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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.
What are your 'class fantasies' for the 64 classes
Lodrig
Member, Alpha Two
Part of the discussion over augments and classes hinges on peoples expectations for how a class will work. Most players have a conception of what a Paladin or a Necromancer are mechanically and what they bring to a party composition. And while the primary/secondary archetype model is a overall accurate description of what they bring it lacks the detail or focus that would be a description of a skill kit and how the player would tactically behave in battle.
I'm brainstorming simple tactical descriptions of each class and the core elements of its kit which distinquish it from either the base or secondary archetype. I'm seeking to think of a means by which the characteristics of the base class can be most easily bent to serve the role of the secondary. For example how would a Bard act as a Tank, could the Bard just littlerally be able to take a lot of damage in the traditional sense, yes but that's excedinlgy dull. On the otherhand a Bard that memzerizes oponents and causes them to stop attacking and thus neutralizing their aggression is achiving the goal of a Tank in a Bardic way, AND fuffilling a coherent class fantasy impled by the name 'Siren'. Package that into a short description and you get
Bard/Tank - Sirens are able to produce such aluring performances that enemies at short range are compelled to follow the Siren in a trance state for a limited distance. So long as the tranced arn't attacked they will stop attacking and can be lead away. In this way they controls and nulifies enemy aggression while providing a way to pull apart enemy groups.
Other examples
Mage/Fighter - Battle Mages specialize in touch delivered magical attacks and short range fan blast effects. Combined with the robustness to survive in the front lines of battle the Battle Mage is excellent at confronting clustered frontline combatants who typically lack good elemental resistance.
Rogue/Cleric - Cultists focus on long casting time high impact dark rituals cast while in stealth. Their rituals can empower themselves and allies with short lived temporary Health and lifesteal abilities to unleash in deadly surprise attacks if they can complete their castings before being detected.
Summoner/Mage - Spellmancers summon elemental themed minions which deal elemental damage and can use their minions as the location for creating AoE spell effects by dispelling the minion in a burst of magical energy. Minions felled in battle by the enemy likewise burst making them all effectivly walking magical bombs thrown at the enemy ranks.
What similar class fantasies can other folks imagine?
I'm brainstorming simple tactical descriptions of each class and the core elements of its kit which distinquish it from either the base or secondary archetype. I'm seeking to think of a means by which the characteristics of the base class can be most easily bent to serve the role of the secondary. For example how would a Bard act as a Tank, could the Bard just littlerally be able to take a lot of damage in the traditional sense, yes but that's excedinlgy dull. On the otherhand a Bard that memzerizes oponents and causes them to stop attacking and thus neutralizing their aggression is achiving the goal of a Tank in a Bardic way, AND fuffilling a coherent class fantasy impled by the name 'Siren'. Package that into a short description and you get
Bard/Tank - Sirens are able to produce such aluring performances that enemies at short range are compelled to follow the Siren in a trance state for a limited distance. So long as the tranced arn't attacked they will stop attacking and can be lead away. In this way they controls and nulifies enemy aggression while providing a way to pull apart enemy groups.
Other examples
Mage/Fighter - Battle Mages specialize in touch delivered magical attacks and short range fan blast effects. Combined with the robustness to survive in the front lines of battle the Battle Mage is excellent at confronting clustered frontline combatants who typically lack good elemental resistance.
Rogue/Cleric - Cultists focus on long casting time high impact dark rituals cast while in stealth. Their rituals can empower themselves and allies with short lived temporary Health and lifesteal abilities to unleash in deadly surprise attacks if they can complete their castings before being detected.
Summoner/Mage - Spellmancers summon elemental themed minions which deal elemental damage and can use their minions as the location for creating AoE spell effects by dispelling the minion in a burst of magical energy. Minions felled in battle by the enemy likewise burst making them all effectivly walking magical bombs thrown at the enemy ranks.
What similar class fantasies can other folks imagine?
2
Comments
Give me human for a race, with medieval looks, even though I am not from northern europe.
And give me a class with melee abilities, with animations that look good on twin swords, 2handed or sword shield.
I want from my class to be able to make a character that shines on the field of battle, mostly on small scale and duels, using a mastery of swords, and the tools to respond to the majority of enemy types, so that I can achieve victory.
I dont care for magic, I dont care for ranged attacks.
I will play the Fighter since it's animations are good enough for what I want. I hope they dont look weird on twin swords.
