Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Feedback: From my perspective so far regarding cleric
Teraxis
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
And here is so far what I can summarize And hopefully some of that might be useful viewpoint/suggestions:
I will start with the skills and my thoughts on each of them:
1) Mend - I did see in other posts people commenting on the skill and some some mixed feelings about it - the skill itself is not great for level one, but based on what it is for level one is enough, Once you hit level 2 you can pick either upgrading mend or just take Deliverance, both viable (i'd say just depends on what classes are playing with you in those early levels)
Now - where i have issue with this skill - at high level the skill is extremely useless , very slow motion cast, even slower time for the sparkle to reach its heal and even after landing it takes a bit for the heal to actually land, making it absolutely unreliable. The skill itself is only usable for self heal as it has no "flight time" and acts almost as small instant heals, however 1 tick of deliverance is more useful or just 1 flash cast, which infact take respectively less time to cast than few motion casts of mend(instead of deliverance) or respectively 1 mend(instead of 1 flash)
If this skill is meant to not be usable at higher level - my suggestion is to just combine both Mend subskills into one, points wasted in both is just too much.
If it is meant to be used at higher level then one or more of the following probably needs to happen:
-Projectile speed needs to be at least trippled
-The time it takes for the projectile to reach the target should not depend on the distance
-The skill should give temporary 10% or so of max hp similar to other skills to make the trade off for using it worth it
-The Motion cast needs to be removed or significantly decreased.
-The animation of the projectile itself needs to be more linear and not so orbital that it is hard to track if it landed already or not (often times when there is close roof or pillars the projectile will just fly off to somewhere and you only know the heal landed if you see the target hp actually move
2) Deliverance - Honestly by my standards skill is already 9/10 , the one missing point is - this animation needs to change
moving like a duck while casting it feels awkward.
But on the serious note - The way the skill cast is segmented in power and also depends on the missing HP, looks really random at first but when you play enough time you actually get a feel for how powerful it can be and to combine different % of its cast with the missing hp of your target for maximum efficiency - love it!
3) Flash Cure - Here also saw some opinions on the skill and i guess mine align with bot sides/perspectives for being too good and too bad at same time:
The skill is made really well that you can actually use it during cast of other spells, however While having charges is nice, I would love to see it having only 2 charges and to be more powerful per charge - perhaps 50-75% more powerful (compared to the current 3x charges) - Reason being the skill does not feel special, nor impactful enough. Normally if i need it i use all 3 charges anyway. Having it as strategic heal and hold on to it without using on the other hand feels wasteful due to the charges, but if i use any of them , when i actually need to flash, 1 or 2 clicks might be too weak.
4) Resplendent beam - the skill as one of the only 3 "group" heals feels strong in early levels and really underwhelming in high levels . This skill in my opinion needs several boosts/reworks. And what i would be suggesting is split in 2 categories - boost and rework.
4.1 For boosts:
- The skill maximum target count needs to be increased to 6 at least.
- The range for the chaining between targets needs to be increased by at least good 30% to 50% distance of the current.
- Animation effect probably needs to be slightly boosted (that is coming from me who is absolute hater of big animation effects) . We had that bug on the earlier weekends where when using it it looks like we get beamed from alien ship, it was rather visible then that the skill gets chained between us. Now however if i am casting it even i don't notice i landed it often times.
4.2 For reworks - similar to flash cure it does not feel impactful enough so i would suggest one of the following:
-increase slightly the cooldown by perhaps 5sec or maybe even 10sec and increase the healing power to 500 or even 600% with its hop heal factor decrease being higher
-lower the cooldown and increase the cast time
-each target healed gets 1 debuff dispelled prior - that effect can happen prior or after the actual heal - both seems nice but healing after the dispel might be too strong (or rather what i mean is in the case the debuff to be dispel is wounded or other heal prevention debuff, the skill will only heal for whatever would be healed prior to having it dispelled) , that whole one can also be made as additional point (subskill) for the resplendent beam
5) Healing Touch - the ability power is really good for melee range skill, however there seem to be way too low contact range for the skill. If the target is stationary there is no problem but if the target is moving, that is huge issue as you can't touch them with the skill (even with wings of salvation in some situations).
