Tanking

I love the overall archetype class design that they're going for, and I know they have said that a tank archetype will be able to tank no matter what secondary class he chooses.
But does anyone know if any other classes if they choose a tank secondary will be able to tank?
For example a rogue/tank being able to do a Dodge evasion type build for tanking. Or a summoner focusing on tanky summons?

Or will the tank primary be the only tanking option?

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SirChancelot

Well
That's not what it sounds like to me. If you say an augment can change a role in the party that makes it sound like healer to DPS, etc...
What says that switching from minor summons to a bigger summon doesn't also give that summon tanky activated abilities allowing the summoner to tank through that summon.

Maybe we should try to get this on a Q&A for three next live stream?

Are primary archetype tank and cleric the only tanks and healers, or will other classes with the right secondary class and augments be able to fill those roles efficiently?

Kalv1441

SirChancelot11 wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

I wonder what you think Secondary Archetype means other than secondary?
Secondaries cannot fulfill primary roles because the don't have primary abilities - they have primary augments and augments are not as powerful as abilities.

I don't need to change the ability, just the flavor to change the role

Example
A rogue has a fan of knives ability.
A rogue/tank generates threat with any knife ability. Now every time he spams fan of knives he is generating AOE threat too.
That could literally be all that augment does.
Another augment could lead to increased dodge/evasion every time they cast something, or as long as they keep moving?

I mean half the tank archetype abilities just have this generates threat tacked on the end... Why not make that part of the augments?

Well said. This why I hold out hope for a summoner/tank or rogue/tank being viable. At least for now, we don’t have the info but the speculation is fun.

Dygz

Steven does not state that an augment can change a role in the party.
"It's a way to get away from that meta feel. It can directly relate to your feeling and experience of being within something as intimate as combat or your role within a party."

Again, what that means is that instead of having just one version of a role, there are 8 versions of each role.
You don't have to just play a Guardian... you can play 7 other versions Tank.

You may need to cross reference with his other statements.
I'll see if I can find a couple more I'm thinking of, later.

Primary Archetype Clerics are the group healers. Secondary Archetypes can help.
Which is why Tank/x is the main tank and x/Tank can off-tank.
That's the design.

Nagash

SirChancelot

Dygz wrote: »

Steven does not state that an augment can change a role in the party.
"It's a way to get away from that meta feel. It can directly relate to your feeling and experience of being within something as intimate as combat or your role within a party.
That's the design.

But that quote literally says your role within a party...

Songcaller

SirChancelot11 wrote: »

But that quote literally says your role within a party...

What would be your preferred Tank at this time, Chancelot? I say Tank but I don't necessarily mean Tank/X, just overall Tank. We can't have Feral Druids because there aren't animal shapeshifts.

Dygz

SirChancelot11 wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

Steven does not state that an augment can change a role in the party.
"It's a way to get away from that meta feel. It can directly relate to your feeling and experience of being within something as intimate as combat or your role within a party.
That's the design.

But that quote literally says your role within a party...

It does not say "can change a role in the party".
It says it's a way to get away from the meta - as in just one Tank. Instead there are 8 versions of Primary Archetype Tank.
This changes the feeling of playing a Tank and allows a Tank to meddle around with some of the other archytypes. It changes the feeling and experience of that role.
It doesn't "change the role" as in you become one of the other roles.

SirChancelot

My normal play style is probably going to fall under tank/cleric but using the death augments instead of life ones...

I've played death knights and dark knights and want to try something with a different approach. Not a standard plate and shield tank.
Because even if all the tank/x combinations are viable and have different flavor, they will all still be plate wearing sword n board tanks... And that seems kind of dull for a game with such high goals.

I would love to see a summoner being able to tank with his puppets because that would be different and sounds cool. ( I can only find information on ideas for summoners, haven't seen any actual summoner abilities yet)
But as I mentioned earlier I think rogue or mage tanks would be awesome variations too if the tank secondary makes it possible

I guess we will just have to wait and get some more details on how much some of these augments actually change the main archetype.

SirChancelot

Dygz wrote: »

SirChancelot11 wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

Steven does not state that an augment can change a role in the party.
"It's a way to get away from that meta feel. It can directly relate to your feeling and experience of being within something as intimate as combat or your role within a party.
That's the design.

It doesn't "change the role" as in you become one of the other roles.

