Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
What are your thoughts on the Classes so far?
brita
Member, Alpha Two
I know class balance and other such features aren't really the focus right now, and only minor balance changes get made. But I just wanted to know what some of the community thought about the classes they've played so far. Issues or things that feel good. Doesn't have to be too serious.
Personally, I love the Ranger class and play it in every MMO. For right now, the ranger feels a little clunky.
Bear trap and Vine field feel great to use, and provide nice utlity for the party, I like the current iteration alot
Thundering Shot feels odd and a little out of place in the rotation, along with Snipe and Headshot.
Party Stride and Strider are nice, but with the current mobs, kiting feels pretty difficult, as they'll be on you in a short amount of time.
The marks are nice but without seeing the enemy's information or stats I have no idea if I need pen or not, so slightly muddled there.
As for tank, I haven't played it a great deal, but the first ability you get feels god awful to use when you begin the journey. The courage system and that ability just don't mesh well. The other abilities, like the single target taunt seem fine, but the higher in the tree I go the more single target or AOE physical damage abilities we see. I don't see the tanks ever pulling large numbers. Even with reflect and fortify, the tank seems to die quite handly unless the mobs are only 1-2. And a personal aside, the conversion rate for "Courage" and how much charge it has, the tool tips spit alot of numbers at you and it's a bit difficult to parse, but I could just be dumb. I'd love for another class to be a tank though.
Any thoughts on your favorite classes
Personally, I love the Ranger class and play it in every MMO. For right now, the ranger feels a little clunky.
Bear trap and Vine field feel great to use, and provide nice utlity for the party, I like the current iteration alot
Thundering Shot feels odd and a little out of place in the rotation, along with Snipe and Headshot.
Party Stride and Strider are nice, but with the current mobs, kiting feels pretty difficult, as they'll be on you in a short amount of time.
The marks are nice but without seeing the enemy's information or stats I have no idea if I need pen or not, so slightly muddled there.
As for tank, I haven't played it a great deal, but the first ability you get feels god awful to use when you begin the journey. The courage system and that ability just don't mesh well. The other abilities, like the single target taunt seem fine, but the higher in the tree I go the more single target or AOE physical damage abilities we see. I don't see the tanks ever pulling large numbers. Even with reflect and fortify, the tank seems to die quite handly unless the mobs are only 1-2. And a personal aside, the conversion rate for "Courage" and how much charge it has, the tool tips spit alot of numbers at you and it's a bit difficult to parse, but I could just be dumb. I'd love for another class to be a tank though.
Any thoughts on your favorite classes
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Comments
That being said I played Mage and Cleric so far. Mage felt super generic but strong. Cleric felt better in terms of being different from other healers in previous games which was nice.
Mage was also super squishy. It seems like people might have a problem with its DPS but I think the class needs a bit of a redesign then.
Also sad there’s no DoT dps option versus direct damage.
Praying the archetype trees are barebones at best and will be expanded greatly come later patches.
Bard is just fun. Fighters and Tanks are hard to keep their mana up even when running full mana battery spec. The Bard is almost as much fun as the EQ1 OG Bard. I am frustrated that almost every class can spec into a full tool kit for the most part and Bards have too many need skills to support the team. I wish there was more layers on the skills over more and more skills. Most classes just add pasives that add more depth. I wish this was rethought or other classes had the same problem. 5 songs and 5 skill points alone. A 5th of your points just for songs. Never know what a group will need
Tank is awesome. PvP to PvE. Only feedback is when I played. The pertical effects its hard to read mobs tells. Also I can't tell the difference between my mages magma and the NPC. I don't know when to dodge.
Cleric is so well done. Most skills are meaningful and the pasives you can add to skills gives the skills extra layers. Heal that now also dose damage the same area and now another level I think did a debuff. More of this for the Bard pls.
Mage is just what it should be. Pure glass cannon and has a few ways to get away and keep punishing. I have not had this much fun with a Mage since WoW 2004.
Can't wait for Summoner
I can totally agree with this. It all seems awful generic at the current stage. I can't even imagine why they would separate summoner from the mage class when it's really just a part of being a mage, no? And fighters and tanks using mana strikes me as odd but that's just a small quibble. I hope they get more fleshed out as the game develops. Personally I would love an expansive class system where it's not just relegated to trees but as it stands I don't think we're getting much more than very generic "types" of classes in the typical MMO sense
Poor verbiage. A better description is that their abilities / spec paths etc are very generic. Not a lot of room for playstyle choices. It in its current iteration boils down to a difference between a couple abilities and that’s the extent of it.
Obviously it’s very early. Just hoping there is more available to choose from even before we get the option to to spec a class. No issues with them filling their roles. I completely agree it’s a solid and a good direction. Just looking for more diverse ways to perform that role.
I think it's moreso 'best practices'.
More impactful abilities that would be the type to define two characters relative to each other within their Archetype tend to come later in the game for many reasons. Ashes might be able to afford to be more 'creative' with them early due to the long leveling phase, but this is still probably the overall 'correct' way to do it.
Abilities that are more specialized and not 'universally meaningful' for most Archetypes or Classes are the sort of thing you choose when you've established yourself in a game, whereas now, we mostly just have the 'must-haves', and you could choose to forego one or two of those, but the average player wouldn't.
I don't think we're supposed to be choosing 'between' actual abilities right now, and only mild drift in playstyle would happen without augments.
So I don't think it would be 'correct' to start throwing in those sorts of decisions at this stage of Alpha. But this is probably somewhat bias, there are probably games that do this, but I've never played any of them.
Secondary classes will come in Phase 3. Cleric and Tank will be first, unknown when, and the others will arrive at some point after that.
- Proc Duration,
- Keen Edge, etc.
A ranger short bow has the same weapon passives as a mage. The little difference being your class passive adding a Proc on Finisher (if you can get to a Proc I>E> BARD or CLERIC CAST starting your from hit no.1) ... However, I find these on Proc Finishers add very little to class play overall, as they are not class defining enough in my view.
Look at GW2 weapons for example (and in my view on of the best MMO implementations of such), where for each class the weapon provided a VERY differenct and unique skill set or skills, for which you then had specific class passive trees that would enhance how your character played. Full Bleed trees, Full Defense trees, Full Regen trees, Bull Buffing trees etc. This also allowed your weapons and weapon sub-skills to be effectively used with your preferred builds and specs.
Right now, I could run my Ranger, Bard and Cleric all on the same "short bow", doing the same rinse and repeat generic auto attacks and throwing in a class skill when not on CD... there does not feel like much of a difference in how the weapon use actually plays out for each and every fight. The generic weapon sub-skill tree for all classes needs to be modified such that each class has its own abilities/skills that generate through the different weapon sets. If these games launched and every single class had the same 'weapon' passives - it would be a very boring and flat use of mechanics.
Or restrict the weapons certain classes can use. Wizards with Greatswords and Fighters with Wands not only feels wrong, it looks wrong, and pulls away from the gritty realism the game is going for.
The problem is while there is one huge difference in the classes, there are no small differences. Things like weapons and armor, or tweaked abilities.
Think of your car (I'm assuming you own one). While it's definitely different then other cars, in big ways it's also different a car, or trucks, that anyone else would consider it to be exactly the same. Maybe it pulls to the left while your driving, or it makes a certain sound when you go over a speed bump, it's those little things.
Think of a lowered truck with luxury rims, that's still a truck but a different kind of truck, because the game doesn't have something which is similar. It causes the classes to lack true identity, it's just a generic thing.