You can start at 17:00 because there's some 'transformative' information in it if you haven't seen this stream already. Basically, this was one of the most directly informative condensed information flows for that 'era' of development and there's various stuff in it.
Whether or not you consider that to be a true indicator or not, this is the one Dygz means.
EDIT: Good, that gets us out of Infinite Azure maybe.
Sorry, my native language is Erlang.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited September 2021
Thanks. Since someone else has taken some time to post a dev quote/link:
"In Ashes of Creation, we’re going big. Our current party size is sitting at eight (8) players for a single group. While that number could change before launch, it’s serving a particular goal we have for gameplay. We like the idea of having a larger party because we want to put the massive back in Massively Multiplayer. If people just want to play with four others, they can always play their favorite MOBA. The idea behind an 8-person group is to allow us to really amplify party roles, and to create a need for each of the archetypes in every party.
We can get pretty creative with encounters if we build for a representative from each of those roles."
Thanks a ton for posting that! I really hope they reconsider that design. Here's some early flaws I see from a supply/demand perspective:
The chances that each primary archetype has an even distribution of players is vanishingly low. Rather than each primary being 11-13% of the total population, there will probably be one that's closer to 10, and one that's closer to 14. Or worse, one that's closer to 9, and maybe one that's closer to 15%.
Even if they somehow manage to convince players to evenly distribute themselves into primary classes, you run into friendship social dynamics. What happens when two people in the same 8-man friend group want to both play the same primary class? They just generally don't group together for 8 man content or one is forced to not play what they want? What happens when someone in the 8-man group quits the game, and the meet someone in real life who wants to play with them, but that person is the wrong class (7/8 chance this happens)?
Say that my 5-man friend group have all agreed to play 5 different primary classes. Now we're always trying to pick up 3 specific classes from the random world, rather than 3 specific players. "Looking for 1 ranger 1 rogue 1 bard for dungeon". It makes logistics a huge pain.
What's worse is the fact that everything will be the same if all 8 primary's are required for all encounters. There won't be any variety in terms of group composition. On top of that, I'm grateful I won't be doing Pick Up Groups for waiting for the golden ratio for the 8 primaries to join would waste a lot of time in my opinion.
Say that my 5-man friend group have all agreed to play 5 different primary classes. Now we're always trying to pick up 3 specific classes from the random world, rather than 3 specific players.
I dont think there will be too much issue. Cause you really can build your character the way your want. So yeah some archetype will have more helpfull insight. But i wouldnt worry about it too much yet. Sinse I think the gameplay will be really about how people wanna play more than how it should be played
Thanks a ton for posting that! I really hope they reconsider that design. Here's some early flaws I see from a supply/demand perspective:
The chances that each primary archetype has an even distribution of players is vanishingly low. Rather than each primary being 11-13% of the total population, there will probably be one that's closer to 10, and one that's closer to 14. Or worse, one that's closer to 9, and maybe one that's closer to 15%.
Even if they somehow manage to convince players to evenly distribute themselves into primary classes, you run into friendship social dynamics. What happens when two people in the same 8-man friend group want to both play the same primary class? They just generally don't group together for 8 man content or one is forced to not play what they want? What happens when someone in the 8-man group quits the game, and the meet someone in real life who wants to play with them, but that person is the wrong class (7/8 chance this happens)?
Say that my 5-man friend group have all agreed to play 5 different primary classes. Now we're always trying to pick up 3 specific classes from the random world, rather than 3 specific players. "Looking for 1 ranger 1 rogue 1 bard for dungeon". It makes logistics a huge pain.
At that point they're at 'cost of fun' again though.
Also it continues to clarify that the abilities in question are things like exploration based abilities, not necessarily related to party performance. So you would definitely 'have something that you miss out on by passing up the last 'correct' Archetype for the group in quite a few situations, and at that point they just need 'general other balance'. It's a good way to prevent the 'that class is 3% less optimal though, so why bother playing/inviting them', right?
