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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Feedback on the Fighter archetype
AstuWar
Member, Alpha Two
I’ve read other posts giving feedback on the Fighter and I think they make some very good points, but still I would like to provide my own. I will try not to repeat what others have said, even if I agree with them, to keep this shorter. I will also try and stick to giving feedback on how it feels rather than to make suggestions as to how to change the archetype, but sometimes I will need to give some examples of changes that could be made to illustrate how I believe the archetype would feel better.
Let me preface by saying that I mainly played as a Titan/Destroyer (Orc Fighter) in Lineage 2 and got to become hero on some (private) servers. My idea of a Fighter might be biased because of this.
I started playing/testing AoC on November 8th and got to level 25 as a Fighter on my third weekend, playing only Friday through Sunday, not the extra weekdays we were granted. I had the best time playing Fighter on the stress test server on December 13th, where everyone was level 25 but only had three pieces of level 10 armor and no abilities from the weapon skill trees; this meant TTK was so much longer and I had the chance to actually build up Combat Momentum, get in and out of combat, perform all sorts of combos and whatnot. The experience outside the stress test server is somewhat worse because of the shorter TTK.
Overall, the Fighter is fun to play, has expected weaknesses and strengths, but also very unexpected weaknesses. Now, to the specifics:
Weapons
The name for the class resulting from combining the Fighter archetype with itself, “Weapon Master,” leads me to believe that the Fighter archetype should be the one making the most out of any, most or at least some weapons. This is not the case. Currently, all archetypes can master any of the weapons and achieve the same results with them because weapon skill trees and archetypes are completely independent. This seems like a case of everyone is special, so nobody is. I think a Weapon Master, or a Fighter on their path to becoming one, should actually be special in this regard. What is the point in becoming a Weapon Master if a Bard’s basic attacks with a sword are as good as or better than yours?
In Lineage 2, a game in which any class could equip any weapon and armor, Fighters (especially Titans) were significantly better than any other class at using basic attacks with most melee weapons because they had access to more passive abilities that granted them higher accuracy, damage, attack speed, wider AoE or other stats while wielding those weapons. If Fighters in AoC had a higher level cap for weapon levels, if they started with some free extra points to spend on weapon skills, if they had an archetype skill which boosted their weapon skills, etc., they would feel so much more like actual weapon masters without breaking the current weapon skill tree system.
Max HP / Squishiness
Yesterday I noticed the actual max HP of a Mage at level 25 for the first time. They were wearing all light armor of green-blue rarity. They had around 4100 HP. I was wearing five medium and three heavy pieces of armor, also green-blue rarity. I had 4600 HP. I couldn’t believe my eyes, I had assumed for the longest time they’d be so much squishier than I. After all, they have an ability granting them a shield/extra HP and just as much mobility too. The Fighter doesn’t have the defensive abilities the Tank has, and yet we’re barely above a Mage in regards to HP? It felt so wrong coming to this realization.
Bleed
Rupture not working as intended (or not properly described in the ability tooltip) has already been reported, so I will ignore that and focus on Bleed.
The description of Rupture reads: “if the target is Bleeding, 1 stack is consumed.” This means the target can have multiple stacks of Bleeding, right? This means you can apply multiple stacks of Bleeding, right? Well, yes, but no. Multiple Fighters can stack Bleeding on a target, but each Fighter can only apply a single instance of it. I really hope that’s not working as intended.
I only had one testing session with Bleed and then never paid attention to how it worked, so please let me know if your experience is different than mine. These are the results I found during the testing session:
Case 1:
- Cast Overpower/Brutal Cleave (while in Form of Ferocity) or Bleeding Deadly Finisher/Bleeding Extended Deadly Finisher: target is now Bleeding (1 stack, 6 seconds).
- Cast Rupture: target is Hemorrhaging (1 stack, 5 seconds), but not Bleeding (0 stacks).
Case 1 is fine.
Case 2:
- Cast Overpower/Brutal Cleave (while in Form of Ferocity): target is now Bleeding (1 stack, 6 seconds).
