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
I'm hoping phase 2 will give a beautiful cleric which damages and heals. I was drawn to cleric in the first place due to danage/heal focus. I believe the devs moved away from the philosophy though.
Its a change I didn't much like. In the process they turned a good class into a bad class.
I struggle to summarise the issues because Steven didn't play the cleric very well and the 4 man group had the team dying with the cleric having most of their mana left due to slow or no heals.
I look forward to this month's dungeon livestream.
I'm used to Celestial, Priest of Mitra or Bear Shaman. PoM is a standard healer HoT, Burst and Damage/heal combined. Bear Shaman is HoT and Damage/Heals combined. Celestial is Wards/Absorbs and damage/heal hybrid.
In a pvx game you need damage/heals hybrids. Cleric was a damage/heal hybrid. We don't want to only heal because you can't go melee, can't hold the rear and can't hold your own.
I've never needed targets because you can fire your abilities off without a target in these games. I've solo healed raids with all three of these classes too.
I agree that the Cleric in Ashes might have some difficulty in PvP, but the 'PvP healer' tends to want this. And yes, in PvE it basically automates it, but we'd have to discuss when they want more feedback on Cleric, whether or not this is a problem.
Basically, how many people are in that 'pain spot' between 'I don't want to have PvP healer execution, but I also really want to use Tap-Damage Healing in PvE'? I can only say I've never met anyone like that, but it's not like my group is often looking for/interacting with a different healer.
Agreed, but let's consider what 'first to be targeted' means really briefly.
A Cleric should probably be physically close to their tank. I don't know if Line of Sight blocking is still active enough that you couldn't Javelin a Cleric out from behind their Tank. Point is, as soon as the attack starts or even before that, Tank pops some positional defensive ability so the Tank is taking damage and not the Cleric, or the Mage CCs anyone who tried to CC both the Tank and Cleric.
Cleric will definitely 'spam heals' of some kind when jumped in PvP, possibly with strong defensive options, but it could be built so that unlike a Tank, no build of Cleric could sustain those defensive options for long.
You only need to sustain them long enough to make your opponent overcommit and then get cleaned up by your team.
By this reasoning, all Clerics should be fine. What part do you disagree with or not expect to be the case in Ashes?
Just to be clear, and apologies if this seems like me discrediting you (but it kinda is), what competitive games of this type do you actually even play?
You didn't seem to be familiar with the 'old school' style MMOs, and your answer doesn't sound like one that a person who played modern 'Fantasy Battle Arena' style games would have (basically, you're describing something that is 'a late game teamfight' in such a game, but your perception of how it goes seems very odd).
I promise I'm not trying to make it out that you just don't know what you're talking about, I genuinely want to know so I can watch some videos of a game of that type that you have played, so that I can understand your concern better.
Ok that makes some sense, but then I have to ask this.
As far as I know, what you described doesn't happen very often in LoL. The design is different enough in ways that would make it not happen. So is it that you are expecting that the underlying requirements/expectations of a partially tab-target MMO would force the issue to be meaningfully different than the LoL outcome, or is it that you actually experience similar things in LoL consistently? (not really asking if you 'heal' in LoL or not, just 'experience similar from any role').
Assume that while I am probably not 'competitive tier' in LoL or MOBAs (I actually don't know, it's complicated) that I can probably understand from that perspective more easily.
Starts at 0:50
I'm specifically talking about the rare 'max 5v5 teamfight'.
And I believe (please correct me) that invuls, cleanses, and so on also take priority over raw HP healing mitigation in LoL too.
I feel like I almost understand but I don't want to make too many assumptions at once so just confirm/deny this one for me.
You're used to games where the Healer/Support are one thing conceptually because HP healing is often less important than protection and buffs, and you therefore assume that the Buffer will be more powerful/required than the Healer.
This is technically far more supportive of Niem's point than anything else.
I don't remember, have YOU played MOBAs much?
As to your "points", yes, the game called those heals reactive, because the ability itself reacts. It is the player that has to be proactive.
This is as opposed to a regular heal that is proactive (the ability just heals as soon as it lands), but where the player needs to be reactive.
I mean, the description of the ability that you yourself provided should make it fairly obvious that the healer using it needs to be proactive in using it. The heal reacts to incoming damage, meaning the player needs to have it applied before damage is taken.
For your second point, the role of a healer is to keep others alive.
You are complaining about this being one dimensional. When someone shows you a very two dimensional way of playing a healer from another game, you saying "well, that isnt a heal" just makes you look stupid.
Thank you for clarity then.
Based on my understanding of what you value, I can only offer/ask this.
From the Mage gameplay you saw that 'stacked debuffs/statuses' are important at least for that class. I believe that if Intrepid were to make a game where Supports could not easily remove these, but Clerics could, and where healing HP was not as important as preventing or removing the debuffs/statuses, then would the 'concern still exist'?
At the risk of being 'cheeky', Death IS just a 'status effect' after all.
Has your view on cleric changed since 2018/19?
I remember you didn't like the cleric back then. Wondered if you have appreciated the change in direction or are still ambivalent about the cleric. Bard is still slated as a non healer so cleric is all we have.