Now I do not know if that is even technology possible, but my suggestion is if in the last 1-1.5 sec or so the target was within range of the spell to actually allow you to cast it even if they are already further. It would not make much of difference to make it broken and at the same time will feel more fluid ability.
6) Soothing Glow - absolutely nothing to add here, both the primary ability and its subskill seem to be on point at least compared to current state of game.
7) Bless weapon - This ability has very interesting interactions when having the subskills on it
But due to the dynamic of the game and the possibility for extra layer of play there what i would suggest for it to have is some sort of indicator on the skill itself when the person with the bless weapon is in range to actually be able to trigger the subskill for bless weapon on you (as cleric) , perhaps similar to how the skills light up when chaining effects are available( burn>conflagration>stun)
That would give the option for the cleric to make extra play and change the bless weapon target temporary for efficiency
Current downside i see of bless weapon - when casting the spell there is kind of no indication that the skill was successfully cast beyond the buff appearing on the target - please either add 1 sec cooldown or something like that to it for that to be clearly visible even if you do not have the target of the spell targeted anymore.
8) Defiant Light - The skill is rather strong and in a pretty good spot. Perhaps the only suggestion i could make it make it a bit more visible on the target - maybe to cloak the targeted character during effect in yellow similar to the berserk of warrior and the blue aura of tank(iron aura or something?). That should help for both during pve sessions and during pvp so the enemy team can make counter plays to it.
9) Purify - this is one the one skill i am most disappointed of at the current phase.
The spell is really not enough - especially with all the poisons being thrown around by half the monsters on the current map. The skill just feels awful, i cast it and , the dispel get often instantly nulified by reapplied debuff and then i just scream at people to be careful ( i do that a lot sadly, but this just adds to it more because i can't do anything about the debuff..)
What I would want to see is one of the following:
- lower the cooldown to 3-4 seconds
-lower the cooldown to 6-7 and add 2 charges
-make 3 charges on it
I'm not the bigggest fan of charges in skills in general, but if the devs think 3-4 sec CD is too strong, adding charges is alternative.
10) Divine flare - the skill and its subskills are strong and feel comfortable to use.
The only thing that i think might be good to be added is alternative countdown animation to it, perhaps outside of the circle or something else , because for being that big of a heal people should not miss it . When it is 1 group and fighting nromally it is visible but when too many animations overalap it is not really visible. For example the mage fire meteor or whatever that thing on the ground is and the cleric chains.
11) Condemn is a semi supportive skill that you might or might not use, due to its prerequisite, but i strongly believe that the cooldown of it is too long and the stun duration too long as well.
When solofarming the long cooldown makes it sort of useless and you have to wait to line up the skills, and when in group the stun seems useless to use inbetween the other classes abilities, but if used feels too long at the same time, perhaps overpowered. I am not confident such long stun should be in the cleric kit.
12) Barrier , Really cool skill, but its implications are mostly pvp wise/ raid wise, so I have not had the opportunity to toy around with it yet , so i'll leave that one for additional feedback later
13) Consecrating wave - the skill is not really strong and mostly used for debuffing, which I suppose might fit having it on the cleric, although the mass volatile probably should be something the bard should be doing instead.
It's subskill is not very effective heal due to the low radius, but it is usefull for intensive lower tier mob farming
My suggestion for this skill is to combo the dispel buff effect with some other effect different than the silence, perhaps wounded or even volatile if volatile is removed from the wave itself.
Reason being: If it is with silence - you have 2 choices either play off your own silence meaning forcing you to misplay your divine flare to land the silence just to use the display (pve/pvp wise) or use it off bard silence which (pvp wise) forces you to go even further off from your supposed role as cleric focusing on doing side things when you should be paying attention to healing.
I have to note - the silence comment i just wrote is purely on the scenarios that should appear and i have not yet done myself. I"m basing it on the rest of the pvp experience i got through while healing and intensity of damage received.
