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.
I find the cleric skills cluttered
nanfoodle
Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I think it's overly complicated. To me any heals that function is so many similar ways that don't really define each heal spell in a way that IMO dose not justify at least 1/2 of the heal skills.
I don't even get some of the combos. Like a skill that makes you run to point black range of a friendly target. And another skill that heals a point blank friendly target. Why are these two skills instead of just one? IMO there is just too many healing skills and options. It seems cluttered.
IMO these skills for healing needs to be slim lined. I have played a healer in many MMOs for many years. I think having one skill having options is great but you need only a few skills. Splash heal, HoT, Large Volume heal and a group heal. Some utilities, like sheilds and the like.. I do like the cone heal and adding that flavor to more heals would be great. Heal and damage. Or heal and buff/debuffs. Making the Cleric more of a battle healers would be great.
As is. I don't get this class so far. It does not have a theme or a direction of the type of healer or what the twist that makes this class stand out. Just seems to be a bunch of random good ideas that don't meld together.
I don't even get some of the combos. Like a skill that makes you run to point black range of a friendly target. And another skill that heals a point blank friendly target. Why are these two skills instead of just one? IMO there is just too many healing skills and options. It seems cluttered.
IMO these skills for healing needs to be slim lined. I have played a healer in many MMOs for many years. I think having one skill having options is great but you need only a few skills. Splash heal, HoT, Large Volume heal and a group heal. Some utilities, like sheilds and the like.. I do like the cone heal and adding that flavor to more heals would be great. Heal and damage. Or heal and buff/debuffs. Making the Cleric more of a battle healers would be great.
As is. I don't get this class so far. It does not have a theme or a direction of the type of healer or what the twist that makes this class stand out. Just seems to be a bunch of random good ideas that don't meld together.
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Comments
1 Row of Active Skills for rotation.
Plus
1 Row of Active Skills that are situational.
But... we'll have to test it to know...
(Also, you don't have to use every skill available)
I will admit I did not watch the 1hr 40min just the ingame 51 min video.
I welcome the intentional fabricated difficulty. Was the first skill called mend? The one with 0 MP, bad targering and low impact?
That's your off-combat heal during the moments that the group is catching their breath. It's a cleaver design. It's useless during combat, making the clerics decision-making shine, but it doesnt cost mp during off-combat, meaning you dont have to slow down, due to wasted resources.
Here is my off-topic suggestion, based on fabricated difficulty to improve the overall gameplay:
Make gap closers and gap openers work without acquaring a target. Make them cause the user to lose the target tab. Make them purely pissitioning moves. Not something that people spam to win, like in ESO.
Steven mentioned that one cleric wouldn’t have all the skills demonstrated in the 51 min video.
yeah lets do the same every other healer has in every other game
also, take into consideration that these skills will have effects depending on the level of the skill and the augment from the secondary archetype, probably allowing you to have many many different combinations that suit different strategies and playstyles
mend will be awesome. it gives you mp
Idgaf if the screen doesn't have one pixel of U.I. on it if that means the combat is bland and boring, which it generally is with "just a handful of skills that are used more often".
Regardless, the U.I. can be cleaned up in other ways, such as through custom/dynamic U.I. settings, and through more versatile control schemes and skill designs that require less "buttons" for the same amount of abilities.
As others have said you will probably not have most of those skills on your bar.
I can see the slight variations used by very different clerics based off the range you want to play at, the armor type you wear and whether you want to be a very heal oriented cleric or maybe one that’s dipping more into the damage side of things with ability choice and secondary archetype choice.
Based off of past comments there’s still around about 20 more skills that we haven’t seen.
This one I quoted specifically I really hope they don’t change. Baking a heal into it will up the spells value and probably warrant a higher mana cost or CD.
This was one of my favorite abilities shown. Can either be used to get you into the thick of it, or targeted on back line to get you out of situations. I like that it is only on target ally so it can’t just be used as a generic movement ability. Once again the limitation can help with balance so its CD and mana cost are able to stay at a lower amount.
I could see at higher levels of skill point investment it giving a shield, or maybe a buff to the target called “salvation” that can do a number of things such as increasing amount of healing the target receives.
But if they did add something else to it I hope it isn’t just heal the target you jump to.
Was not my point. I want a flavor of what Ashes is trying to make and this was a cluster of skills. I get now that these are not skills every Cleric will have. If I could amend my OP. I would like Ashes team give us one of the attended skil sets a Cleric would have. Let us see a vision over a large scope of what could be. People need to see how IS wants these classes to look and play. This demo did not help. Gaming forums elsewhere are saying things like "I don't get it" "this looks like a jumble of skills" "are we to have that many healing skills on my skill bar?"
Yeah but you’re kinda missing the point of having all the options and the ability to pick and choose and upgrade what you want.
IS gives you all of the tools and then you get to figure out how you want it to play. Possibly even adjusting your skill points just based on the content you’re going to do. Group content maybe you want to skill into more heals, solo you may want more damage abilities.
15-20 spells on a bar. 35-40 primary class skills. Plus however many weapon skills are available per weapon sucking up skill points they may result in less active spells.
I don’t think we are going to really see “builds” take shape until A2. For we just get to see some of the tools we will have to make alllllllllll the different potential builds.
I think this will be more useful for a cleric/fighter or cleric/tank. Someone who wants to be closer and have a more melee heal approach.
As others have said, a cleric isn't designed to have every one of these abilities... But choose the ability they like that fit their healing playstyle. I can see at least 4 different healer types being feasible from the list of abilities they showed off. And also don't forget secondaries can edit some of these too.
I think this is a great spot for a dual purpose spell and it could be included in the ground target heal. If an enemy is in the center ring of the circle they are stunned. It adds more potential for the stun since it wouldn’t be limited to single target but the enemy has a chance to react since it is a delayed result.
Was always very fond of their mindset that hard ccs weren’t going to be point and click. It was one thing I was rather disappointed to see.
I think they said multiple times that there won't be any active weapon skills in Ashes (that you could slot on the bar), instead weapons will provide different passives, procs, etc.
I was going to say this as well. The skills are so varied and numerous so we do get the ability to create a rotation and skill set we like.
It looks 10000 times better than esos puny hotbars and no cooldowns.
What mmorpg are you comparing it to healing wise? What what do those mmorpgs have that AoC doesn't have in healing?
Steven said in the demo that we didn't have to have all of those Active Skills in the hotbar.
It's not a "skill bar". Two of those slots held potions.
Clerics have a bunch of Active Skills for Healing - many of the ones demoed in July we had not seen before.