I will select the meta class combo.
For all those that want a class with more distinct lore and playstyle, like a necro, dark knight, paladin, druit or monk, (scratch monk, unarmed combat is a ridiculous concept for mmos) I would advise you to start conversations, because I dont see how the rigid abilities of the 8 archetypes will manage to change to something that feels unique, even if you borrow a bit of flavour from the other archetypes.
1. The Challenge of Balancing Class Identity with Flexibility:
As you’ve noted, many players bring preconceived notions about what certain classes, such as Paladins, Necromancers, or Summoners, should embody. These expectations are often shaped by years of exposure to various fantasy settings, games, and systems like DnD or other MMOs. When designing a system that allows for such broad class customization, it becomes crucial to strike a balance between maintaining the core identity of a class and allowing for meaningful, yet not overwhelming, variation through secondary archetypes.
For example, the idea of a Summoner is traditionally tied to a DPS-centric role, where the primary function is to call forth and control creatures that deal damage. The introduction of a secondary archetype like Tank creates an interesting design challenge: How do we incorporate tanking elements without fundamentally altering the Summoner’s identity?
2. Integrating Secondary Archetypes Without Overwriting the Primary Role:
Steven Sharif has mentioned that secondary archetypes won’t drastically change your primary class pick, which suggests that the core mechanics and fantasy of your base class will remain intact, even as you add new layers to it. This is a delicate balancing act. The goal is to allow the secondary archetype to add flavor, utility, and slight role-shifting capabilities without making the base class unrecognizable.
For instance, the Summoner/Tank combination, known as the Brood Warden, might draw inspiration from characters like Starcraft’s Zagara. The Brood Warden could focus on summoning resilient, defensive minions that absorb damage or disrupt enemy formations, rather than directly tanking in the traditional sense. These minions could act as extensions of the Summoner’s will, drawing enemy aggro and providing a buffer zone, thus fulfilling a tank-like role without stripping away the Summoner’s DPS-centric identity.
Similarly, a Mage/Tank combination could draw from examples like DnD’s Abjuration or War Magic, where the Mage uses powerful defensive spells, barriers, and magical wards to absorb or deflect damage. The Mage’s tanking role could revolve around controlling the battlefield, using magic to manipulate enemy movements and protect allies, rather than simply absorbing hits in the traditional sense.
3. Setting Clear Expectations:
One of the key responsibilities in game design, especially with such a versatile system, is to clearly communicate these nuances to the player base. The challenge lies in ensuring that players understand that while their class might gain new abilities and role-shifting options through secondary archetypes, the core essence of their primary class will remain the dominant aspect. This clarity will help prevent potential frustration or disappointment when players realize that, for example, a Summoner/Tank is not a traditional tank in the way a Fighter/Tank might be if it can tank at all.
Animations should match the weapons/magic tools. Animations should show where the character draws power from, whether it is by harnessing the elements, being bestown divine power, surrendering to the darkness.
Animations should make it clear that this warrior is a master of technique, this one relies on brute strength, this one is a battle mage and this one is an oppurtunistic killer.
For that you need a structure of classes and weapons.
The alternative is a false promise of play as you want, as the meta will eventually become narrow and most of the options will not be viable.
Needless to say that the animations have to be generic and detached from the characters bow, specially the physical classes.
I am way more concerned on whether the classes will feel unique that if I can make gold as a carpenter or a blacksmith or a scribe, and whether there should be both cooking, potion making, rune making and enchanting.
We cant ignore the basics of gaming.
You cant spend time on those and ignore the base of the genre
Great breakdown. I am hoping for some clarity in Friday's Q&A so that we can start adjusting out expectations. Even though I lean heavily towards more flavor and uniqueness for archetype combos I don't really have a problem with either system, I just want to know what the ultimate vision is so I can set my expectations correctly.
Nightblade (Figher/Rogue): You gain a burst of Combat Momentum after attacking an enemy from Stealth. Attacks that deal poison damage award 1 additional Combat Momentum.
Hunter (Fighter/Ranger): Ranged Weapon combo finishers generate additional Combat Momentum. Attacks have a chance to apply a stack of Stalk to the target.
Spellsword (Fighter/Mage): Whenever you use a fighter skill augmented by a specific element, your weapon combo finishers gain Elemental Empowerment for that element. Attacks that hit burning, chilled, or volatile targets grant 1 additional Combat Momentum.