I don't personally perceive that quote or anything else said to have anything to do with actual party dynamics in itself, other than the standard 'hey we'll create synergies between these'. And synergies would, in 90% of cases, actually achieve the goal. There is 'no synergy' between the 4x Fighters in one party. They are probably not terribly lacking in effectiveness either, but it's probably enough to get other Archetypes invites even if Fighters do the most raw damage.
So as long as it is an incentive instead of a requirement, it should be fine. Of course, if it is, then you'll find people that don't care about it, but Dygz already has given multiple answers about how to react to those types of people.
I dont think there will be too much issue. Cause you really can build your character the way your want. So yeah some archetype will have more helpfull insight. But i wouldnt worry about it too much yet. Sinse I think the gameplay will be really about how people wanna play more than how it should be played
It's a supply/demand problem. As in, say that your game is designed in such a way that all you need for an 8 man group to function properly is 1 tank 1 healer and 6 dps. If you just need any 3 dps, you're able to recruit from 75% of the playerbase. If you need 1 ranger, 1 rogue, 1 mage, you have to recruit from 12.5%, 12.5% and 12.5% of the playerbase individually, which is WAY harder. It'll take you much, much longer to put a group together than if you could just take any 3 dps.
Thanks a ton for posting that! I really hope they reconsider that design. Here's some early flaws I see from a supply/demand perspective:
The chances that each primary archetype has an even distribution of players is vanishingly low. Rather than each primary being 11-13% of the total population, there will probably be one that's closer to 10, and one that's closer to 14. Or worse, one that's closer to 9, and maybe one that's closer to 15%.
Even if they somehow manage to convince players to evenly distribute themselves into primary classes, you run into friendship social dynamics. What happens when two people in the same 8-man friend group want to both play the same primary class? They just generally don't group together for 8 man content or one is forced to not play what they want? What happens when someone in the 8-man group quits the game, and the meet someone in real life who wants to play with them, but that person is the wrong class (7/8 chance this happens)?
Say that my 5-man friend group have all agreed to play 5 different primary classes. Now we're always trying to pick up 3 specific classes from the random world, rather than 3 specific players. "Looking for 1 ranger 1 rogue 1 bard for dungeon". It makes logistics a huge pain.
At that point they're at 'cost of fun' again though.
Also it continues to clarify that the abilities in question are things like exploration based abilities, not necessarily related to party performance. So you would definitely 'have something that you miss out on by passing up the last 'correct' Archetype for the group in quite a few situations, and at that point they just need 'general other balance'. It's a good way to prevent the 'that class is 3% less optimal though, so why bother playing/inviting them', right?
I don't personally perceive that quote or anything else said to have anything to do with actual party dynamics in itself, other than the standard 'hey we'll create synergies between these'. And synergies would, in 90% of cases, actually achieve the goal. There is 'no synergy' between the 4x Fighters in one party. They are probably not terribly lacking in effectiveness either, but it's probably enough to get other Archetypes invites even if Fighters do the most raw damage.
So as long as it is an incentive instead of a requirement, it should be fine. Of course, if it is, then you'll find people that don't care about it, but Dygz already has given multiple answers about how to react to those types of people.
If the difference between a party with some duplicate primaries and one with all unique is a few percentage points of efficiency, I'm good. If the difference is that it's impossible to actually complete the dungeon because you can't unlock a door or tame some beast or open some chest or w/e, then there's a problem. If they balance the game so that every primary has some very-powerful non-overlapping buff (mages have a huge intellect buff, warriors buff strength, clerics buff fort), etc, then maybe missing out on one of those buffs is a non-starter.
There's ways they could tune the numbers where it's okay, and ways they could tune the numbers where it turns out bad.
Did you get a chance to read my earlier response to your 'cost of fun' post?
What's worse is the fact that everything will be the same if all 8 primary's are required for all encounters. There won't be any variety in terms of group composition. On top of that, I'm grateful I won't be doing Pick Up Groups for waiting for the golden ratio for the 8 primaries to join would waste a lot of time in my opinion.
