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Our September Update is Live On-Demand

    • 30 posts
    September 15, 2022 7:39 PM PDT
    Miss our monthly developer's live stream? Learn about our improvements to character models and get an update on our classes that will be available for the upcoming Pre-Alpha test.
     

    This post was edited by MinusVR at September 15, 2022 7:40 PM PDT
    • 612 posts
    September 15, 2022 11:22 PM PDT

    Some thoughts & questions...

    We've been getting lots of good little snippets of how Techniques are going to play out. When we first heard about this system, I wondered if these Techniques were going to be the same for all classes and be something any character could do while wielding the weapon; so anyone using a sword will get a special Thrust attack for example. Or if these would be class specific attacks; So perhaps if you are a rogue using a dagger you get a 'Backstab' attack but if you are a Warrior using a Dagger you get a 'Disable Armor' (where you cut an armor strap on your enemy) attack.

    So we now know that this seems to be the latter, where these Techniques are unlocked for your class rather than just for anyone using the weapon type. This makes a lot of sense and I really like how this will play out. For example we now can see how weapon choice can still matter for classes like a Rogue. Most people feel that Rogues are only good if they use a dagger or shortsword because Backstab just doesn't make sense when using a Mace or similar Crushing weapon. But just because Backstab may now be a 'Piercing Technique' we can see how using a Mace will open up 'Skullcracker' that gives Rogues a solid stun and the ability to activate the 'Disoriented' state on an enemy.

    Also with Dual wielding it can really be a good strategy for a Rogue to offhand an alternate weapon type instead of just dual wielding daggers, thus opening up a larger pool of potential Techniques.


    Dear Tehom: The Rogue page on the website still lists 'Combat Resource: Endurance, Opportunity'. As we have moved Endurance over to sprinting/climbing and now have a new 'Readiness' resource for Rogues, perhaps we could get an update to this page. Also could you let us know if this Readiness is a passive regen or an active regen resource. Ie. Does it passively recharge at a set rate, or do you gain Readiness per hit (set amount per hit) or per dmg (set amount per point of dmg) applied to enemies (and/or hits or dmg taken from enemies). I'm sure VIP's will learn this when the Pre-Alpha comes online, but some of us are not VIP pledge and won't know the answer (and VIPs will be behind NDA and might not risk answering us).


    On to Enchanters...

    We got some updates on the Mesmerize Ability, and it now has a maintain cost of 1 mana / 3 sec unless cast on a Disoriented target. Tehom doesn't say there are limits to how many targets can be Mesmerized at once, but this maintenance cost can effectively put limits on how many targets can be kept controlled for any length of time as the cost will eventually overwhelm your mana pool.

    But this then brings up another thought... as you level up your effective mana pool will increase, thus making this mana cost less and less of a burden. High level players will just laugh off this meager drain on their mana pool. One would then consider that perhaps higher level versions of said spells would then cost more mana both in initial cost and in this maintenance cost.

    Yet when we look at the Tooltip shown for Mesmerize, there doesn't seem to be any good reason for this Spell to ever need upgrades. There is no limitation on Target levels. We know that the 3 second cast time is to prevent this spell from being used as an inturrupt, and so VR will not allow this to go lower. So the only possible 'upgrade' to this spell is reducing it's cooldown which is already short at only 4 seconds. But if upgrading to gain a second or 2 on the cooldown increases the mana cost and maintenance, this could cause some players to choose 'not' to upgrade this spell at all.

    Now perhaps VR will put a level restriction on Mesmerize. So perhaps the first Rank of this spell will be learned at level 5 and will work on targets up to level 20. Once you reach level 16 you can learn Advanced Mesmerize which will only work on targets up to level 35 and then at level 31 you can learn Expert Mesmerize which will only work on targets up to level 50. This gives us a reason to upgrade and will not encourage players to skip upgrading.

    But this then begs the question... what happens if you are level 16 and have upgraded your Mesmerize spell, but you are still fighting level 16 enemies who don't need the upgraded version yet. You are now paying a higher cost to use this upgraded spell, but level 15 Enchanters can Mez these same enemies for a cheaper cost. You essentially get penalized for getting the upgrade.

