Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Upcoming Healing Question
Ebonborn
Member, Alpha Two
Leveling in Alpha 1 felt extremely limited for healers and heavily relied on having a damage counterpart. While I understand alpha 1 was not for balancing. How do you plan to balance the capabilities of a healer leveling vs the damage leveling? Are you going to require that dps needs a healer just as much as a healer needs a dps? It seems like the requirement for dependency on healers is missing in the leveling process which allows dps/tank players to bypass the goal of working as a "group" when min maxing.
Welcoming anyone's thoughts/opinions on this topic and how I can change my question or just to spark conversation about healing. Feel like its not talked about enough!
Welcoming anyone's thoughts/opinions on this topic and how I can change my question or just to spark conversation about healing. Feel like its not talked about enough!
1
Comments
everybodywould probably level faster by being in a party.
also im sure clerics will have a damage build with augments and all that, but you cant expect it to
The holy trinity exists for a reason right? MMOs have moved away from group leveling content and focus on the solo grind. AoC, from my understanding, is bring back grouping to progress your level.
Back in the early 2000s I played FF 11 as my main MMO for years. Outside of 1 class, beastmaster, the solo leveling experience didn't really exist. There were other, very niche, solo classes but it was far inferior than being in a group and killing mobs. I believe from what we have seen in live streams a healer is a must have. Tanks may be the ones who will have the hardest time with being a party, as Fighter seems to do pretty well gaining threat/hate. I'm sure there will be many viable set ups for parties.
An 8 man team of tank, healer, bard, and 5 dps will probably be a standard thing(in my mind). If bard is able to support a party enough with healing then the Min max strat could be 2 bards and 6 dps. That still doesn't make healer obsolete though. Healers just wouldn't be in a party like that. Just like in mage burn parties where your standard dps isn't wanted.
Time will tell but, I think there should be little to no worry here.
I should have added this to the other post... sorry.
It is my understanding in WoW(classic) Warriors leveled slow compared to everyone else(solo). Mages were super levelers and Hunters were also pretty fast. In group content, like running a dungeon, you needed a warrior. Forgive me for not know too much about WoW, I never played it much, but there was a time that 4 warriors with the spinning axe, a shaman(?)with the same axe, and a healer was super desired to do runs of ZV(?) near that goblin outpost in the desert. I remember flying through the levels there.
I think there are classes in every mmo that level inherently faster because of their kit. The balance of which class levels faster shouldn't be of large concern in my opinion.
I plan to play a Cleric, though definitely augmented for damage as much as possible. That's my jam.
Anyway, in the November 2022 livestream (Dec 2, 2022), which was the Cleric Update livestream, the group ran through the graveyard. It seemed like a very typical questing area. Probably pretty typical for leveling. That area seemed way too much to solo-level. It seemed like you would definitely want a healer and a couple dps to run it efficiently. If you haven't watched that play-through, maybe check it out, the dps definitely needed a healer for that area.
While I agree with you to an extent, meaning I don't want it to take me 2x more time to level than the non-Cleric classes, I don't expect it to be perfectly balanced. Based on what I've seen I think Clerics will be in-demand, and what they lose in their ability to solo through content, they will make up for in the fact that they will be able to easily find a group to run with. I personally am not too worried about it, but then again, I wasn't in A1.
why should there be equity?
also dps kill 1 monster faster than a cleric but cleric can keep going non stop because infinite hp...dps have to sit and rest..theres ur balance.
also in a1 clerics could aoe too T_T they were the best class lol.
also we only saw leveling to 15...
How did you find it to be limited? I would like to compare it to my own experience leveling as Cleric in Alpha 1 (my Alpha-1 playloop was basically to just go straight to the beach near Moonhollow and level there every time while my friends went to quest and do other things to compare, and I usually outpaced them and they had to come join me to get exp).
I found healer to be somewhat broken in A1. I was able to solo the Ice dragon. I was never in danger of dying while leveling. I could go nonstop in the solo grind. Compared to Tank where I died a few times and had to stop to heal up every few kills.
You should be able to solo mobs that are at least 2 levels lower than you.
the game requires cooperation and competition is everywhere. you should be able to solo, at a slower pace than a group though. bad design is what you are suggesting.
and why mobs 2 levels below you? where does that magic number comes from?