Augments provide a ton of variety -- they change who you synergize with in the group and how you synergize and how you play the Primary Archetype in general.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1791529601/ashes-of-creation-new-mmorpg-by-intrepid-studios Players will be able to choose from one of 8 races (four species, each with two subtypes). In keeping with our theme of Consequence, and unlike other games, race won’t just be a matter of look, with relatively inconsequential abilities tacked on. Instead they integrate deeply into our class system, augmenting and changing the basic chassis provided by our eight core archetypes.
Our goal here is to create a system where an elven fighter feels different, but serves the same role as a dwarven fighter.
That remains true for all types of augments. The playstyle of the Primary Archetype feels radically different despite using the same Active Skills, while also still serving the same role.
It's a supply/demand problem. As in, say that your game is designed in such a way that all you need for an 8 man group to function properly is 1 tank 1 healer and 6 dps. If you just need any 3 dps, you're able to recruit from 75% of the playerbase. If you need 1 ranger, 1 rogue, 1 mage, you have to recruit from 12.5%, 12.5% and 12.5% of the playerbase individually, which is WAY harder. It'll take you much, much longer to put a group together than if you could just take any 3 dps.
That is true but if u always try to get 1 main class of each. To get everything hidden. But I dont think most people will really care. And nobody really know if 1-tank, 1-healer, 6-dps is the way to play.
That remains true for all types of augments. The playstyle of the Primary Archetype feels radically different despite using the same Active Skills, while also still serving the same role.
Yeah, I understand about Augments. I've also chosen:
For my Py-rai Assassin or Predator (Depends on the class designs though.)
I did, it's just that I had put 'fun' in quotes for a specific reason there too.
For some people, perfection is fun. For others, efficiency, as you noted with the Option-2 and Option-3 players.
I personally believe that both these player types have similar reactions, but in the case of those who don't care about efficiency with the encounter or maximizing their chances of clearing it, they do the same calculation, that's why I ended up using that term. It's probably not quite correct, but once I start thinking in English instead of meta, it can be hard to translate my meta-thoughts into more descriptive strings.
So I call it 'fun' because 'Players who just want to have the experience against the encounter who are waiting for one of the people from a group they know to be chatty and fun or maybe roleplays' may go 'let's just ask that person, I know that they at least aren't going to bitch at us for being suboptimal, they won't talk to the group or anything but it's better than waiting around'.
You're absolutely right, that it is 'the cost of waiting around' but I didn't want it framed through any concept of 'efficiency', if that makes sense.
People got to the point of 'not even bothering to invite Rangers to non-arrowburns because those Rangers would always be waiting for that party type and might complain if the normal-distribution party was not going to do as well'. But some Rangers could still be invited and overall help the group have fun even if they were just going through the motions, because it enabled the smooth flow, and the Ranger didn't hate it (or didn't indicate they did).
I did, it's just that I had put 'fun' in quotes for a specific reason there too.
For some people, perfection is fun. For others, efficiency, as you noted with the Option-2 and Option-3 players.
I personally believe that both these player types have similar reactions, but in the case of those who don't care about efficiency with the encounter or maximizing their chances of clearing it, they do the same calculation, that's why I ended up using that term. It's probably not quite correct, but once I start thinking in English instead of meta, it can be hard to translate my meta-thoughts into more descriptive strings.
So I call it 'fun' because 'Players who just want to have the experience against the encounter who are waiting for one of the people from a group they know to be chatty and fun or maybe roleplays' may go 'let's just ask that person, I know that they at least aren't going to bitch at us for being suboptimal, they won't talk to the group or anything but it's better than waiting around'.
You're absolutely right, that it is 'the cost of waiting around' but I didn't want it framed through any concept of 'efficiency', if that makes sense.
People got to the point of 'not even bothering to invite Rangers to non-arrowburns because those Rangers would always be waiting for that party type and might complain if the normal-distribution party was not going to do as well'. But some Rangers could still be invited and overall help the group have fun even if they were just going through the motions, because it enabled the smooth flow, and the Ranger didn't hate it (or didn't indicate they did).