And the real issue with the skill is altitude difference, similar to the damaging abilities of ranger it cannot target different altitude
14) Communal restoration - another "group heal" that needs some changes as it feels too weak in its current state.
The heal feels insignificant to the point that i am often using i as small hot for 1 target, because i dont feel it is strong enough to be used for actual group healing if situation for instant need for appears.
Changes that I can suggest for this skill are one of the following:
-Increase initial heal amount by double of current (perhaps raise a bit the mp cost with that too to balance)
-Increase the tick healing by double (or the duration to overlap with previous cast)
-Increase the maximum temporary HP provided upon landing the skill by a lot.
(Disclaimer: depending on changes made to the Resplendent beam this skill might not need significant change, as it depends on which of the 2 will become the primary group heal)
15) Wings of Salvation - What my suggestion for the main skill is - Perhaps the only thing I would suggest is to grand a bit more HP. Additionally I would like to see a maybe one more subskill with same effect "breaks all hard crowd control effects" but for the target instead and even better if it is possible those 2 subskills(the current and the suggested) to lock out each other as in only be able to skill up one of them.
16) Chains of Restraint The skill itself is nice - but i have 2 major notes here :
-the animation is way too strong , overwhelming visibility within its circle - that perhaps needs to be tuned down.
-There need to be clearly visble marker where you are casting your spell when you start that long cast. Currently it just casts on your cursor and sometimes you do not know if it is on the correct position. Especially when your camera is clipping in roof behind you or something like that and you cast the chains eslewhere because you do not see.(that is issue with many such circle like placement skills in different games)
17) Resurrection - this is needs to be checked - For some reason when you have for example 2 targets dead and you start ressing the 1st target then you interupt it and click on the other person to res him, if they are both in the same direction the cast is still cast on the initial target. Happened 3 times to me already.
The animation is displayed correctly to the actual person getting resurrected but you have the other one targeted.
(I guess this is more of a bug? i'll port that as a bug as well when i sit on the pc again)
But form feedback perspective the cooldown of the resurrection is way too long. my suggestion for that would be to have the cooldown lowered to 10 sec for example and increase the manacost for each subsequent resurrection within 30 seconds.
Now a bit on the UI side of things:
18.) As some people in the other threads have already stated the divine power needs to be possible to be added somewhere else. Currently it is fine for the alpha state, but when the game is released we need to be able to detach it form the HP bar and put it somewhere else.
19) This is actually something i don't remember if i checked if it is option but would add it as needed regardless - there needs to be option where you yourself will be included in the party window list.
20) the order of the party should be re-arrangable, and most importantly KEYBINDS need to follow the order of the party list from top to bottom (currently it is sorta random)
21) during raids the members "hp block" should be a bit larger and we need to be able to see debuffs.
Also suggestion for the raids - if possible to be able to drag out specific people on your screen, for easier access (that was a thing in Aion)
-Different colorization of the dots for your group and the rest of the raid on the minimap
-Need to have a proper approach to the targets in raid when casting or attacking. To be honest I can't really tell if it is because the vision range bugs currently or because it is not in the game at all to be able to select targets out of range I hope vision gets better so we can do more testing on that.
Probably will be adding or editing somethings later but those are my thoughts so far.
I will start with the skills and my thoughts on each of them:
1) Mend - I did see in other posts people commenting on the skill and some some mixed feelings about it - the skill itself is not great for level one, but based on what it is for level one is enough, Once you hit level 2 you can pick either upgrading mend or just take Deliverance, both viable (i'd say just depends on what classes are playing with you in those early levels)
Now - where i have issue with this skill - at high level the skill is extremely useless , very slow motion cast, even slower time for the sparkle to reach its heal and even after landing it takes a bit for the heal to actually land, making it absolutely unreliable. The skill itself is only usable for self heal as it has no "flight time" and acts almost as small instant heals, however 1 tick of deliverance is more useful or just 1 flash cast, which infact take respectively less time to cast than few motion casts of mend(instead of deliverance) or respectively 1 mend(instead of 1 flash)
If this skill is meant to not be usable at higher level - my suggestion is to just combine both Mend subskills into one, points wasted in both is just too much.