    Now some of you may say 'Well why not just use the lower version Mesmerise when you have a lower level target and use the Upgraded Mesmerise when you have a higher level target.' The problem is you can't. Once you get an upgraded Ability or Spell you won't be able to downrank to a 'lesser' version of the ability anymore. This kind of thing is most often exploited by Healers who use lesser versions of their Heals in order to more efficiently manage their mana costs vs healing require. Yet you can see here how this would be useful for the Enchanter to pick a Mesmerize Rank based on his target level.

    Yet we know that VR has decided against 'Down Ranking' Abilities or Spells. As per Joppa in the Apr 3, 2020 stream.  Thus, if you upgrade your Mesmerize spell, you can never use the lower version anymore. Now I'm not sure how they will balance this in regards to Healers since they have historically used Down Ranking more than other classes, but in regards to Mesmerize I would hope there should never be a downside to getting a higher Rank version.

    Due to this, I am inclined to believe that Mesmerize maintenance cost should instead be balanced based on the the level of the target being Mesmerized. This way, as you level up and are using this Spell on higher level enemies, the drain on your mana pool will get worse. They can then have upgraded versions of the spell reduce the cost by increasing amounts for each upgrade. For example:

    Say that with level 20 enemies your cost could be 5m / 3s. Once you get the upgrade at level 16, it reduces the Maintenance cost by 20% thus dropping this cost down to 4m / 3s.

    At level 35 enemies your cost could be 10m / 3s, but once you get the upgrade at level 31 it now reduces the Maintenance cost by an additional 35% thus droping this cost down to 7m / 3s.

    This is just an example and obviously the math they use will depend on how large mana pools will grow as you level up, but you can see how this will both keep the maintenance cost valid as you level up, and still allow for and incentivize upgrading the Rank of the Spell itself.

    We also know that Mastery will be involved here too. So perhaps Mastery levels will effect things like changing the cost to every 4 seconds instead of 3.


    Dear Tehom or Joppa: Just a clarification question... I have been under the impression that using Mastery Points on an ability will carry over to upgraded Ranks of that Ability. Thus all Ranks of an Abiilty will have the same 3 Mastery Upgrades. Is this correct or will upgrading an Ability Rank require you to rebuy new Masteries for the new Rank of the Ability.


    One thing that I have noticed is that Ability tooltips for Melee type attacks have started listing actual damage modifiers such as '... does X% of weapon damage'. So instead of setting a specific damage value, they instead tie the damage to the weapon damage. We know that this will be effected both by the actual weapon you choose, but also by upgrades to your stats and/or weapon skills. So these abilities will Scale as your Weapon Damage increases.

    This is great, but I notice that Spell caster tooltips on Abilities still tend to just say things like '... dealing moderate damage' instead. I understand that when it comes to Balancing things, the numbers will be adjusted as Pre-Alpha, Alpha, and then Beta happen. So I'm not expecting solid numbers here. Yet we don't really get a sense of how these Spells will scale. It's doubtful that Wizard, Enchanter, and Summoner spells will scale from Weapon damage, but we still have no clue what will scale the damage of these abilities. Will there be a 'Spell Power' rating? Will these kinds of spells Scale off this Spell Power? so will tooltips read '... deals X% of Spell Power'?

    The other option seems to be not having any type of Scaling for these Spells, but instead to just set a number value and then these classes are fairly stagnant in their damage until they get an upgrade. So a level 5 Fireball spell would continue to do 50 dmg until you suddenly reach level 16 and upgrade to Explosive Fireball which does 150 dmg.

    I am hopeful that this will not be the case and instead we will see these Dmg Spells scaling in some way similarly to Melee Dmg Abilities.


    The new 'Visions of Restoration' Enchanter spell says 'A target may only have one Gift active at any time'. This reminded me of the plan for Druid 'Harness Trait' to be also limited to one Trait active on a target at a time. In those cases though, the Druid spells were actually Titled as 'Imbue Trait: Speed of the Black Wolf' or 'Imbue Trait: Swiftgill's Fin'. If Enchanters are going to have a special 'Gift' type of abilities which are limited to 1 per target, should this Spell instead be called 'Grant Gift: Visions of Restoration' so that players can easily manage which 'Gift' spells they are putting on the LAS and who they are casting which Gift on.