Something I want to be really careful with is that the option-2/option-3 distinction is more general than just about efficiency vs fun. It comes up any time your own goals don't perfectly align with the group's goals, whatever those may be. Maybe the group would overall have the most fun if you were willing to play such-and-such build (and other people are making similar concessions). If everyone strictly did what they selfishly wanted it might be a disorganized mess, so people compromise.
Folks draw the line at how much they're willing to be a team player at different spots. Some people are willing to be a team player so long as they get to play the primary class they wanted. Some people are willing to be a team player so long as they get to choose their primary and secondary. Some people are willing to be a team player so long as they get full freedom over everything about their character and build (the team can dictate my play but not my character). Some people aren't team players at all, and want full autonomy, you can either play with them as they want to play or not at all.
None of these ways to play are wrong! All I'm saying is that these sorts of playstyles aren't particularly compatible with each other. Folks that are willing to sacrifice their own personal goals for the team's goals will feel taken advantage of (and they are) by folks that demand full autonomy. What ends up happening is that these players separate out and form separate guilds, since they tend to clash ideologically.
This also happens on a server-level, since pick-up groups need to have some sort of default social behavior. Is the default social behavior to pursue your own goals at the expense of the teams, or is it to pursue the team's goals at the expense of your own (if you have to choose)? In WoW, you're expected to do the second. In some games (like FFXIV), you're expected to do the first, and any attempt to pressure anyone into the second gets you reported.
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.
This isn't true. Paladins, for example. Were wonderful for tanking dungeons. Ret paladins did great leveling up and do PvP and ofc healing was for your raiding.
Pretty much the same for Druids. Feral was useful in multiple ways, as was resto. And Boomkin, like Shadow was quite good for PvP
Nobody talked about a spec which can dps like a dps spec, heal like heal spec and tank like a tank spec.
However, having class-specs that are utterly useless, which people will choose, have passion for, level to max, only to find out their whole time was for nothing, only to have their imersion **** on, is horrible design.
Just checking in to let the folks at home know that everything Ironhope is writing about ret/prot paladins was right for both vanilla wow (circa 2006) and was amplified in the rebooted classic wow.
I think folks like ariatras had a completely different experience with the game, probably depending how their own social circles played. It may have seemed like protection paladins were wonderful tanks if none of the damage dealers in their dungeons were anywhere near optimized. If the DPS were optimized, it wouldn't have been possible for the pally to hold threat off of them, or for them to do larger pulls.
If all of the group members were equally ineffective, they probably don't notice that the paladin has to drink for mana after every pull (because they do too), but effective classes don't have to do this, and would be slowed down and annoyed by a tank that has a mana bar (none of the other tanks have mana).
The Tank in Ashes has Mana, at least when I played the Tank in Ashes. I think all the classes in Ashes will have Mana.
I really like that.
Didn't like the WoW energy and rage systems.
They felt very restrictive, always made you feel starved for energy/rage, made the drinking mechanic useless for many players and just didn't fit the theme often.
Sorry - I'll be more specific. The protection paladin was the only tank in wow that wasn't able to chain pull (it had to drink water between fights) and had a time limit (mana) for how long it was able to be effective in fights. Every class in wow that has mana (all of them except rogue and warrior) had different ways to manage mana, and all of them had varying levels of mana management problems. Some classes were able to effectively chain pull whole dungeons when well-optimized without stopping. Protection paladins weren't.
It was a horrible experience for me and a very notable number of players to see these awesome classes, with an awesome theme, awesome lore, awesome everything... which weren't actually playable.
I don't imagine they will get all 64 classes viable at the launch.
I don't imagine they will get all 64 classes viable in the first 5 years of the game.
I however expect heavy-name classes like Warlock, Necromancer, Templar, Shaman, Paladin, Beastmaster, Broodwarden, etc to be viable.
These are heavy names.
Solid themes.
You will have thousands upon thousands of RP-er flocking to them.
If they aren't viable, you will have a much higher number of people disappointed than if ''anonymous'' classes like Scion, Acolyte, Apostle, Soul Weaver, Strider, etc are unviable.
