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
A good healer can defend oneself. In most if not all situations in which people die, it is never the Healers fault.
DPS has crowdcontrol too very often so they should use it instead of just focussing on DPS.
The Tank should wait as well and always check if the Healer has mana left.
A few times when I still played WoW and joined "Looking for Group" random instances, I saw some Tanks that clearly mistook themself for maincharacters. When they were just Tanks.
They never stopped progressing through the instance.
When they aggro'd one group of mobs, a group that should be DEAD before the group passes on to the next group of mobs, the Tanks did not waited until the group was dead.
Instead they walked backwards while nicely holding aggro and tanked the evermore accumulating mobs.
Wanna know why they did it?
Because they were extremly well geared Tanks who were probably also used to extremely well geared groups of DPS and a Healer. So these "individuals" simply refused to wait.
They refused to acknowledge the reality that this was just a random group of "blue equipped" people or maybe very "cheaply purple equipped" people.
Which resulted in either the mobs not dying fast enough, or the Healer not following up enough.
And ultimately the Tanks died.
In one instance... after the Tank had pulled half of the instance.
And the cherry on top was their IMMEDIATE RAGEQUIT about 2 or 3 seconds after their death!
Not even an insult, not even the blamegame! NO! Only a silent, immature and cringe looking ragequit.
Oh but maybe after writing for a minute or so
" More heals, more damage! ", while backpaddeling with +8 mobs on themself.
I've heard of such people before. They have some kind of wierd elitism mindset which did not allow them to compromise cause that would make them feel "inferior".
So if there was an instance that they could clear in 15 minutes, but takes normal group 20 to 25 minutes and they could not reach their elitism qouta, they would just quit.
BUT ONLY AFTER HAVING DRAGGED THE GROUP FOR 8 WHOLE MINUTES THROUGH THE DUNGEON ALREADY so in fact they have wasted MORE TIME than less, which makes them look even stupider!
And since it was a LFG group, we found a new tank after like 20 or 30 seconds
What for cloooooooowns some tanks were.
Oh yeah but a few of them left after quickly spewing
" Trash! " " Losers, quit the game! " and then were never seen again!
Same as nobody wants to get rid' of Healers, but everyone can (and DOES, often
I am just afraid to see the typical WoW Scenario return.
- > One Team has a Healer in a Fight - > the Team with a Healer automatically wins.
- > One of the two Teams has TWO Healers instead of One - > the Team with two Healers automatically wins.
And so on - and so on ... ...
Imagine a Game, where in a Battle of for Example Ten versus Ten or Fifteen versus Fifteen People,
the Team with 5 Healers or above automatically wins - > or must RRR~EEAALLY f~xxx up, in Order to lose. 😅
You would logically start to ask yourself,
of why not Everyone plays a Healer. At least everyone who wants to win.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Currently no guild !! (o_o)
A: Ashes aims to be a more difficult leveling experience than perhaps we have been accustomed to over the past decade of MMO gameplay. And with that in mind, when it comes to balancing during Alpha-2 and thereafter, there is not going to be an overage of healing that's available. We will tune those things. We'll have an opportunity to balance those things... Some of the debuff options that the fighter class has within their class kit are debuffs that can reduce received healing on the target.[9] – Steven Sharif
I don't think we have too much to worry about, when it comes to healers generating automatic wins. They already have in mind mechanisms to give us ways to fight healers that can heal boss damage. (We dont do boss levels of damage in most games is what I mean, but healers can handle it)
Seems to me Intrepid have already had this on their mind, but its a low priority currently since they are trying to reach other milestones first before class balance.
god i hate that. Getting into a WoW bg where we got no heals other team is 20-40% healers... and we either organize like an elite SWAT team to suppress and take them out or lose without killing a single one of them.
GL random pug team, it'll be over quickly at least...
RIGHT ???
It's ABSOLUTE. CANCER. !!!!!
People managed to program PvP right at "SOME" Point in the Past ... ... ...
... ... ... not making it an absolute Shitshow as soon as One Specc and Class was present in certain Numbers or at all ... ... ... 😅
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Currently no guild !! (o_o)
Ofcours healers in a Holy Trinity game will be very nice to have. They end up mandatory, only if you feel the need for a 100% optimized group - just like a tank, DPS, utility class would be mandatory in the same scenario.
A group with a healer can absolutely lose in PvP against a group without one. There is no need to paint your fears and assumptions as hard truths.
New World is not relevant in any kind of way. There is zero comparison between a Holy Trinity Tab-Target MMO and a Three Button Action MMO (which is horrible btw).
You correctly point out there is but one healing class to the others. But from this you extract that balancing has already been made to make the one healing class overpowered in groups because they will supposedly hold up the raids by themselves. Hold up, buddy. We're not even at the balancing part. Again, you have drawn a conclusion from your assumptions.
You argue heavily against the Trinity, already thinking the non-existent balancing and non-existent class designs has made any setup except the perfect group composition useless. Surprisingly enough, this is not the case and nothing says it will be.
You know what would be worse than a poorly balanced Trinity combat? Any other combat.
Do you really think there will be a more lenient, broader meta if you replace group based combat and trinity for a more action-oriented combat where the meta is whatever DPS class does the most damage that patch? A combat designed to where everyone can do everything is a combat where the one meta build will be the one build. Yuck.
