way for tomorrow as I think that will color a lot of my opinion (was not in A1) and with the looming A2 happening SOON(tm). I guess it will paint a better picture on what will be expected.

Ludullu

In a party setup I'd prefer cleric to mainly be a healer. The bard addition there would probably help with some additional party dps boosts (through both buffs and debufs).

But if we're comparing solo dps capabilities between a cleric/bard that has a dps build and another dps archetype with a dps build, then I'd prefer the C/B to be at around 60% in most cases and around 120% in some. Those "some" would be mob types that clerics are good against (smth along the lines of holy/unholy types).

I'm used to bards being buff machines which lets them do more solo dps than an unbuffed dps char, but I'd hope that Intrepid goes away from those kinds of extremes, so a bard would be around 80-90% of a dps char.

Imo the cleric should be ~40% against normal mobs (mainly due to high mana use), but should also have a few mob types that they can kill quite easily. That mob type would be limited, so solo clerics would have to contest them. But as we all know, solo clerics are a rare kind of player, so I don't think it'd be that much of a problem.

And so a cleric/bard would have the buff/debuff boosts against normal mobs, which would bring him up to ~60% of a dps char, while against those special mob types it would push him over 100%.

Nova_terra

NiKr wrote: »

In a party setup I'd prefer cleric to mainly be a healer. The bard addition there would probably help with some additional party dps boosts (through both buffs and debufs).

But if we're comparing solo dps capabilities between a cleric/bard that has a dps build and another dps archetype with a dps build, then I'd prefer the C/B to be at around 60% in most cases and around 120% in some. Those "some" would be mob types that clerics are good against (smth along the lines of holy/unholy types).

I'm used to bards being buff machines which lets them do more solo dps than an unbuffed dps char, but I'd hope that Intrepid goes away from those kinds of extremes, so a bard would be around 80-90% of a dps char.

Imo the cleric should be ~40% against normal mobs (mainly due to high mana use), but should also have a few mob types that they can kill quite easily. That mob type would be limited, so solo clerics would have to contest them. But as we all know, solo clerics are a rare kind of player, so I don't think it'd be that much of a problem.

And so a cleric/bard would have the buff/debuff boosts against normal mobs, which would bring him up to ~60% of a dps char, while against those special mob types it would push him over 100%.

I am absolutely on board with the Cleric featuring the "bulk" of the party heals, and would love to see the bard with spot heals/bubbles/wards/etc and maybe effects like "All party members in 10m get 15% buff to heals received" or other healing adjacent effects. I just think it is mildly narrow game design if the cleric is the only class that can heal at all (or specifically is responsible for the bulk of the healing in all scenarios). Even if other classes can part time heal I think that would lead to more diversity.

That aside, I think we can all agree that Clerics should not be DPS/Heal war machines and that them taking a substantial hit to their DPS performance vs a DPS kitted class (lets just say DPS fighter) is welcome but I don't believe it can be to the severity that they are unplayable in solo/open world (again everyone seems to be in agreeance that somewhere between 80-60% sweet spot, even if that means a huge mana inefficiency) as that makes the class really distasteful to approach (obviously my biased opinion). I know I will probably have no trouble finding a group, and they will be in demand but if I am at a huge disadvantage in all content outside of group pvp and WBs/Raids/Dungeons it seems like it won't be very fun unless someone is waiting for me to log on to heal them or function in that group setting.

maouw

To be clear, are there reasons other than "supports take longer to grind coz no dps"? Do supports need more dps for anything else?

In Maplestory, bishops (advanced clerics) have an "Archangel" toggle that makes them "change form" which basically puts them in DPS mode at the expense of healing.
This is pretty effective at getting around this issue, however it also completely destroys role identity because then clerics were matching (and in many cases out-shining) other classes at the push of a button.
Could be a fun class fantasy if it was a more like an ult, rather than a toggle.

Previously I suggested giving supports wider AoE's but less single-target damage - so that they can compete when it comes to grinding mobs (coz they can hit more of them at once) without bossing/PvP advantage; but someone pointed out that this would limit the TYPE of mobs that are accessible to supports. Is this a bad tradeoff?