Sorry - I'll be more specific. The protection paladin was the only tank in wow that wasn't able to chain pull (it had to drink water between fights) and had a time limit (mana) for how long it was able to be effective in fights. Every class in wow that has mana (all of them except rogue and warrior) had different ways to manage mana, and all of them had varying levels of mana management problems. Some classes were able to effectively chain pull whole dungeons when well-optimized without stopping. Protection paladins weren't.
Its not only that man.
I don't remember the math exactly like 2 years later but Prot Paladin stats are all messed up and unlike Prot Warrior or Feral (bear) Druid, Prot Paladin gets hit by crushing blows, so he gets hit as if it was a dps or support, not a tank.
Cant say 100% this was the case but back then some prot pallies explained to me why they dont play prot pally in classic too and this is how it sounded.
Sorry - I'll be more specific. The protection paladin was the only tank in wow that wasn't able to chain pull (it had to drink water between fights) and had a time limit (mana) for how long it was able to be effective in fights. Every class in wow that has mana (all of them except rogue and warrior) had different ways to manage mana, and all of them had varying levels of mana management problems. Some classes were able to effectively chain pull whole dungeons when well-optimized without stopping. Protection paladins weren't.
Its not only that man.
I don't remember the math exactly like 2 years later but Prot Paladin stats are all messed up and unlike Prot Warrior or Feral (bear) Druid, Prot Paladin gets hit by crushing blows, so he gets hit as if it was a dps or support, not a tank.
Cant say 100% this was the case but back then some prot pallies explained to me why they dont play prot pally in classic too and this is how it sounded.
I mean, they straight up don't have a taunt. Like, they weren't a finished class full stop.
I really hope the bard will be close to what it is in game like FFXI for example : bad DPS, bad heal (not even 5/10 on both. . . Bard were not meant to heal or DPS but just improve all other.) or like RDM, here to help healers, and mainly put lot of debuff on bosses.
I kinda hope it's more like Lucio in Overwatch. He puts out good AoE healing, and packs a punch if the team is grouped up. Same with the speed buff. He's relatively weak when the team are spread out of course.
As a long time spriest (in the days before that became "a DPS spec") and Moira player, I think that's my ideal. Decent, but not great damage. Decent, but not the best heals. For PvP at least. In PvE I'm more inclined to be a main healer, although a bit of druidic catweaving was fun.
Comments
19:00.
You can start at 17:00 because there's some 'transformative' information in it if you haven't seen this stream already. Basically, this was one of the most directly informative condensed information flows for that 'era' of development and there's various stuff in it.
Whether or not you consider that to be a true indicator or not, this is the one Dygz means.
EDIT: Good, that gets us out of Infinite Azure maybe.
The chances that each primary archetype has an even distribution of players is vanishingly low. Rather than each primary being 11-13% of the total population, there will probably be one that's closer to 10, and one that's closer to 14. Or worse, one that's closer to 9, and maybe one that's closer to 15%.
Even if they somehow manage to convince players to evenly distribute themselves into primary classes, you run into friendship social dynamics. What happens when two people in the same 8-man friend group want to both play the same primary class? They just generally don't group together for 8 man content or one is forced to not play what they want? What happens when someone in the 8-man group quits the game, and the meet someone in real life who wants to play with them, but that person is the wrong class (7/8 chance this happens)?
Say that my 5-man friend group have all agreed to play 5 different primary classes. Now we're always trying to pick up 3 specific classes from the random world, rather than 3 specific players. "Looking for 1 ranger 1 rogue 1 bard for dungeon". It makes logistics a huge pain.
I've written about this concept at length in bring the player
I dont think there will be too much issue. Cause you really can build your character the way your want. So yeah some archetype will have more helpfull insight. But i wouldnt worry about it too much yet. Sinse I think the gameplay will be really about how people wanna play more than how it should be played
At that point they're at 'cost of fun' again though.
Also it continues to clarify that the abilities in question are things like exploration based abilities, not necessarily related to party performance. So you would definitely 'have something that you miss out on by passing up the last 'correct' Archetype for the group in quite a few situations, and at that point they just need 'general other balance'. It's a good way to prevent the 'that class is 3% less optimal though, so why bother playing/inviting them', right?
