What I feel is a serious problem with AOCs class system and how to, at least partially fix it.

I think I have a more concrete example @Ironhope

"You have reached level 2, please choose between the following abilities so we know which Variant you are playing:

[1] Judgement: Smite your enemy with a Hammer and weaken them
[2] Devotion: Heal your ally."

I am a 'misdirection' Cleric (just assume it's the same as any other 'standard Healer fantasy'). I choose Devotion.

"You have reached level 4, please choose between the following abilities so we know which Variant you are playing:

[1] Judgement: Smite your enemy with a Hammer and weaken them
[2] Castigation: Strike your enemy with a magic whip."
[3] Devotion II: Heal your ally, but better."
[4] Blessing: Heal your ally, but on a delay."

I am still the same style of PLAYER, here it makes a little difference because I wanna do SOME damage. Castigation.

"You have reached level 4, please choose between the following abilities so we know which Variant you are playing:

[1] Judgement: Smite your enemy with a Hammer and weaken them
[2] Castigation II: Strike your enemy with a magic whip."
[3] Devotion II: Heal your ally, but better."
[4] Blessing: Heal your ally, but on a delay."

Now I take Blessing, again, 'normal healer'.

Most games tell you 'here are the skills and talents for your class, pick the ones you like the best. But almost all those games, lots of people pick 'the best ones'. Or the game makes it simple, it 'chooses for you'. It never really asks you this. Or worse, they do both. They choose a sub-path for you and THEN tell you to choose some options anyway with the 'options' not really mattering to the sub-path because all they do is make you slightly more like one of the others instead of more effective at your 'class fantasy'.

Ashes in Alpha-1 didn't do that.

You take Judgement, Castigation, Judgement II, decide if you even care about taking EITHER healing spell.

I take Castigation, both healing spells, and never touch Judgement. I'm not a Templar.

This could start a whole argument about how 'If I play Cleric but I don't heal, people won't group with me!', but that's just a delay on something that was going to happen anyway IF it was going to happen. If you picked a DPS Cleric and it didn't do enough DPS, the sort of person that would never pick you for DPS role is never going to pick you anyway because you tried to blend DPS and 'healer' in the first place and that sort of person doesn't like hybrid builds.

Or, DPS Cleric will just WORK and there is some group out there where you fit perfectly. Point is, that 'problem' isn't the one you care about here. You care about 'feeling like a Templar'.

2Handed Hammer. Heavy Armor. Judgement, Castigation, Judgement II, passives that make you hit harder. If you can't DPS at that point, that is your problem, not 'do you feel like/appear to be a Templar'. If Ashes' MAIN skill Trees for Cleric don't allow you to choose a group of skills that fall under your class fantasy of 'Templar'. It doesn't matter what your Augments do exactly . You mostly want those because they probably offer more useful effects/changes to the TYPE of skills a Templar picks, theoretically you shouldn't need them. It's like being able to choose 'Judgement IV' at level 25 and having your "Judgement IV" be a Templar-exclusive version.

You already did the 'usual thing' and raised Judgement up to Judgement III by then, probably.

EDIT: Fixed 'choices' because I'm too ranty to remember how BBCode works.

And L2's warlock is a summoner, but he summons cute kitties

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This would then imply that all the people who'd want to play their archetype as their main "class" would never be able to come back to it after those 25 lvls. Which in the grand scheme of things is barely even 1% of the overall gameplay time.

And no doubling down on the same archetype wouldn't let you play your preferred "class". I want to play Tank, but if I want to play optimally I'll have to get a secondary archetype and change from Tank to something else. That is unfair to say the least.

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That's my whole point - I can't. I want to be a Tank, not a fucking guardian (whatever the hell that means). But the game forces me to choose something that is not Tank. And then it forces me to play the rest of the game like that. And that potentially years of gameplay. Sounds way more unfair than just a few days that all those classlovers need to play before getting their preferred char.

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Notable is exactly right. And "we don't know" is right too. We have no clue how the main archetype will change even if you double-down on it. I choose to believe that a guardian would be quite different from a tank. You choose to believe the same about mage and warlock. in other words, we agree, except I don't want to play as a guardian but will have to for the rest of the game after lvl25, while you want to play as a warlock and would only have to play as a mage for a few days (if that).

My struggle seems quite a bit bigger than yours. That's just unfair.