Azherae

maouw wrote: »

To be clear, are there reasons other than "supports take longer to grind coz no dps"? Do supports need more dps for anything else?

In Maplestory, bishops (advanced clerics) have an "Archangel" toggle that makes them "change form" which basically puts them in DPS mode at the expense of healing.
This is pretty effective at getting around this issue, however it also completely destroys role identity because then clerics were matching (and in many cases out-shining) other classes at the push of a button.
Could be a fun class fantasy if it was a more like an ult, rather than a toggle.

Previously I suggested giving supports wider AoE's but less single-target damage - so that they can compete when it comes to grinding mobs (coz they can hit more of them at once) without bossing/PvP advantage; but someone pointed out that this would limit the TYPE of mobs that are accessible to supports. Is this a bad tradeoff?

This isn't really about a 'need'.

Or rather, not a need for any specific 'thing that happens'.

It gets back to other aspects of design relative to 'having enough of them around', 'having them able to remain in sync with groups they like', and 'Roleplay class identity'.

Some people (you've seen them) just view themselves as 'Adventuring Healers that can Heal and DPS'. Sometimes, as you suggest 'Ah, but not at the same time' and sometimes 'under complex conditions' such as what NiKr suggests with 'special target mobs'.

The main 'problem' is that those things, by emergent design, often are available to other classes as well (might not be in Ashes) so it creates this weird situation where designers 'spend a lot of time making sure healers have less DPS or survivability' (the latter is more justified imo, but also probably should be tweakable) to prevent them from doing stuff that others can find other ways to do.

As for your question... I don't know because I don't really enjoy games where you can SURVIVE fighting too many mobs at once even on a healer, alone or even duo. I don't enjoy the gameplay type much other than as a 'hey watch this cool thing I can do when I time it perfectly with all cooldowns and all mana available' from a Mage.

tl;dr my experience is that if you make Healers/Bards too rigid in an MMORPG it becomes 'a lobby game' to them, they get sick of it, and either 'rush to endgame' (since that's what a large subset of the people who ask them to heal want to do as soon as they HAVE a healer/bard) or play something else.

In a game with Secondary Archetypes, I also feel a lack of DPS would create the 'why even bother trying?' meta quite quickly.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

In a party setup I'd prefer cleric to mainly be a healer. The bard addition there would probably help with some additional party dps boosts (through both buffs and debufs).

But if we're comparing solo dps capabilities between a cleric/bard that has a dps build and another dps archetype with a dps build, then I'd prefer the C/B to be at around 60% in most cases and around 120% in some. Those "some" would be mob types that clerics are good against (smth along the lines of holy/unholy types).

I'm used to bards being buff machines which lets them do more solo dps than an unbuffed dps char, but I'd hope that Intrepid goes away from those kinds of extremes, so a bard would be around 80-90% of a dps char.

Imo the cleric should be ~40% against normal mobs (mainly due to high mana use), but should also have a few mob types that they can kill quite easily. That mob type would be limited, so solo clerics would have to contest them. But as we all know, solo clerics are a rare kind of player, so I don't think it'd be that much of a problem.

And so a cleric/bard would have the buff/debuff boosts against normal mobs, which would bring him up to ~60% of a dps char, while against those special mob types it would push him over 100%.

My game experience is that if you have varied and good PvE, every class has something like this,

I wouldn't think of this as 'the Cleric/Bard does extra damage to the mob' (this tends to lead to problems) but I would prefer "DPS do less if they don't have Cleric/Bard cleanses or buffs" across MANY mobs.

This therefore 'slows the DPS' but lets them still try, which makes many places more viable for adventuring in a way that might meet people or support smaller groups. If you had 'Bard/Cleric does extra damage to mobs', the DPS has no 'reason to go to that area looking for a Bard/Cleric to hang out with/bother/fight' because they are wasting their time if they happen to not find any and the gameplay isn't necessarily more interesting.

If you have 'This mob/opponent debuffs me enough that I want a healer/buffer' you can have more interesting gameplay involving shifts in your own build, consumables if you're determined and just killing some time, etc.

