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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.
Comments
Should a TANK augmented Class be top DPS?
The people that are min maxers will absolutely do that where they can. Tank,cleric, bard, 5 mages... 😑
You're really not getting the picture here. Sure if you hyper focus on just DPS and look to min max a glass cannon, of course a mage/mage should do more damage than a tank/mage. But maybe top DPS on a target dummy isn't always the best approach. Maybe I want to play a melee magic bruiser, so I use a tank/mage. I like the engage and CC, but add all the elemental effects to my abilities and focus all my gear for dealing damage instead of being a raid tank. That should be a viable gameplay choice.
There should be more factors at play than big number = better... Otherwise I feel like it would be actually be poor game design...
I get it, but I wanted to know the answer. Because it relates to why would a Fighter / Tank be a better tank than the actual Tank/ANYCLASS.
Same goes for Cleric, who should heal better than a Cleric?
Cleric classes are the only classes that can fill the role of a primary healer.[9] Classes with Cleric as a secondary archetype will have self-healing benefits as well as limited healing benefits to other players.[9][10][11][12]
Don't these Archetypes fit the definition of the holy trinity?
I get other classes can possibly do these roles SORT OF, but not better and they shouldn't. Especially at the highest level content.
All I'm asking is for you to answer.
I did answer, I said a mage/mage should be better at raw DPS than a mage/tank...because that is what you want to hear... But I'm hoping there's more to building a character than that, because if that's all there is to it, then there is nothing inspiring or new here. If the mage in a group just needs to do raw magic damage then the best option is likely to always be mage/mage, why would you ever try anything else... And that would just be a waste of their primary/secondary system.
So what you're asking me to answer, in my opinion, is the same as saying who should have better melee DPS, a rogue or fighter? They're DIFFERENT, they have different gameplay, and that is what I am after. I want to be able to build different approaches to classes and have them be viable.
Let's go with bard/cleric, I feel like he should be able to heal in group content. Will he have the same max HPS as a cleric/cleric? no, and I'm not saying he should... But he could/would have more utility for the group being able to apply buffs and each buff now gives a stacking HoT due to the cleric augments. (Theoretical example I know). Maybe with the constant speed and dmg buffs combined with the healing allows a group to clear areas quicker than the group with the cleric/cleric who can heal harder.
It's all a slider to me going from
Cleric/cleric -> cleric/bard -> bard/cleric -> bard/bard.
How much heal to support do you want/need in your group.
My questions were about Tank vs Fighter/Tank.
And about how you can't replace a cleric.
High end content will require a Tank, Cleric, and likely a Bard. Damage will be dependent on content.
Damage classes will obviously be a mix and match on damage because in the holy trinity they fit the damage roll, not a cleric or tank. Mages, rangers, rogues, and fighters will likely all have their pro and cons as dps. You won't replace dps with a tank or cleric.
You initially argued against this and subverted to talk about classes that weren't in question.
Same same. Still a slider between two playstyles.
Tank/tank -> tank/fighter -> fighter/tank -> fighter/fighter. The first three could be capable of tanking, where the last three would be capable of DPS roles in a group... Each bringing something different to the table.
No it would not " replace the need of a cleric", I covered that in the thread I linked earlier too if you bothered to look at it. Every class will probably bring something unique to a party that would make it "required". A cleric could be the only class with a cleanse to clear poison/disease effects, meaning you'll always need one. A rogue having detect traps, a mage with detect magic, etc, etc...
You're basing this off the idea that every character is min maxed to be their unique role and only that role. Therefore a tank/tank, cleric/cleric, mage/mage, etc. If this is true, and that's what it all boils down to then the whole system is pointless. Which it is possible that this could be the case, but I'm hoping it isn't true. I'm hoping that other aspects play a part in character and party creation and that diversity in characters is possible.
Please keep in mind, I've never said you're wrong... Just that I'm hoping it's not the case, because it would be terribly boring if you're right. If it works like this and a party needs a tank/tank because it's the best tank, then why would anyone make an x/tank? It would be a waste of DPS potential. And if nobody would take it, why bother having it?