If it is meant to be used at higher level then one or more of the following probably needs to happen:
-Projectile speed needs to be at least trippled
-The time it takes for the projectile to reach the target should not depend on the distance
-The skill should give temporary 10% or so of max hp similar to other skills to make the trade off for using it worth it
-The Motion cast needs to be removed or significantly decreased.
-The animation of the projectile itself needs to be more linear and not so orbital that it is hard to track if it landed already or not (often times when there is close roof or pillars the projectile will just fly off to somewhere and you only know the heal landed if you see the target hp actually move
2) Deliverance - Honestly by my standards skill is already 9/10 , the one missing point is - this animation needs to change
moving like a duck while casting it feels awkward.But on the serious note - The way the skill cast is segmented in power and also depends on the missing HP, looks really random at first but when you play enough time you actually get a feel for how powerful it can be and to combine different % of its cast with the missing hp of your target for maximum efficiency - love it!
3) Flash Cure - Here also saw some opinions on the skill and i guess mine align with bot sides/perspectives for being too good and too bad at same time:
The skill is made really well that you can actually use it during cast of other spells, however While having charges is nice, I would love to see it having only 2 charges and to be more powerful per charge - perhaps 50-75% more powerful (compared to the current 3x charges) - Reason being the skill does not feel special, nor impactful enough. Normally if i need it i use all 3 charges anyway. Having it as strategic heal and hold on to it without using on the other hand feels wasteful due to the charges, but if i use any of them , when i actually need to flash, 1 or 2 clicks might be too weak.
4) Resplendent beam - the skill as one of the only 3 "group" heals feels strong in early levels and really underwhelming in high levels . This skill in my opinion needs several boosts/reworks. And what i would be suggesting is split in 2 categories - boost and rework.
4.1 For boosts:
- The skill maximum target count needs to be increased to 6 at least.
- The range for the chaining between targets needs to be increased by at least good 30% to 50% distance of the current.
- Animation effect probably needs to be slightly boosted (that is coming from me who is absolute hater of big animation effects) . We had that bug on the earlier weekends where when using it it looks like we get beamed from alien ship, it was rather visible then that the skill gets chained between us. Now however if i am casting it even i don't notice i landed it often times.
4.2 For reworks - similar to flash cure it does not feel impactful enough so i would suggest one of the following:
-increase slightly the cooldown by perhaps 5sec or maybe even 10sec and increase the healing power to 500 or even 600% with its hop heal factor decrease being higher
-lower the cooldown and increase the cast time
-each target healed gets 1 debuff dispelled prior - that effect can happen prior or after the actual heal - both seems nice but healing after the dispel might be too strong (or rather what i mean is in the case the debuff to be dispel is wounded or other heal prevention debuff, the skill will only heal for whatever would be healed prior to having it dispelled) , that whole one can also be made as additional point (subskill) for the resplendent beam
5) Healing Touch - the ability power is really good for melee range skill, however there seem to be way too low contact range for the skill. If the target is stationary there is no problem but if the target is moving, that is huge issue as you can't touch them with the skill (even with wings of salvation in some situations).
Now I do not know if that is even technology possible, but my suggestion is if in the last 1-1.5 sec or so the target was within range of the spell to actually allow you to cast it even if they are already further. It would not make much of difference to make it broken and at the same time will feel more fluid ability.
6) Soothing Glow - absolutely nothing to add here, both the primary ability and its subskill seem to be on point at least compared to current state of game.
7) Bless weapon - This ability has very interesting interactions when having the subskills on it
But due to the dynamic of the game and the possibility for extra layer of play there what i would suggest for it to have is some sort of indicator on the skill itself when the person with the bless weapon is in range to actually be able to trigger the subskill for bless weapon on you (as cleric) , perhaps similar to how the skills light up when chaining effects are available( burn>conflagration>stun)
That would give the option for the cleric to make extra play and change the bless weapon target temporary for efficiency
Current downside i see of bless weapon - when casting the spell there is kind of no indication that the skill was successfully cast beyond the buff appearing on the target - please either add 1 sec cooldown or something like that to it for that to be clearly visible even if you do not have the target of the spell targeted anymore.