- Reset Overpower/Brutal Cleave’s cooldown using Berserk or a Finisher.
- Cast Overpower/Brutal Cleave (while in Form of Ferocity): target is now Bleeding (1 stack, 6 seconds).
- Cast Rupture: target is Hemorrhaging (1 stack, 5 seconds), but not Bleeding (0 stacks).
Case 2 is not fine. Applying Bleed to a target which has a stack of Bleeding applied by you removes the previous stack/resets its timer, essentially dealing less damage, as opposed to adding a stack, increasing the damage dealt.
I thought, “Well, both stacks of Bleed are coming from the same ability, Overpower/Brutal Cleave, so maybe it’s just one stack shared by the two uses of the same ability and they need to come from two different sources.” So I kept testing, but even the best case scenario gave the same result:
Case 3:
- Overpower/Brutal Cleave (while in Form of Ferocity): target is now Bleeding (1 stack, 6 seconds).
- Basic Attack: target is still Bleeding (1 stack, 5-6 seconds).
- Basic Attack: target is still Bleeding (1 stack, 5-6 seconds).
- Bleeding Deadly Finisher: target is now Bleeding (1 stack, 6 seconds).
- Bleeding Extended Deadly Finisher: target is now Bleeding (1 stack, 6 seconds).
- Overpower/Brutal Cleave (while in Form of Ferocity): target is now Bleeding (1 stack, 6 seconds).
- Rupture: target is Hemorrhaging (1 stack, 5 seconds), but not Bleeding (0 stacks).
Case 3 is not fine at all. Before Rupture, the target should have four stacks of Bleeding and three after it, not one and none.
However, when there are multiple players applying Bleed to the target, it does stack:
Case 4:
- Fighter 1 uses Overpower/Brutal Cleave (while in Form of Ferocity): target is now Bleeding (1 stack, 6 seconds).
- Fighter 2 uses Overpower/Brutal Cleave (while in Form of Ferocity): target is now Bleeding (2 stacks, 5-6 seconds and 6 seconds).
- Fighter 1 uses Rupture: target is Hemorrhaging (1 stack, 5 seconds) and Bleeding (1 stack, 5-6 seconds).
Case 4 is fine.
Untested:
- Fighter 1 uses Overpower/Brutal Cleave (while in Form of Ferocity): target is now Bleeding (1 stack, 6 seconds).
- Fighter 2 uses Overpower/Brutal Cleave (while in Form of Ferocity): target is now Bleeding (2 stacks, 5-6 seconds and 6 seconds).
- Fighter 3 uses Rupture.
Fighter 3 should be able to leverage Fighter 1 or 2’s Bleeding and make it become Hemorrhaging, but I didn’t get around testing whether they can. Please let me know if anyone tested it.
Since Bleed is not working as intended/advertised, I feel like it is underwhelming.
Shaken / Physical Mitigation
This affects all archetypes, but I’d rather report it here than make a different post about it, seeing that applying Shaken might be an integral part to the Fighter’s kit.
I tested the effects of Physical Mitigation vs. Penetration before and after the rebalance of December 6th and I observed Penetration had a different effect on P. Mitigation after the patch. I only got around testing the effects of Shaken after December 6th, so your experience might be different if you tested it before.
I can confidently say that Shaken is not currently working as intended or as advertised. Shaken is supposed to do “-15% Physical Mitigation”. Let me show you how that’s not the case with two examples. Consider a player with these stats while wearing two different sets of armor:
- Set 1: 524 Armor - 35.7% P. Mitigation. When applying Shaken to them, their tooltip for P. Mitigation will show that Shaken has an effect of -9.6% P. Mitigation, resulting in 26% P. Mitigation. 26% P. Mitigation being the equivalent to ~350 Armor.
- Set 2: 402 Armor - 28.7% P. Mitigation. When applying Shaken to them, their tooltip for P. Mitigation will show that Shaken has an effect of -10.7% P. Mitigation, resulting in 18% P. Mitigation. 18% P. Mitigation being the equivalent to ~220 Armor.
