Question about itemization and character builds

I watched the Alpha 1 preview stream and overall I was excited at what I saw and I think it's looking great so far. I did have some questions about what you plan to do for gear and stats specifically. So far it looks pretty straightforward, where tanks where heavy armor and melee weapons/shield, dps wears medium armor and melee weapons or a bow, and healers/caster dps uses a staff and cloth armor. This is how ESO does it, despite having a ton of build options, realistically due to itemization you are limited to three options. That's very boring and very disappointing, because it means a lot of players can't play the type of class they enjoy.

How do you plan to handle itemization here? Can I play a heavy armored healer with 1h/shield or 2h mace like a standard Cleric archetype - Aion's Cleric/Chanter or WoW's Holy Pally? Can someone build an effective medium armor tank? Can a physical dps wear heavy armor? Can a player make an effective battle mage?

Will itemization offer enough variety for us to do anything we want, or will it be something that changes with the acquisition of a promotion class? I know the latter is how Aion handled it - upon reaching level 10 for example, the Priest would go from cloth to Chain upon becoming either a Chanter or Cleric.

I really hope you allow true variety without gimping people because that's probably my biggest concern right now. The class system and super narrow build options in ESO really ruins it for me, but a game like WoW for example has every type available almost so people can do what they want and still feel powerful and balanced.

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Noaani

Leiloni wrote: »

I want to be able to play the same classes other games have.

Why?

Why not just play those games?

I don't want copies of other games classes in Ashes, I want classes that feel unique to each game.

Blink2

What tends to happen when healers have access to plate gear is plate gear offers less healing potential, and although you might be able to take more hits you can't restore as much health. This goes against the main healer job of healing as much as possible so people don't use the heavy armor and deem it unviable. If heavy armor had the same potential as light armor when it came to healing then there would be no reason to have light armor and now it becomes unviable. So it's probably best if classes stick to their niches to avoid a fake sense of choice.

Leiloni

noaani wrote: »

Leiloni wrote: »

I want to be able to play the same classes other games have.

Why?

Why not just play those games?

I don't want copies of other games classes in Ashes, I want classes that feel unique to each game.

Ashes has 64 classes. I want to be able to play those classes, not 8 versions of the same mage and same cleric because right now that's what we're looking at.

Leiloni

Blink wrote: »

What tends to happen when healers have access to plate gear is plate gear offers less healing potential, and although you might be able to take more hits you can't restore as much health. This goes against the main healer job of healing as much as possible so people don't use the heavy armor and deem it unviable. If heavy armor had the same potential as light armor when it came to healing then there would be no reason to have light armor and now it becomes unviable. So it's probably best if classes stick to their niches to avoid a fake sense of choice.

In a lot of games that's not the case, nor is it really fantasy/DnD tradition. The idea that only cloth gives enough healing power is something more modern MMO's came up with (and even then, only a few modern MMO's even follow that - many have chain, plate, and even some with leather healers that are quite powerful), and it's exactly what I'm trying to push against. There's no reason for that to be the case.

In fact, the healer in this game is a Cleric, not a Priest. Clerics traditionally wear chain armor, and use a mace/shield or 2h mace. That's primarily why I've asked because that's the expectation when you see Cleric, but in the livestream she was essentially a Priest - cloth armor and staff. In fact if you hop into two of the most traditional, "stick-to-the-rules-that-created-the-genre" MMO's, DDO and Neverwinter, they have chain or plate wearing Clerics as the primary healer class.

Wandering Mist

Leiloni wrote: »

Blink wrote: »

What tends to happen when healers have access to plate gear is plate gear offers less healing potential, and although you might be able to take more hits you can't restore as much health. This goes against the main healer job of healing as much as possible so people don't use the heavy armor and deem it unviable. If heavy armor had the same potential as light armor when it came to healing then there would be no reason to have light armor and now it becomes unviable. So it's probably best if classes stick to their niches to avoid a fake sense of choice.

In a lot of games that's not the case, nor is it really fantasy/DnD tradition. The idea that only cloth gives enough healing power is something more modern MMO's came up with (and even then, only a few modern MMO's even follow that - many have chain, plate, and even some with leather healers that are quite powerful), and it's exactly what I'm trying to push against. There's no reason for that to be the case.

In fact, the healer in this game is a Cleric, not a Priest. Clerics traditionally wear chain armor, and use a mace/shield or 2h mace. That's primarily why I've asked because that's the expectation when you see Cleric, but in the livestream she was essentially a Priest - cloth armor and staff. In fact if you hop into two of the most traditional, "stick-to-the-rules-that-created-the-genre" MMO's, DDO and Neverwinter, they have chain or plate wearing Clerics as the primary healer class.

The whole point of giving healing classes cloth armour is a matter of balance. You sacrifice survivability in favour of magical strength (either healing or dps). What you are essentially asking for is to have both high survivability AND magical strength, unless of course the different armour types are purely cosmetic for RP value alone.

Sarevok

We don't really have enough information yet on what armor will come with stats wise yet. All we know is that there are four types so far: cloth, light, medium, and heavy. Traditionally, the heavy armor comes with more defense and HP but has less stats effecting your DPS where medium had a close balance of both, light is more stats and less defence and cloth will primarily be mostly stats and little defence. Risk vs reward is usually what it boils down to. We would need to know more about the advantages and disadvantages of gear before being able to iron out the difference between a Cleric in cloth vs a Cleric in plate.

I think of the four types they are trying to balance a few stats: attributes (HP/mana/etc), armor (physical/magic), mobility (raw movement speed?) and dps % bonuses. I'm going to asssume that each slot piece will have a predetermined item value or total allocated point system that will dictate what that item will come with. Where the armor amount on a heavy chest will be more that the armor amount on a heavy helm but the helm will have more HP for instance. Having varying degrees of stats like this could lead to mix and match uses or possibly force everyone to use that same types of items for reach slot for meta reasons. There just isn't enough information yet to start worrying about itemization yet.

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