8) Defiant Light - The skill is rather strong and in a pretty good spot. Perhaps the only suggestion i could make it make it a bit more visible on the target - maybe to cloak the targeted character during effect in yellow similar to the berserk of warrior and the blue aura of tank(iron aura or something?). That should help for both during pve sessions and during pvp so the enemy team can make counter plays to it.
9) Purify - this is one the one skill i am most disappointed of at the current phase.
The spell is really not enough - especially with all the poisons being thrown around by half the monsters on the current map. The skill just feels awful, i cast it and , the dispel get often instantly nulified by reapplied debuff and then i just scream at people to be careful ( i do that a lot sadly, but this just adds to it more because i can't do anything about the debuff..)
What I would want to see is one of the following:
- lower the cooldown to 3-4 seconds
-lower the cooldown to 6-7 and add 2 charges
-make 3 charges on it
I'm not the bigggest fan of charges in skills in general, but if the devs think 3-4 sec CD is too strong, adding charges is alternative.
10) Divine flare - the skill and its subskills are strong and feel comfortable to use.
The only thing that i think might be good to be added is alternative countdown animation to it, perhaps outside of the circle or something else , because for being that big of a heal people should not miss it . When it is 1 group and fighting nromally it is visible but when too many animations overalap it is not really visible. For example the mage fire meteor or whatever that thing on the ground is and the cleric chains.
11) Condemn is a semi supportive skill that you might or might not use, due to its prerequisite, but i strongly believe that the cooldown of it is too long and the stun duration too long as well.
When solofarming the long cooldown makes it sort of useless and you have to wait to line up the skills, and when in group the stun seems useless to use inbetween the other classes abilities, but if used feels too long at the same time, perhaps overpowered. I am not confident such long stun should be in the cleric kit.
12) Barrier , Really cool skill, but its implications are mostly pvp wise/ raid wise, so I have not had the opportunity to toy around with it yet , so i'll leave that one for additional feedback later
13) Consecrating wave - the skill is not really strong and mostly used for debuffing, which I suppose might fit having it on the cleric, although the mass volatile probably should be something the bard should be doing instead.
It's subskill is not very effective heal due to the low radius, but it is usefull for intensive lower tier mob farming
My suggestion for this skill is to combo the dispel buff effect with some other effect different than the silence, perhaps wounded or even volatile if volatile is removed from the wave itself.
Reason being: If it is with silence - you have 2 choices either play off your own silence meaning forcing you to misplay your divine flare to land the silence just to use the display (pve/pvp wise) or use it off bard silence which (pvp wise) forces you to go even further off from your supposed role as cleric focusing on doing side things when you should be paying attention to healing.
I have to note - the silence comment i just wrote is purely on the scenarios that should appear and i have not yet done myself. I"m basing it on the rest of the pvp experience i got through while healing and intensity of damage received.
And the real issue with the skill is altitude difference, similar to the damaging abilities of ranger it cannot target different altitude
14) Communal restoration - another "group heal" that needs some changes as it feels too weak in its current state.
The heal feels insignificant to the point that i am often using i as small hot for 1 target, because i dont feel it is strong enough to be used for actual group healing if situation for instant need for appears.
Changes that I can suggest for this skill are one of the following:
-Increase initial heal amount by double of current (perhaps raise a bit the mp cost with that too to balance)
-Increase the tick healing by double (or the duration to overlap with previous cast)
-Increase the maximum temporary HP provided upon landing the skill by a lot.
(Disclaimer: depending on changes made to the Resplendent beam this skill might not need significant change, as it depends on which of the 2 will become the primary group heal)
15) Wings of Salvation - What my suggestion for the main skill is - Perhaps the only thing I would suggest is to grand a bit more HP. Additionally I would like to see a maybe one more subskill with same effect "breaks all hard crowd control effects" but for the target instead and even better if it is possible those 2 subskills(the current and the suggested) to lock out each other as in only be able to skill up one of them.
