Greetings, glorious adventurers! If you're joining in our Alpha One spot testing, please follow the steps here to see all the latest test info on our forums and Discord!
Options
The Bard could be the other "other" support class
Vissox
Member
Don't give the cleric any dispels. Here's why:
In most MMOs the game tends to be either a Holy Trinity system or a split responsibility system. Ashes is a blend of the 2, with the class augment system, that has been said to allow almost any class to perform any needed role, while maintaining the Trinity requirements.
Seeing the lack of status dispelling abilities in the cleric update showcase, it got me wondering why that responsibility is normally a healer centric one in the first place. I think the bard could be the archetype that enforces (or makes an optional) 4th party requirement: Dispelling debuffs and giving buffs and combat enhancements.
I believe this will help individual players within ashes 8 player party system feel more important, and it will help offset the top heavy amount of DPS in a party.
It could open up opportunity's to make bosses do more raid/party wide damage since a healers attention won't be split between 2 duties, making fights a little harder.
It would give off meta DPS classes a way to still gear appropriately without being shunned to a healing role. (Those ret players exist and I am here for them.)
Some examples I was thinking of:
A rouge bard could give an AoE stealth to party members to help them skip a difficult area or get the drop on a contesting group.
A tank bard could make some sort of spirit mitigation link between themselves and the tank that forks damage.
A true bard could provide pre combat buffs and use cooldowns that increase damage by a percentage or casting and attack speed, (like heroism in WoW).
You get the idea. I love when games offer different ways to be useful, besides griding numbers together, It makes a more social and fun experience.
In most MMOs the game tends to be either a Holy Trinity system or a split responsibility system. Ashes is a blend of the 2, with the class augment system, that has been said to allow almost any class to perform any needed role, while maintaining the Trinity requirements.
Seeing the lack of status dispelling abilities in the cleric update showcase, it got me wondering why that responsibility is normally a healer centric one in the first place. I think the bard could be the archetype that enforces (or makes an optional) 4th party requirement: Dispelling debuffs and giving buffs and combat enhancements.
I believe this will help individual players within ashes 8 player party system feel more important, and it will help offset the top heavy amount of DPS in a party.
It could open up opportunity's to make bosses do more raid/party wide damage since a healers attention won't be split between 2 duties, making fights a little harder.
It would give off meta DPS classes a way to still gear appropriately without being shunned to a healing role. (Those ret players exist and I am here for them.)
Some examples I was thinking of:
A rouge bard could give an AoE stealth to party members to help them skip a difficult area or get the drop on a contesting group.
A tank bard could make some sort of spirit mitigation link between themselves and the tank that forks damage.
A true bard could provide pre combat buffs and use cooldowns that increase damage by a percentage or casting and attack speed, (like heroism in WoW).
You get the idea. I love when games offer different ways to be useful, besides griding numbers together, It makes a more social and fun experience.
2
Comments
I wouldn't say there isn't a trinity at all at least mechanically speaking, but I would agree that there is no locked class identity, which is awesome.
There will be a trinity, for sure, with Bards being kind of a 4th, support group, that will mix dmg, buffs/debuffs, and healing, depending on how you spec it, though obviously leaning more into support, rather than pure healer or pure dps.
I'm pretty happy with that. I hope it is good enough to where players won't overlook it for another DPS class.
They've specifically have said "trinity". Even in the last live stream.
Tank, DPS, Support (healing).
But with that said it's more likely 4. Tank, DPS, Support, Healing. It will really come down to if they make bard a primary healer, or strictly support.
Gating content behind one primary class is no good.
A trinity of four.....
So Trinity, with blending via augments.
a healer is a support btw..
Correct, but not all support are healers. You probably won't do as well without a cleric.
So holy trinity is Tank, DPS, Cleric. Then you add support. 8 man groups add 5 more besides the trinity. Most high end content probably won't need two tanks. Maybe a fighter off-tank. A good chance for 2 clerics and likely a Bard support. The rest dps/support classes.
Bard will likely be so good at support it will be mandatory. Quadrality
But the showcases and the most complete archetypes are clearly trinity, and the balance will expand from there.
They've said they intend for Bard to be a needed role in every party. So Tank, Cleric, Bard, and DPS (although I suspect most parties will also want a Summoner). Although Bard will be a non-healing support so Cleric will have healing (and I assume also cleansing and we saw dps and CC to an extent). Bard will have a bunch of cool debuffs, buffs, some dps and CC too I'm sure. Should be fun.
We still don't know the extent of what secondary archetypes will be able to change the primary. A fighter/tank may be able to tank group content if he is built to tank. A bard/cleric could be able to heal a group of their skill choices focus on that.
In this scenarios, who's the unlucky and undesired archetype?
The untouchable two of the trinity, a bard support, and the many choices of fillers for the dps spots.
This is true, but if a Tank can't do what it's primary role is better than an augmented fighter/tank can do. That's crap design.
Bard currently by known information is support first class, and if it can heal as a Bard/Cleric it should also not be better than a Cleric because once again it's a crap design.
Could you get away with it in some content? Sure, but high-end content, not likely.
You shouldn't devalue the archetypes primary role. That will be a feel bad moment for those players.
It's not quite like that though.
Coming from a similar game...
Sometimes a non-optimal tank can suffice because the party composition is full of 'low threat generation DPS'. Sometimes they suffice because the enemy targets primarily don't do a lot of damage but do a lot of negative statuses and the healer's job just falls to 'remove those statuses from whoever has them, but Tanks tend to resist them the most'.
Sometimes a Bard is sufficient as a healer because the mitigation and other healing across all other characters is sufficient.
This doesn't really feel bad unless it becomes super meta somehow, and with enough enemy variety/ecology, it generally doesn't become very meta.