    Also of note... this ability lists a cooldown of 30 seconds. Now I would guess that a 'Restoration' skill buff will likely be only beneficial to Healer types, but with such a long cooldown this means that if you have 2 or more party/raid members who could benefit this really could drag out any prep/buff stages. Of course perhaps Mastery will reduce this, but it still seems like a rather excessive cooldown for a long lasting buff that you likely will only be casting while Out of Combat.


    Regarding 'Mental Fortification'. The tooltip tells us 'preventing the next spell interruption that would occur from taking damage.' and has increased Charges of inturrupt prevention based on Augmentation skill.

    This brings up a question. When you deal with actual Inturrupt abilities like Stuns or Silences, these will stop the spell 100% and will require the target to start over casting the spell again. But when you are discussing 'interruption that would occur from taking damage' this could be a different thing entirely. Will taking damage Always inturrupt, or will there only be a chance of inturrupt? Or will damage cause casting time pushback like in WoW, thus increasing the overall cast time of the ability and only fully inturrupt if you take damage too many times in a short period.

    Depending on the answer to these questions it will effect how this Spell might work...

    If damage causes inturrupt 100% of the time this means that this Buff will trigger a charge each time you get hit. Whereas if damage only has a limited chance to inturrupt should it only use up a charge if the hit actually would have caused an inturrupt. If you get lucky you could get hit dozens of times before it ever uses up a charge of this buff.

    If there is pushback on casting time, does this Buff use up a charge of prevention to Prevent pushback or does it only use a charge if the spell would be fully inturrupted? And if the Latter is the case, would triggering the charge instantly cause the spell to successfully finish casting (assuming it's already met it's minimum cast time) or will it just prevent the inturrupt and yet future damage could continue to pushback the cast and extend the casting time indefinitely or until you run out of Prevention charges.

    Perhaps Tehom could clarify this for us...

    Cleric new spell 'Invigorate'. As with the new Enchanter buff 'Visions of Restoration' the cooldown on this buff seems rather excessive at 30sec when it's such a long lasting buff and will normally only be cast while Out of Combat. It could become rather Tedious when a group of players form up in town and then need to wait for 2 minutes while the Cleric buffs up 5 other players with Endurance regen to help with sprinting as they run out to a dungeon.


    The spell 'Celestial Guard' again brings us back to the question of how Spells like this will scale on their healing values. The tooltip kindly tells us that the Absorbtion shield will be 180% of the Healing done, but it gives us no idea on how the Healing value will be calculated. We can assume that healing won't be based on Weapon Damage, but vague tooltips like this don't enlighten us on what will actually effect the scaling of the Heal on abilities like this.


    I am very excited about the 'Bonds of Faith' ability for Clerics, but have a few questions as well.

    Will there be a spell particle effect that is Active while you are Bonded with an Ally? I imagine this as something similar as in the MOBA game Smite where you play as the Gods of Myth... the Aphrodite character has the ability to Link to her Allies and then her other abilities share effects with those Allies. It creates a visual beam that connects the two. Here is a 7 sec Youtube Clip of what this looks like.

    Also... we see that this ability has a 25 meter range. While this obviously applies to how close you need to be to Activate this buff, it does not mention if there is a range that must be maintained in order for the buff to remain active. Will the Bond drop if players get more than 25 meters away from each other? In the above mentioned Smite game, if the Ally and Aphrodite get too far away from each other the Bond will break and Aphrodite will need to re-apply the Bond when they get closer again. Does this Cleric Buff follow similar rules or can this Bond remain active even at great distances?

    I am imagining various exploits where Clerics can Bond with a low level character who is killing Rats in a newbie area and then the Cleric goes off adventuring somewhere else, yet is periodically healing the low level friend from a massive distance.

    The new 'Faithful Strike' ability works with this 'Bond of Faith'. This is listed as a 'General Technique'. General Technique suggests that it works with All weapon types, yet why is this not just a normal Cleric Ability rather than a Technique. One might guess that this is just a simple way for them to Require a weapon to be Equipped in order for this ability to be useable. One would wonder though why other classes Abilities that are based on Weapon Damage don't need to be Techniques. Perhaps because they can still be used while 'unarmed' and would use an 'unarmed' weapon damage? Anyway, we can guess that this just means that 'Faithful Strikes' cannot be cast while Unarmed, so no Divine Punches for you Clerics.