This is the kind of feedback and creative blending of the archetypes that I'm looking for. Though I think these examples feel a little granular, they read almost like the descriptions of individual Nodes in an augment tree. But they are excellent starting points for playstyle concepts particularly in how they incorporate the Momemtum system of the Fighter. If I was to reformulate them to broader descriptions I might get.
Shadowblades (not NightBlade) are able to both attack from stealth with burst damage and sustain prolonged combat, the Nightblade focuses on rapidly apply numeous DoT and disabeling effects in melle to their oponent. They then gains Momentum with each DoT tick to sustain their assualt as long as nessary.
Hunters focus on eliminating high priority targets that they single out with Marking and debuffs delivered by ranged attacks before they close in for a quick kill in melee, they gain momentum faster if they remain focused on their target exclusivly though they are so target fixated they lose all momentum upon downing their quarry nessesitating a reset to range to begin stalking a new target.
Spellsword are able to empower their weapon attacks with elemental damage to bypass the physical defenses of thier oponents. As their Momentum builds they apply more elemental damage and status effects with each hit. By expending their Momentum they can generate elemental blasts centered on themselves.
Rogue/Bard Charlatans
Focusing on the inspiring their allies with daring dirty fighting tactics and backstabs, each dastardly deed and mustache twirl giving a temporary bonus to themselves and nearby allies. While weak at the moment they reveal themselves the compounding effects of their inspiration can reach a rapid creshendo carrying them or their team to victory.
Rogue/Ranger Predators
The ideal sniper, they stalks their target and fires from stealth without revealing themselves so long as they limit their rate of fire. While a single attack can only drop already weakened oponents they are ideal at pursuing and applying snares and slows with their ranged attacks on fleeing groups wich will leave straglers which can then be easily finished off by a pursuing group or by the Predator themself at their leisure.
Summoner/Rogue Shadowmancer
Shadowmancer's summon etherial and ghostly aparitions which have no collision and evade most barriers and snares. The Shadowmancer can also disquise themselves as a similar aparition nigh indistinquishable from one of their summons thus allowing them to join in combat, or escape at lower risk while presenting their enemy with a deadly shell game.
Tank/Mage Spellshield
Masters of magical riposte the Spellshield soaks up half of magical damage recived to restore their mana with the rest generating Courage as normal. They can then release a huge omnidirectional burst of magical damage back at their attackers by consuming all their current Courage and Mana.
Summoner/Tank Brood Warden
A flexible defender able to summon an aray of durable Golems ranging fom earth to stone to metal, with a command these golems can morph into walls, cages, spikes and other obstacles to block oponents or envelop the Warden or allies in protective shells, though the golems remain vulnorable to attack in these altered states. Likewise they can be commanded to morph back at any time to re-engage oponents in direct combat.
Rogue/Summoner Shadow Lord -
A master of misdirection the Shadow lord not only moves stealthfully but through throwing their voice and using ticks of light and shadow they can split off false images of themselves which they can move at will to confuse their enemies and bait out spells, unwise pursuit and countermeasures and either attack or escape in the ensuing confusion. AKA Shadow clone Jitsu.
Ranger Down !!
I see Tank secondary being more then just being 'beefier' (wear armor if you want that). Maybe the Snare and Crowd control elements of Tank could be emphasized in a Ranger/Tank as both archetypes have a lot of that so Sentinel would be the ultimate 'stopping power' but not nessarily have a high damage output. Also dodge tanking seems more more stylistically appropriate for a Ranger base archetype.
Ranger/Tank Sentinel
Master of crowd control the Sentinal lets no enemy pass with their wide set of Area effect snares, obstacles and hamstrining hits delivered at range and by Marking. They eshew heavy damage output of other Rangers in favor of Dodge and evasion which is unparreleled against ranged attacks and rely on their virtual wall of obstacles to kite melee oponents while drawing out long attritional duels with other archers.
Dose that sound like a compelling class kit you would like to play?
That seems like more of a Bard thing to me. Though I guess it would be kinda of a head game if Bards could kind of 'fake' having Bigger more powerfull spells then they actually do. Illusion and meszmerizing magic is kind of a Bard specialty. So maybe Bard/Mage or Mage/Bard can LOOK like they are dropping archwizard nukes even if they don't have that much punch.
Sounds like you want Fighter/Fighter aka Blade Master. Though I am not sure if the can dual wield.
