Don't make the same mistake WoW did with its hybrid classes. Dont wait 3 years to learn this lesson.

Basically for the entire duration of vanilla wow, hybrid classes such as retribution paladin, feral druid, dps shaman, etc were at best memes but never actually functional, never actually viable for anything.

If someone wants to be a hybrid dps-healer you shouldn't give him half the damage a full dps does. Thats just bad design, nobody will want to play that.

What you should do (let's compare an assassin and a templar) is this:

Both should deal good damage. Sure give the full dps a slight edge.
The rest of the templar's performance should come from healing, buffs and resilience, which are his classe's theme.
The rest of the assassin's performance should come from his stealth, high mobility and crowd control, which are his classe's theme.

Don't make hybrid classes memes and jacks of all trade, in practice, they will end up being only disappointments.

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JustVine

wherediditrun wrote: »

I appended my previous response with an addition: I.e what's the point of burst damage, if we are fighting the boss. And game design does not offer some mechanics around the boss to provide burst windows? Not that as a concept it does not exist, but it's not something the team build their strategy around. Unless you can provide me with a few examples to prove that it isn't as exotic and rare case as I see it.

Imagine this, boss is invulenrable unless you work with your team via some environment mechanic to expose the boss to damage in short windows. All while adds are pouring in so the regular dps has something to do in trying to out kill rather than out tank. While be burst must work with who ever is working on exposure mechanic on the moment to sync their nukes? How many raids / dungeons you know of which uses it as a winning condition?

FFXI: Magic Burst

In battle, when a Weapon Skill is used on an enemy, the target is typically struck with an elemental "resonance" that can result in a Skillchain if a proper subsequent Weapon Skill is used, resulting in additional damage for the subsequent Weapon Skill. Skillchains, in turn, leave the target with another type of resonance that temporarily enables Magic Bursts to be performed, a method for increasing the power and accuracy of offensive magic. Mage spells (including Blue Mage with the use of Burst Affinity), Ninjutsu, magical Blood Pacts, and Songs can be used at the end of a skillchain to increase damage and accuracy of their magic attacks. This action is called a Magic Burst (MB). In order to create a Magic Burst, the element of the spell must match one of the elements of the Skillchain that precedes it. After approximately 3 seconds after the Weapon Skill that closes the skillchain, there is an approximate 5 second window in which appropriate spells must finish casting in order to produce Magic Bursts.

As for why this isn't more common given how old this game is? Beats the hell out of me. People wanna be 'unique and original' with their game design? Jeffery Bard was a FFXI player though so the influence might have been planned to be included.

wherediditrun wrote: »

One one hand strain is put, and when it comes to blunt number balance by pushing the slider slightly. On the other hand entire thing devolves into chaos. That's exactly the same thing I was talking about. You're talked differences do not occupy same spot of importance like having a role of a healer or tank. My argument is that they SHOULD. Given that we have 8 folk parties.

In the main game I play I could argue 'most of them' do.

Atama

I don’t ever want to play a game where the only thing I can do is heal or mezz or buff or whatever. That would suck.

I don’t mind a game where I’m responsible for one of those roles in a group as I’m doing other things like DPS.

Luckily there is no such thing as a “pure support” and never has been. That idea is some weird ridiculous fantasy.

Sure, you won’t do as much DPS as a class that is devoted to damage but you’ll at least contribute.

CROW3

Atama wrote: »

Luckily there is no such thing as a “pure support” and never has been. That idea is some weird ridiculous fantasy.

QFT - when thinking about being part of LOTR, no one says "I wish I were Bob the Pony!"

Wyborn

It seems like, when Wow came out, the druids were a support class. A jack of all trades. They were able to do everthing just not as good as the straight tanks, healers, or dps. The apparently someone with some pull started playing a druid and presto you get druids doing everything just as good if not better than the other classes. Hybrid class overcompensation.

Atama

Yeah in my guild I played with for years, our best tank in WoW was a bear form Druid. It was solid. And it was easier than playing a protection Warrior, which was more of a "pure" tank. I say this as someone who did a lot of Warrior tanking back in the day.

CROW3

Atama wrote: »

Yeah in my guild I played with for years, our best tank in WoW was a bear form Druid. It was solid. And it was easier than playing a protection Warrior, which was more of a "pure" tank. I say this as someone who did a lot of Warrior tanking back in the day.