It's all the same argument to me. I want there to be more player control within character creation, more variety, and more potential class combinations within parties. I want secondaries to be able to "apply their identity" to the primary to the level of being able to shift their roles within the party. So yeah I want to see some combinations of x/cleric and x/tank be able to fill the roles of healer and tank within groups. Obviously some would be more niche than others, and maybe some won't work all that well or would be very difficult to play. But I want that one person out there that wants to play rogue/cleric be able to be a sneaky battlefield medic and play as a healer if that's what makes them happy.
With the aggro school the fighter would be able hold the aggro, but would drastically depend on the healer to keep him alive (which means faster mana consumption and more risk.).
With protection school, the aggro goes all over the place, but the party has some defensive buffs. But if they're generally kinda thin on their base defenses - the healer has to overwork again and the party is yet again at a higher risk of dying.
Having a tank instead of a fighter/tank would completely negate that, because he'd have both a great aggro kit and a fuller/stronger protection buff kit.
With the healer it's a bit harder because we've only seen the "life" side of his kit so far. There's supposed to be a "death" one as well. Getting some HoTs through augments could potentially keep a super thiccq tank alive, but w/o knowing how the "death" school would be designed it's difficult to say if it'll have any impact on the party's survival.
I'd personally prefer some resurrection interactions and "death delay" stuff (kinda like that one ability from the showcase where instead of dying you'd get healed 25%), but, from what I've seen, quite a lot of people are against super strong resurrection gameplay and want that shit on 10min CDs. To me that's silly, so we'll just have to wait till Intrepid tells us their plans.
The fighter is a DPS, the problem with DPS and aggro is that they usually generate more than they can handle. That's the whole point of giving tanks extra threat, because their damage isn't high enough to hold aggro from the DPS (and healers).
Let the mage loose and giggle maniacally as they cast DD after DD and they will keep the aggro.
Rogue opens the fight with a big backstab or what not.
Ranger pulls with a few aimed shots in row.
Cleric is generous with the healing early on and then keeps healing themselves.
Give a kazoo to the bard (and earplugs to the rest of the group) and no creatures, dead of alive, will want to hit anyone else... Ok, Bards may need the extra threat after all.
The problem is not generating threat, it's more about being able to regain aggro with only one ability (like taunt) and having the means to mitigate the damage received.
There is also more that goes into a class than just primary and secondary choice. Skill points allocation for passives. If I choose max health and Regen over increase damage or crit. You also have gear choices , compare a fighter that is rolling with a sword and shield vs a two hander... With heavy armor all focusing on tank stats. If you build the fighter/tank to be a tank on all fronts, he's going to be tanky.
You took these a bit of context from the original posts these came from earlier in the thread.
I'm not a fan of spamming the thread with my same responses, but...
Tank Archetype should be the best 'tank', no Fighter/Tank 'tank' should be better in the HOLY TRINITY role of 'tank'. Can it do it ? Sure, top end ? Probably shouldn't be able to.
All of the Tank archetype base abilities would be formulated to provide the best outcome for the role of 'tank'
Basically the same thing for Cleric, no matter which other archetype takes Cleric as a secondary.
This isn't true, it defeats the whole point of the system, which is filling in a tank/healer role on the fly if you cant find one. You have it flipped, your main role is the fantasy and whatever secondary class yo are speced into defines your role.
That makes no sense.
If you're playing a necromancer your role (summons) is determined by your first choice. The cleric choice gives you some fantasy and utility (undead summons, other gameplay utilities) but making that cleric choice equate to healing is just bad design. Locking the desired playstyle behind an investment of 30 levels means you don't get to play what you want at low levels which is a pain point for players and causes people to not play.
The old just want until it gets good isnt a recipe for success. It's why DND 5e let's you get rage at level 1 as a barb. If I pick barb I want rage not be a fighter until I am multiple campaigns in.
