Equality for the classes; My hopes for the expansion.

[Nightreaver]

If everyone could do everything equally well, I'd just tell trion to mark it up as a loss and just let us choose between the current 32 souls on each character and give each armor class certain passive benefits and defficiencies. There would be no point in callings or classes at that point since there would be nothing setting them apart.

At a Class Level
For Mages at least this goes beyond doing things differently but equally well.
Our third role has no use outside of 20-man raids. Or to put it another way; our third role has no use in the vast majority of the game content. Add to that that you will never see more than one Mage Support role in a raid.

Now imagine the QQ if that concept applied to any role belonging to another class.

Would I play a Mage Tank if that was our new role?
Probably not, Tanking the Prince in HK is enough for me.
But hey.... give us a Tank like Justicar with an AoE Heal that only costs 6 points into the soul that is instant cast and no CD and I'm all for it.


At a Role Level
I can accept that Ranged DPS is just another way of doing DPS. The question is can Clerics, Rogues and Warriors do the same.
Or will they continue to insist that melee DPS should always be better than Ranged DPS?

[dbe]

WTF is the point of 4 classes if they all do the exact same stuff?

Well they can all dps - should we take that away from 3 of the classes? Are the choices for doing damage on a warrior the same as on a cleric?

Warriors can ONLY tank. Clerics can ONLY heal. Mages are the only dps. And rogues can ONLY bard.

That your ideal game?

Also, socialism is a economic system by which the workers own the means of production. It's not a synonym for splitting things up evenly.

I don't even want to see every class have every role, but it might be nice if warriors had 3 like everyone else.

[dbe]

What is wrong with a class having access to all 4 roles? My cleric does.

You might be able to check "support" on the LFG finder but clerics do not have a true support role the way mages and rogues do.

[Souldancer]

Please no. Where is the fun in that? there needs to be difference imo. Why would I play all classes when they are equal anyway?
Why would I role a cleric if a rogue can heal the same.
Why roll a mage if you want to tank? then roll a class that can tank.
etc
etc
etc

This logic only works when classes can only do one role. Let's take your own example - Why did you roll a cleric instead of the other obvious choice - mage? What was it about cleric that attracted you and made you select that over mage when mages are really good healers too? For tanking, why do some people choose rogue and some people choose warrior when both are really good tanks? I don't think that anyone who rolled a mage did so thinking that they were doing it to be a tank, so your logic is flawed. However, they are looking at their current souls and thinking, "Ok, well we can already do so much, what can Trion possibly give us that will be unique and interesting to play" and they are trying to fill in blanks.


Allowing all classes to do all possible roles isn't going to suddenly make everyone choose the same one class, especially if they do things in different ways. We are still going to have people who prefer healing and doing it the way clerics do it. We are still going to have people who prefer tanking the way warriors do it. Adding variety and souls to suit every playstyle always seemed to me to be one of Trion's major goals.

[Ivengar]

Funny how they managed to make the Druid pets scale fine

What game are you playing as its a very common and proven fact that the druid pets hardly scale at all.

[Ivengar]

Please no. Where is the fun in that? there needs to be difference imo. Why would I play all classes when they are equal anyway?
Why would I role a cleric if a rogue can heal the same.
Why roll a mage if you want to tank? then roll a class that can tank.
etc
etc
etc

Because you choose the play style you like the most.

Just look at tanks... Rogue, War and Cleric tank all work VERY differently. So even if all you do is tank you can have all 3 classes and each plays in its own unique way.

[Ivengar]

This logic only works when classes can only do one role. Let's take your own example - Why did you roll a cleric instead of the other obvious choice - mage? What was it about cleric that attracted you and made you select that over mage when mages are really good healers too? For tanking, why do some people choose rogue and some people choose warrior when both are really good tanks? I don't think that anyone who rolled a mage did so thinking that they were doing it to be a tank, so your logic is flawed. However, they are looking at their current souls and thinking, "Ok, well we can already do so much, what can Trion possibly give us that will be unique and interesting to play" and they are trying to fill in blanks.


