I wanted to start a post on the community stream, hoping to get interesting comments and observations from everyone.
I kept flipping between various P.O.V.'s and the hour seemed to fly by!
I noticed they wewre all level 30? so it was intersting to see that on the ramparts is a challenge in BRK. I wonder if there are higher areas stil we havent seen in BRK or was 30 the top? if so BRk is now looking to me like a big little dungeon, or a little dungeon with alor fo big rooms which is nice.
The group was really tight- seeing the chanter bring the control to "crowd control" and pulling was fun to watch. I wonder if it was almost too easy? or was that just watching good players in a PuG and them making it look easy. From this I wonder at the niche community and if ir needs to be turned up a notch? maybe exponential so the lower levels can attract any newcomers but once you hit level 10, then playerability will come into play and class knowledge.
I really liked how each of the streamers decided to give a brief overview of their skills and talents- I kind of wish they were able to link loot in general chat in game so all could see, but then again I realized there WAS a loot table, where in the first dtream with Fion the loot table wasn't yet set in stone.
I watched the Enchanter stream. Was very informative and pretty interesting - I learned some new stuff and even had a few questions answered by Nick! Was really great when he showcased the different variations of each spell intended to be used for various situations - didn't even know we had that before! I think that's really awesome and an easy but good way to expand the toolkit of a class. Choosing which one to use will be easy, but knowing which ones to have on your limited bar will be the hard part initially. Was very nostalgic watching him swap spells off his bar too.
Was sad that it was only an hour but it got me even more pumped for the game and playing an Enchanter.
I am in the middle of watching the stream right now but my tablet died so I have to grab my power pack. I was watching from the enchanter perspective and love what I have seen so far. I like that the class is only focused on CC and utility. It also seemed like you have to "prepare" your spells like you would in D&D and only get to use from a set number at any time. Did anyone else see that or am I making stuff up?
I enjoyed it overall.
The issues I had was that the Paladin couldn't seem to hold aggro, it seemed like he was supposed to be the MT from what the player said toward the beginning of his stream, maybe the direlord was just unloading all his hate building abilities too disregarding the MT/OT setup? It also seemed like the DPS was sort of gung ho about just laying into the mobs and not letting the tanks build some hate first, though maybe that was just the bugged(?) bear that kept pulling aggro.
I do have to admit I am getting a bit tired of always seeing the same thing on these streams, BRK. I can go longer without a stream if we will see a new area or revisit The Tower of the Reckless Magician again or something.
Xilshale said: Concerned by the Paladin lack of ability to control agro at all, I'm left wondering if that was player error on Saicred's part, everyone dumping dps fast and furious, or needs major tuning? Even with the DL using the agro over time generator the Paly should be able to reliably pull agro at the beginning of an encounter from the DK. Final named that wiped the group on the ramparts....seemed to wipe it's agro list...fun lol. Also,the train at the end was little much. To agro that many movs and bring them out alive...this the some streamers having gm access and using it to god mode grief BRK I've read about on Facebook threads?
If you're reading about anything happening in Pre Alpha on FB, you should be reporting that. Nothing in Pre Alpha is not covered under NDA. It's one thing to tell someone IRL but putting it on FB is a major violation.
Paly threat could be contributed to the fact that Saicred normally plays shaman and was trying a different role or it could be that Pally needs to be tuned. Either way, it's pre alpha, can't expect things to look like release quality. Numbers tuning doesn't happen much for a long time.
Xilshale said: Concerned by the Paladin lack of ability to control agro at all, I'm left wondering if that was player error on Saicred's part, everyone dumping dps fast and furious, or needs major tuning? Even with the DL using the agro over time generator the Paly should be able to reliably pull agro at the beginning of an encounter from the DK. Final named that wiped the group on the ramparts....seemed to wipe it's agro list...fun lol. Also,the train at the end was little much. To agro that many movs and bring them out alive...this the some streamers having gm access and using it to god mode grief BRK I've read about on Facebook threads?
It's really hard to say why the Dire Lord had a much easier time to hold aggro. Saicred had not played Paladin before, so who knows if it was a class thing or a lack of class knowledge thing, or any combination thereof.
As far as the train goes, that's classic EQ socialization for you. If they keep it like how it was in EQ, you'll learn to spot the TRAIN yells in zone and find a place to hide, or cross the zone until it resets.
accivatti said:anyone have a link to youtube video? Didn't get a chance to watch live.
I'll see if I can't gather all the others once posted and make a post sharing them all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfxnPXjUFbo
Saicred said:accivatti said:anyone have a link to youtube video? Didn't get a chance to watch live.
I'll see if I can't gather all the others once posted and make a post sharing them all. In the mean time don't mind the groofy guy cheesing the whole time. He is a paid actor :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfxnPXjUFbo
You did great, Saicred. :) Thanks so much for doing that. Thanks to the others who were in the group as well! I 'followed' :)
Enitzu said:
If you're reading about anything happening in Pre Alpha on FB, you should be reporting that. Nothing in Pre Alpha is not covered under NDA. It's one thing to tell someone IRL but putting it on FB is a major violation.
Lol it was posted about on as a comment on official post by the Pantheon account, August 5th. It's a little blatant and if Kilsin didn't catch that he's not looking.
i enjoyed the streams. loved being able to switch POV and see from Wizard, Dire Lord, and Druid side of things.