I don't personally perceive that quote or anything else said to have anything to do with actual party dynamics in itself, other than the standard 'hey we'll create synergies between these'. And synergies would, in 90% of cases, actually achieve the goal. There is 'no synergy' between the 4x Fighters in one party. They are probably not terribly lacking in effectiveness either, but it's probably enough to get other Archetypes invites even if Fighters do the most raw damage.
So as long as it is an incentive instead of a requirement, it should be fine. Of course, if it is, then you'll find people that don't care about it, but Dygz already has given multiple answers about how to react to those types of people.
If the difference between a party with some duplicate primaries and one with all unique is a few percentage points of efficiency, I'm good. If the difference is that it's impossible to actually complete the dungeon because you can't unlock a door or tame some beast or open some chest or w/e, then there's a problem. If they balance the game so that every primary has some very-powerful non-overlapping buff (mages have a huge intellect buff, warriors buff strength, clerics buff fort), etc, then maybe missing out on one of those buffs is a non-starter.
There's ways they could tune the numbers where it's okay, and ways they could tune the numbers where it turns out bad.
Did you get a chance to read my earlier response to your 'cost of fun' post?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1791529601/ashes-of-creation-new-mmorpg-by-intrepid-studios
Players will be able to choose from one of 8 races (four species, each with two subtypes). In keeping with our theme of Consequence, and unlike other games, race won’t just be a matter of look, with relatively inconsequential abilities tacked on. Instead they integrate deeply into our class system, augmenting and changing the basic chassis provided by our eight core archetypes.
Our goal here is to create a system where an elven fighter feels different, but serves the same role as a dwarven fighter.
That remains true for all types of augments. The playstyle of the Primary Archetype feels radically different despite using the same Active Skills, while also still serving the same role.
That is true but if u always try to get 1 main class of each. To get everything hidden. But I dont think most people will really care. And nobody really know if 1-tank, 1-healer, 6-dps is the way to play.
Yeah, I understand about Augments. I've also chosen:
For my Py-rai Assassin or Predator (Depends on the class designs though.)
For some people, perfection is fun. For others, efficiency, as you noted with the Option-2 and Option-3 players.
I personally believe that both these player types have similar reactions, but in the case of those who don't care about efficiency with the encounter or maximizing their chances of clearing it, they do the same calculation, that's why I ended up using that term. It's probably not quite correct, but once I start thinking in English instead of meta, it can be hard to translate my meta-thoughts into more descriptive strings.
So I call it 'fun' because 'Players who just want to have the experience against the encounter who are waiting for one of the people from a group they know to be chatty and fun or maybe roleplays' may go 'let's just ask that person, I know that they at least aren't going to bitch at us for being suboptimal, they won't talk to the group or anything but it's better than waiting around'.
You're absolutely right, that it is 'the cost of waiting around' but I didn't want it framed through any concept of 'efficiency', if that makes sense.
People got to the point of 'not even bothering to invite Rangers to non-arrowburns because those Rangers would always be waiting for that party type and might complain if the normal-distribution party was not going to do as well'. But some Rangers could still be invited and overall help the group have fun even if they were just going through the motions, because it enabled the smooth flow, and the Ranger didn't hate it (or didn't indicate they did).
Something I want to be really careful with is that the option-2/option-3 distinction is more general than just about efficiency vs fun. It comes up any time your own goals don't perfectly align with the group's goals, whatever those may be. Maybe the group would overall have the most fun if you were willing to play such-and-such build (and other people are making similar concessions). If everyone strictly did what they selfishly wanted it might be a disorganized mess, so people compromise.
Folks draw the line at how much they're willing to be a team player at different spots. Some people are willing to be a team player so long as they get to play the primary class they wanted. Some people are willing to be a team player so long as they get to choose their primary and secondary. Some people are willing to be a team player so long as they get full freedom over everything about their character and build (the team can dictate my play but not my character). Some people aren't team players at all, and want full autonomy, you can either play with them as they want to play or not at all.
