I am currently a 185 C3 Wiz, C2 Thaum, C1 Necro. I fluctuate between the top 50 and top 75 in the adventure journal- not the best, not the worst, just have experienced enough to feel the feedback could be worth something. Throughout my journey I have noticed more than a few things that need be addressed but will try to omit the opinions that have been voiced previously by other players. I will, however, re-voice that which I feel needs genuine attention-- whether that has been stated once before or a hundred times over.
I will work my way back from the end and start with class feedback and then on to more general feedback on overall progression and gameplay.
NECROMANCER
Shoggathhuhwhat? The Necronomicon proves to be near useless as the limited few cards you’re able to slot inside all result in Shoggath having the same AI and appearance. I understand this unique creature has replaced the mish-mash of corpses that take the shape of your card but I strongly feel it was a poor decision and was best left as it was. Putting in a Mineloader or an Archon makes no difference save for a few minimal stat adjustments. Your Shoggath will not change appearances, will not gain new and exciting abilities, and will not even slightly alter its AI to prefer one attack type over another (melee or breath attack). In short-- your card type does not appear to really matter. At all. A few extra HP here, very little attack bonus over there, whatever-- the stat differences are so small in fact that you won’t notice the difference and certainly nobody else ever will either. What’s worse is that a Sorc’s Temple Shooter will vastly outshine your Shoggath in every way despite being an earlier rank election and a fellow summoner class. But it’s not just Temple Shooter… I’d venture to say every single available summon that a Sorc can card into will outshine Shoggath’s plain melee hit and small in-line aoe. Someone may correct me if they like. I’m neither the best nor the worst and make no claims at knowing everything lol
Skeletons and more skeletons. Skeletons are deathly afraid of NPC safety circles. This is likely tied to a classification bug (scared of NPCs, aggro for a second on zone change and PK, turn into permanent hostile enemies if cutting to some cinematics etc etc) but sucks either way for us right now. If you are going through a narrow corridor with some random NPC standing beside the path then you can kiss your skeletons goodbye as they will not progress past the NPC with you but instead run away at 500 miles per hour, requiring you to change zones to get more skeletons because… dun dun dunnnnn summoning skeletons will not overwrite existing skeletons. This is terrible for more than one reason. Firstly, it means you cannot replace errant skeletons who have wandered away to do their own thing but must instead manually go and complete their task for them so that you may be within range for them to change back to “follow” mode. Secondly, if you have several skeletons who are down to one or two hits worth of HP you are unable to summon new ones but must instead roll out with a crew that will die instantly and then summon them (if you’re lucky all will die and be able to be summoned again, if you’re unlucky you will have wasted your cooldown to summon only one skeleton and have to wait until your cooldown is refreshed and others have died). There are so many reasons this is inadequate but one major factor should be consistency. Summoning Shoggath for instance replaces your existing one with a fresh one. Skeletons should follow suite and surviving skeletons should crumble to the ground as new ones are summoned in their place.
Gather corpse and dissenter need to be re-evaluated for the new corpse system. As it stands they are a waste of skill points. You only get 15 skill points per rank, why waste several of this precious commodity just to replace a few consumable pots? Don’t get me wrong, the corpse pots need to stay, nobody ever reported at having been in love with the old system and having to collect tons of corpses for hours just to blow through them all in a few minutes. But these skills need to be adjusted around the existence of these consumables so that the skill remains a viable selection.
The next two issues with Necromancer can go hand-in-hand. Firstly, there isn’t representation of remaining corpses on the GUI and must instead be referenced by pulling up the Necronomicon and noting the value there. This should be treated like a mana bar with constant visual aide so the player is always aware of their remaining corpses when they need to know. The second issue is made worse by the previous. If a Necromancer ability is cast and the corpse total is insufficient to cast the spell then the spell goes on cooldown without being cast and the error message “The amount is low” appearing. The amount of corpses would have been sufficient had I known I was low in the heat of battle, but, also the spell should be checking the corpse value prior to casting. Currently it is: Do you have enough mana? Yes?->Cast spell->Wait, do you have enough corpses? No?->Too bad, we put it on cooldown anyway. This needs to be changed to the obvious: Do you have enough mana? Yes? Do you have enough corpses? No?->Oops, we can’t let you cast that, you need more materials, try again soon! The method as it is would be no different than omitting a mana-check for your own class skill and letting you put it on cooldown without having actually cast it.