    It says that it buffs your weapon and then Strikes the target dealing 80% weapon damage as Divine Damage. If I am reading this correctly this means that this Strike will actually do 20% Less damage than a normal Weapon swing but that the damage will be Divine Damage which will not be mitigated by Physical Armor but instead be effected by Divine resistance. We can probably guess that Undead enemies will be rather weak to Divine type damage and perhaps may even take Extra damage from Divine damage. So for example if an undead enemy takes double damage from Divine dmg this Strike would do 160% weapon damage that is unresistable to this undead enemy.


    Note to Tehom: The Tooltip for 'Faithful Strike' ability says that it costs 500 Readiness, which is the Rogue resource (unless I'm wrong) and should probably be changed to a Mana or Celestial Power or Bond cost in line with Clerics resources.

    Also the description should probably be edited to read '... and healing an Ally under the effects of your Bonds of Faith ...' rather than '... and healing an ally under the effects of Bonds of Faith ...'. As it reads now, this suggests to players that this Strike would heal All players in the area that have a Bonds of Faith buff from any Cleric.

     


    This post was edited by GoofyWarriorGuy at September 15, 2022 11:32 PM PDT
    • 46 posts
    September 16, 2022 2:23 AM PDT

    Watch out Roenick and Minus, Tara and Duarte did it very well, maybe you will be replaced as host of the next livestream... ;-)

    • 217 posts
    September 16, 2022 2:29 PM PDT

    WOWOWOWOWOWWOW!!!

    HO-LEE-COW!!! Great stream and you guys 3d ART and Rigging... just BLEW ME AWAY!!! If I had another 1K I would pledge again!!! I feel reinvigorated and giddy as a school boy, I am a graphics wh-re... LOVE LOVE LOVE ❤️  what you 2 have done thus far.. just WOW... did I make myself clear? Its been half a day and I still get them, new girlfriend butterflies, just looking at how FREAKIN RAD the character models, armor and rigging looks. I also loved watching the mesh and 3d art views and the models being manipulated! Gr8 stuff, onward and upward!

     

    Keep up the amazing work!


    This post was edited by vigilantee13 at September 16, 2022 2:31 PM PDT
    • 500 posts
    September 17, 2022 8:24 AM PDT

    C'mon Vigilantee, please show a little enthusiasm. :)

    • 217 posts
    September 17, 2022 8:30 PM PDT

    Grymmlocke said:

    C'mon Vigilantee, please show a little enthusiasm. :)

    What can I say? I wear my heart on my sleeve!

    AJ

    • 3 posts
    September 18, 2022 12:28 PM PDT

    Great video update. Thanks

    • 1921 posts
    September 20, 2022 7:13 PM PDT

    GoofyWarriorGuy said: ...

    Thus, if you upgrade your Mesmerize spell, you can never use the lower version anymore. 

    ... 

    IMO:

    This is poor design and will be followed by poor implemention if the design is not adjusted.
    Just so it's been said. :)

    Great post in general, GoofyWarriorGuy.  Would be great to get answers to all of your questions.

    • 2419 posts
    September 21, 2022 7:21 AM PDT

    vjek said:

    GoofyWarriorGuy said: ...

    Thus, if you upgrade your Mesmerize spell, you can never use the lower version anymore. 

    ... 

    IMO:

    This is poor design and will be followed by poor implemention if the design is not adjusted.
    Just so it's been said. :)

    Agreed.  Terrible design decision if it actually ends up that way. Players should have the freedom to use whatever tier/level spell they have in their spellbook in whatever situation/scenario they wish.

    • 122 posts
    September 21, 2022 9:09 AM PDT

    Great video loved the info...

     

    I do not like how the enchanter mesmerizes a target; they get drained for mana while holding the mob in mes. Sure it needs to be tested, but the enchanter is a crowd control character. I agree that mesmerize should not be used as a stun or interrupt, so more time to cast seems reasonable. Why not make it that when the rogue causes damage, the rogue takes a bit of that damage, or when a summoner casts a pet, it gets mana drained for as long as it is up. I want my skill with the class to shine, not hey, here is a class that does this, but if you do that, I'm draining your mana.

