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.
Comments
I agree, I haven't been this hyped for an MMO since college and I was hanging out in Blizzard's forum in the WoW beta waiting room, lol. I was always disappointed when there was no Bard in WoW, and now I can't wait to see what Intrepid comes up with. The idea of status effect combinations, or buff combinations, or more creative CC options feels like the door is wide open for AoC to do some new and unique things with Bard and support gameplay.
I'm not sure about reducing aggro range (the musical talents of a bard aren't likely to include making your location less noticeable), but overall I agree with this sentiment. Most classes only have to worry about one thing. Tanks hold aggro, healers watch health bars (primarily one or two), and DPS are focusing on rotation and avoiding boss mechanics. I think bards will be able to help anyone.
They can buff tanks, healers, or DPS by giving them resistances, increasing resource generation, increasing crit chance, lowering others' cooldowns, increasing move speed, etc. They can also mock and demoralize enemies with debuffs or interrupt fight mechanics, put enemies to sleep, slow enemies, drain them of resources, etc. They'll have to choose what part of each encounter needs their support and when in order to best utilize their own resources.
I think their instrument should be an off-hand tool that requires a certain key press to be swapped between while wielding your main weapon and vice versa. There should be a GCD-esque delay whenever you swap between musical abilities and traditional combat abilities. Not strenuously long, but long enough to feel natural with a quick character animation and automatic ability-bar swap UI animation. Long enough to require some strategic thinking in tense encounters.
Weapon abilities are tricky, because typically, the bard's iconic flair is music and some supplementary magic. Some versions like the college of swords bard in D&D have more of a sailor/noble/merchant type vibe to them with light to medium armor proficiency, rapiers or short swords, and generally play like a mix between a fighter and a rogue with nimble footwork and quick, successive strikes with the ability to switch quickly between multiple enemies and do a bit of light cone-range AoE.
However, the opportunity for heavier bards is also very interesting. I could imagine a wilder-looking bard character that plays a large drum and carries a two handed mace, wearing medium-weight berserker-style armor that allows them to dive into the action and move fairly quickly for a two-handed weapon wielder at the cost of a lower armor class while balancing their damage and vulnerability with self and group buffs and enemy debuffs using their war drum when appropriate, dipping in and out of combat when able, or hyping themselves up before engaging if running solo.
Then there's what I view the traditional bard as - a musical magician ranged character. So when you switch weapons, it would be to a staff or wand, and your character deals magical damage similar to a mage, but perhaps with a musical flair to the visual style and sound effects, and also perhaps with a certain niche. For example, mages could choose to focus on single target or AOE damage, but bard casters are masters of projection, so they're only able to cast AOE magic and AOE healing with the assistance of magically empowered vocal talents, the spell casts being accompanied by lyrical melodies.
I never played a bard character until BG3, and have since become heavily invested in the archetype. I really hope they offer a lot of specialization options and give bards some more serious/badass abilities, animations, and SFX/VFX like I know they deserve just like every other archetype,
I don't mind if the Bard has access to the most (or all) kinds of ongoing effects and damage types, if that can help the party in some way. But I don't want them to design a game around team combo+finishers AT ALL. I've done that in at least one MMORPG and I hated it.
I think if that's how their combat was planned to work, we would have heard about it by now over the past 6 years or whatever. Even when they can't show us features, they tell us frequently what their vision is.
(Again I'm talking about team combos and finishers, obviously each class/archetype will have their own.)
Am I mistaken or didn't they show team combo's in the healer or tank live stream? Healer had some AoE ability to cause "shaken" then the tank had some ability that would "stun" the "shaken" enemies? I like the idea of group members synergizing their abilities, although I can't think of any MMO's I've played that had a similar mechanic. I've definitely played MOBA's (like League of Legends or Smite) that had a similar mechanic. What MMO did you play that had group-based combo mechanics?
EQ2 tried it (badly) at release, they dropped it later on.