Summons don’t appear to be able to be buffed with party skills. I may be wrong here, but, as a Thaum I have buffed a few Bokors before and they have reported that their zombies nearly double in dps as a result. This is from more than a few Bokors as I’ve always been sure to ask, just in case, to be sure. With Necromancer… nope. Zip. Nadda. Zilch. Granted, these are summoned based off of your INT stat, and were it up to me I would have gladly taken ThaumC3, but since this beta would not allow both ThaumC3 + Necro (due to rank limitations and level restrictions), I had to settle for ThaumC2 and Necro. With C3 Thaum the INT buff would scale nicely and buff Necro summons in that sense. But the complaint comes from the fact that nothing appears to increase any of the Necro summon’s dps post summoning. No party buffs, no self buffs, nothing save for your INT value. Needless to say I was a little disappointed that I was able to buff the Bokor’s mindless army but do nothing for my own henchmen.
Thaumaturge
Thaum has been a love hate relationship the entire ride. I will be going C3 Thaum next time, however, for several reasons… but that doesn’t mean that they can also escape my criticisms. At no point in the game have I heard anyone call out for needing a Thaum. This is early game and the flat bonuses provided by them are impressive-- the bonuses being flat, though, will mean that later on they will gradually lose effectiveness. So early game, the here and now, is when their bonuses will shine the brightest. And even still nobody will specifically need you. Aside from the buffs, if the rest of a party is already highly efficient, then yeah you can swell enemies for double drops and 2x exp. If the party is struggling though you will only add to their woes when enemies survive and revert status. Working with a team can require communication, too, as “fap hands” take up 2 buff slots for the party, with the big head later taking up a third. 3/5 of a party’s available buffs may be taken up by you… and that’s not including Transpose.
Ohhhh Transpose. You are a blessing. A ray of hope. You let me face tank anything and everything at the cost of damage, but, hey, that’s okay, because right now I’m here for the team. I’m here to let them shine brighter, I’m here to concentrate on keeping things in constant buff/debuff statuses. But… wait what? I died? Oh, thank you random Fire Enchant from our pyro, you ate Transpose. Now instead of face tanking (since my skills for some reason require I be nearly on top of the enemy to hit them) I’m respawning. This is more of a complaint on the buff re-writing system itself more than anything. I don’t feel that your own “self buffs” should ever be overwritten. You cast them for a reason. Additional buffs, sure, you can count those toward being eaten by someone else’s rebuffs, but your own? Come on. If I give myself a buff, like transpose, or even a party buff like swell left hand, then those specific buffs, for myself, should not be overwritten by someone else. The few spots I have left can be bounced around but my own personal casts should never be wiped clean by someone else. Even after properly communicating to a team this can happen mistakenly. More than once I’ve been in the fray and taking damage so that I can be close enough to do my thing when suddenly a kind teammate casts safety zone on me, noting that I had been taking a few hits. Thank you sir, now I can’t step out of this bubble because I will be one shot, safety zone ate a buff slot and, with Transpose being the oldest buff and thusly wiped, I have no other option but to sit here and pray while my cooldowns tick.
Buffs being overwritten… all that being said though, yeah, I don’t feel that your own buffs should be allowed to be overwritten and that only additional buffs by other players should be the ones to go. This will still require communication between teammates but won’t result in your favorite buff being replaced by 4 sorc buffs from a cat. Yes, Daino exists, can still be scrolled via simony, and should probably be sought after so as to prevent anything from ever being overwritten. But it isn’t a perfect world and I’ve neither the willpower nor the silver to be the only person going out buying hundreds of Daino scrolls just to be the only one saving a pug from overwrites in the absence of a Krivis. If my buffs get overwritten on them, by them, then fine, but my own buffs I gave myself shouldn’t be killed by anyone else.
Transpose though likely shouldn’t heal… while I strongly dislike having to heal to full every time… I agree it should be that way. Well… sort of. It has taken me a long time of working around it to appreciate that. I enjoy living through a boss fight but it shouldn’t come without risk or cost. It should require timing, teamwork, and maybe even a few additional skill points for duration. If the skill healed you to full every time then could you imagine their faces when you are nearly dead but simply re-pop your Transpose back to massive full HP again? Wouldn’t work out well and the complaints would explode onto the scene come pvp. But what could be in place instead is treating your HP as a percentage and filling the appropriate amount. Example, you’re a Thaum with base 10k hp, but are at half health. If you transpose then you should be “filled” to the new half health amount. If you are blinking red with 1% health then after transposing your hp should increase but only to the new 1% mark. If that makes sense. Currently all Transpose does is increase your Max HP with an empty glass; the container is bigger but what’s inside it remains the same.
C3 Wizard
As for Wizard C3… I have no real complaints. I knew going in that I would have to work around limited skills for the payoff. I feel it’s still worth it. I missed out on a lot of other great skills for it. Countless ticks of damage delivery, near irreplaceable buffs and debuffs of other classes that make them what they are (linker, you beast you, I will miss you every night) but I feel the payoff is worth it in the end. Whatever class you end up with come release, and when you’re sitting at lv600 and looking around, will you be glad you had a 50% damage increase on all your new and strongest skills? Or will you still miss the effectiveness of plopping a few fireballs and camping spawns? Only time will tell. For me it was the right decision. Although I do feel that missing out on all kinds of delivery options for the damage has hurt. It’s not the base numbers I’m concerned with but how well the skills will scale and some missed skills will still deal quite a bit with late-game INT values and possible item combinations. C3 Wiz, don’t regret it, and it was as I expected with the trade offs.