Totally agree. I MTd Wrath, Cata, and MoP as a warrior, started Legion as a Blood DK eventually switched to Vengeance DH, then tried Druid and it was stupid easy.

Percimes

Wyborn wrote: »

It seems like, when Wow came out, the druids were a support class. A jack of all trades. They were able to do everthing just not as good as the straight tanks, healers, or dps. The apparently someone with some pull started playing a druid and presto you get druids doing everything just as good if not better than the other classes. Hybrid class overcompensation.

Half truth. They could spec to be effective in the 3 roles, but not at the same time, at least not to the level of other classes that could perform the task. If you spread in all trees you couldn't achieved the same level of mastery. Gear synergy between different spec wasn't always a given (pre-TBC gear could be rather limiting). Re-spec were not always an easy switch (and costed a fortune if you switched often).

Having some, if not all classes, able to spec for different roles isn't a problem, as long as they can't do it at the same time or convert on the fly. If a wizard could spec to tank (shield, roots, barrier, whatever) but could not perform as a dps while spec that way, while geared to sustain that role, it would be a tank.

Classes and roles do not necessarily have to be fused together.

Percimes

If you people want classes to equal roles, skip the specialization options. Make it as it was in old EQ. All warriors had the same skill set. All rangers had the same spells and skills. The only variations between two characters was how they were equipped, and the decision of the players.

JustVine

Percimes wrote: »

If you people want classes to equal roles, skip the specialization options. Make it as it was in old EQ. All warriors had the same skill set. All rangers had the same spells and skills. The only variations between two characters was how they were equipped, and the decision of the players.

Which of course in modern gaming would be a death sentence for an mmo. People want freedom of expression and rigid class systems are antithetical to that. If people want rigid class roles we should just go full fighting game mmo. But the same people for rigid class systems seem to also usually not argue for fair and proper balance mechanics 'because it goes against Intrepid's stated plans'. I wonder why

Percimes

JustVine wrote: »

Percimes wrote: »

If you people want classes to equal roles, skip the specialization options. Make it as it was in old EQ. All warriors had the same skill set. All rangers had the same spells and skills. The only variations between two characters was how they were equipped, and the decision of the players.

Which of course in modern gaming would be a death sentence for an mmo. People want freedom of expression and rigid class systems are antithetical to that. If people want rigid class roles we should just go full fighting game mmo. But the same people for rigid class systems seem to also usually not argue for fair and proper balance mechanics 'because ot guess against Intrepifld's starred plans'. I wonder why

Hehe, and yet people express their freedom of choice by all spec'ing into the same few optimal ways. And so a meta is born.

Atama

JustVine wrote: »

Percimes wrote: »

If you people want classes to equal roles, skip the specialization options. Make it as it was in old EQ. All warriors had the same skill set. All rangers had the same spells and skills. The only variations between two characters was how they were equipped, and the decision of the players.

Which of course in modern gaming would be a death sentence for an mmo. People want freedom of expression and rigid class systems are antithetical to that. If people want rigid class roles we should just go full fighting game mmo. But the same people for rigid class systems seem to also usually not argue for fair and proper balance mechanics 'because it goes against Intrepid's stated plans'. I wonder why

Funny enough, WoW has gone the other way. You used to have a lot of freedom in how you built your character, having 3 or 4 talent trees per class that you could pick from to put together a unique build.

Now you pick a specialization, and then you have to pick 1 of 3 talent options per tier as you level in that specialization. They absolutely have a rigid class system with very little freedom.

Percimes wrote: »

Hehe, and yet people express their freedom of choice by all spec'ing into the same few optimal ways. And so a meta is born.

I think Blizzard figured that out and said, screw it, just pick a specialization and forget the cookie-cutter, we'll just hand you a cookie.

(Of course not everyone agreed with that and many bemoan the changes, hence WoW Classic.)

Swifty00

If you think about it long enough and you read about secondary augments, this is a total non-issue.

Ironhope

I don't think hybrids should be good in all roles at the same thing, I think (because history has shown this to be the case) they should have the option to specialize in 1 field and become good in that field, while the rest of their performance comes from their hybrid nature (their hybrid kit).

So if a hybrid (starts off with basic tanking, dps and healing abilities) specializes into dps, most of his performance should come from dps, while a minor part of his performance should come from his undeveloped (still basic) healing/tanking/buffing abilities.