As for how much skills need to change I'm thinking that Half of an archetypes active skills will need a radical change (such as the range, shape, target type, condition of purpose of usage etc), another 40% will need a Flavor change (extra procs, damage type changes, buffs etc), and 10% will need near total changes which almost completly change what a skill dose. That's a lot of total change I will admit.
Did you see my Necro concept from the other thread, I'll post it again here.
Summoner/Cleric Necromancer
Necromancers summon undead themed minions which are unique for their immunity to most mind effecting debuffs, stuns, taunts and other mindeffecting crowdcontrol effects as well as crital hits, but at a cost of being more vulnorable to Holy damage. The Necromaner also brings powerfull targeted and AoE lifedrain effects which sustain himself, his summons and team mates.
This combines what I think are the minamal nessary components to be a credible Necromancer. They function as an off-healer through exclusivly lifedraining and due most damage through their summons which is how I imagine most summoners will work.
Only one conclusion. We really can't give real feedback till we know at least 10% on this. Because we know way less then that. IS really needs to do a monthly update on this. My guess we will know not much more till around May 1st 2025, when we get the last Base class.
OMI it's two things. IS is still working out how they will be handling this very large game system. Or what they did work out needed to be reworked in some way.
Ya, thats a nice concept
I could only get behind that if Summoner were not already an Archetype. Then Necromancer could then get all the variations your imagining in place of Summoner. But having both is just too much area to stretch a limited amount of canvas across and distinquishing a Summoner/Fighter from a Necromancer/Fighter would be nigh impossible.
It's post like this I am saying we need information soon then later. Peoples picture of subclasses are not fitting with the little info we have.
EDIT: This could have backlash
We've been waiting 5+ years for the last two Know Your Nodes articles...
And 7+ years for Nodes 3.
We tend to get info later rather than sooner...
Sure but we knew many details. About 40 words about augments on the wiki. There is many ideas on what they do and how they work. Many are convinced they are a class beyond the core archtype. When all they do is augment the skill of the main class. IMO if clearer picture (more details) soon. Many will be upset and feel cheated.
Cleric/Summoner Shaman
Protectors of ancestral holyground, the Shaman summons a number of immovable holy totems that radiate their blessings. These Totems powerfully heal nearby allies while debuffing enemies, but are vulnorable to attack and destruction. The Shaman dose not directly heal or buff allies but can use targeted restoration on their totems to keep them standing or cast temporary consecrations to add powerfull buffs to the totems area of effect.
Fighter/Summoner Bladecaller
Are able to animate their melee or ranged weapon, which ever is swapped the other set fights besides them making the attacks the Bladecaller isn't. Thus the Bladecaller is effectivly utilizing both melee and ranged weapon sets at all times and can even direct the animated weapon to attack specific targets, though the weapons are leashd to remain nearby at all tmes.
Fighter/Tank Dreadnought
At the center of the fray the Dreadnought is able to attack all adjacent enemies with wide circular swipes and to keep them engaging him alone with powerfull pulls leashes and trips on anyone trying to disengage. The greater their momentum and the more crowded they are the harder they are to hit allowing them dive into and thrive in situations which would doom any other warrior.
I don't know how to give positive feedback on these without 'debate' so, this one time, I'll give the 'unwanted' feedback and you can tell me how 'unwanted' it is.
Cleric/Summoner - e.g. FFXI WHM/SMN, https://paladins-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Grohk and so on
Pretty obvious. I don't agree they should be restricted to not directly healing or buffing allies because that narrows their efficacy in too many situations. It's a restriction to give more flavor/distinction probably but it just ends up making the class bad.
Without that limitation, works well enough.
Fighter/Summoner - We all know her... at least I hope we do? Also certain builds of BDO Nova and Shinbi (but not really)
This is another simplistic, easy to love and implement class fantasy, for people who really have a strong wish/focus on wanting to attack more than one thing at a time with physical damage (please just let Bladecaller summons be Physical Damage, Intrepid). Whether or not I view this as a class fantasy at all comes down to if the game has the potential to make it anything more than either 'a melee Summoner' or 'an AoE fighter that doesn't have to aim', but that's me.
