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.
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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
There were "SOME" Abilities around in for Example WoW-Vanilla i think ... ...
A Poison from the Rogues ? One that weakened Healings a bit ? I think a Warrior or other Class had something similar ... ... ?
If Intrepid will make a single Healer being able to take on SEVERAL. Players. at once. -> it will quickly be like Burning Crusade in World of Warcraft again.
Healers will dominate the Battlefield. I am not sure if i would love to see such unparallelled cringe to return ever again. Of Course if it does, well ... ...
... ... it means i will probably need to give up on free Choice which Class i want to play, if i want to heighten my Chances of Success together with whoever are my Comrades and Allies in arms. We will need to "BE" as much overpowered Healers as possible. lol
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
For me A healer that has no offense/control/mobility/support is so fking boring to play. You just stand there spamming heals and nothing else.
Ofc i am aware that there will be "Support" class - Bard and maybe summoner as well - that will specialize in control/support/mobility, and be lacking on heals, But even so Cleric should have some unique utility skills that if used right (skill based) will let him survive, and without using those skills right he would die 1v1 to most dps classes.
AND even when using those utility spells in best possible way - this should just give healers like 1 min more time to survive in 1v1. For example healer fights other dps, the other dps uses most offensive cds (and they have a cd of 1 min), the cleric uses his cds to survive (which have 1.5 -2 min cds). So now after 1 min the dps has his cds back and if used he can kill the healer which still doesnt have his cds.
You could argue that it should maybe be a little bit higher due to ashes being an open world game with primarily raid fights for all of its prime content - but excluding that argument (It gets very complicated with the aoe situation for both hps and dps), the 1.5 to 2.0 ballpark is about correct for small-mid scale content.
The above generally lets dps players and healer players both feel good in a large variety of situations.
Generally speaking, of the same skill level, 1 normal dps should have little chance of dropping a same skill healer of their matching type. However, specialists for countering healers in each archetype should exist. Whether through manaburn, debuffing or both.
I.e. a manaburn/anti-heal debuffing assassin (different from a regular assassin build) should have a "solid" chance of dropping a same skill healer, but should be subpar against other dps players. It should be a specialist decision with a price to become a counter, not a generic thing.
Likewise, you should have to really specialize into getting aoe (if you want good aoe) whether you're a dps or a healer - and thus, a single target spec'ed dps should have a pretty easy time killing an aoe healer and an aoe spec'ed dps should be facing a strugglebus. Whereas an aoe dps should quite easily overwhelm the healing output of a single target healer in a raid scenario, but shouldn't really be able to drop them in basically any situation where the overwhelming aoe isn't a factor - it's not what they've specialized in.
Ashes is a game where you are supposed to be factoring in risk vs reward and making important decisions on the drawbacks/benefits of things. All dps effectively should effectively be able to overwhelm a healer who specializes in the wrong aoe/st field against them (i.e. an aoe healer basically always dying rather easily to a single target dps), but to solo kill any same skill healer who specializes in the same field between aoe/st as you, should require you to specialize (and sacrifice in other areas) in order to have solid shot at it.
And even that is still VEEERY powerful for Healers, in my Opinion. This still gives Teams with Healers an edge over those with lesser Healers or no Healers at all.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
It should tske as many as it takes. These questions do not mean anything in an active environment. If the healer has tsnky gear and Int/Con/Mnt stats, you would have a hard time to pushbsck the spellcasts snd landing CC. And you know, cleric can HoT and just use shield block.
If you play dressman healer, yeah, rogues will shred you to pieces probably.
Praise the Sun the game is class agnostic on armor and weapons, warrior priest builds are fun.
But they do mention they like the rock paper scissors approach to balancing 1v1s so you can expect some sort of match up balance like that. However, you can always take certain secondary archetypes to tip the scales in a certain direction. Also skill should be an important factor as well!
1 person putting pressure on should be enough to force them to split healing between themselves and the group
2 to stalemate them and require all their healing focus on themselves
and 3 to actually cut through it all to kill them (or 2+ a heal reduction debuff, depending on how plentiful those are)
So sending two players to pressure a healer mid-raid would probably be plenty to staunch a clear attempt unless they brought two healers
I change my answer from two to three. Again, if the healer is focusing on keeping themselves alive.
Well, yeah. I’m confused if this is intended to be a reason to not support healers being fairly resilient when healing themselves. It sounds like a reason to be in favor of it, but the emphasis suggests we’re meant to interpret otherwise?
Would rather see group based pvp be focused on disrupting the enemy, mitigating damage, and smart tactical play and positioning as a way to manage incoming damage.
Instead of, healers just shrugging off tons of incoming damage like it is nothing, reducing pvp to voice chat "Target xyz, 3-2-1-burst"
Not to mention the countless 1v1 and 1v2 situations that will come up during normal play anyway, turning healers into un-killable gods
This is not about making clerics gods of the battle field. Two things here.
