What I mean by this is, kind of a "what classes are being designed to do"?
I only briefly played EQ back in the day (was a kid with no credit/debt cards and a small allowance, so making monthy recurring payments didn't work so well, lol), but remember playing a Bard killing giant rats at some Human city somewhere. I've played WoW, FF14, Runescape for a bit (didn't really have...classes...), Baldur's Gate, Rift for a bit, Star Wars Online for a bit, Star Trek online for a bit, Eve Online (which also doesn't really have classes...) and single player RPGs. I'm just trying to figure out what all the classes are kind of for since the class profiles are coming out soooo slowly, and get some thinking about what I'd want to play.
There seems to be a lot of speculation based on other games, VG and EQ mainly for...obvious reasons (dev team), but yeah. Can someone clear this up for me? Can someone tell me kind of what they all are about? From all the reading and what I know about other games, this is what I've gathered:
Warrior, Crusader, Dire Lord:
"The Tanks"
The tanks are the tank part of the tank/healer/damage dealer trinity. They have moderate to good damage output and excellent damage mitigation and mob management abilities (like taunts). Warriors tend to be physical damage dealers, have strong physical defense/parry/shield block abilities, but no natural healing abilities. Their martial skills are unmatched, though, and they have the best damage output and are able to manage agression better than any other tanks, having useful utility abilites to quickly come to the aid of allies and save them in clutch situations. They're not exactly self-sufficient, but they're usually among the best tanks. Some variations - including the Lord of the Rings Online Captain - also use various banners and rallying cries to focus and coordinate their allies. In the truest sense, Warriors are "leaders of men" and often form the heart of a strong party. Crusaders do have innate healing allowing them some more solo viability, but tend to have more trouble with multiple enemies in terms of managing aggression. They have some martial defenses like parry or shield blocking, but not as good as the Warrior. But due to their fervor, they are beastly against undead, and they tend to boast stronger matical defenses, and have an array of useful utility abilities and basic protective and healing spells for themselves and their allies, including being one of few non-healer classes who carry the ability to raise allies from the brink of death. Dire Lords seem to be the archetype that also wears heavy armor, but fights more with debilitating the enemy with dark magics and possibly using Mana/Health conversions and blood type magics. (I can't say I know much about this class since it seems to be some crazy mix of Necromancer, Warlock, Dark Knight, and Death Knight, and I'm not entirely sure how that works.)
Cleric, Druid, Shaman:
"The Healers"
The healers obviously restore health, allowing their allies to stay in the fight. Clerics are the quintessential healers, having the most efficient heals and being the most direct healing class to understand or for new players to pick up. Wearing plate also allows them more survivability, again helpful to newer players. Their healing abilities are effieicent and straightforward, making them easier to understand and use, but this functionality also comes at the cost of them being more specialized - Clerics almost always tend to be focused on healing with some buffing utility. Like the Crusader, their fervor allows them to deal strong damage to undead as a big part of their class flavor. Druids are the "solo-friendly" healer. Druids have basic healing spells like the Cleric, but their advanced healing is more focused on positional spells and heal over time spells (HoTs). This requires a healing Druid to put more forethought into the fight and more carefully manage their mana to maintain for long fights. What they gain from the trade, however, are useful utility spells and buffs like movement speed increases, damage shields, crowd control, and the ability to deal decent damage. While the mana crunch doesn't allow them to damage and heal simultaneously in a group, their mix of skills allows them to be solo wanderers in the wilderness when they choose while also bringing functional healing to a group and desired buffs to a raid. Shaman are the farther side of this scale, being even more focused on buffing and crowd control. While this focus is a bit less on damage, they also tend to have functional area of effect/group heals and highly desired buffs for group play, as well as crowd control abilities allowing skilled and thoughtful Shaman to solo decently and perform multiple roles in a group situation. Shaman also tend to be the master DE-buffers in most games, having various curses and hexes to employ against enemies to reduce their resistance to party damage, while also having holistic remedies for allies who have been stricken with the same.
