If 56 'classes' are just animation skins combined with buffs to the same ol'stuff, it will be tragic

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If I, as a Cleric/Tank, have an Augment on my heal that raises the Defense or Damage Mitigation of my Tank, I am more effective by 'whatever percentage defense up they got' (assuming mitigation tank, not evasion tank).

If I, as a Cleric/Cleric, simply have stronger heals due to an augment, that raises my healing itself by whatever percentage bonus.

If I, as a Cleric/Rogue, have an Augment on a heal that raises the Evasion of my Tank, I am again, to some extent, 'more effective by whatever percentage evasion up they got' (assume any decently evading tank).

The list goes on.

But if I, as a Cleric/Fighter, don't get some sort of 'Higher chance of crit heal' or 'change in healing stat formula' or something from my Fighter Augment on my heal, then now I'm worse than the other three at 'healing and mitigation'.

So to me, 'balance' would be 'make sure Cleric/Fighter has Augments that help when applied to their heals', instead of 'treat Cleric/Fighter as DPS', so that they are mathetatically similar, not particularly hybrid, etc.

A good example would be that I see no current benefit to Cleric/Ranger with respect to 'amount of healing they can do in a normal situation'. Now, I don't consider that difficult to resolve, but let's assume things were to release without this being addressed, in this hypothetical world where the above are all true.

Now Cleric/Ranger is 'weaker' than all the others at healing. If it is fun, great. If you 'are a Cleric Ranger who wants to help defend your node from a Siege or Boss', though, now you have to find a way to make up that % healing loss with something else about your Secondary Archetype. If you are 'unfortunate' enough that whatever Cleric/Ranger offers you is not easily useful in those types of battle, then... well, you know the rest, you're the one who made the Hybrid Classes potential problems thread.

As for your point about MOBAs, maybe I only played the weird ones?

My experience is 'get into match, choose according to map and expected enemies, if you get build choices then you adapt those as well according to the situation, coordinate with others for positions if the opponent builds a specific way'.

And obviously if it doesn't work and you lose, you can just 'not do that again', or you can 'do it again and refine your skill at doing it'. But all you lost was a match, not your Node, Freehold, Caravan, resources. You didn't become 'less able to play the game the way you want', you only maybe lost some ELO.

"Losing half my gatherables because my teammate and I were playing Cleric/Ranger and Rogue/Tank and got facerolled because those two classes are 10% less effective than others in most 2v2 situations" is the outcome I'm looking at here. Will it frustrate people enough to 'conform to the meta' or 'quit the game'? I doubt it. Usually the response is just grumbling until negativity kicks in across some critical number of players.

So "We're not balancing for 1v1" (and by extension 2v2, lemme know if I need to explain the numbers) is a valid warning. You know what you're getting into with just base Archetypes, before we even get into 'potentially underpowered secondaries'. So, a little grumbling, people tell you 'well that's what you signed up for', and most people don't 'sign off'.

"Waiting 7 months for the Devs to decide exactly which nerfs they want to apply to OPClass11" in a game where the intent is to balance PvP and PvE more or less the same, though, would be rough.

Your first point, I didn't get. It sounded like you were saying 'Clerics will be happy if they can do great things even if they could never beat a Ranger in a fight'. That sounds like what they're making, you're back to just being disappointed at the number of Archetypes then, am I understanding correctly?

I guess I would just have to tell you the same thing I told neuroguy back in that other thread:

I f your concern is that Intrepid is not focusing enough, then just assume that the following classes will all be super cool and very thematic and practically 'premade'.

Weapon Master, Dreadnought, Trickster, High Priest, Oracle, Strider, Scout, Assassin, Predator, Minstrel, Conjurer, Necromancer, Archwizard, Warlock, Hawkeye, Duelist, Paladin, Guardian.

If you'd like them to focus on these, then just assume that they will tune the Augments to make these perfect.

That's what some people seem to believe will happen. If that's what they have the resources for, then that's still 16. You'd have to play Paladin instead of Templar, but it's entirely possible that what you think of as 'Templar' will be 'things a Paladin does', so aside from the name issue (which I sympathize with), you don't have to be disappointed overall.

