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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
PVE combat rez open to everyone is an interesting idea and I don't really know if I like it yet or not. I would need to be in a raid setting to figure that out.
On one hand, I don't want it to make content trivial and on the other, it will be a nice tool to use if there are heavy limitations.
Bringing 20 clerics to a raid because you can cheese it is a horrible thought that will cause my entire guild to quit.
I completely disagree with this. While we are at it, maybe give every class blink and shield wall too?
As stated in a previous thread, once you start giving every class every ability, it erodes class identity and the fun of playing (for me anyway).
I personally don't like the scrolls, but if they have a long cd for the party/raid, like 15 minutes, and they are weak rezzes, then ok. The Cleric should have the best rez with the ability to spec skill points into a very strong rez with shortest cd, shortest cast time and reduced death penalties. I think Cleric and the scrolls should be the only battle rez (again, with scrolls being weak and having a long cd). Give the bard and maybe summoner a weak rez without the ability to rez in combat, just to help alleviate the annoyance of corpse runs.
Resurrection, especially during combat, should be viewed as a very powerful ability that can save the group in an epic fashion and must be used strategically. Not something everyone is running around doing with 10+ rezzes during every encounter. There were WAY too many resurrections during the Firebrand fight.
Also, scrolls should be a high end crafted item.
It should be risky, but if you pull it off, you get rewarded for it - and I'm talking about mass ress here. High risk could be longer cast time for example, but not too long. Enemies should have the ability to react to someone casting it, and interrupt them, but it shouldn't be too long, where you will always be interrupted.
Cooldown around 20-30min, sure, but what if you don't finish the cast? Should it be fully reset, fully on cd, or somewhere in between?
Test, and see what works.
In my opinion, only the Cleric should have access to such ability, while others can use scrolls. Maybe summoner can get it's own version of single target res, especially if they're a Cleric as a secondary.
If you pull off a good mass res, you can turn the tide of a battle.
I'm going to make an assumption here that might as well be wrong, but I think those who are against combat res in PvP, simply haven't played any games with open-world mass PvP.
I would actually love for each archtype to gain access to an extremely powerful , unique, group-wide skill, on a very long cooldown. Something that can turn the tide in battle, or provide a counter-play of sorts. Here are a few examples:
Cleric - Mass Resurrection - Resurrects all party members in a radius with 50% health and 25% mana - 1h CD
Rogue - Mass Invisibility - Provides 20s of cloak to all party members in a radius. The first attack when coming out of cloak deals 20% more damage - 30m CD
Summoner - Summon Allies - Teleports all party members to the caster's location, regardless of distance - 2h CD
Tank - Unbreakable Phalanx - Makes all party members in a radius invulnerable to all types of damage and crowd control for 5s - 1h CD
etc.
Curious if you guys have any ideas about the rest.
I'm actually all for this.
Bard could also have some sort of a raid-wide buff for allies.
In all cases, it's a long cd ability, so you better choose the right time to use it. It's a version of an Ultimate skill.
Thats kind of just the way it is though in pure PvE.
You invest in dying over and over again in repeated boss attempts, hundreds of wipes over weeks to months for a brand new top end challenge. Investing everything it takes to learn all the tricks. Reviewing hours of video footage of your recorded attempts from multiple points of views to decipher the mechanics.
Until eventually you get the clear, and then you know everything there is to know about the raid and you have it on farm. Other teams leech off your effort if you happen to share strategies.
In PvE, all it takes is time and effort. Anyone can do it, some people it will take far more time and effort than others, and they give up or dont try to improve the weak areas necessary to get the clear. It all depends on your teams initial level of skill and commitment to learning at a fast pace.
In a PvE only scenario, you only lose if you quit.
Its not like a PvP or PvX scenario, or open world encounters where there are variables beyond just learning how the boss works. These bosses are just built different, simpler mechanics that don't take weeks to learn either, because in PvX, you can know everything and still lose.