    I think this kind of development does not need to happen; there are already so many checks and balances being performed; why add more checks? Just develop the skill with the proper mana cost and time. 

     

    I hope this makes sense... what I am trying to get across.


    This post was edited by Nytman at September 21, 2022 9:57 AM PDT
    • 122 posts
    September 21, 2022 9:53 AM PDT

    GoofyWarriorGuy said:

    Some thoughts & questions...

    We've been getting lots of good little snippets of how Techniques are going to play out. When we first heard about this system, I wondered if these Techniques were going to be the same for all classes and be something any character could do while wielding the weapon; so anyone using a sword will get a special Thrust attack for example. Or if these would be class specific attacks; So perhaps if you are a rogue using a dagger you get a 'Backstab' attack but if you are a Warrior using a Dagger you get a 'Disable Armor' (where you cut an armor strap on your enemy) attack.

    So we now know that this seems to be the latter, where these Techniques are unlocked for your class rather than just for anyone using the weapon type. This makes a lot of sense and I really like how this will play out. For example we now can see how weapon choice can still matter for classes like a Rogue. Most people feel that Rogues are only good if they use a dagger or shortsword because Backstab just doesn't make sense when using a Mace or similar Crushing weapon. But just because Backstab may now be a 'Piercing Technique' we can see how using a Mace will open up 'Skullcracker' that gives Rogues a solid stun and the ability to activate the 'Disoriented' state on an enemy.

    Also with Dual wielding it can really be a good strategy for a Rogue to offhand an alternate weapon type instead of just dual wielding daggers, thus opening up a larger pool of potential Techniques.


    Dear Tehom: The Rogue page on the website still lists 'Combat Resource: Endurance, Opportunity'. As we have moved Endurance over to sprinting/climbing and now have a new 'Readiness' resource for Rogues, perhaps we could get an update to this page. Also could you let us know if this Readiness is a passive regen or an active regen resource. Ie. Does it passively recharge at a set rate, or do you gain Readiness per hit (set amount per hit) or per dmg (set amount per point of dmg) applied to enemies (and/or hits or dmg taken from enemies). I'm sure VIP's will learn this when the Pre-Alpha comes online, but some of us are not VIP pledge and won't know the answer (and VIPs will be behind NDA and might not risk answering us).


    On to Enchanters...

    We got some updates on the Mesmerize Ability, and it now has a maintain cost of 1 mana / 3 sec unless cast on a Disoriented target. Tehom doesn't say there are limits to how many targets can be Mesmerized at once, but this maintenance cost can effectively put limits on how many targets can be kept controlled for any length of time as the cost will eventually overwhelm your mana pool.

    But this then brings up another thought... as you level up your effective mana pool will increase, thus making this mana cost less and less of a burden. High level players will just laugh off this meager drain on their mana pool. One would then consider that perhaps higher level versions of said spells would then cost more mana both in initial cost and in this maintenance cost.

    Yet when we look at the Tooltip shown for Mesmerize, there doesn't seem to be any good reason for this Spell to ever need upgrades. There is no limitation on Target levels. We know that the 3 second cast time is to prevent this spell from being used as an inturrupt, and so VR will not allow this to go lower. So the only possible 'upgrade' to this spell is reducing it's cooldown which is already short at only 4 seconds. But if upgrading to gain a second or 2 on the cooldown increases the mana cost and maintenance, this could cause some players to choose 'not' to upgrade this spell at all.

    Now perhaps VR will put a level restriction on Mesmerize. So perhaps the first Rank of this spell will be learned at level 5 and will work on targets up to level 20. Once you reach level 16 you can learn Advanced Mesmerize which will only work on targets up to level 35 and then at level 31 you can learn Expert Mesmerize which will only work on targets up to level 50. This gives us a reason to upgrade and will not encourage players to skip upgrading.

    But this then begs the question... what happens if you are level 16 and have upgraded your Mesmerize spell, but you are still fighting level 16 enemies who don't need the upgraded version yet. You are now paying a higher cost to use this upgraded spell, but level 15 Enchanters can Mez these same enemies for a cheaper cost. You essentially get penalized for getting the upgrade.

