lets talk about the state of the game and combat

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Noaani plays on a higher skill lvl, but even back in my days of L2, you'd fight till you died. The healer's job would be to keep you alive in whatever way. The hp bar itself didn't come into play. Only the binary options of "was that player under attack: yes or no". If someone was under attack - you heal them. If the healer was under attack - you protect him.

And defensive movement would be based on the same thing. Are you being attacked? Move. Are you not being or about to be attacked? You can stay in one place or keep chasing your target.

HP values didn't play that big of a role in decision making, if any.

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Do explain what aspects you're talking about, because L2 pvp is still my favorite gameplay in my entire gaming career. And I've both played as a healer and played with amazing healers that I trusted completely.

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And those buffs will come from the bard. It's as if I've said this from the very start. Having a healer and a bard in your party will be very beneficial, and will most likely be more beneficial than just some additional dps.

Also, we have no clue about that blink's CD. We have no clue about the amount of silence abilities in the game. We have no clue about any "movement ban" debuffs. We have no clue about detailed mana design (costs, debuffs, etc). We have no clue about general debuffs and their influence on blink (mb root prevents you from using it).

As others have stated multiple times. You're judging the currently presented design as if it was the final one and as if the game was about to release. But none of that is true.

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So why are you still here then? If you're so sure that the game will be an unbalanced mess, why keep following it?

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Healing is now "too much"? Do you expect healers not to heal? In a 9-member party everyone has their own role and healer's just so happens to be "to heal". It's not too much, it's just enough. If anything, it's sometimes too much in the other way, because people still fail that role, due to their inability to heal well enough in hard situations.

To clarify, the "to heal" role still requires way more work than just hitting a button or two. It requires constant awareness of the battlefield, constant monitoring of not only the whole party's hp values but also the positioning of the party and of the enemies. It requires general knowledge of dmg values against your party's defense values, superimposed on all the buffs that'll be used and all the healing that you can provide. And that healing has to be properly used, as to not burn all your mana away within just a few seconds.

All of those requirements usually mean that only a chosen few manage to be good healers. If that kind of gameplay is not interesting to you, I'm not sure you're meant to be a healer. And if you still find all of that gameplay as easy as "press one button, cause they're capable of too much", then I'm curious to know what other game has an even harder gameplay than that.

And btw, adding damaging abilities to a healer wouldn't add any difficulty to the list I presented, because the actions required from a heal-dmg class are the same as a pure healing one. If anything, a game that gives its healers damaging abilities would probably be designed in such a way where it's way easier for players to survive with a healer that's not constantly healing.

And I personally wouldn't want Ashes to be that kind of an easy game.

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If they manage to design the cleric in a way where it can keep up some dps while providing enough healing - great.

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I'm gonna test it once alpha2 is out. I didn't have $500 to test alpha1 back when it was online. "Have not bothered" implies that I could easily do so, but not everyone has $500 to just throw away.

As for why I'm here, it's mainly because I like the current direction of the game, but I know for damn sure that majority of people don't. So I'm here to provide even at least the smallest voice to those who do like the game as it plans to be right now.

You're

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that the game will be unbalanced, so you're here to

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I'm here to do exactly the opposite.

So I guess that's the answer to my question, that I should've figured out even before asking it. You're, just as many other people, here to change what Ashes is going to be on release. So, sorry for taking up your time with these pointless questions.

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Which is exactly the reason I'm here

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Steven copied a pvp system from ~20 years ago almost 1 to 1. He took death penalties from games from 20 years ago. He took the oldest mmo design of the holy trinity. He took big pvp content from pvp mmos of ~20 years ago (pretty much the same one that the pvp system is from, but other games also had it). He took open worldness of the same old mmos. He took the forced pvp at sea system from a 10y.o. game. He took the "party-based balancing and design targeting" from the 20y.o. games. He took the "no party finder" from those same games. He employed people that worked on mmos 20 years ago.

Oh, and probably the biggest indicator of "this is an old mmo" is the tabness of combat. Even though the system is hybrid, it's still just tab with action camera. And it's been said from the start, if they fail with hybrid - they go full tab.

This game has not been about reinventing design wheels. It's been about going back to the roots and trying to just perfect them, w/o moving away from their core designs.

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The problem with not balancing classes is that players, over time, treat unbalanced classes as jokes or as if they don't exist.

It's safe to do this in quick, lobby style games, but not for longer term MMOs with dedication to class required.

I'm not saying Intrepid NEEDS to balance their archetypes, I'm saying that spending design time on unbalanced stuff is generally a waste in my experience. It leads to negative sentiment and discussion, it doesn't tend to result in much use, and it makes a certain subset of players toxic towards those who choose to play the unbalanced options (both upper and lower).

In a way, it's actually not worth it.

That's my error then.

I tend to use the word 'balance' to refer to only 'the specifics of overall power and usability', and view 'class homogenization' or 'making sure everyone has healing/DPS/cleanse' as different things.