These examples show not only that Shaken isn’t applying a -15% to P. Mitigation (or Armor), but also that it has a greater effect the lower the P. Mitigation of the target. If you are lowering the effective P. Mitigation of a target by a (supposedly) fixed percentage, it should obviously have a greater effect on targets with higher Armor/P. Mitigation.
In short, the feeling is that Shaken (or P. Mitigation reduction, rather) should be great against Tanks and meh against Mages but it’s actually the opposite, which is confusing.
Combat Momentum
As a Fighter, if you want to be of any use, use Berserk or survive at all in PvP, speccing into Raging Blitz (+20 Combat Momentum from Blitz) and initiating all fights with Blitz is a must. That’s one fewer gap closer (out of two-three) that you have for 20 seconds or until its CD is reset by Berserk. I feel like I lack agency over Combat Momentum and I would greatly appreciate more ways to generate or manage it besides the ones currently available.
Just to illustrate on what I mean by agency, here are some examples of what would make it feel better for me:
- Have an ability generate X Combat Momentum by spending Y HP% and put it on a CD.
- Have a toggleable ability generate X Combat Momentum by spending Y HP% or HP every Z seconds. Make it untoggleable while the player character is disabled, stunned, etc. Make it so that it keeps draining HP even while at 100 Combat Momentum but it won’t go over the limit. Make it so that its Combat Momentum generation rate is on par with or slightly lower than Berserk’s Combat Momentum consumption rate.
- Have an ability that lets you use your missing HP% as Combat Momentum for the purposes of Form of Ferocity, Fluidity and Celerity, but not for other abilities that have a Combat Momentum cost.
- Have damage taken generate Combat Momentum.
Berserk
Berserk feels too short and has little impact. It’s mostly only useful as a CC break and to reset CDs. For it to feel good to use, it should last longer and/or grant CC evasion, immunity or duration reduction. It could also feel good to use if Combat Momentum could be kept up while Berserk is active as suggested above, or if you could choose to spend HP instead of Combat Momentum to keep it up.
I also think that a Fighter would feel better to play if their current HP% or missing HP% had an impact on the effects of Berserk or other abilities, not only Blood Fusion.
Thanks for reading. Please let me know what you think of this.
Let me preface by saying that I mainly played as a Titan/Destroyer (Orc Fighter) in Lineage 2 and got to become hero on some (private) servers. My idea of a Fighter might be biased because of this.
I started playing/testing AoC on November 8th and got to level 25 as a Fighter on my third weekend, playing only Friday through Sunday, not the extra weekdays we were granted. I had the best time playing Fighter on the stress test server on December 13th, where everyone was level 25 but only had three pieces of level 10 armor and no abilities from the weapon skill trees; this meant TTK was so much longer and I had the chance to actually build up Combat Momentum, get in and out of combat, perform all sorts of combos and whatnot. The experience outside the stress test server is somewhat worse because of the shorter TTK.
Overall, the Fighter is fun to play, has expected weaknesses and strengths, but also very unexpected weaknesses. Now, to the specifics:
Weapons
The name for the class resulting from combining the Fighter archetype with itself, “Weapon Master,” leads me to believe that the Fighter archetype should be the one making the most out of any, most or at least some weapons. This is not the case. Currently, all archetypes can master any of the weapons and achieve the same results with them because weapon skill trees and archetypes are completely independent. This seems like a case of everyone is special, so nobody is. I think a Weapon Master, or a Fighter on their path to becoming one, should actually be special in this regard. What is the point in becoming a Weapon Master if a Bard’s basic attacks with a sword are as good as or better than yours?
In Lineage 2, a game in which any class could equip any weapon and armor, Fighters (especially Titans) were significantly better than any other class at using basic attacks with most melee weapons because they had access to more passive abilities that granted them higher accuracy, damage, attack speed, wider AoE or other stats while wielding those weapons. If Fighters in AoC had a higher level cap for weapon levels, if they started with some free extra points to spend on weapon skills, if they had an archetype skill which boosted their weapon skills, etc., they would feel so much more like actual weapon masters without breaking the current weapon skill tree system.