16) Chains of Restraint The skill itself is nice - but i have 2 major notes here :
-the animation is way too strong , overwhelming visibility within its circle - that perhaps needs to be tuned down.
-There need to be clearly visble marker where you are casting your spell when you start that long cast. Currently it just casts on your cursor and sometimes you do not know if it is on the correct position. Especially when your camera is clipping in roof behind you or something like that and you cast the chains eslewhere because you do not see.(that is issue with many such circle like placement skills in different games)
17) Resurrection - this is needs to be checked - For some reason when you have for example 2 targets dead and you start ressing the 1st target then you interupt it and click on the other person to res him, if they are both in the same direction the cast is still cast on the initial target. Happened 3 times to me already.
The animation is displayed correctly to the actual person getting resurrected but you have the other one targeted.
(I guess this is more of a bug? i'll port that as a bug as well when i sit on the pc again)
But form feedback perspective the cooldown of the resurrection is way too long. my suggestion for that would be to have the cooldown lowered to 10 sec for example and increase the manacost for each subsequent resurrection within 30 seconds.
Now a bit on the UI side of things:
18.) As some people in the other threads have already stated the divine power needs to be possible to be added somewhere else. Currently it is fine for the alpha state, but when the game is released we need to be able to detach it form the HP bar and put it somewhere else.
19) This is actually something i don't remember if i checked if it is option but would add it as needed regardless - there needs to be option where you yourself will be included in the party window list.
20) the order of the party should be re-arrangable, and most importantly KEYBINDS need to follow the order of the party list from top to bottom (currently it is sorta random)
21) during raids the members "hp block" should be a bit larger and we need to be able to see debuffs.
Also suggestion for the raids - if possible to be able to drag out specific people on your screen, for easier access (that was a thing in Aion)
-Different colorization of the dots for your group and the rest of the raid on the minimap
-Need to have a proper approach to the targets in raid when casting or attacking. To be honest I can't really tell if it is because the vision range bugs currently or because it is not in the game at all to be able to select targets out of range I hope vision gets better so we can do more testing on that.
Probably will be adding or editing somethings later but those are my thoughts so far.
Old Lineage2 player - mostly known as WaterAngel - Innova Core server // Longtime Aion player - Primary names Siera/Teraxis/Flowerstep - EU servers
In-depth game analysis person / love to guide & help
In-depth game analysis person / love to guide & help
2
Comments
Here each skill is a percentage of your Healing Power (which is mostly Magical Power rating unless you have gear that has +Healing Power stat on it specifically) and that stays the same at every level. So for example max cast Deliverance is 500% of the Healing Power and the heal from Consecrating Wave is 250% Healing Power per target. Those numbers don't change.
Instead as you level your base stats increase slightly, so you get a bit more power from the increase in Intelligence. But a large portion of your power comes from gear - Intrepid has said 40%-50% of player power comes from gear. So you need to keep increasing gear as you level or you're potentially only half as powerful as you should be. If you don't, then all you get is a tiny increase in power while enemy NPCs get a larger increase in power. So you will feel weaker as you level if your gear doesn't keep up.
You'll need to work on getting at least several new pieces every 5 levels to keep up in power as best you can. Once you do, you very much notice your heals getting better. So healing feels really good if you upgrade your gear and feels really bad if you don't. Overall Cleric is very powerful right now and well balanced when geared and played right.
As for deliverance it is 1000% not 500% and is super strong ability. It is also further boosted when your target is low hp, so far the best i've seen by landed heal was 3300 with it in one go, which is insanely good.
(now that i think about it it might even need some nerf as with higher gear it might end up being way too strong)
And since you compared those 2 abilities the wave is healing about 5-6 times less, which i guess it is fine as it is not single target. I did not suggest any changes to its healing part of the ability, i wanted to see a different change there
I'm well aware of how the power is increasing healing abilities as well. What i've written above is based on all i've seen so far in the gameplay i've done so far. Also most of it is not even about power of healing or power of healing alone.
On the next phase we'll probably run with some crafted gear of higher grade so will have different perspective on everything as well.
In-depth game analysis person / love to guide & help