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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.
Cleric abilties
Temijin_DeathStalkyr
Member, Alpha Two
The clerics seem to be missing an array of buffs and debuffs portrayed as curses and blessings. Buffing hp or in creasing resistances to certain types of attacks. Weakening or buffing damage against undead/evil creatures. Roots and snares for undead/evil entities.
Initial spells are single target that grow in power with levels with high level clerics getting group blessings and aoe curses.
There can be even more verity based on the chosen religion and status within the religion. Very high status clerics should be able to add a permanent curse or blessing effect to weapons and armor. Amor could be blessed to reduce damage from undead or a weapon blessed to reduce the strength of a target.
I played a cleric in Everquest for years. I has a very good array of standard and situational spells to use as a model.
Initial spells are single target that grow in power with levels with high level clerics getting group blessings and aoe curses.
There can be even more verity based on the chosen religion and status within the religion. Very high status clerics should be able to add a permanent curse or blessing effect to weapons and armor. Amor could be blessed to reduce damage from undead or a weapon blessed to reduce the strength of a target.
I played a cleric in Everquest for years. I has a very good array of standard and situational spells to use as a model.
1
Comments
Hopefully see more and varied skills in the next 6-9 months as A2 progresses.
In my opinion they also haven't designed many of the abilities that will be available later, since their Alpha Test will not level past 25 until later next year probably.
Some of the other things you mentioned are actually available, though, or probably will be available in Augments to stuff like Barrier and Bless Weapon (if you don't know much about these, full list is here: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Cleric).
I think they weren't so obviously shown in recent showcases, so you might want to check the Cleric Showcase from their YouTube channel if you haven't seen it.
Blown past falling sands…
If you want more DPS skills added to a class, the best way to handle it is to join the alpha and provide proper feedback to the devs. That's why we'll be testing later this month, after all.
I hope they don't pull a Blizzard and have a Death Cleric spec/path.
I like their current direction:
The Cleric uses light to not only restore their allies, but also to damage their enemies. While not as effective as dealing damage as other specialized archetypes, a cleric can be offensively dangerous in the right hands.
If someone wants gloomy death dark emo they have the Summoner and his Void powers.
Yep.
The Archetype does not have it's advanced skill repertoire yet. Crossing fingers summer 2025 maybe?
We did have to dispel fears of one agitated Forum-goer who called the class "boring" ... after participating in a siege test where characters were capped at level 15 and had vanilla weapon skills.
They have made it very clear that the ~20 active abilities is the INTENDED TOTAL and your skill set is complete, after level 25 you will be augmenting, not adding new abilities.
Is cleric rather one note, yes. Could it use a slight broadening of effects, yes, I would like to see more debuff and status effect removals, some long duration 'bless' type buffs maybe that improve a characters healing recived.
Cleric secondaries are known to have death augments (that's how you get the classic necromancer)
If it exists in the secondary then it probably exists in the primary too, at some level.
Before the combat revamp, they said that each archetype will have 40 skills, of which 15-20 will be active depending on whether you go deep or wide.
While this intent may have changed, it is still the last known information we have.
As someone already said, Clerics have Life and death themed secondary classes, they are also quoted as being "Masters of Life and death" in the past. They could easily change that, or maybe they already have because the Alpha 2 overview does makes it sound like they are exclusively healers and holy smiters.
Yes I know, I was refereing to a long running and grossly incorect interpretation, aparently even up on the wiki which has interpreted that same statement to mean 35-40 active skills and which people refuse to give up dispite all evidence to the contrary. They will strait up claim that Intrepid is just going to whip out 15-20 additional active skills for every archetype sometime between Alpha II wave 3 and launch.
If you want the full cleric experience like a cleric in Everquest, you will probably/possibly want to go Cleric-Bard (Scryer).
There are going to be 64 classes and we haven't seen any of them yet.