    Now some of you may say 'Well why not just use the lower version Mesmerise when you have a lower level target and use the Upgraded Mesmerise when you have a higher level target.' The problem is you can't. Once you get an upgraded Ability or Spell you won't be able to downrank to a 'lesser' version of the ability anymore. This kind of thing is most often exploited by Healers who use lesser versions of their Heals in order to more efficiently manage their mana costs vs healing require. Yet you can see here how this would be useful for the Enchanter to pick a Mesmerize Rank based on his target level.

    Yet we know that VR has decided against 'Down Ranking' Abilities or Spells. As per Joppa in the Apr 3, 2020 stream.  Thus, if you upgrade your Mesmerize spell, you can never use the lower version anymore. Now I'm not sure how they will balance this in regards to Healers since they have historically used Down Ranking more than other classes, but in regards to Mesmerize I would hope there should never be a downside to getting a higher Rank version.

    Due to this, I am inclined to believe that Mesmerize maintenance cost should instead be balanced based on the the level of the target being Mesmerized. This way, as you level up and are using this Spell on higher level enemies, the drain on your mana pool will get worse. They can then have upgraded versions of the spell reduce the cost by increasing amounts for each upgrade. For example:

    Say that with level 20 enemies your cost could be 5m / 3s. Once you get the upgrade at level 16, it reduces the Maintenance cost by 20% thus dropping this cost down to 4m / 3s.

    At level 35 enemies your cost could be 10m / 3s, but once you get the upgrade at level 31 it now reduces the Maintenance cost by an additional 35% thus droping this cost down to 7m / 3s.

    This is just an example and obviously the math they use will depend on how large mana pools will grow as you level up, but you can see how this will both keep the maintenance cost valid as you level up, and still allow for and incentivize upgrading the Rank of the Spell itself.

    We also know that Mastery will be involved here too. So perhaps Mastery levels will effect things like changing the cost to every 4 seconds instead of 3.


    Dear Tehom or Joppa: Just a clarification question... I have been under the impression that using Mastery Points on an ability will carry over to upgraded Ranks of that Ability. Thus all Ranks of an Abiilty will have the same 3 Mastery Upgrades. Is this correct or will upgrading an Ability Rank require you to rebuy new Masteries for the new Rank of the Ability.


    One thing that I have noticed is that Ability tooltips for Melee type attacks have started listing actual damage modifiers such as '... does X% of weapon damage'. So instead of setting a specific damage value, they instead tie the damage to the weapon damage. We know that this will be effected both by the actual weapon you choose, but also by upgrades to your stats and/or weapon skills. So these abilities will Scale as your Weapon Damage increases.

    This is great, but I notice that Spell caster tooltips on Abilities still tend to just say things like '... dealing moderate damage' instead. I understand that when it comes to Balancing things, the numbers will be adjusted as Pre-Alpha, Alpha, and then Beta happen. So I'm not expecting solid numbers here. Yet we don't really get a sense of how these Spells will scale. It's doubtful that Wizard, Enchanter, and Summoner spells will scale from Weapon damage, but we still have no clue what will scale the damage of these abilities. Will there be a 'Spell Power' rating? Will these kinds of spells Scale off this Spell Power? so will tooltips read '... deals X% of Spell Power'?

    The other option seems to be not having any type of Scaling for these Spells, but instead to just set a number value and then these classes are fairly stagnant in their damage until they get an upgrade. So a level 5 Fireball spell would continue to do 50 dmg until you suddenly reach level 16 and upgrade to Explosive Fireball which does 150 dmg.

    I am hopeful that this will not be the case and instead we will see these Dmg Spells scaling in some way similarly to Melee Dmg Abilities.


    The new 'Visions of Restoration' Enchanter spell says 'A target may only have one Gift active at any time'. This reminded me of the plan for Druid 'Harness Trait' to be also limited to one Trait active on a target at a time. In those cases though, the Druid spells were actually Titled as 'Imbue Trait: Speed of the Black Wolf' or 'Imbue Trait: Swiftgill's Fin'. If Enchanters are going to have a special 'Gift' type of abilities which are limited to 1 per target, should this Spell instead be called 'Grant Gift: Visions of Restoration' so that players can easily manage which 'Gift' spells they are putting on the LAS and who they are casting which Gift on.