You should maybe be able to solo easily mobs X levels lower than you. If they're your level it should require high skills. We can't allow solo players to play without engaging with the community
Shadowpriest was the most solo fun I have had as a healer. Templar in EQ2 was the most fun in a group. Would love to see a blend.
I totally disagree with this take. Your comments would mean that even simple exploration would require a group, because encountering even 1 mob at your level means you're probably going to die.
Gathering/exploring should absolutely not require grouping to survive the environment.
I enjoy group content, and feel an MMO should absolutely require player cooperation. I want both solo and group content to be difficult. I want every encounter to require me to be on my game, or die.
I want some areas that are too much for me to handle solo. I want difficult content, overall. But I also want to be able to level, quest, gather, etc solo for a few nights a week when I don't have the time or desire to group up.
I personally want 80% of quests to be solo/soloable, with 20% extremely hard to solo and require multi-player cooperation. There will be more than enough group content with world bosses, guild, raids, pvp caravans and sieges, etc.
I definitely feel that. Levelling as spriest back in vanilla was fun, and they were pretty good for PvP too (Bloodscalp EU represent!).
I've also levelled in holy spec, and that was a lot less fun. My TTK was measures in days.
If 80% of the quests are soloable might as well have an instanced game. That's insane. I want group content most of the time. Maybe 20% should be soloable, the rest should require a group and you could only solo it if several levels above.
If you want to gather and explore, that's fine, but content should require high degrees of mastery even when overleveled.
Haha, in Classic I levelled my priest spec in discipline. Mostly in solo. Thank the light for the wand. Not has bad as Holy, but still...
With some luck you can't level solo efficiently and people will be forced to group, like it should be
Yeah but you're also an FFXI player so I expect that, basically.
I can definitely see there being certain mobs that the Cleric in A1 could not solo, but that could just be the OP not being used to 'ecological niche' or concepts like that and therefore what to target.
Also I'm pretty sure some of those little Maws were actually bugged, probably in the same way the Weapon Combo was 'bugged', just in reverse.
I hope is this way. We need group content, no solo.
But I'd really like to see high leveling efficiency in the 3-5 player group range. Not that those groups should be faster than an 8-man (although they will be faster to form), just close when grinding.
7--8 person groups should only be *necessary* for some large story quests, class progression quests, zone event quests, dungeon end-boss kills, etc
There's content for solo players, too.
At the moment our 'problem' is that since Ashes made most of its original design inferences long ago, it's possible to come to a lot of different impressions.
I come from a main game that was 90-95% group content at launch. Soloing was tedious, pretty unrewarding, and while soloing, two of the main interesting parts of the game's combat system were basically impossible to do.
But based on the descriptions of the game at the time from the makers (there weren't many of these) you wouldn't have known it was going to be like that. Basically, there are 'hints' in Ashes that a lot of it is going to be group content. For some people, sailing became group content a while back, and Freeholds became group content recently. Dungeons were probably group content all along, and with no global auction house, most economics may be group content. Depending on your area, it may be far more reasonable to consider gathering to be group content.
The OP is addressing 'is just basic leveling also group content'. But they didn't say 'I couldn't level', they said it was 'extremely limited', which implies that they tried it and either:
1) Could only level on a few mobs that their Cleric could consistently kill due to their type or level
2) Could only gain smaller amounts of exp compared to being in basically any group at all
3) Would be at so much risk that they could literally die and lose more exp than they gained
There is a design paradigm from the 2000s where classes are explicitly not able to solo well, so maybe it's just those people's expectations combined with Steven's 'attitude' in a lot of his old content.
Therefore I ask the counter-question. Why should I believe that most of the game won't be group content?
80% solo?!?!
Holy smokes.
A pillar of this game is the importance of community and having a reputation... And the nexus of that is group play.
There was no solo leveling a healer in DAoC.
I would rather have a challenge in a group than a challenge solo.
What percent of the game, the entire game, would you estimate that quests represent?
I played a Druid on launch, and they were one of 2 solo-capable classes for Hibernia (Enchanter was the other). The first 50 in Hib was a Druid, he also leveled mostly solo. I recall Aug Healer was supposed to be pretty good at it, but did not level one.
Things changed a lot by the time fins were added/discovered, along with PBAE