Are classes being limited by "hyper focusing" on their roles and its effects on the world

The bards kit has 27 skills so far. According to the ashes wiki.

Around 16 of these skills are strickly aoe/party wide buff/debuff auras of some type. Around 50% of activated skills.

Cleric has 20 skills on the wiki so far and 0 of them are party wide buffs or debuffs.

I know the bards is the party buffing class, but is half of their kit being only buffs/debuffs too much? Will augments effect these 16 skills in different ways, or will each and every aoe/party buff that gains the life augment also have a healing tic effect stuck to it?

If a bard augment gives say a slight party buff effect, say a tank/bard, uses a defense buff skill and his bard augment makes it apply 5% of the skills effect to the party or something along those lines. Will the entire feel of the game shift upon reaching second classes?

You go from only bards buff at all to, every single person could be buffing the whole party?

I guess my main thought is are single classes overly focused on their roles, and will gaining a second class and augments feel jarring. With the transition from one Archetype to a full class be overwhelming both for the player, and for the world.

Perhaps you could pick your second class at level 5 instead of 20, and unlock your augments progressively?

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Dygz

Ludullu_(NiKr) wrote: »

Steven has already flipflopped on their value, and he's done so before even knowing what they'll be, so I see no reason why he couldn't just flipflop back and say "augments will just make small changes to the ability".

Also, even if augments do make huge changes, your argument doesn't work, because at some point in your character's progression you'd get to a point where new augments introduce big changes that make your character feel like something different.

I don't think Steven has flip-flopped - it's just that gamers rarely settle in the gray... so they either dismiss augments as "just flavor" or imagine "huge changes".

Steven has always tried to convey that its not "just flavor", like changes in color, and also not as impactful as a new Active Skill.
X/Clerics will be able to use Life School Augments to do some Healing on top of their Primary Archetype Active Skills, but that Healing will not negate the need for a Cleric/X in an 8-person group.

Dygz

Lodrig wrote: »

For example the mage augments we have been told of Ice, Fire, Electric are all Flavor based and not PlayStyle. No one who plays a pure Mage envisions themselves defined by elemental damage type, they think of the playstyle, Big AoE's, Single target Nukes, Area control, or Jack of All, which is still all within what we would consider a pure glass cannon Mage/Mage. Thouse are the revelent playstyles of Mage that people really care about. So a Mage/Mage augment set needs to give us the diversity of Mage types not just slapping some elemental flavor ontop of skills.

I disagree.
I think you may be talking about Archetype role vs video game combat role.
When I play a Mage, I not only define myself based on Elemental Damage, I define myself as Ice Mage vs Fire Mage. And, if I'm an Ice Mage - I'm not going to use a Fire ACtive Skill just because it's an AoE or a Single Target Nuke. If I'm an Ice Mage, I'm not going to use Fire Active Skills. And I will expect there to be plenty of AoEs and Single Target Nukes that I can with my Ice Skills.

Flavor-based is more like the choice of Flute/Lute/ Drum in the Bard Skill Tree for the graphics of how the Bard intitiates their Skill FX. Difference in appearance but does not change what the Active Skill does.

Some Augments can change whether an Active Skill is an AoE or Single Target.
Some Augments can change the Damage Type.
Some Augments can attach additional effects, like adding a self-heal to a personal Shield.
The primary example of using a Mage Teleport/Blink to a Fighter's Rush is that without the Augment a Wall would block the Rush, though with Blink attached, the Fighter would be able to Rush past the Wall.
That's a significant change that I would not call "flavor". It significantly changes what the Fighter can and cannot do.

Lodrig wrote: »

This is why I do not think it's going to be viable to have the same 4 augments vailable to every Base archetypes which picks a specific secondary. They will need to be customized, not nessarily 4 unique augments per class to produce 64x4 (512) augments. Many augments will like 'work' (in the sense of being a good Stylistic extension of the base archetype across many classes maybe dropping the total to100 different augment, still a big increase from 4 augments x 8 which gives only 32 total augments. Ultimatly the same number of skill/augment combinations need to be designed and tested.

We have no clue whether the devs will be able to accomplish Steven's vision - since we haven't seen Augments yet even 7 years into development.

Renathras

I think it depends on how it's done.

One of the big ones to me is aesthetics. For example, suppose there's someone who wants to play a Resto Shaman because they want to be a healer and like nature magic. So they start with Cleric...but have to play a month as a Holy Priest before suddenly being a Resto Shaman once they hit level 25.

There may be a not insignificant amount of players that this sort of thing applies to. Someone wants to be a doomcloud Dreadnight...but can't be until level 25. Someone wants to be a righteous holy Paladin...but can't be until level 25.

The only case that feels like natural progression are the pures (e.g. Cleric/Cleric going from Cleric to High Priest), whereas the other variations will feel jarring due to going from being class fantasy to a completely different class fantasy that you want to be, but having to play for days/weeks/months before getting to play the actual fantasy you want to play.

I'm not sure that's good for the game or player experience.

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