Any character that is ressurected should get back with 5% health and 5% mana/stuff and be at risk of being one shotted or simply get melted by AoE/dots being spammed around
they only died that much because they are still noobs in that content, when the real meta pve farmers come up they won't die that much and with ressurection it will be too easy
Naa because ive done so much pvp i know mass combat res is kind of very dumb. Exactly why the idea of all these limits are brought up for when you are resed, long cooldowns, restrictions, etc. Because its a broken ability that is mandatory in all content in the game.
If you lose the fight the fight should be over, it shouldnt be you trying to run 10 clerics and trying to res people every second until one goes though and cycling it.
That or other classes need skills equal in power to mass res on long cooldown where they can nuke tons of people for super high dmg, blow people up with a skill, have strong forms of debuffs like being unable to cast in an area for long durations, etc.
This idea its hard to get a combat res off in large scale combat is also very silly, you also have people supporting you from being killed and cc'd.
Mana is an Universal archetype resource in Ashes of Creation.[1][2][3]
Resting and mana regeneration.[4]
As you know, a classic MMO thing to do is to sit and rest as you get your resources back.[5] – Steven Sharif
All archetypes use mana to varying degrees.[1][2]
Even pure melee players use mana to manipulate The Essence for their extraordinary abilities.[6]
It will apply if there is an instant wipe, but it will also apply if the boss has any number of other mechanics. Rage timers and equivlent mechanics are fairly common, a mob that spawns a significant number of strog adds will prevent you from killing the encounter if your raid die a lot, mechanics that heal the mob will be an issue, mobs that regenerate will be an issue - there is a lot more than just mobs with instant wipe abilities.
As to your comment about open world - the encounters in an open world setting pit your raid against others involved to essentially see who can do the most DPS. If you are having to resurrect people often, that clearly won't be your raid. In this situation, while the mob may die, you don't get anything at all for it.
Again, spoken like someone that has no clue.
We know where Steven is pulling his ideas for the game from, many of us even spent years in those games. However, Intrepid are the ones showing off raid content.
Steven has specifically stated that he is aware that there are some things the developers want to do with encounters that can't be done in the open world - due to that bloodbath you talk about. This is what happened most of the time in L2 and Archeage, and Steven is well aware that if Ashes is to have anything that is considered "good" PvE, that needs to be avoided.
This is why Ashes is slated to have 20% of it's content instanced.
However, most of us talking here - especially those of us that have been here for a few years - are almost always thinking about the game in terms of the open world, as well as the potential for instances.
Which is why there should be a debuff applied to everyone, when someone uses the ability, or at least to those who got resurrected. This way, you cannot have different Clerics spamming mass res, constantly reviving everyone.
I'd say the ability for a cleric should be limited to rank 1 or 2 and have a 10 second cast time, at least 15 but no more than 30 second cool down and have a mana cost on the higher end. The High Priest should get to max out the ability rank with same cast time and cool down but maybe a lower mana cost.
Scrolls of resurrection shouldn't be a thing, that being said, I grudgingly admit it would be useful to have them available. Scrolls should have a cast time of at least 30 seconds and 60 to 90 minute cool down. Scrolls are a bit of a slippery slope, if everyone has easy access to them then it invalidates part of the role of clerics. Therefore they should not be widely available, easy to acquire or cheap. They should be a last ditch emergency use only type deal. I'd be perfectly happy if they end up as a guild only purchase tied to whatever guild purchased them and each guild can only have a small limited number, lets say 10, at any given time.
That is an extremely true statement.
Also a partially true statement, but one with some caveats to it. As a very long time healer I do feel the need to point out these caveats.
How well does the dead player know how to play their specific role?
How often does the dead player die?
Tied directly to the previous question; How often does the dead player do something stupid or unnecessarily flashy to get themselves killed?
Given the current state of the battle, is it more or less efficient time and mana-wise to revive the dead player or heal others?
A hard bit of truth that most people don't like to admit, even more so when they are one, there are players that at any given time even alive are just useless as a dead player. Some even more so, by being just alive they are a detriment the teams around them. Refusing to follow orders, not paying attention, not keeping their mouth shut when the grown ups are talking.