I am a littel concerned about Cleric mana. They never seem to have mana. Can you imagine any group without an Enchanter? The enchanter helps everyone gain mana, even then, the cleric can't heal thru a single boss. So are groups literally going no where unless they have 2 healers per group? and must have enchanter as well?
I know, it's pre alpha, things will change. But right now, IMO, the cleric Mana pool need to be increased by 50% minimum. The cleric looks so bad, I won't be playing one at launch like I originally planned.
After seeing how bad the healers have it, I don't want to heal at all.
Can't do a job when you don't have enough tools
In regards to the healing, in Classic EQ and PoP it was typical to have two healers in the group. A Cleric could handle single healing in difficult situations, but that was largely due to the broken mechanic of Complete Heal. I would anticipate most groups having two healers, the Shaman and Druid both have significant secondary roles to contribute as well, be it Debuffing or straight DPS. A Cleric is probably going to shine the most when he's not the sole healer for a group of level appropriate content, but with the right group makeup (Geared Tank and Enchanter at a minimum) and solid cleric gear along with excellent player skill, the Cleric will probably be the only healing class that has a shot at solo healing difficult group content. Overall though, I think two healers in a group will be the norm.
Now, as for the Paladin, I think Saicred struggled a bit. The Enchanter and Paladin have a lot of synergy since the Paladin can build significant hate with his crits off stuns. Both classes have long stuns that should allow the Paladin to get off several big hits with Fervent Strike. Not to mention Paladin has several other abilities that can proc a stun (Pommel and Cross, Lightguard), and if so, he has to follow that up quickly with FS. That is his hate generater, and then he has the AoE hate generating aegis ability as well. These were #6 and #7 on his bar, and he just didn't use them. He pretty much just spammed FS when it was up, which is not what you're supposed to do, and the few times he used Aegis, it was late in the fight. It's a hate build up over time, so he needed to use it right away. He also seemed overly infatuated with the dinky heals. I think tossing up the minor heals has its place for the Pally, but the core focus should be building up hate, stunning, and using FS off any stuns. Pommel has a 1 second cooldown, I get that it's a cone attack, but any solid MMO player can position himself so as not to hit a mezzed mob. The rotation should have been Aegis, Pommel, FS, Pommel, FS, etc... With Oathflame tossed into build Wrath as needed, but Aegis and FS build Wrath and Pommel only costs 40, plus just getting hit builds wrath, so holding aggro is key. I am interested to watch a Paladin's aggro capability versus a Dire Lord when the Paladin uses his rotation correctly. Dire Lord definitely seems to have it a little easier to build aggro.
Very good points @Mathir! Thanks so much for the insight! I guess I was scared to break Nick's amazing Mez's with the AE of Aegis and Pommel, so you are very correct I didn't use them nearly as much as I might should have! :) I'm also guilty of being a Healer Main and me thinking that my Single target Taunt and Heals would provide any sort of Aggro Generation was way off haha!
Can't wait to see some of the great Paladins out there get a chance to show what the class can really do. Regardless it was a super fun class!
Saicred said:accivatti said:anyone have a link to youtube video? Didn't get a chance to watch live.
I'll see if I can't gather all the others once posted and make a post sharing them all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfxnPXjUFbo
when I searched for "Pantheon pre-alpha twitch stream" in youtube yours was the first (and only) to come up haha. I started watching it after I watched NickHoTs twitch so it was funny hearing the same things from a different perspective. I still have to finish watching your video thank you so much for uploading it so more people can see this great game!
@Mathir / @Saicred
I do think Pommel had a big cost (40 wrath) so I'm not sure it could be spammed so much, but depending of the stun duration you might be able to strike twice with fervent strike for guaranteed critical strikes.
True for aegis, one of the rare + aggro attacks here.
Maybe preparing combos with incite first and a serie of big strikes / critical strikes loaded here and there ?
Anyway it was great to see a paladin's stream since it's one of the newest class from the last PA phase, they seem to have a big sweet spot between hate/damage/support that might be a bit hard to reach first.
I was watching a few of the different perspectives yesterday, and noticed in Nick's stream that he had about 600 hp at the start, but only 250 mana. Seems fairly low for a lvl 30 caster. I haven't looked at the cleric perspective yet, but maybe its similar there, and it would explain why the casters run low fairly quickly. Not sure if that's intended or a result of the not so great gear they had (Nick showed that he had gear with only AC, no other stats).
On the positive side, I was quite impressed with the wizard. Mobs seem to have a comparatively huge amount of hitpoints. And it was very pleasing to see the wizard take big chunks of those away with each cast (475 damage with the big hitter). I'll have to re-watch Baz's stream to see how the ranger did for damage in comparison.
Mathir said:Now, as for the Paladin, I am interested to watch a Paladin's aggro capability versus a Dire Lord when the Paladin uses his rotation correctly. Dire Lord definitely seems to have it a little easier to build aggro.
Ahh, you have studdied well. Good write up on the pally. Much different aggro generating abilities on this class that I think will make it fun to play if master, yet hard to master. And yes, I think you're currect on the DL too. Seems to be a 'toss this ability on, have everyone wait a few seconds before blasting away and we're set' kinda aggro tank.