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
For example, you cast a long heal, and then cancel the cast by pressing the divine power which eats the spell and gains divine power based on how strong the heal was going to be.
Creates a decision: Can I get away with charging up the divine power right now?
Could be a tough call in the middle of a battle. Requires game sense.
Healers notoriously have blank space downtime at the beginning of battles and throughout fights anyways, gives them something to fill the space with if they aren't attacking or healing.
There will certainly be Augments, from a variety of sources, that will allow players to apply DoTs.
I would agree with the questioning of the class resource. And that it is a valid question even at level 15 since as far as we know this will be a persistent resource regardless of level. I personally don't mind having the extra mana pool but I would see where some might find this boring. I was also in need of the mana given my build. I like your feedback about having a toggle if it stays as is. I would definitely rather chose when to burn through the 10% extra healing resource. I also did not like that the class resource use had to be chosen as a skill, using up valuable skill points. I would rather this be a stand alone.
I agree about the oh shit moments. There does seem to be some sort of lack there. Rather than spending our resource to insta cast I would rather use it all for a group AoE heal for these moments.
I should point out that I intentionally went with an AoE heals / damage build with armor and a shield so that I could play on the front lines as a battle priest. This tradeoff of armor specifically left me with a smaller mana pool at baseline so I did enjoy the extra resource. Mana is however a really hard thing to gauge until we see the bard.
As for mobility that really depends on the way you play the build. There is some movement in builds that want to be in the backline and cast heals but it is admittedly slow. For me I had no problems with movement during combat. But I built the character specifically for that.
The main thing I would like to see given my build choice is more melee skill options for clerics. Maybe that comes with secondary choices but I would like to see it as in the primary skill trees as well.
Intrepid could do certain Builder and Spender abilities, but that feels a lot like what the Fighter already has. The Fighter also gets to swap between passives and Exert is far more class-defining than built-in mana potion. To be clear, I don't want them to copy Fighter. I'm just pointing out what the expectation should be based on what appears to be the most complete class so far.
@Summpwner I don't I'm really comparing it to a max level healer. If we want to use wow holy priest as an example then right now at level 15 you have a lot of spells naturally just from being 15. These include several heals, 3 dps abilities, some small utility spells. The you also get the stuff from the few talent point you have at lvl 15. You could easily have all of your holy word spells and thing like feathers and leap of faith along with a few passives that upgrade spells. The class fantasy of holy priest is already taking a very strong foundation by such a low level and the current max level in wow is higher than aoc max level. I get the point you are trying to make but I think it is a faulty argument.
I don't think you should need to be incredibly deep into a class to start to have a feel for how it's going to work. Obviously there is a ton of room to grow since we are only level 15, but that doesn't mean it should be boring just because it's low level. And like I've pointed out several times, this isn't inherently a problem of lack of spells, it's that the class resource, divine power, is flawed. Since divine power is kind of the cornerstone of the class you want to make sure it's the best part of the class. The list of spells I gave was in direct reference to making better use of divine power.
Hmmm.. That's a cool idea too! A little less punishing decision-wise, but there are still some gameplay situations where you may choose to overheal a full person (to get more divine power) rather than partially heal a person, who you know already has hots on them or defensive CDs up or something.
For sure if you had to "eat" your heals in order to charge the divine power the effect would have to be stronger to compensate for the tradeoff, especially in the middle of a battle. Numbers can be tweaked. The important part of this idea is that there is a decision to make that requires game sense.
I mean WOW updated their classes constantly over the course of 20+ years so I don't know why people think Ashes is going to lock in their design during the Alpha and never consider budging.
I think you have to also incorporate something for non-healing Clerics (maybe not if there are enough hybrid abilities like Consecrating Wave).
I kind of do think that lower levels of MMOs should be boring for veteran players. The lower levels are where new players to AOC and to the MMO genre as a whole will be first encountering fundamental game concepts. I don't think that ~20 hours into the game should be "ok now you need to juggle buffs with unique timers and use a variety of situational skills correctly and also manage a secondary resource optimally, otherwise your party all dies and blames you." All of this is assuming that its still a relatively new player, and my opinion would be more nuanced if its more like ~50 hours.
You had more Oversight than me then. Good for you.
I enjoyed this monthly Presentation as much as i can, but damn it still makes Hunger for more. x'D
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)