I'm mostly mentioning this because I'm aware of the difference in your PvE experiences.

ElCrisp

I think its fine for Clerics or Bards to do as much as 100% the damage of an avergage DPS if they have to trade off 100% of their group buffs and healing to get it (or losing the amount of utility that puts them above your average dps)

This choice could be done through gear stats, or more simply skill points.

Say "X offensive skill now does more damage, but Y healing spell costs twice as much mana".

So your through put of healing may be lower. But you can put through some panic heals for the party, killing your resource pool, and taking that DPS lower at that time.

In the Bards case maybe they trade more and more of the
'buff group' power for greater 'buff self'.

It is just a question of balance, if you want to create those options, or blurring of dps vs utility, you just have to make sure that the total remains 100% and not 120%

maouw

ElCrisp wrote: »

I think its fine for Clerics or Bards to do as much as 100% the damage of an avergage DPS if they have to trade off 100% of their group buffs and healing to get it (or losing the amount of utility that puts them above your average dps)

This choice could be done through gear stats, or more simply skill points.

Say "X offensive skill now does more damage, but Y healing spell costs twice as much mana".

So your through put of healing may be lower. But you can put through some panic heals for the party, killing your resource pool, and taking that DPS lower at that time.

In the Bards case maybe they trade more and more of the
'buff group' power for greater 'buff self'.

It is just a question of balance, if you want to create those options, or blurring of dps vs utility, you just have to make sure that the total remains 100% and not 120%

I know what you're saying but it's a bit weird because it means we have to derive some sort of conversion for DPS to "healing equivalent": we can say 100% damage for 0% healing - that makes sense, but then what is 100% healing for 0% damage?
So to rephrase the original question into your language: what should be the default ratio of healing to damage for a cleric? 30% heal to 70% damage? Does that mean if a cleric goes 100% heal to 0% damage they become a heal bot and are 333.33% more effective at healing than default clerics?

This problem suggests it needs to be a binary choice - or a choice with threshold levels.

I should insert my opinion at this point - I like special numbers because they could create some sort of mathematical symmetry down the line so my preferred ratio is:

1 - (1 / e) = 63.21%*

*with the expectation that optimal grinding is a group activity where being a support is mildly superior to partying without supports. (mildly = ~5%) I wouldn't expect supports to solo grind, they'd spend solo time in the game's 83284 other systems instead.

Azherae wrote: »

...

It gets back to other aspects of design relative to 'having enough of them around', 'having them able to remain in sync with groups they like', and 'Roleplay class identity'.

Some people (you've seen them) just view themselves as 'Adventuring Healers that can Heal and DPS'. Sometimes, as you suggest 'Ah, but not at the same time' and sometimes 'under complex conditions' such as what NiKr suggests with 'special target mobs'.

The main 'problem' is that those things, by emergent design, often are available to other classes as well (might not be in Ashes) so it creates this weird situation where designers 'spend a lot of time making sure healers have less DPS or survivability' (the latter is more justified imo, but also probably should be tweakable) to prevent them from doing stuff that others can find other ways to do.

As for your question... I don't know because I don't really enjoy games where you can SURVIVE fighting too many mobs at once even on a healer, alone or even duo. I don't enjoy the gameplay type much other than as a 'hey watch this cool thing I can do when I time it perfectly with all cooldowns and all mana available' from a Mage.

tl;dr my experience is that if you make Healers/Bards too rigid in an MMORPG it becomes 'a lobby game' to them, they get sick of it, and either 'rush to endgame' (since that's what a large subset of the people who ask them to heal want to do as soon as they HAVE a healer/bard) or play something else.

In a game with Secondary Archetypes, I also feel a lack of DPS would create the 'why even bother trying?' meta quite quickly.