I don't expect I'm going to be disappointed either as a Shadow Disciple. Out of that entire list of 64, the only place I expect even the small chance of disappointment in an otherwise good game/system would be:

Falconer, Beastmaster, Shaman, Bladecaller.

And those are all down to 'how good is Summoner/how do Summoner Augments work'. At the end of the day, if they don't have the resources/staff to do something, they don't have them. What do you want from them at that point? You could 'Petition to change the description to say "8 Classes that you can Augment with abilities from other Classes!" but I expect that would be about as successful as my totally-real-and-definitely-intended petition to change the 'Tank' name to 'Mailman'.

I really do appreciate you clarifying as much as you did, so either what follows this line leads to a better discussion, or I concede that there's no middle ground.

It's been pointed out by @Noaani in another thread related to this... 'amazing things' isn't that big a set, within anything balanced.

I always say that MMOs are convergent evolution. There just aren't enough actual things to do (as single abilities) for this to make sense to me, so I think 8 bases is ok.

Heal
Heal over Time
Close in
Shield and prevent damage
Buff (resistance)
Buff (stats and power)
Debuff (resistance)
Debuff (stats and power)
Positioning damage by flank
Positioning damage by range
Magical damage burst
Magical damage over time
Physical damage over time (effect)
Physical damage over time (sustained hitting of the thing)
Various CC that are sorta-separate from Debuffs (and for the sake of sanity would be limited anyway)
Regenerate some Resource (probably Mana)
All the pet/summon stuff

I see everything as one of these, and it's great if you get thematic representations of each of them that fits with the feeling of your class. I know you said you are working on your builds for discussion, but for now, just take out one thing, any thing from your build that doesn't fit the above categories.

Thematic design and balance design can be kept separate for quite a long time in game design before you have to start thinking about how best to combine them. Summoners are a particularly good example of this.

"I want a moving pet that debuffs when it attacks."
"Ok what debuff do you want?"
"Some kind of sickness or slow."
"Ok that sounds like a Zombie, you can play Necromancer, I'll make sure that the moving pet with sickness debuff looks like a Zombie."
"Wait I don't want a Zombie, I want a slime."
"Ok you can play Conjurer and you can have a Slime that does that, I'll still make sure the Zombie does it in case you change your mind. I'll even make the Slime heal itself a little when you do it."
"Wait no I like the Necromancer thing but I still want the Slime."
"Uhh... ok lemme think about that one a bit... ok I'll give you a ring for Zombies and a Ring for Slime and you can choose which one to wear."
"But I want the Zombies and the Slimes to have different stats."
"That's fine, I'll tie that to the Ring. We good?"
"Yeah, now let's talk about my REALLY important idea... EXPLODING TOTEMS."
"You SURE you don't wanna just be a Conjurer?"

etc etc.

You're defining the fail condition, then drawing a direct line from 'what they said' to your defined fail condition. The way you fixate on specific things implies to me that I should make shorter posts, so I'll do that from now on.

• I never said it couldn't be done.
• I never said it hasn't been done.
• I think the examples you gave would exist in Ashes, I personally predict the bottom three or something like them are on Tank.
• Won't the Cleric become more Tanky if they just cast heal on themselves with the Defense buff?

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It is not. People are not minmaxing your world, and not even your ships nearly as much as individual class decisions. It takes a lot more design effort to get the classes right, even if it will take a lot less art and programming effort than that needed for world, sieges, etc.

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She was talking about the archetype bases. Yes, all of those are specs that end up with their own flavor, but which of your specs do an ability that is outside of the range that Azherae specified?

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You don't need to keep up as much sustained healing if your base defense is higher. An Apostle that has this augment wearing the same gear as your theoretical High Priest will still be "more Tanky" and able to survive burst damage better if the defense buff math has any effort put into it. That's synergy of the "cleric" and "tank" concepts to get something unique.

Sorry, I've realized I'm becoming confrontational because of my wish to avoid 'doing a bunch of theorycrafting' and derailing or causing 'trouble' by doing it, but it may be the best option.

So let's craft.

According to my Expectation of Fighter Augments, you get to choose the following for your Cleric skills.