Ranger, Rogue, Monk:
"The Physical damage dealers"
The physical damage dealers tend to have better armor and health than their magical brethren, though this focus tends to cut into their group synergy slightly. Their crowd control can be good, but is also based on physical parameters - poisoned arrows or daggers, blinding an enemy with a kick of dust. Despite the name, these classes may not be limited to physial only abilities (the Rogue mostly is), but the bulk of their damage and buffing/debuffing is based on those abilities. Rangers are the archetypial archers of games. Although the archetype itself is also a functional melee fighter, they are mostly portrayed in games based on their skill with a bow. Master trackers and wilderness wanderers, their skills at tracking enemies, use of traps, cammoflage, and so on make them functional solo classes, if requiring some skill to employ. Their skill with the bow and various types of arrows and trickshots allows them to be masster "pullers", dictating the terms of a fight from the outset, and their understanding of seeing traps can help allies avoid a quick end. They tend to gain access to basic to moderate level Druid spells, albeit it at lower levels than Druids, allowing them some utility and IN THEORY the ability to be backup healers...though in practice, their abilities are better put to use controling and bringing down enemies. Rogues are masters of shadows, poisons, and what others might call dirty or dishonorable fighting - the Rogue simply considers this fighting smart. Rogues are able to strike from shadows, poison enemies, blind them with a flash of gunpowder or a kick of dirt, expose weaknesses in armor, and take an "all of the above" view to weapon disciplines and skills. Rogues tend to have excellent agression management - in the sense of keeping out of an enemy's sight - and this coupled with their weapon skills allows them to be functional pullers. They can be functional dungeon crawlers and soloers if skilled, but they can't take much punishment in a fight if they're the center of attention. Monks wear light armor, and their honing of mind and body gives them almost magical abilities in their own right. Monks are peerless in direct raw physical damage output, and have some skill to buff and strengthen allies, and considerable skill at self-buffing. Monks also have some unusual utilitiy spells, including increasing an allies magic regeneration or quickly reviving an ally in combat, though in a weakened state. Monks tend to wear the least armor of the physical damage dealers, meaning they take the most direct physical damage when unbuffed, but they tend to have high health to offset this, and their various self-buffs can increase their magical and physical defenses or offense.
Wizard, Enchanter, Summoner:
"The Magic damage dealers"
Wearing thinner armor of cloth or light leather soas not to encumber their precise hand and voice encantations, magic damage dealers are the most physically fragile classes in most games. In exchange, they tend to have some high damage capabilities, including fighting at range to avoid damage in the first place. Their magical abilities allow them to be equally functional fighting a single enemy or striking swaths of enemies at once with area of effect (AOE) attack spells. Even the most damage focused of magi have access to various utility spells from crowd control to conjuring food or drink for allies. They tend to be difficult to adventure alone with, but well played and skilled, they are tremendous assets to a group. Wizards are masters of direct damage, having various spells to strike at enemies with. With skills in various elements, they can exploit enemy weaknesses to bring foes down more quickly. Their utility tends to focus more on ways to damage the enemy or out of combat abilities for allies. Enchanters are masters of controling the fight, able to weaken enemies or remove them from the fight all together. A skilled Enchanter dictates the facts and pace of the fight and the ability of allies to pick and choose their battles. These skills make them excellent additions to parties and among the best pullers, and they can single-handedly turn the tide of a fight. This peerless focus on controling the battlefield, however, makes them weaker on the side of damage output, but a skilled Enchanter's battlefield mastery makes them a strong asset to any group and a functional - if somewhat higher skill capped - solo capable class. Summoners are masters of calling forth minions from the planes to aid them in combat. This skillset allows them to command a small army to exploit the enemy's weaknesses or to utalize the world around them to their advantage. Their abilities with souls and planes also grant them some interesting utility spells. And of the magic classes, Summoners do tend to be the most hearty, able to wear better armor due to their spellcasting being more focused on their summoned beasts than on intricate and precise, on the spot encantations. As with all magic classes, they have skills with crowd control and are capable damage dealers, though they lose a good deal of their damage output when without their powerful minions.
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So, can someone tell me if this is, at all, in the realm of correct?
Or, for that matter, if we're going to be getting information released soon to flesh out all of them and kind of piece them together in these terms? Knowing Clerics are paragons of healing and Shaman can see into the future and past is cool, but that doesn't really tell me much about how they play, if they can adventure solo or in groups, damage output potential, or how they buff/debuff or what utility they might bring, or even really the archetypes and the options available for the classes (race/class combinations, for example).
Is that info coming soon? Or did I miss it somewhere and one of you nice fellows can tell me if these descriptions are accurate or not?
I didn't read your entire post, but some of those classes don't fit in those 'roles.' Loosely they do, but otherwise they don't.
Enchanter for example, sure they'll likely do SOME damage, but are more than likely going to come with more utility than anything. Mana regen buffs, crowd control, charms, ect.
Shamans are likely to be healers, but not devoted - probably with debuffs and buffs.
Druids are likely to be healers, but have some damage too, and buffs.
Summoners are likely to be damage dealers, with a large emphasis on pets and summoning things.