Allowing all classes to do all possible roles isn't going to suddenly make everyone choose the same one class, especially if they do things in different ways. We are still going to have people who prefer healing and doing it the way clerics do it. We are still going to have people who prefer tanking the way warriors do it. Adding variety and souls to suit every playstyle always seemed to me to be one of Trion's major goals.

Exactly! I know mages that all they do is play chloro. I ask them why and they say because they like to heal. I ask them why they didnt just play a cleric then and some said they like the way mages play more while others said they like the way mages look. It really is that simple.

[Potter]

To all the people who say no to mage tanking:

I play a mage. I love mage. I love ranged nuking bosses. I also like to solo. My soloing sucks most of the time. Why? I have no decent defensive TANKING abilities to solo mobs. Why should I be punished because I prefer to play mage?

[Aguni]

To all the people who say no to mage tanking:

I play a mage. I love mage. I love ranged nuking bosses. I also like to solo. My soloing sucks most of the time. Why? I have no decent defensive TANKING abilities to solo mobs. Why should I be punished because I prefer to play mage?

You aren't being punished, being punished would assume someone is doing something to you in a negative manner for your choice.

In this case, no one is doing such a thing.
You knew well that mages cannot tank, ergo, you knew their solo ability would not be as powerful, ergo no one is punishing you.


Anyway, the only reason I can ever see the Mage calling getting a tank spec is if ALL callings had access to 4 different roles.

At the moment, the only calling that should be getting a new role is warriors.

[Souldancer]

You knew well that mages cannot tank, ergo, you knew their solo ability would not be as powerful.

I'm not sure really what one has to do with the other. Currently I solo in my Riftblade spec, which isn't a tank spec. I've never used an actual tanking soul for soloing\farming\etc.

Perhaps he should have phrased his comments better and not tied soloing in with tanking, but to suggest he shouldn't be able to fight monsters that check "even match" is taking a page out of the game I just referenced. It was stupid there that mages couldn't do anything without a group, and it would be stupid here too.

[Valest]

My hopes for SL role/class wise is there no longer being a redundancy of multiple classes having buffs that overwrite each other, which has been more so what has made warlord such a failure(on the higher end of the tree). This coming from someone who loves the warlord concept, but archon/bard can do everything it can buff wise better.

warrior tanking trees are practically all the same to a certain extent, until you get to the higher end of the trees as well. It just feels like any form of creativity gets stifled by the fact of so many things being staples build wise of what makes a tank spec "great" at this time.

In my opinion passively the stats should come out identically some how, compared to any other builds as a warrior tank, and your points spent should be valued more so into utility purposes.

I'd say the same about rogues or clerics but the only have (currently) one tanking soul to worry about.

tl;dr what i want is less gimmick in the warrior tanking trees(high end) and more solid and useful skills.

[TheGrinnz]

My hopes for SL role/class wise is there no longer being a redundancy of multiple classes having buffs that overwrite each other, which has been more so what has made warlord such a failure(on the higher end of the tree). This coming from someone who loves the warlord concept, but archon/bard can do everything it can buff wise better.

This is not actually true; Rallying Command and Aid Command are unique raid buffs that can be very beneficial. They aren't generally used for two reasons:

1. Going that high in Warlord does not sufficiently improve your tanking ability/mitigation
2. They are very situational and like Assault Command/Flaring Power can only be used every 5 minutes.

[Nsayn1]

To all the people who say no to mage tanking:

I play a mage. I love mage. I love ranged nuking bosses. I also like to solo. My soloing sucks most of the time. Why? I have no decent defensive TANKING abilities to solo mobs. Why should I be punished because I prefer to play mage?

Mage in the right spec solos faster than the other 3 classes....try again.