...
That last line
The last 6 words

Songcaller

In ESO they do have a Nightblade Tank (Rogue Tank) which works quite well in Dungeons etc. In Age of Conan they had a Dark Knight which was a good off-tank and a main tank for some encounters. Protection Paladin is a great tank in WoW but Monk would be preferred due to the smoother Damage Mitigation for higher level encounters. I'm not too sure on how effective Hybrids will be. In other games you would pick the class and build the class, in Ashes you will have to build the class after you pick the class. I also believe Paladin will be the best Tank out of the 8, even surpassing Guardian, because of the Augments Cleric will provide. However, I'm not certain about the threat tables and in terms of Min/Max Guardian might be able to hold higher threat to compensate for the Higher DPS and higher Heals. However, Heals in the current iteration also create a lot of threat so a Paladin with Heals could generate higher threat than a Guardian. All in All, I will test Guardian and Paladin in Alpha 2.

Dygz

SirChancelot11 wrote: »

That last line
The last 6 words

Right. The whole last line - it does not do those last 6 words.

Khronus

SirChancelot11 wrote: »

Percimes wrote: »

[

And nothing taunts as much as a kazoo, we all know that.

I stand corrected

You must not have been part of the vuvuzela craze.

RocketFarmer

I figure that so much can change from now to launch that we’ll just have to see what they come up with. How much better is a Tank/Tank than a Tank/X, and is the difference meaningful? Advantage of a Tank/X may be solo play as you might have a little more damage or some healing.

64 combos sound a bit like over design, and not every combo may be viable as a high performance spec. Now that’s different than unplayable, which is the issue with other games. If all 64 combos are playable then I consider that a win. I take it the system is designed this way to facilitate multi-classing that doesn’t suck. But in a group you may be better off being focused in one class. We will have to see how that plays out.

Songcaller

Aye, Rocket. So much is still uncertain and we have little info on augments or half of the classes. Can't wait until alpha 2 when the archetypes are tested

ThexBlackxKnight

Nothing is set in stone and Steven is willing to change things , so who knows what will be possible down the road as far as tanking options go.

Saedu

lets all just hope @Dygz is wrong on this.

.

If Rogue/Tank can be a viable tank through increased evasion, etc, but at a cost to the rogue's DPS, then that would make the class significantly more interesting.

Being able to switch between roles based on your augments/gear adds SIGNIFICANT value to this system. I don't know why people would want to lock themselves to one single role ever...

A tank/* that has 8 variations of tanking is not as good as having multiple */Tank classes that can tank. Those variations on tank/* would not be that meaningful because you are still using the same abilities... just with different flavor. But a rogue/tank or a summoner/tank would give a significantly different playstyle than all the tank/*.

They just need to make them end game viable and you have the best tool possible to break the meta. if tank/* is always superior, then you wont break the meta as everyone will always take a tank.

Sure maybe tank/tank is the hardest to kill and easiest to heal, but maybe that setup also has the lowest DPS so its a trade off and a tank/dps might be better.

I think it would be interesting if some of the tank/dps specs also sacrifice some of the tankiness of the class for DPS so they could be a viable DPS spec too (but not be able to be a viable tank at the same time).

This just gives soo much more meaning to 64 classes and variability. If the secondary can't change your effective role, then we really only have 8 classes and only one of them is a viable tank and one is a viable healer. The secondary class choice isn't really all that "meaningful" if it can't change your primary role. If it can change your role (when balanced with the right augments and gear), now you are breaking the meta in all sorts of ways.

Saedu

"with the augment system there is a great degree of diversity available among the classes and diversity is a producer of a way to get away from that kind of meta feel because it can directly relate to your feeling and experience being with something as intimate as combat lets say or your role within a party. So thats, obviously testing, testing, testing, testing, and testing is needed and thats what we intend to do." - Steven (from the video Digz posted).

I interprite that line as Steven verbally saying that the augment system can impact your role within a party (pending testing of course).

if only tank/* class can tank, then you have a tank required meta. if only Cleric/* can heal, then you have a cleric required meta. If roles can change based on secondary class/augment, then you break down the meta. There should be a reason people want to bring each class into a group/raid, but there should also be options so you don't feel any single class is mandatory for a group. As soon as you have a archtype that is mandatory, you are forming a meta.

I know lots of people like to rip on WoW here, but they have 7 different classes (archtypes) that can tank. Each has its own completely different toolkit and approach to getting the job done. If it was only the Warrior class that could tank and they could only tank (no DPS specs), but the Warrior could do it through lots of different talent options (like Augments), then it would be a total trash system. I personally would have never gotten into tanking. I hate the Warrior playstyle, but I like monk, druid, DK, and Paly style of tanking...

There is no good reason to lock the game down to only a single archtype being your end game boss tank and only a single archtype being your go to healer. That would simply be poor design and minimize the meaningfulness of the entire augment/class system. If "great degree of diversity" does not mean "role changing/defining", then it isn't a "great degree of diversity"... Sorry no way around that in my opinion.

