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
In EQ2, there were 3 healer archetypes, broken down in to 2 different classes each.
Of those three healer archetypes, two of them required proactive healing.
One placed a heal buff on the player target that would trigger a heal when ever that character received damage - and the two classes with these spells had two single target and a group version of this type of heal.
Then there was the other archetype that placed a ward over top of the target players HP pool, effectively giving them a buffer of additional HP (not able to be healed, but can be replenished via recasting a ward).
It was normal in regular group content for a tank to never actually dip in to their own HP reserves if they were running with either of these two healer archetypes.
The game also had abilities among healer that were cast on enemies, which would trigger a heal on any player they attacked with their primary attack
Basically, the bulk of the healing in the game was proactive rather than reactive (though all healers had plenty of reactive healing).
To bring this back to Ashes, we have no idea whether these mechanics will make it to the game as yet - the cleric showcase was FAR too early in the development of that class to have any real expectation of that kind of detail.
The only real points to add to the above are that there are a LOT of developers from EQ2 working on Ashes - and that the game is still so far out that we can all expect at least one more full round of class showcases.
Suffice to say, people enjoyed playing them, and enjoyed being grouped with them.
I've topped the healing trackers with my healers for a long time. Often times, proactive healing conflicts with over healing because you can't always guarantee a proactive heal will be need or utilised due to rng on damage. Also, mana management can either make or break proactive healing for the same reason. The issue right now is the reactive healing is too slow for cleric and there are no options for proactive healing. Sure, you can hit a delayed heal but i still wouldn't call it a proactive heal. Sometimes, reactive healers become proactive healers just by understanding a fight, or, timing the skills to mimic a big damage spike.
Heal over time can be proactive healing but the clerics main heals are more based around burst healing and normalisation healing. I kind of like the normalisation healing and I do enjoy burst healing. I would hope Cleric has some larger, longer heal over time to get proactive healing a real chance.
Absorbs are shields yeah, the mage has an absorb right now. Except the absorbs related to healing are given to others as well as the self.
Sometimes older references are changed and newer references are created. I've stuck to older idioms.
1. It's moreso that MMOs provide a 'damage mitigation on others' class which sometimes has the ability to restore lost HP, as the primary skill, and sometimes does not. Players call this class 'healer'.
2. This class then has proactive damage mitigation sometimes, but since proactive damage mitigation prevents damage (again, usually this has to be on others for the classes we are talking about) it isn't usually called healing.
3. Those classes then control the timing and delivery of their mitigation based on the enemy, and some of them also mitigate negative statuses since they're often based on things like Ashes' Cleric, which would, for example, 'pray for the afflicted to be healed from their sickness or blindness'.
I'm not yet able to understand how your argument isn't circular. If a Cleric's prayers result in protection rather than restoration, it seems like you don't count it as a healer. If they pray before the danger rather than after it, it seems you don't count it as proactive gameplay.
My example for you, which you can clarify for me, is what I do in FFXI when healing when my Paladin is in the party. My Paladin heals his own HP in many fights, as this is optimal for hate control. I do the following depending on the fight and the stage of the fight (because I'm managing mana, and casting everything will wear my mana out):
1. Cast Haste on the person whose recasts, skills, or abilities will best improve our chances, usually by their abilities preventing damage.
2. Cast Bar-Element spells, which reduce damage from elemental attacks, but I can only have one at a time, so I sometimes react to casts, sometimes guess, sometimes choose according to the special attacks of the enemy.
3. Cast Bar-status spells, which protect against or reduce the duration of status effects. See above.
4. Cast Auspice, which reduces the Gauge gain of enemies being struck, resulting in them using less special attacks.
5. Cast Flash to blind the enemy for a second or two when a big attack has happened so that its strikes have no chance of interrupting the Paladin from doing his own healing.