General feedback?
Damage calculations, Arde, and You. Overall between a lot of skills though I feel there needs to be more… balance. Multi hit skills are the bread winners, thus far, and the more hits you have the more bread you win. This lends itself to how damage is calculated currently and how stacking additional damage or hits pays off. Arde Dagger being a great early source of additional damage that can shine from lv75 all the way to 200. I feel this is horribly wrong. Someone in some back office is cackling with glee at sneaking this into the core mechanics that we all play with. I feel, and you can hate me if you like, that base damages need to be increased and then spread out over the hits instead of counted on a per-hit-basis. If a skill hits 1 time for 20k, but another skill hits 20 times for 1k, in the end they get the same damage right? Except that the dot aoe requires positioning the enemy and the one hit likely has some condition or cast time to deal with. Suddenly though when you begin to consider additional damage buffs, including elemental damages from Arde or the likes, things go into a hellish tailspin. Your 1 hit skill for 20k gains 1k worth of additional damages and is now 21k, but your 20 hit skill gets that same 1k worth of damage on every single hit so with a few items or buffs your less useful skill, which is more situational and positioning dependent, instead becomes way more effective and gets doubled in total damage dealt. All of this with a cooldown that is assuredly lower than your one-hit-wonder.
I don’t know the solution for that to be honest. I just know that it doesn’t feel right.
Why is the best actually the best? AKA lack of variety. I know also there will always be a “best” item, or “best” setup, and that eventually more unique item/stat/skill builds will die out as metas are developed. I feel though that, in addition to changing the base method that additional damages are calculated, that there needs to be a much, much, much larger pool of viable equipment options to choose from.
As a Wizard I favor Rods. Their Matk rises with every successful swing to an anvil and they only take one hand allowing us our other for additional damage or defensive means. Cool, makes sense, and a rod is likely lower in total Matk than a staff of its level as it only takes one hand and requires off-handing for additional damages or defenses to compensate. Logical. But out of the rods available thus far there is nothing that stands out and really screams “ME, ME, I can make your unique build WORK!” There are other items for classes that give them some actual options but there is no such rod, or even really staff for that matter. And, no, I’m not counting the black staff with +phys or the +1 cryo skills. I mean… there are no real truly unique items for the class. Temere? 1% debuff that doesn’t proc on bosses, and likely shafts your team anyway as you’re likely to be one of the few reliant on Matk. Ignition? Burn for a bit, but does that make it really shine? I am sure it’s the same with nearly every class though. Item stats are dull. This is even considering the items we don’t have access to but can only dream about on Tosbase. There is not enough variety to really pick from and in the end you’re just aiming for the higher numbers. Bottom line is that I feel (so far) there are very few cut-and-dry options. Because they simply are the “best” and that we need more options to choose from at all stages in the game, whether it is early mid or late. Especially later when the grind is more real and you’re stuck in these brackets for a much longer time.
A Thaum Nec shouldn’t have to pick Temere or Ignition simply because no other rod around our level has better attack, when they’re all just generic. Where are the bows that have a chance to summon a pack of wolves on hit? Where are the swords that cast a whirlwind aoe every so often? Where are the rods and staffs that crack the ground and cause eruptions as you yell “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” We have a toy hammer with a unique effect. We have a hammer that can make sadhu SPR builds more effective. A few classes have 1-2+ skills on them. Can you name 10 items that a lvl200 would find viable that also have unique traits? Why should a couple classes have fun options even sub200 when not all classes are afforded the same variety? I mean yeah it’s beta and yeah it’s early levels… but, even then, why are there a few for some while all the other classes are left with just resorting to the highest Patk/Matk values on an item?
In closing
I don’t want to come off as overly negative. There is far more that I love about the game than what I dislike. But stating all the things that I feel are right won’t help as much as pointing out a few that I feel are wrong. These are some of the things that really stood out to me, and some general feedback from my experiences. Before I end this book though… yeah, please, less bosses early on. 50 bosses in a row with sprite swaps isn’t fun and made me cringe in the early game. Some quests resulting in boss after boss after boss without so much as a second to breathe. Throwing in a lot of bosses makes each one less special-- I’d much rather have a handful of bosses and make each one memorable than try and fight them at every turn. It should be something exciting, something challenging, not just another time-sink where your gimped early class elections result in running around in circles auto attacking quest after quest after quest.
