The Gift of Life - Cleric Alpha One Preview

💖 Can you master the balance between life and death? ☠

Meet the Cleric and learn more about the power they wield from level 1-10 in our Alpha One preview: https://ashesofcreation.com/news/2020-11-02-the-gift-of-life-cleric-alpha-one-preview

https://youtu.be/7AHwGp-t27M

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oheyspun

I just really hope that most of these abilities don't force your character to stop moving. They have such long animations and getting killed in an animation lock is no fun.

oheyspun

Good stuff

Sathrago

spun666 wrote: »

I just really hope that most of these abilities don't force your character to stop moving. They have such long animations and getting killed in an animation lock is no fun.

Why wouldn't a caster have to stop to cast their abilities? They are most likely cast times rather than locks, otherwise yes it would be terrible to play with.

Damokles

spun666 wrote: »

I just really hope that most of these abilities don't force your character to stop moving. They have such long animations and getting killed in an animation lock is no fun.

Here is how I would see it (Hard cast means having to stand still for the cast and soft cast means being able to move during the cast):
Castigation - instant no root
Judgement - soft cast
Hallowed Ground - hard cast
Exorcism - channel ability with root
Damnation - soft cast
Devotion - instant no root
Divine Censure - long hard cast
Benediction - soft cast
Resurrection - hard cast

Varkun

Great stuff be excited to see the other classes in the future.

neuroguy

It'll be interesting to see what augments will do to some of these spells that already have multiple components and effects. You don't want to over-complicate single spells when you have a solid number of spells already which seems to be the case with AoC.

Gizban

I'm going to main Cleric and am overall pleased with this, however these are some thoughts:

1: Too much gold. Damage and heal fx should be delineated by color. 'Holy' damage and 'Radiant energy' damage should be delineated.

2: Some of the spell names are, by a wide margin, in the 'generic catholic trope' category. See Exorcism, Benediction, Hallowed Ground, Damnation.
Divine Censure is a good name, it describes the spell but without making you feel like your watching a horror movie about nuns.

3: Devotion has no bearing on healing, healing quickly, nor describes the action of the spell. Something along the lines of 'Rushed/Hastened Prayer' would be more appropriate.

4: Divine Censure has electric sound effects. Too many twinkle sound effects overall.

5: Exorcism's 'ripping at your target's spirit' is not an appropriate description for a Cleric spell. For a channeled spell, I recommend 'Cleansing Malediction'. With text in the line of: "Holy energy overwhelms the target, culminating in a searing explosion. Channeled."

Gizban

oheyspun

Damokles wrote: »

spun666 wrote: »

I just really hope that most of these abilities don't force your character to stop moving. They have such long animations and getting killed in an animation lock is no fun.

Here is how I would see it (Hard cast means having to stand still for the cast and soft cast means being able to move during the cast):
Castigation - instant no root
Judgement - soft cast
Hallowed Ground - hard cast
Exorcism - channel ability with root
Damnation - soft cast
Devotion - instant no root
Divine Censure - long hard cast
Benediction - soft cast
Resurrection - hard cast

yeah, see that doesnt sound awful. My other thought is I really dont like getting locked by an animation, or the allowance of animation canceling (when you can still use the ability).

Allowing us to cancel a spell by moving is really nice and adds a nice skill cap to abilities.

Amma

Well, i was not very interested in the cleric until now, but the one thing i love most is healing through damage dealing at the same time, so the most interesting thing is what the cleric augments will do. Can i heal with every other archetype a little bit too through damage (with cleric augment)? If not, then cleric will be one of the most interesting classes for pvp for me. Looks very interesting. I wonder what the next things after level 10 will be.

Amma

Healing me or my group while doing damage was the most interesting thing for me while playing discipline priest in wow. I like it very much to not just standing around as a healing battery but to be able to be a little bit offensive in the fight, so for me personally what i see is a move in the right direction.
I wonder if every other archetype will get such passive healing abilities for themself through cleric augments in a less effective form.

Warth

spun666 wrote: »

Damokles wrote: »

spun666 wrote: »

I just really hope that most of these abilities don't force your character to stop moving. They have such long animations and getting killed in an animation lock is no fun.

Here is how I would see it (Hard cast means having to stand still for the cast and soft cast means being able to move during the cast):
Castigation - instant no root
Judgement - soft cast
Hallowed Ground - hard cast
Exorcism - channel ability with root
Damnation - soft cast
Devotion - instant no root
Divine Censure - long hard cast
Benediction - soft cast
Resurrection - hard cast

yeah, see that doesnt sound awful. My other thought is I really dont like getting locked by an animation, or the allowance of animation canceling (when you can still use the ability).

Allowing us to cancel a spell by moving is really nice and adds a nice skill cap to abilities.

i agree with that. Being rooted in place just feels bad for non-chanelled abilities. I'd much rather habe them auto-cancel hardcast when i move. Rooting just takes away from fluidity and player control.

daveywavey

pyreal wrote: »

2: Some of the spell names are, by a wide margin, in the 'generic catholic trope' category. See Exorcism, Benediction, Hallowed Ground, Damnation.
Divine Censure is a good name, it describes the spell but without making you feel like your watching a horror movie about nuns.

3: Devotion has no bearing on healing, healing quickly, nor describes the action of the spell. Something along the lines of 'Rushed/Hastened Prayer' would be more appropriate.