    Also of note... this ability lists a cooldown of 30 seconds. Now I would guess that a 'Restoration' skill buff will likely be only beneficial to Healer types, but with such a long cooldown this means that if you have 2 or more party/raid members who could benefit this really could drag out any prep/buff stages. Of course perhaps Mastery will reduce this, but it still seems like a rather excessive cooldown for a long lasting buff that you likely will only be casting while Out of Combat.


    Regarding 'Mental Fortification'. The tooltip tells us 'preventing the next spell interruption that would occur from taking damage.' and has increased Charges of inturrupt prevention based on Augmentation skill.

    This brings up a question. When you deal with actual Inturrupt abilities like Stuns or Silences, these will stop the spell 100% and will require the target to start over casting the spell again. But when you are discussing 'interruption that would occur from taking damage' this could be a different thing entirely. Will taking damage Always inturrupt, or will there only be a chance of inturrupt? Or will damage cause casting time pushback like in WoW, thus increasing the overall cast time of the ability and only fully inturrupt if you take damage too many times in a short period.

    Depending on the answer to these questions it will effect how this Spell might work...

    If damage causes inturrupt 100% of the time this means that this Buff will trigger a charge each time you get hit. Whereas if damage only has a limited chance to inturrupt should it only use up a charge if the hit actually would have caused an inturrupt. If you get lucky you could get hit dozens of times before it ever uses up a charge of this buff.

    If there is pushback on casting time, does this Buff use up a charge of prevention to Prevent pushback or does it only use a charge if the spell would be fully inturrupted? And if the Latter is the case, would triggering the charge instantly cause the spell to successfully finish casting (assuming it's already met it's minimum cast time) or will it just prevent the inturrupt and yet future damage could continue to pushback the cast and extend the casting time indefinitely or until you run out of Prevention charges.

    Perhaps Tehom could clarify this for us...

    Cleric new spell 'Invigorate'. As with the new Enchanter buff 'Visions of Restoration' the cooldown on this buff seems rather excessive at 30sec when it's such a long lasting buff and will normally only be cast while Out of Combat. It could become rather Tedious when a group of players form up in town and then need to wait for 2 minutes while the Cleric buffs up 5 other players with Endurance regen to help with sprinting as they run out to a dungeon.


    The spell 'Celestial Guard' again brings us back to the question of how Spells like this will scale on their healing values. The tooltip kindly tells us that the Absorbtion shield will be 180% of the Healing done, but it gives us no idea on how the Healing value will be calculated. We can assume that healing won't be based on Weapon Damage, but vague tooltips like this don't enlighten us on what will actually effect the scaling of the Heal on abilities like this.


    I am very excited about the 'Bonds of Faith' ability for Clerics, but have a few questions as well.

    Will there be a spell particle effect that is Active while you are Bonded with an Ally? I imagine this as something similar as in the MOBA game Smite where you play as the Gods of Myth... the Aphrodite character has the ability to Link to her Allies and then her other abilities share effects with those Allies. It creates a visual beam that connects the two. Here is a 7 sec Youtube Clip of what this looks like.

    Also... we see that this ability has a 25 meter range. While this obviously applies to how close you need to be to Activate this buff, it does not mention if there is a range that must be maintained in order for the buff to remain active. Will the Bond drop if players get more than 25 meters away from each other? In the above mentioned Smite game, if the Ally and Aphrodite get too far away from each other the Bond will break and Aphrodite will need to re-apply the Bond when they get closer again. Does this Cleric Buff follow similar rules or can this Bond remain active even at great distances?

    I am imagining various exploits where Clerics can Bond with a low level character who is killing Rats in a newbie area and then the Cleric goes off adventuring somewhere else, yet is periodically healing the low level friend from a massive distance.

    The new 'Faithful Strike' ability works with this 'Bond of Faith'. This is listed as a 'General Technique'. General Technique suggests that it works with All weapon types, yet why is this not just a normal Cleric Ability rather than a Technique. One might guess that this is just a simple way for them to Require a weapon to be Equipped in order for this ability to be useable. One would wonder though why other classes Abilities that are based on Weapon Damage don't need to be Techniques. Perhaps because they can still be used while 'unarmed' and would use an 'unarmed' weapon damage? Anyway, we can guess that this just means that 'Faithful Strikes' cannot be cast while Unarmed, so no Divine Punches for you Clerics.