Max HP / Squishiness
Yesterday I noticed the actual max HP of a Mage at level 25 for the first time. They were wearing all light armor of green-blue rarity. They had around 4100 HP. I was wearing five medium and three heavy pieces of armor, also green-blue rarity. I had 4600 HP. I couldn’t believe my eyes, I had assumed for the longest time they’d be so much squishier than I. After all, they have an ability granting them a shield/extra HP and just as much mobility too. The Fighter doesn’t have the defensive abilities the Tank has, and yet we’re barely above a Mage in regards to HP? It felt so wrong coming to this realization.
Bleed
Rupture not working as intended (or not properly described in the ability tooltip) has already been reported, so I will ignore that and focus on Bleed.
The description of Rupture reads: “if the target is Bleeding, 1 stack is consumed.” This means the target can have multiple stacks of Bleeding, right? This means you can apply multiple stacks of Bleeding, right? Well, yes, but no. Multiple Fighters can stack Bleeding on a target, but each Fighter can only apply a single instance of it. I really hope that’s not working as intended.
I only had one testing session with Bleed and then never paid attention to how it worked, so please let me know if your experience is different than mine. These are the results I found during the testing session:
Case 1:
- Cast Overpower/Brutal Cleave (while in Form of Ferocity) or Bleeding Deadly Finisher/Bleeding Extended Deadly Finisher: target is now Bleeding (1 stack, 6 seconds).
- Cast Rupture: target is Hemorrhaging (1 stack, 5 seconds), but not Bleeding (0 stacks).
Case 1 is fine.
Case 2:
- Cast Overpower/Brutal Cleave (while in Form of Ferocity): target is now Bleeding (1 stack, 6 seconds).
- Reset Overpower/Brutal Cleave’s cooldown using Berserk or a Finisher.
- Cast Overpower/Brutal Cleave (while in Form of Ferocity): target is now Bleeding (1 stack, 6 seconds).
- Cast Rupture: target is Hemorrhaging (1 stack, 5 seconds), but not Bleeding (0 stacks).
Case 2 is not fine. Applying Bleed to a target which has a stack of Bleeding applied by you removes the previous stack/resets its timer, essentially dealing less damage, as opposed to adding a stack, increasing the damage dealt.
I thought, “Well, both stacks of Bleed are coming from the same ability, Overpower/Brutal Cleave, so maybe it’s just one stack shared by the two uses of the same ability and they need to come from two different sources.” So I kept testing, but even the best case scenario gave the same result:
Case 3:
- Overpower/Brutal Cleave (while in Form of Ferocity): target is now Bleeding (1 stack, 6 seconds).
- Basic Attack: target is still Bleeding (1 stack, 5-6 seconds).
- Basic Attack: target is still Bleeding (1 stack, 5-6 seconds).
- Bleeding Deadly Finisher: target is now Bleeding (1 stack, 6 seconds).
- Bleeding Extended Deadly Finisher: target is now Bleeding (1 stack, 6 seconds).
- Overpower/Brutal Cleave (while in Form of Ferocity): target is now Bleeding (1 stack, 6 seconds).
- Rupture: target is Hemorrhaging (1 stack, 5 seconds), but not Bleeding (0 stacks).
Case 3 is not fine at all. Before Rupture, the target should have four stacks of Bleeding and three after it, not one and none.
However, when there are multiple players applying Bleed to the target, it does stack:
Case 4:
- Fighter 1 uses Overpower/Brutal Cleave (while in Form of Ferocity): target is now Bleeding (1 stack, 6 seconds).
- Fighter 2 uses Overpower/Brutal Cleave (while in Form of Ferocity): target is now Bleeding (2 stacks, 5-6 seconds and 6 seconds).
- Fighter 1 uses Rupture: target is Hemorrhaging (1 stack, 5 seconds) and Bleeding (1 stack, 5-6 seconds).
Case 4 is fine.