The terms aren't specifically Christian.
For example - Exorcism isn't purely a Christian thing. Plenty of world religions practise it. Hallowed ground is simply an area of ground that has been blessed. Again, it doesn't specifically relate to Christianity.

I don't mind a healing spell called "Devotion". It could signify the Healer's devotion to their party member, or the Cleric's devotion to a healing god/goddess. My biggest query with it was that, for a "quick heal" spell, it didn't appear to be that quick.

Duckge

The abilities themselves look great and have me excited for augments, but they also spark some questions from a design/pvp perspective.

I wonder if the ratio of damage to heal abilities fulfill the healer fantasy. It'll probably change as more skills are unlocked, but are these level 1-10 abilities sufficient for the design of the New Player Experience? The low level combat loop seems to focus on damage first and healing second.
I could be totally wrong about this, but it seems like Castigation is meant to be the spammed ability for low level Clerics. If that's the case is the design subverting the traditional idea of a caster healer in the back to more of a frontline melee? There are many casted abilities shown, but again I'm thinking of the low level combat loop and what Clerics spam when all the other abilities are on cooldown or when players are flustered.
I wonder why there is a delay (about 1 second maybe?) between finishing the cast of Devotion and the target receiving the heal. Usually low level skills are designed to be more forgiving and it is much less satisfying when there is a delay.
The cast time for Resurrection seems pretty short (about 3 seconds?). I liked how in Archeage, Revive had a 7 second ish cast time which was a decent buffer for enemies to counterplay (gap close + interrupt).

I am definitely being overly critical without having firsthand experience, but I hope these points are considered. Many MMOs struggle with their New Player Experience and I hope AOC's NPE is heavily critiqued to facilitate growth after initial release.

(my bad, I didn't see the class discussion topic prior to posting this so I reposted it there. Please delete this post)

Duckge

The abilities themselves look great and have me excited for augments, but they also spark some questions from a design/pvp perspective.

I wonder if the ratio of damage to heal abilities fulfill the healer fantasy. It'll probably change as more skills are unlocked, but are these level 1-10 abilities sufficient for the design of the New Player Experience? The low level combat loop seems to focus on damage first and healing second.
I could be totally wrong about this, but it seems like Castigation is meant to be the spammed ability for low level Clerics. If that's the case is the design subverting the traditional idea of a caster healer in the back to more of a frontline melee? There are many casted abilities shown, but again I'm thinking of the low level combat loop and what Clerics spam when all the other abilities are on cooldown or when players are flustered.
I wonder why there is a delay (about 1 second maybe?) between finishing the cast of Devotion and the target receiving the heal. Usually low level skills are designed to be more forgiving and it is much less satisfying when there is a delay.
The cast time for Resurrection seems pretty short (about 3 seconds?). I liked how in Archeage, Revive had a 7 second ish cast time which was a decent buffer for enemies to counterplay (gap close + interrupt).

daveywavey

Gooose wrote: »

[*] I wonder why there is a delay (about 1 second maybe?) between finishing the cast of Devotion and the target receiving the heal. Usually low level skills are designed to be more forgiving and it is much less satisfying when there is a delay.

Yeah, it's labelled as a "swift act". It didn't seem very swift, to me.

WolfKnowsAll

Always loved playing any type of healer class's so it will most likely become my main, no idea why just like keeping friends/guild members alive.

Damokles

spun666 wrote: »

Damokles wrote: »

spun666 wrote: »

I just really hope that most of these abilities don't force your character to stop moving. They have such long animations and getting killed in an animation lock is no fun.

Here is how I would see it (Hard cast means having to stand still for the cast and soft cast means being able to move during the cast):
Castigation - instant no root
Judgement - soft cast
Hallowed Ground - hard cast
Exorcism - channel ability with root
Damnation - soft cast
Devotion - instant no root
Divine Censure - long hard cast
Benediction - soft cast
Resurrection - hard cast

yeah, see that doesnt sound awful. My other thought is I really dont like getting locked by an animation, or the allowance of animation canceling (when you can still use the ability).

Allowing us to cancel a spell by moving is really nice and adds a nice skill cap to abilities.

I remember a Fire Mage in my WoW raid back in Legion, who got the legendary boots that let you move while casting...
He never had them equipped because he could not cancel his casts by moving anymore xD

jorgym123

I though it looked great, can't wait to play when alpha 2 drops. I only had a couple of thoughts when I watched the video. I feel like seeing an ethereal hammer manifesting above someone and then smashing down would be cool.
Also, I've played my fair share of mmos and I feel like resurrection abilities usually look about the same. Actually seeing a vague shape of a humanoid figure (depending on race) being pulled and faded back into the target would give the feel of resurrection. Then having the cleric making motions as if they were actually trying to coax the life energy down from above.
That's my two cents.

Kumary

I like that we can heal and at the same time do some damage, even if it's damage over time. My only concern is the way I see the skills load/channel and also they seem static (unable to move). I may be wrong, but it's what I took from it.

In regards to my concern about the loading/channeling of the skills to complete and comparing them with just the auto-attack from the spear (which is pretty quick) I hope it can balance out in a good way to heal in comparison to the faster-paced weapons....not sure I'm making any sense lol

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