"Crit Rate Up"
"Damage Formula Bonus"
"Use HP To Empower Attack/Skill"
"Close-In ability"

These are just predictions, this has nothing to do with what I would choose. For example, I wouldn't actually make 'Closing In' a Fighter Augment, I'd make it much more complicated than that, but things I build are usually too complex and need to be curated with people who like simpler things. Just usual disclaimer.

If you told me 'Build a Templar' in Ashes out of what we have for Cleric now, with that, I would:

"Equip a mace, because they have good animation timing for casting between swings and might have CC weapon skills/perks"
"Wear a balance of offense and defense gear which will sometimes cause me to take more damage than a very tanky player, unless the enemy is very strong."
"Focus a lot of points into Weapon Skills and CC Resistances."

Then do:

Judgement (raise to higher level) - Augment with Close-In ability, it already lowers enemy damage
Regeneration (leave at lower level) - Augment with Crit Rate Up (my experience was that individual ticks of Regen can crit)
Castigation - Augment with HP Empower (since you're going to get the HP back anyway)
Main Heal skill - Augment with Crit Rate Up
Secondary Heal Skill (the delayed one, Devotion) - Augment with Crit Rate Up
Divine Censure - Augment with HP Empower to do more damage
Hallowed Ground - Augment with Crit Rate Up or Close-In if Close-In caused it to center on me
Radiant Burst - Might skip this, seems moreso a Cleric/Tank thing, but depends on content generally done

There are obviously more Cleric Skills, and any damage ones would get more similar augments.

Now, bearing in mind that even a basic search for 'Templar MMO' returns a response for a lot of people who want to be able to do all three options of the 'Trinity' (tanking, healing, and DPS), I would consider the overall theme of Templar to be 'muddier' than some others, in terms of mechanics .

So now you have a class that increases their damage, spends a lot of Skill Points on 'methods of hitting the opponent hard and disregarding any hits they take by just healing it away, and can decide if they want to have hate on them or not in most situations by focusing on Regen crit-heals'.

Specialists are more effective in simplistic situations, but they're generally only 'equally effective' otherwise. In a game full of potential sudden PvP even when doing normal content, this Templar is by far more 'scary' than a High Priest.

If you (not you specifically, just 'most average people told to design something', which MIGHT include you) make a specific 'Templar' class, the ability types you 'end up' giving it are going to be mostly:
"Do Damage + CC" (could be a weaponskill, and you would have 'saved' enough Skill Points to get a lot of them)
"Do Damage that causes me to be healed" - Castigation
"Increase my attack" - Gear handles this
"Sustain my attack rhythm" - Regen, particularly with crits, does this, a 'Moving' Hallowed Ground does too, without being a real downside to a Templar due to their other flows
"Raise CC resistance" - Gear and passives handle this for the build above

But in order to make the 'I wanna heal as a Templar' people happy and the 'I wanna sorta Tank as a Templar or at least have a good PvP kit' people happy, you have to add more things to 'dilute' it.

I don't think your intention was to 'lay claim to Templar as a Damage Dealer primarily', even outside of the realm of Ashes' augment system. That is, even if they switched to 16 curated classes, you'd end up arguing with 'that person that wished Templar was more of a healer' over the differences in 'vision'.

This post is too long again, but at least most of it is directly design.

You'd have to give an example of something a 'Templar' class would have, that couldn't be covered between 'Weapon Stuff' and 'Build Choices'.

They told us that not every class might use every weapon equally effectively, and that might be thematic too. Maces add damage, not Magical Crit Chance like Staff does, for example. A 'standard' High Priest would do better with a Staff because it enhances their build choices. A 'standard' Templar would do better with the Mace. I don't think that would be too unfair to ask of a player to accept. "This weapon type, thematically, does this". So maybe Templars who want to do physical DPS will be 'expected' to use Maces.

So, once you are 'A mace wielding, physical accuracy build, CC resistant, weapon-skills-flying-everywhere, 'I can charge at you and hit you with my divine Hammer and slow you so I get to keep hitting you in PvP while you can't escape my DPS aura (Hallowed Ground)' Cleric'...

What do you still want?

And of course this:

https://mmos.com/news/see-crowfalls-templar-in-action-in-new-video

(not actually a video, just a list of abilities).