Fighter/Tank - Literally any common bruiser character with a charge skill and AoE CC, TL Sword and Shield/Greatsword, MH Charge Blade, etc
An AoE Fighter that doesn't let you run away and ramps in damage/efficacy uptime if they're surrounded. Always nice to see a balanced one, never been sure if the average person who wants to play one is really 'into it' when it's balanced or has a proper tradeoff, given how many games seem to treat this as the 'newbie' bruiser that you're 'supposed to advance from'. More power to everyone who wants to play some flavor of this, as long as your 'class fantasy' doesn't also include 'Oh and I want to resist CCs too while doing it all and ramping my damage anyway'. At least Greystone has to choose and Grux doesn't... wait, no, Grux does get to do exactly this and it's great... until the enemy team has 3 ranged and focuses on their terrain height advantage options...
(I probably won't mess with your thread by doing this again, consider it a test of how well I can interact with this thread)
Good things take time, right ?
But Ashes of Creation and Intrepid take this to a completely new Level.
When i think about it,
JUST FOR the amazing Engine alone, which shall enable Players to run around in massive Numbers in the same Area without freakish Frame-incursions and Disconnects ... ...
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Currently no guild !! (o_o)
I was directing that mainly comment at Dygz who is clearly not on topic and just seems to want tell everyone to stop doing anything and 'wait' for the game to be delivered, we already have a thread for that.
I want feedback on the actual class fantasy concepts (as well as other folks to throw out their own ideas), both in how they fufill a fantasy and how evocative they are to play as if you were a player about to pick a secondary and were reading the class descriptions.
And if they sound like they would 'work' in a mechanical sense. And if they sound like the appropriate mix of base and secondary archetype, still fufilling the base role but partially filling the secondary without potentially overshadowing or replacing a party member who had that as their primary. Another element is how you would feel paired with someone with the same primary but different secondaries (which should be a very common occourance), would you feel distinct enough from them or feel redundant, would you litterally get in each others way as you try to do the same thing?
Overall I very pleased with what your providing as it is very constructive critisism.
I'm hardly the first person to think of the 'healing totem' concept nor to link it with a class called Shaman. My thought was that the totem needs to be very strong area controlers that gives your side a really big boost if your in the area of effect in order for them to be the classes focus as to where to deploy them, to keep them alive etc, think TF2/DRG Engineer sentry level of focus.
I then thought that having big constant AoE healing plus normal individually targeted heals would be OP so the idea is that you cast all thouse heals now only onto the totem itself which 're-broadcasts' onto the area (potentially multiplying the effect for more total healing). This is what I meant by 'not direct'. Note that the intent was for the Shaman to retain all the existing cleric AoE heals and be able to deploy them outside the totem areas without restiction.
Dose that sound more reasonable or is it still leaning in too much?
I agree it should be physical damage, basically same as if you had been attacking with the weapons yourself, though maybe subject to a damage reduction if balance demands it, maybe 50% is appropriate.
A question I did not adress is if the animated weapon is attackable. I tend to view summoner as having a role of 'target saturation' aka making more stuff for enemies to need to engage with. An untouchable weapon dosn't do that and would present less counterplay so I think it makes sense to allow folks to attack and 'kill' it, though the Wild Blade can presumably resummon it again like any summoner replaces losses.
Their is indeed a classic "I am tanking all you bitches" fantasy. I actually drew the element of hitting multiple oponents from an ArcheAge class of the same name which I think was Intrepids source as a lot of the class names look to come from it. Note the intent is for total DPS to ramp up as surrounded, but for single target DPS to remain flat or even decline, this will likely mandate that much of the Fighters abilities to become AoE's that register the number of targets they hit and ramp accordingly. The intent is for you to function like a 'Tar Baby' that gets thrown into the middle of an enemy groups and causes everyone to get stuck to you, but you don't kill them and they don't kill you, but you come out ahead on total damage and kept them from being able to attack your teammates and thus fufilled the role of tanking. It could be tricky to balance but as you point out ranged attacks are the counter and it's possible that the defensive ramping could be made to work only against attacks from the immediatly adjacent enemies which lets distant ones rain in fire at full effectivness.
Lastly we might want to ask if this concept is better for the Tank/Fighter (Knight) and what it would be left doing, could it just be a broadly similar concept with more tank and less fight or should they be radically different? With other pairings of X/Y Y/X it's a bit easier figure out a clear difference (Like Shaman/Necromancer) but tanks and fighters are broadly similar both being frontline, beefy classes expected to take and deal damage in melee so blends of the two can be hard to differentiate.