Dygz

RocketFarmer wrote: »

I figure that so much can change from now to launch that we’ll just have to see what they come up with. How much better is a Tank/Tank than a Tank/X, and is the difference meaningful? Advantage of a Tank/X may be solo play as you might have a little more damage or some healing.

64 combos sound a bit like over design, and not every combo may be viable as a high performance spec. Now that’s different than unplayable, which is the issue with other games. If all 64 combos are playable then I consider that a win. I take it the system is designed this way to facilitate multi-classing that doesn’t suck. But in a group you may be better off being focused in one class. We will have to see how that plays out.

It's really about the Primary Archetypes - that where the abilities come from. So any of the 8 versions of a Primary Archetype are viable...they just play somewhat differently. Any of the 8 Tank variations can tank.
And that is what creates the different ways a player can play the Primary Archetype.
Again, the Primary Archetypes are the way they are balancing rock-paper-scissors.
There will be 8 versions of main tank. Not 16 versions of main tank.
8 classes of Primary Archetype Tank is a great degree of diversity - especially when there will be another set of 8 classes that can use Tank augments to tank somewhat as well.
8 classes of Primary Archetype Cleric is a great degree of diversity - especially when there will be another set of 8 classes that can use Cleric augments to deal Life and Death somewhat as well. Again, augments are not as powerful as abilities are, so Cleric augment heals will not be as powerful as Cleric ability heals.
Otherwise, they would just give x/Cleric Cleric abilities, rather than Cleric augments.

Augments do impact your role. That is not the same thing as changing your role to be a different role.
Groups are balanced so that you will want one of each type of Primary Archetype in the group.
Steven has never said any thing like if you don't have a Tank/x you can just use an x/Tank or if you don't have a Cleric/x, you can just use a x/Cleric.

There are 8 classes of primary Cleric as well as 8 other classes of secondary Cleric.
8 classes of viable main tank is breaking the meta of having only one viable build of main tank.
Again, I don't know what you think Primary and Secondary are intended to mean if we essentially have 16 versions of primary (main) tank.

If you want to primarily tank, but also heal a bit, you choose Tank/Cleric and use Tank abilities with Cleric augments.
If you want to primarily heal, but also tank a bit, you choose Cleric/Tank and use Cleric abilities with Tank augments.
Keep in mind that Primary Archetypes also have role specific utilities that Secondary Archetypes won't have.

Biccus

Dygz wrote: »

It's really about the Primary Archetypes - that where the abilities come from. So any of the 8 versions of a Primary Archetype are viable...they just play somewhat differently. Any of the 8 Tank variations can tank.
There will be 8 versions of main tank. Not 16 versions of main tank.
8 classes of Primary Archetype Tank is a great degree of diversity - especially when there will be another set of 8 classes that can use Tank augments to tank somewhat as well.

Augments do impact your role. That is not the same thing as changing your role.

If the game has only 8 tanks and those tanks all have the exact same abilities, with only flavourful differences from augments.. I think that’s no real diversity at all and sounds stale.

These augments need to change your archetype abilities so radically that it actually feels like you have 8 tanks to pick from and not just 1. Otherwise the diversity will have to come from x/tank.

Dygz

I don't know what is meant by only flavorful.
You are fabricating a false dichotomy of either augments allowing secondary Tanks to main tank or not being able to tank in any meaningful way.
Secondary Tanks should be able to off-tank well. That is meaningful; not "only flavorful".
The devs are going to balance to make sure that a Cleric/Tank can be a primary healer. They are not balancing to make sure that Cleric/Tank can be a primary tank.

We do have 8 Tanks to choose from for main tank. We do not have 16 Tanks to choose from for main tank.
And it's 8 classes of Tank with the same abilities - not the exact same abilities because those same abilities will be augmented differently. But combat role is balanced around the abilities; not the augments.

There are 8 classes with the primary role of Tank. Tank/x.
There are 8 classes with a secondary role of Tank. x/Tank.
X/Tank does not mean that augments allow you to change your primary role to Tank. Your primary role will remain whatever x is.

https://discord.com/channels/256164085366915072/256164085366915072/739365922246098987
11:14 PM] OGCorn: @Steven 😇 If i use Cleric as a Secondary Rather than i Primary will i still be able to heal others. Or only self healing?
[11:15 PM] OGCorn: @[Overlord] Roogini That dosent exactly answer my question. If i use secondary cleric can i heal others?
[11:16 PM] Steven 😇: @OGCorn indirectly there are some augments when applied to certain skills that can do this. But it would not replace a cleric archetype.

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