    It says that it buffs your weapon and then Strikes the target dealing 80% weapon damage as Divine Damage. If I am reading this correctly this means that this Strike will actually do 20% Less damage than a normal Weapon swing but that the damage will be Divine Damage which will not be mitigated by Physical Armor but instead be effected by Divine resistance. We can probably guess that Undead enemies will be rather weak to Divine type damage and perhaps may even take Extra damage from Divine damage. So for example if an undead enemy takes double damage from Divine dmg this Strike would do 160% weapon damage that is unresistable to this undead enemy.


    Note to Tehom: The Tooltip for 'Faithful Strike' ability says that it costs 500 Readiness, which is the Rogue resource (unless I'm wrong) and should probably be changed to a Mana or Celestial Power or Bond cost in line with Clerics resources.

    Also the description should probably be edited to read '... and healing an Ally under the effects of your Bonds of Faith ...' rather than '... and healing an ally under the effects of Bonds of Faith ...'. As it reads now, this suggests to players that this Strike would heal All players in the area that have a Bonds of Faith buff from any Cleric.

     

     

    What a great read.... Thank you for all the time you put into that. I truly appreciate it. 

    You make some really good points and even better questions. 

    • 5 posts
    September 22, 2022 8:50 AM PDT

    From what I understand the enchanter seems to be an offensive caster that masquerades as a healer of sorts. The enchanter is similar to a healer in the sense that their gameplay seems to be heavily focused on mana management. With casting classes Mana Management is everything because similar to pen and paper DnD, once a caster is out of abilities they are a sitting duck of sorts. Melee on the other hand, has pretty much infinite uptime. This game is slower gameplay with a focus on being intentional with choices. Not being able to use downranked abilities isn't necessarily a problem depending on implementation.

    If they decide to make all spells a certain fixed percentage that are more effective as you level, mana management wouldn't be too much of an issue. If they don't, the amount of mana you have is going to become significantly more important and mana management is going to be a significant gameplay mechanic for all casters. Downranked spells are used in more niche cases such as going back to lower level zones, trash mobs that die in one hit in general, or pvp. With that being said I understand why they wouldn't want downranked spells in general because they can be abused in certain situations to make things trivial. This makes game balanced more difficult. For example, a Tier 1 spell does 100 damage with a slowing effect of  40% vs Tier 5 spell does 800 damage with a slowing effect of 40%. With mana management, if you want the slow you are going to use the Tier 1, vice versa for damage. Without downranked spells, I would assume they would add a magical auto attack of sorts to give casters time to regen mana, or fights must be done as quickly/efficiently as possible. This means that strategy and tactics are going to be everything for this game. 

    • 2756 posts
    September 26, 2022 1:39 AM PDT

    Vandraad said:

    vjek said:

    GoofyWarriorGuy said: ...

    Thus, if you upgrade your Mesmerize spell, you can never use the lower version anymore. 

    ... 

    IMO:

    This is poor design and will be followed by poor implemention if the design is not adjusted.
    Just so it's been said. :)

    Agreed.  Terrible design decision if it actually ends up that way. Players should have the freedom to use whatever tier/level spell they have in their spellbook in whatever situation/scenario they wish.

    Surely, given LAS, it's a perfectly fine design decision?

    But anyway, wasn't that design decision qualified? I can't remember they exact phrasing, but though there wouldn't be 'families' of abilities with multiple levels of the same spell, but there would be more meaningfully distinct versions of the abilities that would always be available?

    So, something that doesn't waste LAS slots quite as much as Fireball 1, Fireball 2, Fireball 3, but gives similar tactical choice?

    • 1921 posts
    September 26, 2022 7:32 AM PDT

    IMO:

    LAS just makes it worse, if you can't use a version that uses less mana, for any reason that you would care to make up.
    Forcing players to use the/an upgraded version is not tactical choice.  It's simply a reduction in player agency, and no amount of spin will make it otherwise.
    But, then again, LAS makes everything worse, from my perspective. :)