Which game? Which content, and what was the actual group makeup?
Let's just say that's true. You're saying content that is designed for the best only Tank archetype could be filled with a non-tank archetype?
I didn't say that and neither does Intrepid.
Though those situations do exist. Niche tanking is absolutely a thing. But the entire point is that it's niche. When you form a guild or even a static group, you don't go 'Ok we only need this BRD/NIN to tank everything so we don't need any PLD'.
That doesn't mean that there aren't entire sessions where the PLD isn't on where you go 'eh it's fine we'll go up to Fei'Yin and the BRD/NIN can just tank everything'.
There are quite often situations where the optimal Tank is not the Tank, but 'optimal' is not 'reliable'.
Ok, that's why I did make an exception in my previous statement.
Well at that point, you're going to look at the content type, and decide which CLASS will fulfill the roles of support / DPS with abilities that will make that content easier.
Also obviously wiggle room, and at some point subject to balance.
Even if you go TANK / CLERIC / BARD - you still have room for 5 DPS Archetypes with DPS or Support Augments.
But since A2 at the start will be augment-lite, we're really just looking at archetype balancing.
Right but tanking and healing in particular aren't like this because the 'Tank' is 'whoever has the best damage mitigation when the group's tactics are applied' and 'healing' depends mostly on that too.
Intrepid says we will get different types of Tanks. In order for this to work, as I see it, there will definitely end up being situations where Mage/Tank is better than Tank/Mage. It just won't matter because 90% of the people who want to tank that content are just going to go to their Node/house, respec to Tank/Mage from Tank/Whatever they were and tank it.
Whereas the Mage/Tank would have to do a lot of stuff. I bet they'd still be better at that high end content even, but I don't expect the Tank to be crying about it.
EDIT: Specifically the reason DPS/Tank normally works pretty well is that 'killing things faster' is a form of damage mitigation and the usual reason old Trinity games don't let you 'just kill things as fast as possible' is that the squishy one is where the damage comes from and they will be turned into a stain on the floor. We might not see that in Ashes in the same way.
I don't think that's crap design at all, I would think that's the best designed character creation I've ever seen in an MMO. Allowing the player to have that much control and customization over their character.
A fighter/tank would be very different play style than a tank/fighter, but if they can both get the job of tanking mobs done then what's the issue? I still think a tank/bard could be a support role, a battlefield commander that uses CC, buffs, and field manipulation...
Again this is all speculation from the crumbs of information we have on secondaries and their effects.
Why do you think their is going to be a singular best, if their whole game design is to avoid a meta. What may be the best tank for one boss won't be the best tank for a different zone.
Sure doubling down on tank/tank may be the tankiest tank to ever tank by being the hardest to kill, but you're giving up bringing any extra utilities to the group. Maybe you want the mage augments for specific magic resist or elemental protections... Or maybe a full defensive mage/tank might be better for such a magic heavy zone.
'Tank' is an archetype. With the primary role of being the Tank. Regardless of augments. The base abilities will be the best example of mitigating damage. There should be no other CLASS that can be better at the role of Tank.
Same with Cleric, and possibly Bard being the best overall support. Which could change since we have seen nothing, and can only go by what they have said the Bard is. I'll quote.
"In a game with diverse encounters, making it so that the Tank class is generally the BEST Tank for any specific content is impossible."
Multiply that by 'everyone being able to equip heavy armor' and any situation where Bard Buffs, being at Range, high Evasion, or 'killing the thing super fast' are meaningful contributions to the outcome
Now that I've seen the Cleric showcase, even with just those skills, I'm even more convinced Ashes is not going to be a game where your best Tank will always be Tank Primary. But that's fine for me, because I'm not out here trying to put my Paladin out of a job..
Imagine spending 20 years perfecting something, you have all the skills, tools, and resources to do the job the better than anyone else. Then I come along with 2 years, broken tools, poor skills, and minimal resources and you get fired, and I take your job and pay.
Avoiding meta, isn't building the trinity with archetypes as the balance metric.
Augments will still be VERY useful in tackling content, but a Tank/Mage could be the better Magic tank instead of going Tank / Fighter where it's a better physical tank. But in the end the Tank is still the best tank.
I'm not sure what you're getting at with your analogy there... But if I'm understanding it correctly, who is to say the mage hasn't spent 40 years perfecting defensive magics and barriers making himself just as hard to kill as any tank?
Again, I'm not saying I'm right and you're wrong, all I'm saying is I've started this argument thread before, and there are plenty of dev quotes that leave role flexibility to be determined... I personally think it would be poor design to have a primary archetype locked to a party role so completely. Either way, we have to see how much augments can let us blur a characters role because currently we have any examples of how they can "radically change an ability" -Steven
If you want to read the last time I started this.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/51718/archetype-roles-i-swear-im-not-crazy/p1
*Edited to add link*
Oh well, I'll be in the tavern until the blessed ones deem my presence acceptable of their radiance.
For me it's just that you're so obviously right that there wasn't anything to say.
Intrepid promises that there will be utility reasons to bring each, and coming from a game where that was at least mostly true, if a bit 'forced', then I guess we can't do much other than believe them.
Oh, wait, were you talking about like, a grouping where you don't actually add all 8 players? Just going to do something with 6, and every time that happens, Ranger or Summoner for example gets left out because they aren't as good as Fighter or Rogue (or just 'ok guys let's get 2 Fighters, one Fighter/Rogue and one Fighter/Ranger because who needs those Primary Archetypes in this case anyway lol')?
More in the 8 players situation, I guess. In smaller groups I would expect every classes or archetypes would be fine, well, until the group becomes full and a preferable candidate shows up.