Your role is defined by Archetype
Tank = Tank
Cleric = Healer
Mage, Rogue, Ranger, Fighter = DPS
Bard = Support
Summoner = jack of all trades, master of none.
Anything / Cleric will not fullfill a main healer.
A.) a fighter/tank, tank/fighter, and tank/tank all geared up and spec'ed to fill the role as tank would be giving up dos capability. I agree and am not contesting that. But each one would play different due to having different combinations of active abilities and augments for them. And that is what I hope to see flavor options.
B.) respecting your build isn't supposed to be easy. So this would have to be a meaningful intentional choice to commit to that role and playstyles.
C.) even with combinations of x/tank being party tanks, tank/x's would still be available... And with this slider of party roles some combinations of tank/x could be used to DPS or support. Example being a mage/tank and tank/mage could feasible both be made to focus on DPS, but they would have extremely different playstyles.
But again until we see more concrete examples of secondaries and the effects of augments, this is all theorycrafting... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Read the link I posted near the begining, there are several quotes collected there that say it isn't that cut and dry.
a. A Fighter/Tank will not have the base abilities to do the job as well as a Tank/Anything. Remind you it could try to do the job, but shouldn't be taken over a Tank/X that would do it better. Just as much a Tank/Fighter won't do as much damage as a Fighter/Tank. Ratios, base abilities etc.
b. I believe it won't be hard to respec, but you would need to do it in town by what I can remember Steven saying. Because content is suppose to be varying.
c. Mage/Tank would likely not be able to tank in the normal sense, maybe some defensive cooldowns for PvP or a weird specific off-tank in a raid. But nobody is going to say "hey mage, spec tank and main tank this raid'
Any archetype that fulfills a holy trinity role, will not do another archetypes primary position in the holy trinity well enough to think that it's a replacement for high-end content or do it better than the actual archetype if put into the same content.
We have the traditional holy Trinity that is present in class designs for MMOs, and it's often that those are either not deviated at all, or completely deviated from entirely. The augment is kind of to offer a balance in between that where you still maintain that semblance of the Trinity system while offering the opportunity to customize your play experience towards one of the other angles in the triangle.
I hope that answered your question
-Steven
25 Jul 20 Livestream
SS: the design behind augments is not just to change the flavor so that it reflects the secondary archtype, but it also fundamentally changes the core components of the skill.
***...more charging w/teleport example...***
The idea behind the secondary augment system is to provide that ability to move the dial between what your classic archetype's role is within that Trinity system, and it does so by radically changing the core components of an ability.
These quotes from Steven make it sound more flexible than your black and white interpretation.
The necromancer isn't a role. It's a subclass of the summoner. When you play summoner, you have access to all the other subclasses you augment with, so yes, you can play a summoner and still be expected to heal/tank/whatever. I'm not trying to debate this with you, that's how the game is going to be as said by steven himself.
EDIT: I even looked into your necromancer example for you. This is copy pasted from the necromancer page on the ashes wiki:
Classes with Cleric as a secondary archetype are able to choose between life or death augments.[21][22]
Choosing life augments will provide self-healing benefits as well as limited life-giving benefits to other players.[23][24][21]
Some cleric augments applied to certain skills will indirectly provide the ability to heal others. These will not replace the need for a cleric archetype.[25]
Cleric augments will radically change the type of summons available from the summoner primary archetype.[13]
Skeletons, zombies and other undead summons will be possible with death-based augments.[13][2]
Any class that's going to choose Cleric as a secondary class will have the ability to pick from those augments to influence their skills to affect the life of others around you.[21] – Steven Sharif
So obviously, if you choose the life augment, you will be expected to heal as a necromancer, and the death augment will be damage.
Cleric classes are the only classes that can fill the role of a primary healer.[9] Classes with Cleric as a secondary archetype will have self-healing benefits as well as limited healing benefits to other players.[9][10][11][12]
The best tanks are going to be Guardians, but tanks with other secondary archetypes will also be viable.[5]
And he said Tank classes, not other archetypes with tank secondary.