I for one fully enjoy a good, nice PvP combat where the Trinity comes into play where you got shot-calling, DPS trying to burst the healers, players trying to CC and peel, et cetera. Thats a combat where coordination wins, not the dumbest DPS meta.
You keep using the word static. Do you want to slide on the floors like in CoD?
It's really hard to understand what you even think is bad with "Healing in PvP like healing in PvE". Why would we want it? Because it's a nonsensical question. Im guessing you are looking for an action MMO in a tab target MMO. You aint gonna get it. Sorry.
P.S Stop being rude, bub. Jeebus. D.S
Also, the nature of the trinity is that a properly balanced group has an advantage over a non-balanced group.
So yes, it should be hard for a dps to down a healer, but it should also be hard for the healer to down the dps. And a group that is properly balanced to include healing should have an advantage over one that isn't.
It's literally that easy. Nice summary.
They should make the Fighter a tank and the minstrel a healer class. Case solved!
Oh and rename the archetype "tank" into "guardian".
so funny how people dont see the problem with that. how are those two things supposed to be balanced when they are totally different things.
one is a rigid fight and the other should feel like a battle field.
It's because for some people, PvE doesn't mean 'rigid fight'.
I only PvP at Night, during Thunderstorms, on Darksday, at level 60, so I can really maximize my counterstrats against enemy healers.
(in case it isn't clear, the above is a joke)
I think if you have healer classes that is limited to "big saves" on a CD comparable to the TTK (rather than health bar upkeep)then there is more counterplay against healers.
I dont think that fits the "trinity" so im not sure it will be required. I do find this playstyle more fun when I play healer so I hope that it will be a build option at the very lest. Maybe on an enchanter like a bard.
To be honest all that ever produces are all dps groups. You can see this now in SWTOR, the game doesn't require a healer for anything so all you see are dps every where. It's boring as hell.
Having powerful healers makes battles longer and more strategic. You have to account for something instead of just alpha striking everything.
Giving tanks better methods of controlling the battlefield would actually be the answer to healers. Not nerfing healers. A tank in your face that can actually hinder your ability to heal is a great way to solve the issue. In current mmos tanks are pretty much ingnorable in pvp.
their is much more depth in 8 dps fighting than sticking around a broken healer.
So if we're creating a hard bottleneck on people capable of engaging in content - including PvP - by forcing them to incorporate someone of a particular class then there's going to simply be a problem of not enough people playing that class. You can look at every single established MMO to see this problem - DPS is massively overrepresented because people don't want the responsibility attached with tanking or healing. On the tank side it will be less of an issue in a game like AoC I believe but healing will still be both very necessary and unappealing to the overwhelming majority of players. So we either massively incentivise people to create healers or make it so healers aren't all that mandatory and are instead designed to be a DPS boost through allowing people to focus their abilities on damage and avoid using their time for self-sustain. In all scenarios the healer should still be designed as a damage dealer so that their contribution can continue independently of whether or not their team mates suck/take damage that needs to be healed.
It is also an issue if one single healer has the power to keep eight people alive. That ability to heal seven other people, plus themselves, is something that scales inversely with the fewer players you have. If you have enough healing to keep eight people up, you're going to have more than enough for four, two, or just yourself in PvP - you can end up with a New World situation where someone with a Life Staff and Ice Gauntlet class combo could stand still in their own AoEs and heal themselves without moving and just indefinitely tank a party of players wailing on them.
This is all before mentioning consumables. I don't think anyone wants the game to be a potion chugging contest of who can drink the most.
None of this is just a balance discussion without seeing things in action, it is a question of design philosophy.
why do you find that hard to believe? its not the first time this has been done successfully.
also, regarding class fantasy, you will always leave people left out...do you think you can incorporate every single possible combination that there is? no you cant! the only way you could do that is if you just create a pool of skills then players dont have classes or archetypes and select a number of skills for their character then name it lol which is not the direction ashes is going.
I find it hard to believe because it would be poor game design. Remove inherent self-sustain from non-healer classes then what you're left with is chronic potion chugging or players simply sitting around twiddling their thumbs unable to play the game unless a Cleric graces them with their presence. The former is not enjoyable gameplay and the latter is just engineered social toxicity and a miserable experience for the vast majority of players.
With regards to class fantasy, sure I can't disagree that people will always feel left out. But it can be mitigated.
how would that be poor game design? so if every class cant heal, support, tank and dps, it is poor game design? pls
If you are forming a pickup group - in part or in full - have a healer.
If you are grouping with friends, make sure one of your friends is a healer. If none of your friends are healers, be a healer.
Now, some people may say that they prefer the gameplay of a tank or DPS. To these people my only comment is - if you are spending time in an MMO with your friends, and being a healer instead of another class is going to mean you don't enjoy your time, get better friends.
how is that remotely fun ? also why do need to have friends to be able to compete ?
Because its not a singleplayer.
Do you realise the amount of people that dont like to take part in this guild thing ? why would you get a ridiculous advantage just for being that extravert gene pool ?
Also, I've been a shut-in introvert my whole life, but I've also being in guilds as a member and as a leader. You don't have to be an extravert to do that.