What class would you say has the best survivability? solo questing, resource gathering, and pvp? I was leading towards rolling a assassin for my first character hoping it would be a pretty good leveling and anti gank character.
i can't honestly answer this yet considering there's so many untested new things in the new build.. but i am confident you can pretty much solo any class in AoC.. regardless of PvE or PvP.
You have stated that the ConQ has the best soldier melee damage, while the assassin does more damage.By how much? 10%? 50%? 100%? If you could do something like that for all the melee classes it would help me see the overall damage differences between the melee classes (Ranger too if you have it!). Too bad you haven't played the Bear Shaman, it would be interesting to see where their DPS falls in the list.
welp as i've said anything I say on this part can be null and void after the new changes in the beta client. so many significant changes that we al had our characters wiped !
the assasin still trumps any mellee damage out put even compared to teh rangers best bow combo.
as for percentages? I couldn't tell you .. the only answers we ever got when asking a dev and when one DID reply was this :
BEFORE APRIL 14th Build
as far as DPS went in the Mellee classes :
-Assasin
-Barbarian
-ranger
-conqueror
-Dark Templar
-Guardian
Demonologist was the highest DPS for casters stated by devs in the gen beta forums. but an Assasin was still higher. Originally Posted by Jayde
Assassins beat Demos in PvE DPS from everything I have ever seen and tested with.
I am particularly interested in a Tempest of Set -- is there any way you could bribe an active ToS to tell a little bit more about the class? There seems to be the least interest/information available on them. I would like to know more about their skills, and hear some personal experiences in both pve and pvp.
My guildie played a tempest of set all the way to 80 and I've never had an issue with them ..
I've heard that they were awesome as the only healer in a dungeon and they were able to maintain a steady flow of heals and added dps thru out teh entire dungeon with minimal downtime.
Is the Herald of Xotli in trouble as a class? We have heard almost nothing about it and there seems to be feedback in here that you get 20sec of being uber and then 1m40 of being weak and waiting for demon form again.
it's a unique clas for sure.. weilding 2 handed weapons and wearing casters robes.. but i've seen one at leve l60 before the last wipe. and I've also listened in global chat about how some found it difficult to level. so I guess that's something that may take some patience and skill to get to a good level.
How is the conquerer as a supporter? Is it possible to play him mainly as a supporter, or are there other characters better suited for it?
I personally believe that the conQueror is one of the best support tanks I've had the pleasure of grouping with. may not have the armor rating of a DT.. but I love thier auras and no question about thier Dps...they have alot of feats that are specialized for group combat.
For the assassin how do the lotus tree and unholy tree compare to eachother, as in how does it really alter the way you fight, if at all?
lotus tree is mostly passive and utility abilities with some CC. Corruption tree is highly aggresive and focuses on debuffs and Damage over time. none of the skills gained in the corruption tree feats are passive and need to be clicked. as of last build
Since it seems PoM was your main, can you give comparison between PoM and other games healers if you played them extensively? (holy priest in WoW, cleric in EQ etc)
First of all, healing doesn't work the same in AoC as in other games. It's mostly HoTs. There is no "oh shit" button. The best job you can do is keep your hots up at all times and hope your team is smart enough to stay close to you so everyone can benefit (otherwise you waste mana).
The luck of an oh shit button means that teams can't go over their heads without expecting to die. A good healer can't keep the team together if the rest of the members can't think for themselves (mainly by pulling from all over the place, attacking before the designated main tanks etc.)
Some differences with WoW priest for example (my former WoW guild was kind enough to allow my priest to get the legendary staff and still going strong as we speak). in WoW you watch bars. Here once you have your HoTs up, you're free to do anything you feel like it's best for the team. You have plenty of time to look around and if you bind the HoT to a key, you can streamline it by twitch updating every few seconds. Most of the time was spend adjusting position and doing other stuff, healing was easy to maintain without much thought besides cone positioning.
Main job of a PoM is healing in a group, secondary crowd control, third is damage. The more people he heals, the bigger the damage he deals. However usually the damage dealers were a good deal better than me and the teams were not overly careful, so I was refraining from spending mana all over the place. So it was usually healing and CC, with damage from xbow.
The other two priests are more offensive. ToS gets mana the more caster damage he deals, thus he can afford to worry a bit less about getting drained. Same with BS, dealing damage which raised his healing spell power.
Now, the same spec I used for grouping, I used for PvP as well. I didn't find another level 80 PoM to fight (at least not online at the same time). I did fight with ToS and BM 1 vs 1. The experience however as you can imagine was made obsolete by the new patch.
