Intelligence and the Bard

Nerror

I noticed we now have different primary stats compared to A1.

• Constitution
• Strength
• Dexterity
• Mentality
• Intelligence
• Wisdom

Thank you @Lex and crew for updating the wiki.

During the stream, one of the things that stuck with me is that Bards seem very heavily Intelligence based. We don't have a Charisma stat, which makes sense for an MMORPG compared to a single player RPG, but I would have thought that perhaps Mentality should be the primary Bard stat? Just based on the name and the traditional class fantasy. It does look like Mentality is the second-most important Bard stat though, based on Bucky's stat allocation, and according to the wiki it helps with mana and mana-regen, as well as magical defenses.

Either way, Intelligence is the stat that Magical Power, Magical Critical Power, Magical Accuracy and maybe casting speed is based on, according to Bucky, but he might just have mis-remembered, because the Wiki says it's Magical Penetration, and that casting speed is Wisdom based. Magical Power seems to be the main waterfall stat determining both the damage and healing of the Bard abilities, and is in fact probably the main waterfall stat for all the casters, including Mage, Cleric and presumably Summoner, which means Clerics are also Intelligence based.

And I suspect Strength to be the main stat for the 4 other archetypes, even for tank and rogue, although I bet their second-most important stats are different depending on their final class.

It's not a problem for me if that's what we end up getting - Intelligence or Strength being the two main stats for all the archetypes - but it's certainly not what we normally see in the other MMORPGs and RPGs and such I have played. Usually we see Wisdom or Dexterity or Charisma being main stats for some classes.

I can certainly see some upsides to it in terms of itemization, though.

What do you guys think?

Azherae

I'm not usually concerned about the specifics of the top stat in the waterfall, for me that stat itself is more of a pivot point, a balance lever to be pulled.

Reassigning different 'lower' stats to particular 'upper' stats is part of balance work, so it doesn't matter too much compared to the structure.

Also, there are many other ways to do this relative to 'making a character strong', so I'm even less focused on what the waterfall-top stats do. If it were me, I wouldn't even care about the specifics of those until late Alpha-2. The number of times I've reshuffled, or seen games reshuffle the effects of top-stats like these, is too many to count.

Ashes also has a fairly hybrid preliminary approach to these, idk if they switched toward the 'MOBA' type output-relationships for stats for any specific reason, or if I'm just reading too much into it, but simplification helps for a lot of people, in my experience, all the way down to just above 'the person that reads a guide and doesn't care what the stats actually do at all'.

I used to think more stats mattered for something other than flavor, but I've learned over the years that it only matters to itemization and related balance. Even recently I was shocked to face TL's four and think 'no way, you have to have at least 5, there's no way just four works'...

I was somewhat wrong there, because they approached it in the way that makes four work, the (imo) only way that makes 4 work, but they still did it.

So, I'm going to place my bet that while Intelligence/Intellect is the main thing that affects the output of Bard abilities, there may still be many other situations where you can build a Bard around entirely different stats, perhaps even Wisdom or Mentality, with INT as the secondary focus. I'd even expect specs that barely care about INT at all.

Nerror

Azherae wrote: »

So, I'm going to place my bet that while Intelligence/Intellect is the main thing that affects the output of Bard abilities, there may still be many other situations where you can build a Bard around entirely different stats, perhaps even Wisdom or Mentality, with INT as the secondary focus. I'd even expect specs that barely care about INT at all.

Yeah we might see some go all out on defense for example, but if Int and Str are the main stats that govern the efficacy of all the active abilities, including the defensive ones, I just have a hard time seeing people not favoring them. It's a time-will-tell thing obviously, as the metas evolve.

Laetitian

I like when people who want to prioritise defence, cast speed, mana, accuracy, etc. have to properly sacrifice damage to do so. This system seems to facilitate that.
The other side of the coin just needs to be that the benefits of the stats that don't scale your abilities are also noticeable enough to be worth the specialisation.

Iskiab

I’m concerned too about multiclassing/mixing bard with melee classes. I was thinking of trying a melee based bard, so bard/fighter or bard/rogue, but am concerned scaling off int will railroad bards to mage.

Nerror

Iskiab wrote: »

I’m concerned too about multiclassing/mixing bard with melee classes. I was thinking of trying a melee based bard, so bard/fighter or bard/rogue, but am concerned scaling off int will railroad bards to mage.

The only thing affected by a potentially low Str would be the basic weapon attacks, if you're going for a sword for example. No matter the Fighter or Rogue augment, all their skills are still likely to be Int based, and Bard/Fighter isn't going to become a melee heavy bard in all likelyhood. Not in any major or meaningful sense. It's more likely that some of the bard abilities could change damage type or get some momentum-like mechanic or something. Or change the buff/debuff of the melodies and dances.

The whole archetype/archetype system isn't a multi-class or dual-class system like we know from D&D (and variants).