6. Cast Regen on party members who have taken hits or AoE damage to improve Mana conservation
7. Hit the mob to get my own Gauge to either participate in killing it faster or regaining my own Mana
8. Cast Stoneskin on myself to ensure that my own HP does not drop or that I can cast at least one spell with no chance of interruption, should things go badly and the mob turn on me for too long.
9. Heal and remove status effects applied to party members.
I don't classify these things as 'proactive' or 'reactive' healing. I don't care if they are or aren't healing. The game offers more challenges than 'restore HP when lost' so I do that. It may be that to you, a White Mage is a 'buff class that has heals', but I'll take it. If Intrepid makes Cleric 'a class that applies defensive buffs to HP by prayer and heals some HP occasionally', I don't feel that as a 'healer' I will be concerned.
What would concern you?
The party kites, baits, catches stragglers and overall fights in a way where numbers won't matter as much.
I understand your concern, but not your basis for the concern.
Why do you think that Bards will have no healing at all? And why would it matter?
Why do you think that Bards having buffs would result in Clerics having no defensive buffs?
I'd like to understand this because the main game I play is the exact opposite of this. Bards have a small amount of Healing over Time which is sometimes used, but not often used because it takes up a 'buff slot'.
White Mages have the defensive buffs I mentioned, while Bards manage other types of Buffs like movement, attack, MP Restoration, Accuracy, etc. Things that are generally not considered defensive (they also have a Defensive buff set for overkill situations)
I consider 'defensive buffs' and cleanses to be part of a Cleric's kit. Could you clarify what games you have played that make you expect the defensive buffs to not be likely for Clerics?
Bishop is the biggest healer in the game and Prophet is the biggest single target buffer in the game. They literally stem from the same class and PP has some small heals, while BP has small buffs (with bigger healing-related ones).
So yeah, to me, it also makes no sense why healers wouldn't have deeper more varied gameplay or why bards/buffers wouldn't have healing.
16 healers would be an awful lot of healers.
Ok, thank you, I believe I fully understand your perspective now, even if I disagree with your conclusions. Specifically, this one:
The game will be balanced around the fact that Bard lacks heals so PvE parties can clear content without a Cleric
Not that I think this can't be an outcome we get, I just don't have as much conviction that it will be so, and I definitely don't presume that Scrolls of Resurrection are going to influence it at all.
I also don't mind if it is true, actually, but Intrepid has specifically said that the aim will be to design it so that you always optimally take one of each. So 'if there was a Cleric available that you were willing to run the content with, you'd always take them rather than swapping them out', is good enough for me, design wise.
Thank you for color coding your response too, btw. No sarcasm, it's nice sometimes to be able to associate points with their colorcodes.
What I don't understand (I'll happily chat and address your entire post, but I want to look at the part most relevant to the thread) is this:
If there isn't enough unavoidable damage to require the Cleric (or just damage in general) how is anyone dying often enough for dealing with the respawn system to be a meaningful part of Cleric gameplay?
Wouldn't that result in bringing a Cleric only because you 'might' die and get some small benefit from their presence in that situation? Similarly, wouldn't 'just not dying'be more effective, and reason enough to bring the Cleric?
I'm not saying that your perspective doesn't make sense, but in 'whole context', I don't find things like 'There will be a Tank that can heal' compelling because of my list above. FFXI Paladins can heal. They heal quite well. That's why 'basic healing' is so low on the priority list given.
Again, my experiences don't match, you ask questions that imply that you would dislike something about the standard (slightly modified for Ashes) experience of the game I play now, or that you don't believe it actually happens that way. Is it that your last paragraph is implying that no one would like such a game because of the number of pain points and so you don't expect that Intrepid wouldn't make it?
This makes no sense you need to stop basing your arguments off this type of stuff. Only reason you are looking at that is to compare it to other games. You are wasting your time trying to compare it they won't have that kind of balance and things are going to change once they design class kits, item builds, etc.
Stop trying to dig into exact intricate details that isn't the purpose of them showing it lmao.