ToS had a clear advantage over PoM, I was using healing/CC/damage spells on him, he was using damage on me and gaining mana by them, while I was draining myself. A mana pot kept us on an equal ground, although ToS had the upper edge again (2 vs 1 odds).
BS against PoM was a never ending fight. I didn't sit still to be hit by his very damaging combos. I was also not able to outdamage his heals. We had fights dragging for over 30 mins.
So the main difference with healers from other games is that you're not stuck playing the 'fill the bar' game. Whether people will like this more active role with the sacrifice of being unable to recover team from a real bad situation remains to be seen.
*** Originally posted by AyameArai ***
Quote:
Originally Posted by AyameArai
So I heard from Shadowgrail that there are a lot of people who are curious about Herald of Xotli as a class, so I'm here to answer questions about the class based on my experience of leveling HoX to 71 prior to wipe and nearly 30 (work in progress) now post wipe. As the topic itself had a few questions I think it will be best to start by answering those:
HoX? How does the HoX compare as a caster to the other two types?
Herald of Xotli I would say is entirely different game from the two other caster types. Main difference of the HoX is that Herald is more or less a melee class mixed with supportive / offensive melee range spells which makes HoX more of a unique version of a battlemage in cloth armor mixed with a bit of a demonic touch.
While the idea of a melee mage in cloth armor might sound weird, HoX actually plays quite well. This has been achieved by giving HoX some buffs that offset the lack of armor rating a bit, by boosting the raw defensive rating but also by offering a buff that absorbs a certain amount of damage before HoX starts to take damage from their own health pool - in addition to the buffs the HoX comes with quite a decent damage output.
As for HoX gameplay, personally I would see that HoX at the start is 90% melee, 10% spells. Later on I would say HoX is 70% melee, 30% magic but this depends on entirely how you choose your feats as HoX - as you could go with heavy melee focus and ignore the casting mostly or put even more heavier focus on magic.
I have one request, is there any way you could ask/persuade a Mage player to come in here and give us some info on them? i know people have tons of questions regarding them, but i really just want to know the differences between them all (mainly Necro, Demonologist, and HoX). I would really just like to know which way to lean, i know it depends on my playstyle, so on that note i would say brutal/evil for me..
Herald of Xotli is definitely both brutal and evil. As a faithful servant of demon-god Xotli your primary weapon is a two handed sword you wield and the fiery magic to scorch the flesh of your enemies. Also on occasions you can morph in to a demonic form which to some degree reminds me of Lovecraftian design.
That being said, HoX combines melee and fire in majority of their combos be it from striking your sword to the ground and summoning pillar of infernal fire to burn your enemies or covering your sword in flames and pulling off a sword combo which seems almost as if powered by inhuman forces.
On the fatality side HoX approaches the more brutal side of the game, fatalities include things such as setting your enemy on fire and watch him/her scream until the opponent dies or simply torturing your enemy with flames and preparing your 2-handed sword for a strike while watching your enemy scream in agony and then finally ending it with chopping their head off... Or more efficiently punching through the opponents chest and ripping their heart out, only to proceed to eat it yourself in order to gain a minor heal.
So if that combined with melee mage sounded good, then HoX could be worth a look.
Is the Herald of Xotli in trouble as a class? We have heard almost nothing about it and there seems to be feedback in here that you get 20sec of being uber and then 1m40 of being weak and waiting for demon form again. Any views on this?
Herald of Xotli is often very much underestimated and people judge the class (I did as well in the start) based on the gameplay on first, say 15 levels or so or in some cases for earlier.
As expected, you don't get all the good stuff from the start which leaves HoX as a melee class in a cloth armor. For new players to HoX this means a very rocky start as levels 1-10 can be quite difficult - depending on how well you adjust to the role of the class. The more levels you gain, the more powerful you become and HoX I would say is one of those classes that keeps constantly improving a lot. While some other classes might already play much easier from the start and steadily progress along.
After level 10 the class gets considerably better and at level 17 HoX is finally starting to have a portion of the classes true power. Even though I must say that HoX is a class that requires quick thinking in combat, bit of pre-planning and really paying attention to what your abilities do.
As for the demon form, the abilitity currently lasts 25 seconds without feats and with feats you are able to increase the duration slightly / reduce the recast time - as well as unlock a more powerful demon form "Avatar of Xotli" which is on separate timer.