1. We are talking about Clerics spec-ed as healers. They should shine in that area. So if just one on one a healer cant keep themselves alive. Something is broken. Do you expect a healer to keep you alive when you getting attacked by two players? At least for a time they should be able to. So they should be able to do the same for themselves.
2. Clerics will be the focus fire of any PvPer that can reach them. It will be their game play. Keep people alive or learn how to keep alive when they become focused fired. Clerics should be able to keep alive with three people on them for at least a reasonable time frame.
Deciding to focus fire on a Cleric/Healer should be a mediative move. Not just an instant way to win an event.
Healer should be killable 1v1 but it depends which healer. I imagine the High Priest to outheal any dps in 1v1. If it's not the case, how he can survive a focus from 3 - 4 or more players???
But If the High Priest has limited dps option, then you'll be able to get him buying time till he runs out of mana.
For the other healer classes, I imagine they will have sightly better dps and slightly worst heal so hard to say.
Then I wonder about the Apostle/Paladin (which level of dps/armor they will have ?)
There's some misconception in this thread using the word healer. Lots of assumptions that means just cleric. What about Bard, or a fighter or some class that has their own capacity to self heal?
This isn't about just a squishy priest in cloth robes and a wand. In Ashes you will be encountering healers in all forms be it a dps fighter/cleric or a cleric/mage... Or what about Bard/Cleric. Summoners? Necros? Shadow Cleric Rogue.
I would certainly hope that a Shadow Rogue will lay out serious damage before you even know something attacked you
I personally hate a game where a healer can take someone from 10%->100% in 1-2 casts. More importantly, IMO it's good for the game to have a likelyhood of attrition in 1v1, GvG or RaidvRaid, rather than there being a bunch of stalemates because everything is outhealed (assuming good DPS balance in the fight)
Longer TTK gives a focused character more time to pop cooldowns/disengage/hide behind a tank/get peeled/other good play options. But the general trend of a PvP fight should always be to lower resources (health/mana) much faster than mana can be recovered. This should go for 1v1, GvG and RvR. It should also apply to DPS and tanks, not just healers.
Another good question: how many health bars should a healer's mana bar be able to fill before being OOM?
At least one more.
The only jobs that ought to be able to handle concentrated fire for more than about 10 seconds are tank specs. And even then it should burn through a tanks resources so he cant do it indefinitely without support.
Healer specs should be just as squishy and just as vulnerable as glass canons.
Your team strategy should revolve heavily around protecting your healers. For example, while some of your tanks should be pushing forward into enemy ranks trying to disrupt the formation and skills as much as possible and keeping defense on your friendly melee dps, you should also need tanks in the backline, disrupting enemy attackers and throwing whatever protections they can on healers they see being attacked and chased down.
Healers should be the very definition of highest risk, highest reward play.
Just one player should be able to out dps a healer trying to heal himself, because the healer is squishy, its the teams responsibility to provide protection and peel for the healer.
Cleric is the only healers. You need to heal a large volume of hp = Clerics.
Bards go back to old school. Not trinity, Tank, DPS and Heals. It's Tank, DPS, Heals and Support.
It's something special 😊 dose not change the fact, a PvX healing class that's spec as healer should be able to keep themselves alive even under burst damage when skilled.
I know it's a facetious argument because clearly the Cleric is main healer. But for sake of debate, does not a diamond represent this better than a trinity?
And totally agree on the mana. A Cleric out of mana is a Cleric on the run and dead. But that is a feature of every class being OOM and special resource makes any class at disadvantage.
I do like the thought that this should be better presented as TTK instead of how many players. And in that TTK is the calculation of mana and special resources,chow long it takes a player to burn through those resources, and how long they can maintain their health.
Yes this is not a trinity system, Heals and Support are two different rolls. Why? Because there is very few games that have Pure Support rolls that are not focused on heals. In a way, Bard make all other class do their rolls better. Classes like Bards, any damage they do is just a bonus and its not why they are invited to the team.
Healers should die completely from alone and from doing nothing. There, Problem solved.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
the .5 because well.. you gotta include the dwarves.
To really think about the player vs healers roles tho. In a 1v1, a healer with mana and access to casting should be nearly invincible.
To make the 1v1 end, the aggressor should have to strategically time their silences for when the healer dipps into kill range, or drain the healers mana. Killing a healer in a 1v1 should be a struggle, not because you are at risk, but because you cant really put them at risk easily.
Same with a 2v1 or a 3v1. It shouldnt be a question of killing the healer. It should be a question of how long until they drain the mana, or how low they need the hp before they chain silences.
Look at the same concept but with a bard. Should bard win ANY 1v1? No its the buffing class. Healer is in the same boat, kind of. Im not saying tie their hands and make them heal bots. But when is comes to efficiency, make them able to heal for a long time, and deal decent damage for a short time. If their attacks are potent but costly, they would live longer just healing, of they would take the risk to go agressive if they thought they had an opportunity.
Maybe even go so far as to make some of their stronger attack spells lower their mana regen for a set time. Things like that, to persuade them to focus on healing, its more efficient, sustainable, and your role! Without making them defenseless.