So a breakdown of other reasons would be:

not enough clerics - need to make no-cleric parties viable
remain in sync with groups they like - need to make a party of all-clerics viable
roleplay class identity - some cleric fantasies involve casting very powerful offensive holy magic
lobby game - avoid having clerics getting stuck with group-content-only and locked out of everything else
survival against too many mobs - mob AI should be challenging, not a risk-free agro everything you can see coz your heals are that good

ACK
yeah I can see how my preferences don't work with points 2, 3 and 5

I don't understand your last point tho - "why bother even trying" meta?

Azherae

maouw wrote: »

ElCrisp wrote: »

I think its fine for Clerics or Bards to do as much as 100% the damage of an avergage DPS if they have to trade off 100% of their group buffs and healing to get it (or losing the amount of utility that puts them above your average dps)

This choice could be done through gear stats, or more simply skill points.

Say "X offensive skill now does more damage, but Y healing spell costs twice as much mana".

So your through put of healing may be lower. But you can put through some panic heals for the party, killing your resource pool, and taking that DPS lower at that time.

In the Bards case maybe they trade more and more of the
'buff group' power for greater 'buff self'.

It is just a question of balance, if you want to create those options, or blurring of dps vs utility, you just have to make sure that the total remains 100% and not 120%

I know what you're saying but it's a bit weird because it means we have to derive some sort of conversion for DPS to "healing equivalent": we can say 100% damage for 0% healing - that makes sense, but then what is 100% healing for 0% damage?
So to rephrase the original question into your language: what should be the default ratio of healing to damage for a cleric? 30% heal to 70% damage? Does that mean if a cleric goes 100% heal to 0% damage they become a heal bot and are 333.33% more effective at healing than default clerics?

This problem suggests it needs to be a binary choice - or a choice with threshold levels.

I should insert my opinion at this point - I like special numbers because they could create some sort of mathematical symmetry down the line so my preferred ratio is:

1 - (1 / e) = 63.21%*

*with the expectation that optimal grinding is a group activity where being a support is mildly superior to partying without supports. (mildly = ~5%) I wouldn't expect supports to solo grind, they'd spend solo time in the game's 83284 other systems instead.

Azherae wrote: »

...

It gets back to other aspects of design relative to 'having enough of them around', 'having them able to remain in sync with groups they like', and 'Roleplay class identity'.

Some people (you've seen them) just view themselves as 'Adventuring Healers that can Heal and DPS'. Sometimes, as you suggest 'Ah, but not at the same time' and sometimes 'under complex conditions' such as what NiKr suggests with 'special target mobs'.

The main 'problem' is that those things, by emergent design, often are available to other classes as well (might not be in Ashes) so it creates this weird situation where designers 'spend a lot of time making sure healers have less DPS or survivability' (the latter is more justified imo, but also probably should be tweakable) to prevent them from doing stuff that others can find other ways to do.

As for your question... I don't know because I don't really enjoy games where you can SURVIVE fighting too many mobs at once even on a healer, alone or even duo. I don't enjoy the gameplay type much other than as a 'hey watch this cool thing I can do when I time it perfectly with all cooldowns and all mana available' from a Mage.

tl;dr my experience is that if you make Healers/Bards too rigid in an MMORPG it becomes 'a lobby game' to them, they get sick of it, and either 'rush to endgame' (since that's what a large subset of the people who ask them to heal want to do as soon as they HAVE a healer/bard) or play something else.

In a game with Secondary Archetypes, I also feel a lack of DPS would create the 'why even bother trying?' meta quite quickly.

So a breakdown of other reasons would be:
not enough clerics - need to make no-cleric parties viable

remain in sync with groups they like - need to make a party of all-clerics viable

roleplay class identity - some cleric fantasies involve casting very powerful offensive holy magic

lobby game - avoid having clerics getting stuck with group-content-only and locked out of everything else

survival against too many mobs - mob AI should be challenging, not a risk-free agro everything you can see coz your heals are that good

ACK
yeah I can see how my preferences don't work with points 2, 3 and 5

I don't understand your last point tho - "why bother even trying" meta?

If you are Cleric/Fighter and you go "I'm a Templar" and your group just goes 'yeah but you're a healer so focus on the healing thanks, please take augments that enhance your healing'...

What's the point of being anything other than a High Priest or Oracle?

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