[Patchkid]

To all the people who say no to mage tanking:

I play a mage. I love mage. I love ranged nuking bosses. I also like to solo. My soloing sucks most of the time. Why? I have no decent defensive TANKING abilities to solo mobs. Why should I be punished because I prefer to play mage?

Firstly, Mages have tanking abilities - they have two pets that tank for them. Which hold ridiculous aggro, and which are easy to keep up for soloing if you want to use them as tanks. There are even videos of mages using said pets to solo instances.

Secondly, the best soloing classes are the ones which have heals -- i.e. Clerics and Mages. Any player can kill mobs, but to kill mobs endlessly with no down-time because you can continuously heal yourself is exclusive to two classes, and Mages can often do this better than Clerics due to less severe mana issues.

This is a bad argument. You made a mage, and mages do not tank, and will not tank. The mage reveal is done, and it's not a tank soul.


Sorry Warriors, you're not getting heals. You're getting a new DPS soul and something else is being converted into a Support soul. Already confirmed by warrior Dev.

Every class is planned on having 3 distinct "roles" in SL.

Warrior - Tank, DPS, Support
Mage - DPS, Support, Heal
Rogue - Tank, DPS, Support
Cleric - Tank, DPS, Heal

No, Clerics don't have a "support" soul. They don't have special raid debuffing / buffing tools that massively improve the group's performance like Archon / Bard does currently -- nor do they have control specs like Dominator. They have "support heal" specs, which is also called "off-heals" as in, they heal passively to aid the actual healers. It's not a "support" spec, and never will be. You can't join a raid as a Cleric and get the little "support flag" icon next to your name -- only Experts with the weird queuing system allows that for no apparent reason.

I expect SL will change the balance dynamic in this game a great deal. It will likely eliminate "excuses" as the OP pointed out as to why certain classes "deserve" better ability in various roles, but it will probably also introduce some niches that are unique to each class. I am looking forward to seeing the changes.

[Elric-merren]

I am hoping that the number of roles a calling can perform is balanced compared to what others can fill/do, with no calling having a extreme advantage over others (such as how warriors had/have 4 tanking based souls, compared to both cleric as well as rogues having one to 1.5 tanking souls to use comparitively.) Alll callings within a role should be able to proform that role competitively with other callings, there would still be prercieved souls/callings that would proform better yet the differnce would/should not be extreme at all. Largely all roles hould be viable/worthwhile to bring in all levels as well as scale of content, weither that be 5 mans or 20 man instances or pvp. Bringing an additional dps or a support should largely be more of a choice of the player not mandated by bad scaling or such, as such a support should bring just as much benefit to a group as bringing another dps would.

The draw of a class/calling should be more about how it proforms their roles in a group via souls combos, and less about how well they proform those roles. Even if every tanking tanked completely equal in standings the method of how they tank would still define them, as well as actually determine how enjoyable it would be (as much as people hate the idea i love the idea of a damage redirection tank, as well as a evasion tank. The fact that both would not be the standard fare of mmos makes them appealing. and when i do find them they are very fun to play.). Each calling should also have method of dpsing both at ranged, and at melee ranged in a specialized soul, but the number of the souls that proform melee or ranged dps should vary from calling to calling, but giving the option for dpsing either at range or melee would allow more people to enjoy their favored style of playing more.

My biggest hope is to see support souls have their buffs, de-buffs, cc, and utilities they bring to a group both scale better (to the group size) as well as having a method of improving the power/effectiveness of their tools like how the other roles can improve their main focus in their role. Such a having a stat that they could stack like others can, or a talent that converts a stat of the character over to their tools improving them. All souls use things like cc, snares, debuffs, buffs, and such yet the support soul/role should be focued on improving these things making them vastly better than the other roles lesser versions.

Also i hope we see a rework of the cc, and dr system to being more indepth, and yet les aggressive. Right now the aggressive dr of cc, as well as the fact that cc (as well as support in many regards.) are relagated to under-geared or new player groups or raids in some regards.