Hope this clears it up for you.
That's not true, and that's not how it will work. It was even specifically said that the main archetype will define your role (I'm pretty sure of it, but can't be bothered to search for it).
HOWEVER, depending on the secondary augments, you could provide off-tank and off-heal roles, you just won't be anywhere near the level of a dedicated tank or healer. Meaning, in certain situations, you might be able to fill in or support those main roles.
Just having 2-3 heal spells, won't make you a healer.
The necro is most definitely fits within a clearly defined role. It's a summons based class that uses pets to be relatively self sufficient. The theme, mechanics, and class utility are all determined by the second choice, but the bulk the actual way you interact with combat is determined by your first choice-summoner. You have access to a respec but will be costly and not something you do on a daily or even weekly basis.
Id attribute those quotes to Stevens used car salesman days aka the time before the game actually was going anywhere. Steven has talked out his ass for the last 6 years, and t's pretty clear that when the rubber meets the road a lot of that was in fact just talk.
That's entirely possible, but some of the quotes are from Jeff Bard and he was more grounded. I do understand that it's all dated info, even that thread I made is a year and a half old at this point.
I know people besides myself have been asking for updated information on augments and secondaries... But we haven't gotten anything new in years...
Hence my saying we really don't know what the case is yet.
A. A fighter and a tank having different abilities is my whole point, that's what I want to see. I want to apply the tank flavor to fighter skills and make a tank that plays different than a tank primary. That's the whole goal of my stance, more variety of options. And you keep saying "better" like tanking is a one size fits all glove, I'm hoping it's not that simple, because that's boring...
B. They have said it won't be easy, and can't be done on the fly. And potentially will have some kind of cool down period to prevent people switching regularly.
C. Bleeding edge top 1% guild raid tank? No probably not... Those are probably going to be tank/tank.
But random pugs of 5-8 just grinding dungeons for mats... I would love to see it
I hope primary archetype doesn't lock your chosen role at level1, that would be disappointing to me. I also see it leading to ashes being even more tank starved than other MMOs have been, but hey, this is all just an opinion...
See the difference here is I'm saying it's possible with their system to push the boundaries that far if they want. And you're saying how the game works as if you're the one making it... Which you aren't.
They have said that augments can wholesale change an ability entirely. There is nothing stopping them from having tank augments shifting primary abilities into tanking ones or healing ones. I've used the example before of the mage's prismatic beam becoming a prismatic barrier, a channeling damage absorb spell.
Will that be a thing? No clue. But they have described a system where that is completely possible... And you're saying it's not going to happen like you know the answers.
Calm down dude...
I'm just telling you the facts, that they have said and are currently showing.
You can imagine whatever you want.
I know this quote is older, but...
"...
Now we’re talking – this is the nitty gritty of group dynamics in Ashes of Creation. While we’re including traditional Tank, DPS, and Support roles our secondary class system and augments system make customizing your character of the utmost import. We want players and their builds to feel malleable in Ashes of Creation. We never want you to feel pigeonholed into a single role, but at the same time we want roles and customization choices to be meaningful. So how do we maintain flexibility in character growth while making sure roles are important?
The traditional roles are the high concepts our classes fall into, but a better way to think of them are as tools that each class can use to help their comrades in arms. Enter Augments – this is how you’ll diversify and personalize your character outside of its primary role, or double down on it’s primary role – the choice is yours. A tank might be able to make a wall, blocking monsters into an area where only he can be hit. A damage specialist might have skills that create weaknesses in their enemy, letting everyone do more damage in turn. A support class might be able to bolster your allies with magic, hardening them against the ruthless foes that seek to strike you down..."
-group dynamics blog post on IS website.
The quotes people link here are so old they're as relevant as the video below is to illustrate combat. It honestly doesn't hold any water.
Your concern about "tank starved" is unwarranted as long as other archetypes can tank for small group content. There is no lack of tanks in wow in raiding.