None of these ways to play are wrong! All I'm saying is that these sorts of playstyles aren't particularly compatible with each other. Folks that are willing to sacrifice their own personal goals for the team's goals will feel taken advantage of (and they are) by folks that demand full autonomy. What ends up happening is that these players separate out and form separate guilds, since they tend to clash ideologically.
This also happens on a server-level, since pick-up groups need to have some sort of default social behavior. Is the default social behavior to pursue your own goals at the expense of the teams, or is it to pursue the team's goals at the expense of your own (if you have to choose)? In WoW, you're expected to do the second. In some games (like FFXIV), you're expected to do the first, and any attempt to pressure anyone into the second gets you reported.
This isn't true. Paladins, for example. Were wonderful for tanking dungeons. Ret paladins did great leveling up and do PvP and ofc healing was for your raiding.
Pretty much the same for Druids. Feral was useful in multiple ways, as was resto. And Boomkin, like Shadow was quite good for PvP
You just can't do all things well.
Yeah, we've tried to make the same point on all their other "DAAANGER DAAAAAAAAANGER!" threads, but they don't seem to want to listen.
While leveling (and they did a worse job than warriors or druids).
For raiding they were useless.
''At least you level fast so you can find out quickly you suck at max level and all your leveling was for nothing''.
Unless we're talking about friends or something, nobody would take you for BG premades. Nobody.
Because prot and ret were useless. Which is what I was saying.
''In multiple ways'' meaning ''not damage''.
Shadow Priest maybe.
Boomkin? No. I've done hundreds of premade bgs.
Don't think I've seen one premade with one boomkin in it, ever.
And if I would have seen one, it would have probably been because the guy was someone's friend and thats the only reason he got invited.
Nobody said a thing about ''do all things well''
Nobody talked about a spec which can dps like a dps spec, heal like heal spec and tank like a tank spec.
However, having class-specs that are utterly useless, which people will choose, have passion for, level to max, only to find out their whole time was for nothing, only to have their imersion **** on, is horrible design.
I think folks like ariatras had a completely different experience with the game, probably depending how their own social circles played. It may have seemed like protection paladins were wonderful tanks if none of the damage dealers in their dungeons were anywhere near optimized. If the DPS were optimized, it wouldn't have been possible for the pally to hold threat off of them, or for them to do larger pulls.
If all of the group members were equally ineffective, they probably don't notice that the paladin has to drink for mana after every pull (because they do too), but effective classes don't have to do this, and would be slowed down and annoyed by a tank that has a mana bar (none of the other tanks have mana).
I really like that.
Didn't like the WoW energy and rage systems.
They felt very restrictive, always made you feel starved for energy/rage, made the drinking mechanic useless for many players and just didn't fit the theme often.
I don't imagine they will get all 64 classes viable at the launch.
I don't imagine they will get all 64 classes viable in the first 5 years of the game.
I however expect heavy-name classes like Warlock, Necromancer, Templar, Shaman, Paladin, Beastmaster, Broodwarden, etc to be viable.
These are heavy names.
Solid themes.
You will have thousands upon thousands of RP-er flocking to them.
If they aren't viable, you will have a much higher number of people disappointed than if ''anonymous'' classes like Scion, Acolyte, Apostle, Soul Weaver, Strider, etc are unviable.
Its not only that man.
I don't remember the math exactly like 2 years later but Prot Paladin stats are all messed up and unlike Prot Warrior or Feral (bear) Druid, Prot Paladin gets hit by crushing blows, so he gets hit as if it was a dps or support, not a tank.
Cant say 100% this was the case but back then some prot pallies explained to me why they dont play prot pally in classic too and this is how it sounded.
I mean, they straight up don't have a taunt. Like, they weren't a finished class full stop.
I kinda hope it's more like Lucio in Overwatch. He puts out good AoE healing, and packs a punch if the team is grouped up. Same with the speed buff. He's relatively weak when the team are spread out of course.
As a long time spriest (in the days before that became "a DPS spec") and Moira player, I think that's my ideal. Decent, but not great damage. Decent, but not the best heals. For PvP at least. In PvE I'm more inclined to be a main healer, although a bit of druidic catweaving was fun.