Untested:
- Fighter 1 uses Overpower/Brutal Cleave (while in Form of Ferocity): target is now Bleeding (1 stack, 6 seconds).
- Fighter 2 uses Overpower/Brutal Cleave (while in Form of Ferocity): target is now Bleeding (2 stacks, 5-6 seconds and 6 seconds).
- Fighter 3 uses Rupture.
Fighter 3 should be able to leverage Fighter 1 or 2’s Bleeding and make it become Hemorrhaging, but I didn’t get around testing whether they can. Please let me know if anyone tested it.
Since Bleed is not working as intended/advertised, I feel like it is underwhelming.
Shaken / Physical Mitigation
This affects all archetypes, but I’d rather report it here than make a different post about it, seeing that applying Shaken might be an integral part to the Fighter’s kit.
I tested the effects of Physical Mitigation vs. Penetration before and after the rebalance of December 6th and I observed Penetration had a different effect on P. Mitigation after the patch. I only got around testing the effects of Shaken after December 6th, so your experience might be different if you tested it before.
I can confidently say that Shaken is not currently working as intended or as advertised. Shaken is supposed to do “-15% Physical Mitigation”. Let me show you how that’s not the case with two examples. Consider a player with these stats while wearing two different sets of armor:
- Set 1: 524 Armor - 35.7% P. Mitigation. When applying Shaken to them, their tooltip for P. Mitigation will show that Shaken has an effect of -9.6% P. Mitigation, resulting in 26% P. Mitigation. 26% P. Mitigation being the equivalent to ~350 Armor.
- Set 2: 402 Armor - 28.7% P. Mitigation. When applying Shaken to them, their tooltip for P. Mitigation will show that Shaken has an effect of -10.7% P. Mitigation, resulting in 18% P. Mitigation. 18% P. Mitigation being the equivalent to ~220 Armor.
These examples show not only that Shaken isn’t applying a -15% to P. Mitigation (or Armor), but also that it has a greater effect the lower the P. Mitigation of the target. If you are lowering the effective P. Mitigation of a target by a (supposedly) fixed percentage, it should obviously have a greater effect on targets with higher Armor/P. Mitigation.
In short, the feeling is that Shaken (or P. Mitigation reduction, rather) should be great against Tanks and meh against Mages but it’s actually the opposite, which is confusing.
Combat Momentum
As a Fighter, if you want to be of any use, use Berserk or survive at all in PvP, speccing into Raging Blitz (+20 Combat Momentum from Blitz) and initiating all fights with Blitz is a must. That’s one fewer gap closer (out of two-three) that you have for 20 seconds or until its CD is reset by Berserk. I feel like I lack agency over Combat Momentum and I would greatly appreciate more ways to generate or manage it besides the ones currently available.
Just to illustrate on what I mean by agency, here are some examples of what would make it feel better for me:
- Have an ability generate X Combat Momentum by spending Y HP% and put it on a CD.
- Have a toggleable ability generate X Combat Momentum by spending Y HP% or HP every Z seconds. Make it untoggleable while the player character is disabled, stunned, etc. Make it so that it keeps draining HP even while at 100 Combat Momentum but it won’t go over the limit. Make it so that its Combat Momentum generation rate is on par with or slightly lower than Berserk’s Combat Momentum consumption rate.
- Have an ability that lets you use your missing HP% as Combat Momentum for the purposes of Form of Ferocity, Fluidity and Celerity, but not for other abilities that have a Combat Momentum cost.
- Have damage taken generate Combat Momentum.
Berserk
Berserk feels too short and has little impact. It’s mostly only useful as a CC break and to reset CDs. For it to feel good to use, it should last longer and/or grant CC evasion, immunity or duration reduction. It could also feel good to use if Combat Momentum could be kept up while Berserk is active as suggested above, or if you could choose to spend HP instead of Combat Momentum to keep it up.
I also think that a Fighter would feel better to play if their current HP% or missing HP% had an impact on the effects of Berserk or other abilities, not only Blood Fusion.
Thanks for reading. Please let me know what you think of this.
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