Absolutely not. This should remain with the cleric class only. I'd honestly go so far as to say the High Priest class only. I'll be playing a High Priest but I mean, if you are going to be handing out class skills, gimmie Aegis from the tanks, Blink from the mages, Cathartic Melody and Cheerful Melody from the bards, Disengage from the rangers and lets see.... Throw in a Blood Fusion from the fighters too.
For anyone particularly interested in Ashes' approach to Rez ability, there was a discussion on this in the recent Yokai Theatre roundtable discussion with Steven.
Mark 42:43
Steven:
"There will very likely be a consumable item that can be crafted that will essentially be a resurrection scroll, that will either have a very long cast time associated with it and a high mana consumption use, and it will likely revive the player at extremely low mana and health, and not return any xp debt back to the player. If we are talking about Resurrection as an ability, that lives squarely within the Cleric realm, obviously that gets expanded out when we talk about the class structure and the 8 different types of Clerics there will be. But the Cleric is going to reserve the ability to return xp debt to the player on resurrection."
A couple minutes later he added...
"Resurrection, tactical resurrection, battle resurrection or whatever you want to call it, it has an upside and it has a downside. The downside is you're coming back in a very vulnerable state. You have the ability with ease to lose additional xp debt when you're in that vulnerable state, and you better be careful about using it in an engagement because not only as a Cleric are you a target when you use that long cast, but as a resurrected player you're not moving positions either, so you're resurrecting on the spot."
As a future Cleric, I was mildly satisfied with what he had to say. It sounds like non-Cleric rezzes will be extremely weak, time consuming and vulnerable, and really only intended to reduce corpse runs after a near-wipe, or maybe in a very rare case it could save your party by getting your Cleric up if he/she goes down. But other than a very rare case, it doesn't really sound like rez scrolls are going to be a viable way to save your party during battle in pve or pvp. Happy to hear that.
A win for class identity!
A key thing to remember is that death will come with hefty downsides, and the lower drop rate debuff alone could make it sub optimal to even want to rez people at bosses.
Nope, the games death debuff is going to make you weaker and weaker to the point where the Mob your fighting is just gonna wipe the floor with you. Cleric Rez allows you to avoid EXP debt, but not death debuffs.
This is something 90% of the commentors here are either ignorant of or are ignoring.
In ESO, we say it's the Healer's job to Heal, cos while they're reviving somebody else, two more players die. So, the DDs do the reviving, and the Healers stick to the Healing.
There are different ways to approach content. Just cos you've always done it that way, doesn't mean it's the only way.
spammed or over used. The point of a res is there for an emergency or if people mess up on a boss or something, however the whole point is not to wipe in the first place.
I’m also cool with resurrection scrolls for single players or an AOE res on a high cooldown, and I even think it’s interesting for PvP but has to be limited compared to PvE. I’m even open to guild skills for resurrecting multiple people but it has to have a high cooldown not spammable. That could also be a diminishing return for the guild number cap that once you go over a certain amount of players you can’t use the guild res skill anymore and have to rely on individuals to res people.
Or keep it Cleric only and make it an instant cast, so two more players don't die during the cast.
There are different ways to approach content. Just cos you've always done it that way, doesn't mean it's the only way.
Obviously being a little facetious, but the important point is that it's more important to maintain class identity. I don't think fighters and rogues should be the rez class because of a long cast time on the rez. That's just wrong, and very detrimental to class identity.
Also, if a Cleric needed to build up charges for the brez, and further have a long cd on the brez (maybe 5-10 min), an instant cast really is not the worst idea. It's a moot point because I don't see it going in that direction, but definitely a better idea than making rogues and fighters the rez class. Luckily based on Steven's comments during Yokai's discussion, that's not something we need to worry about.
https://strapi-prod-bucket-k5d2g5.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Cleric_Resurrect_f228555d19.mp4#t=0.001
It's look like will happen, because Pve and PvP are together in the most of systems.