The rest is really speculation...
How you've grouped them is how I've grouped them, Renathras. Whether or not it's correct I guess we'll see over the next year. :)
They've mentioned the holy trinity as tank, healer, cc and in other places/posts tank, healer, dps+CC but I suspect a design goal, given the group size of 6, is that you start with a tank, healer, cc and add three DPS, given the popularity and quantity of DPS classes. (the six 'damage dealers' whether magic or non-magic). What is CC? likely root and mez, possibly root, fear and mez, depending on how they implement fear. But if you have wizard and enchanter with root, and enchanter with mez, at minimum, that means the three magic damage dealers can act as CC in a primary role.
However, there are other aspects involved such as how prevalent lull will be, or if a Rogue can sap, or if FD can be used for split pulls, if there will be any kind of distract, luring, tempting, and similar innovations added in. Some of those are more up front work, so to speak, but are a form of crowd control outside of doing it based on pull three, root 1, mez 1, type of situations. Reducing social aggro, yell radiuses, social assist radius and similar things? Who knows if or how they'll do that.
Things like how a shaman heals differently in concert with slows and curses, or based on what they've shown in the videos how an enchanter has more DoT's than a wizard, will likely be the subject of much change and debate over time.
Okay. Well, like I said, I wasn't sure, hence asking.
...also, the text in this typing box is MUCH smaller font, so the post turned out to be MUCH bigger than it looked in the preview, lol.
I knew they were going with the trinity, so no "buffing" role (/cry Bard), and were bringing backk CC, but didn't realize they're classing CC as the third role.
But yeah, so no exact word yet? Have they said when they're going to talk about that more? To me, some of the most fun about games is thinking about and researching the character/class I want to play and the interrelations between the classes. :)
I don't think we're going to see public & complete Ability Arsenals on the official site/wiki until beta, which is likely over a year away at this point. That's really what's required to make an accurate comparison, along with recast times, mana/stamina costs, ranges, # of targets, global cooldowns, damage types, levels granted, mana pools, specializations, etc. Add to that how prime scrolls are going to fit in, and how many core mechanics are likely going to be thrown out or completely changed between now and then? It's just a big void filled with questions at the moment. Even what has been revealed in the videos (enchanter and wizard) might as well be written on burning parchment, it's so subject-to-change.
I hear ya though, I love theorycrafting classes and comparing skills & spells, but this game is nowhere near that, yet, and there isn't even a firm date for the start of alpha.
So we're a long way away, with more than 2.5 years already passed. (jan 2014 was the original announcement of intent)
Well, I know that some things here are going to be different from some other games, but some things will draw from previous stuff.
For example, the Cleric here seems more like the Baldur's Gate (D&D) Cleric and less like the WoW Priest (and similar classes of various WoW-clones over the last decade). Meanwhile, the Ranger class strikes more like the post-EQ archetype of a skilled bowman and woodsman rather than the BG and earlier version, which was essentially a warrior who had lesser martial skills in terms of specialization, but retained the Warrior's weapon and armor access (could use essentially all melee weapons as well as ranged) while gaining some Druid spells and some utility abilities (sneaking/hiding, detecting and setting traps, etc) for the trade.
But on the other hand, EQ had some classes with soloing viability, though as a rule soloing content was relegated to grinding mobs and was less efficient than doing so with a group, but possible for skilled players playing certain classes (I believe Druids were an example of this).
A game having a strong focus on group content doesn't always mean that if you aren't in a party, you don't leave the walls of your capital. Especially for classes that are "at home" in the wilderness (Druids, Rangers) where it makes sense that they'd spend more time wondering the wilds or studying at hidden groves and lodges than in large cities of men/orcs/etc.
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Also, I like the idea of a quaternity better than a trinity. The more playstyles the better, imo. :)
Well in group oriented MMOs it is indeed necessarily a quaternity .
The function CC (crowd control) that you didn't mention is a whole category unto itself .
For instance in EQ it was practically impossible to fight in a dungeon without an enchanter because single mob fights were exception and multiple mob fights and adds were the rule .
That's why it was not an option but a necessity to have an enchanter in every deep dungeon group (trying the Hole or Sebilis without an enchanter was practically a suicide) . Not mentionning that a mob charmed by an enchanter was also a powerful damage dealer .
The CC tools being mez, charm, stun, root, snare, fear (only in some very specific outdoor cases), the classes that had a collection of such abilities had always also some CC ability and could in a modest way contribute to CC . But like clerics were the masters of healing, warriors masters of tanking, wizards masters of DPS, enchanters were the masters of CC .