This is because of the same weakness to ranged attacks. I think that in MMORPG 'language', it is easier to understand that a Knight has 'minimal or no defensive weaknesses when actively doing their role', but 'lacks creative ways of doing damage', whereas a Dreadnought would have specific defensive weaknesses, but have more options for doing damage.
(this is technically why Greystone has to choose and Grux doesn't, because Greystone is very clearly a Knight and Grux is very clearly a Dreadnought)
Ranger + Mage aka a Scion
Imagine shooting elemental arrows at your opponents. Finally a ranger class I can actually enjoy.
I'm going to use Frost Mage school augments to demonstrate how this class will differ from the base class.
Also, this would be the easiest to do for me, as we don't really have that much info on what other augments will look like, + we already have base Ranger skills to use as examples.
We've all seen it. Many people liked the ability.
- Now with the augment, it will change the Air Strike into a Frost skill.
- Visuals will change accordingly, and instead of root, the skill will now apply freeze.
Is it going to change your playstyle much? Not really. Is it going to feel unique? For sure! Visuals and sound effects play a huge part when it comes to a class theme/fantasy. Hopefully the sound effects also change when augmenting abilities.
- Ability becomes a frost trap, freezing anyone who steps over it.
Fairly basic and simple. No need to do more.
- Also does a backflip in the opposite direction, but it also does a frontal cone AoE, dealing damage and Freezing enemies.
- With the Frost Mage augment, this now becomes a Frost Arrow ability, which deals bonus damage to Frozen targets, instead of dealing additional damage to targets below 50% hp (when using the upgraded version).
- You get the deal, it's now a frost skill.
- Applies stacks of chilled on hit.
Overall, you become a cc machine, you look like a frost mage, yet you are a Ranger that shoots arrows. Unique enough for me.
--
I could really continue with this, and do every single ability, but I think you get the point by now.
Visually your class is very close to a mage, except you are still a Ranger that shoots arrows, with Ranger mechanics, which should be the entire point of the augment system. The fact that abilities stay relatively the same mechanics wise is not an issue at all. Actually, this way you have several ways of playing a mage-like character, and your base class determines the mechanics. Or you could go for an actual Mage, and play with Mage mechanics, with different subclasses to change the way it looks. Options are there everyone.
It may be difficult to understand this for some people because we don't have actual footage of how the following abilities will look with augments. For now, think of Ashe from League of Legends.
Over these past few days, I've heard people say that none of the subclasses will feel unique enough, because augment system is bad, yet if it is going to work anything like my example, then it's simply not true. I also do expect them to change some abilities much more than I did, especially with other archetypes that are not as clear as mage.
And the main thing is, they do need to nail the visual change when using augmented abilities. They should look different, even if they do the same or similar thing mechanically.
There is a decision to be made whether the class will still mainly deal Physical damage, with only applying elemental status effects/debuffs, or should we convert most of the damage to Frost. I'm fine with either option.
Thoughts? Am I too optimistic? Too pessimistic? Delusional?
Maybe it's just me but Dreadnought sounds way tankier (Like your a giant steel Battleship) then Knight (who is a mere human in a tincan). So I'm leaning on flipping the names Tank/Fighter named Dreadnogut and Fighter/Tank called Knight. Maybe I feel that way because I had very little familiarity with the use of these terms from other MMORPG's.
In any case I think my class fantasy description I made is more fitting for the Tank/Fighter class what ever that is called and would be easier to code and implement it because the Tank skillset is already closer to the snare/leash activity that is needed, basically make thouse skills ominidirectionl rather then single target.
Make thier basic weapon attacks big circular arcs and swap out the defence bonus from momentum with generation of courage from dealing damage and I think it's a wrap.
Meanwhile the Fighter/Tank might just be a fairly normal fighter in damage output while just being 'beefier', I've said before that Tank secondary should not JUST be adding a side of beef to your character (use gear and stats for that) this is a place where that such simplicity dose sit ok with me and I suspect would sit well with the crowd that just wants to 'be a fighter that dosn't die' and wants a simple meat and potatoes gameplay. Lets be realistic thouse are the kind of people who won't read class descriptions before picking their secondary anyway and will just assume this is what Tank secondary gives.
I think you mean that some people want Ashes Classes to be more like standard Classes in other RPGs - despite what is explained in the wiki?
Can't please all of the people all of the time.
I think the entire playerbase agrees we would like to see more details about Augments sooner rather than later.
Steven does not appear to be interested in sharing more details any time soon.