If hybrids are made to be jacks of all trades, 5/10 in all, they will fail the same way they failed in wow classic until wow TBC did what I just said.

Ironhope

Percimes wrote: »

Hehe, and yet people express their freedom of choice by all spec'ing into the same few optimal ways. And so a meta is born.

Then the dev has failed to crate multiple viable paths or reasons to take those paths.

Percimes

Ironhope wrote: »

Percimes wrote: »

Hehe, and yet people express their freedom of choice by all spec'ing into the same few optimal ways. And so a meta is born.

Then the dev has failed to crate multiple viable paths or reasons to take those paths.

I wouldn't be that harsh on the devs. Some paths become more trodden because they, for no particular reason, were popular early on and the player base found workarounds that would not have been necessary if the other paths had also flourished. Not saying the reasons were completely random, but it could simply be due to a class being picked for its aesthetic, common when there are race/class restrictions, or how loaded with pop culture it's name is. You say "paladin" and many people turn their head and put a hand up. Get many people picking a certain class and it can influence how the game is played. At some point, it can become the default way to approach encounters and, through laziness for adaptability or shortage of available alternatives (from player choices), only a few paths are left.

Ironhope

Percimes wrote: »

I wouldn't be that harsh on the devs. Some paths become more trodden because they, for no particular reason, were popular early on and the player base found workarounds that would not have been necessary if the other paths had also flourished.

Does anyone remember the vanilla warrior which everyone believed to be underpowered and everyone was asking for buffs, until some guy made a video proving the warriors are in fact overpowered and soon after nerfs were thrown?

Yeah, the dev community interraction is a big part of the equation.
No doubts about it.

Sometimes it will be the community's fault, despite good design, indeed.

However, such cases will be less common.

Percimes wrote: »

Get many people picking a certain class and it can influence how the game is played. At some point, it can become the default way to approach encounters and, through laziness for adaptability or shortage of available alternatives (from player choices), only a few paths are left.

Well yeah its the devs job to stimulate, to give the players good challenges and the tools to solve, to overcome those challenges.

And sometimes, there just isn't any reason to have a meta.

PvP is an example.

Give a dps class, for example, a build that gives it bursty damage but trash sustained damage, one which gives it great sustain but trash burst, one where he does decent burst decent sustain but now supresses healing taken or silences with auto-attacks.

Theres a lot of potential with talent trees always and if you put enough thinking into them they can become pretty fun.

Percimes wrote: »

Not saying the reasons were completely random, but it could simply be due to a class being picked for its aesthetic, common when there are race/class restrictions, or how loaded with pop culture it's name is. You say "paladin" and many people turn their head and put a hand up..

Ironhope

Percimes wrote: »

I wouldn't be that harsh on the devs. Some paths become more trodden because they, for no particular reason, were popular early on and the player base found workarounds that would not have been necessary if the other paths had also flourished.

Percimes wrote: »

Get many people picking a certain class and it can influence how the game is played. At some point, it can become the default way to approach encounters and, through laziness for adaptability or shortage of available alternatives (from player choices), only a few paths are left.

Percimes wrote: »

Not saying the reasons were completely random, but it could simply be due to a class being picked for its aesthetic, common when there are race/class restrictions, or how loaded with pop culture it's name is. You say "paladin" and many people turn their head and put a hand up..

I'm 100% one of those guys.

Saw ''templar'' and was sold the next moment.

Fact is tho, when they put such big names (templar, paladin, necromancer, warlock, shaman, beastmaster, etc) on the table, they better walk the walk in terms of development and deliver something actually fitting of the name.

The real problem will be, in my opinion, picking their class based on name and finding out it doesn't fit the gameplay role/theme role they would expect.

The templars for example were dps priests in real life. They didn't try to save your soul, they lead an epic charge to crush your sould in battle.

Things don't look very rosey for the AoC templar meanwhile. I really hope it won't be a classic retribution paladin v2.0.

Thats why I believe character customization (talents, gear, node and organization/religion affiliation, tattoes, etc) should count for more than base class choice.

Atama

Ironhope wrote: »

And sometimes, there just isn't any reason to have a meta.

PvP is an example.

I think that's something we all need to remember. As we talk about classes and roles and builds and question the utility of them, it seems like the discussions always revolve around how useful they would be in a group doing PvE. For example, it's asked why someone would ever roll a Tank who isn't a Tank/Tank if that is objectively the best kind of tank in the game. But we seem to skip over the PvP side of the game which is important. Maybe a Bard/Tank is going to have trouble fitting into a group, but that might be an unstoppable combo in PvP. (Just a random example based on nothing.)

Maybe hybrids will struggle to succeed in a PvE raid but are kings of PvP. We really can't know at this point.

beaushinkle

Atama wrote: »

Ironhope wrote: »

And sometimes, there just isn't any reason to have a meta.

PvP is an example.

I think that's something we all need to remember. As we talk about classes and roles and builds and question the utility of them, it seems like the discussions always revolve around how useful they would be in a group doing PvE. For example, it's asked why someone would ever roll a Tank who isn't a Tank/Tank if that is objectively the best kind of tank in the game. But we seem to skip over the PvP side of the game which is important. Maybe a Bard/Tank is going to have trouble fitting into a group, but that might be an unstoppable combo in PvP. (Just a random example based on nothing.)

Maybe hybrids will struggle to succeed in a PvE raid but are kings of PvP. We really can't know at this point.

My core issue with this, as a player, is that you will invest thousands of hours into a single character and will be more-or-less at the whim of the current meta and balance patch. If the game is properly balanced to some sort of completely unobtainable ideal (NOTE, I'M NOT ASKING FOR THIS.), then you could form a group of just players playing together. You don't need 2 tank 2 healer 4 dps, just 8 players.

In the trinity system, we know we need tanks, healers, and dps, so we know that there's going to be a meta requirement built on top of that. Is the ratio of tanks, healers, and dps going to be the same for all forms of content? As in, say that the standard 8-man is 2 tank 2 healer, 2 melee 2 ranged. Is the standard 16 man 4 tank 4 healer 4 melee 4 ranged? Or do you drop a tank for a ranged? Is the standard 40 man 10 tank 10 healer 10 melee 10 ranged, or is it closer to 5 tank 8 healer 12 melee 15 ranged?

In this situation, we need 1/4 of the players to be tanks for small group content, and 1/8 of the players to be tanks for raids. This leads to situations where half of the small group tanks don't have raid slots when they want to start raiding (if they want to start raiding). This, likely, means they won't get leveled in the first place, leading to a huge shortage of tanks for small group content.

In the context of PvP, if you've geared, leveled, and practiced a class that used to be in-meta (like your bard/tank example), but then a balance patch hits and it becomes off-meta, what happens? You potentially get benched from your roster because your effectiveness is directly tied to your character power, not your player skill.

I don't think it makes much sense to be okay with designs that relegate subclasses to "this is the PVP focused spec" or "this is the pve spec" unless it's trivial to switch between them.

Atama

beaushinkle wrote: »

I don't think it makes much sense to be okay with designs that relegate subclasses to "this is the PVP focused spec" or "this is the pve spec" unless it's trivial to switch between them.

It won't be trivial to swap, but it's possible to swap. We just don't know how that will be.

Currently in WoW I can swap specializations by opening a menu and clicking a button. Boom, I'm a new spec. It won't be that easy for certain.

In Lord of the Rings Online, if I wanted to swap to a different specialization I would go talk to a particular NPC and pay a sum of money. I remember it being a large enough sum of money that it was always a bit painful, but generally I did this to get into a raid or some other activity which had a lot of rewards involved so it was worth it. I mostly played a Guardian which was a tank class, and most of the time I ran around in a DPS spec so that questing wasn't a chore, but I would swap to my tank spec when doing activities with my guild because that's what they needed. The fact that I needed to talk to an NPC meant I couldn't do it anytime, anywhere; I had to at least travel to a particular place to do it and abandon whatever I was doing at the time. And the money cost meant I didn't do it casually; I had to have a good reason to swap or it was a huge waste.

If they do it like LotRO did, it would be okay if one particular build worked better for some activities, and another worked better for others. I didn't feel left out in that game, or pigeonholed into a particular role all the time. Ashes might be the same. We'll have to see. They haven't even hinted at how swapping your secondary class will be accomplished, just that you'll be able to do it but it won't be able to be done "on the fly". That leaves a lot of possibilities open.

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