As for the demon form itself, currently I would say that it is something you would want to save up for those situations when you have a larger encounter ahead that you couldn't normally take or when there is a boss encounter ahead - rather than something to use instantly when it is up.
I would definitely like more information on the herald of xotli and the dark templar playstyles if any of you guys are testing those. The herald in particular interests me the most.
As for the playstyle of Herald of Xotli, I would say you need to be somewhat calculative of what you do and have a bit of pre-planning on the each situation.
For example, check the area for possible patrols, make sure you got some room to escape if the pull goes badly, never try to engage a huge bunch of mobs without a plan B or for that matter a plan A as simply mindless rushing will end up in a trip to resurrection point and fast.
As said HoX is a melee mage who wears cloth armor, now while you have a buff to increase your defensive rating and a buff to absorb a portion of damage - you will still take a lot of damage and fast if you take on multiple mobs.
In those cases you need to be able to make decisions fast, be it from debuffing the mobs, killing portion of them and rooting the rest / running or simply positioning them properly and unleashing some raw power to strike them all down before you die. Also as a HoX potions are your friends, they can save your life on very tough situations.
Also as a HoX you always need to keep an eye out on your damage absorbtion spell, as the spell itself has only 5 minute duration you will need to refresh it often. However, a lot of people simply just forget about it and start to complain how HoX is weak and ends up dead so fast.
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That being said, as you might have noticed I've definitely found my class and absolutely love Herald of Xotli. As the class offers interesting concept, rewarding gameplay and quite a few feats that have huge effect on your gameplay from things such as improved demon form, rather limited self resurrection, various new spells / combos or simply just changes to your existing spells / combos that change the way your character can be player.
Herald of Xotli can definitely offer fun and it is a nice class choice. However, I must say that if you prefer running to the battle and just hack & slash your enemies to bits - then HoX might not be the correct choice for you. Instead if you prefer to think and are able to react quick to the situations in battle and like a little challenge once in a while, then HoX could be worth a look.
As for the HoX in groups, I would say that role of HoX is to mainly do dps and secondarily offer some debuffs and buffs as well. Group mobs tend to hit hard, and combined with cloth armor and not-so-high amount of hp on Heralds you will need to be careful about your aggro and learn your limits.
I hope that answered even a slight portion of questions about Herald of Xotli as a class, but if you can think of any other questions please do post them and I'll try to take a look at this topic once in a while to answer any if I can (PvP related questions I can't answer for now at least, since I play on PvE).
If you could elaborate a bit on the spells, just generally speaking.
Heralds get a defense and damage absorb buff, makes sense since they are cloth melee class. But are there any group buffs available? And for the offensive spells do they get anything like health or stamina drains or is it mostly debuffs to fire/melee and aoe/dd fire damage?
I'm seeing it as sort of akin to the templar in shadowbane just without the platemail obviously.
The damage absorbing buff is a group buff. Apart from that the other stuff are self buffs, which include things such as the defense buff I mentioned earlier, resist buff, pulsing damage shield around the herald and some more.
On the debuff / crowd control side heralds have some debuffs such as melee mitigation debuff/damage debuff for mobs attacks, instant cast point blank range root spell...
In addition there are fancy things such as Hellstep, which allows you to charge at your opponent at incredible speed and from feats you can unlock things such as mana to stamina conversion spell, a spell that extends the duration of your next demon form, melee procs that increase your next offensive spell cast or another proc to make it free cast etc.
Well theres a whole lot more of stuff really, but that should give some sort of picture I hope. As for the combos, a lot of HoX combos include some additional components either by default or with feats - which can debuff mobs, set them on fire for dot damage, mana burn them (or with a feat this turns into a mana leech/drain) or have some other additional effects.
In general theres a lot of stuff really which depends on how you select your feats in addition to the regular things you get as a HoX.
Are there 5 levels of Conqueror group run speed aura? Are there any known items that can buff that run speed (like bard drums or things)?
will have to ask a conqueror in-game about feats for run speed. but there's an aura that regens stamina so well that you almost can run at sprint speed continously if you used a super sized stamina potion.
Does the Run Speed buff work in Dungeons? Does Combat disable it?
it's pretty hard to sprint and fight simultaeneously.. since you have to have really really large hands just to reach all your hotkeys !
Playing other games the most important aspects for a meelee class for me are:
1) How do they reach the enemy (charge, stealth, teleport, pull enemy to yourself, speed boost)?
all classes.. including Mellee classes have multiple ways of reaching the enemy. by later levels most soldiers have a sort of Charge ability in one way or another. as wel as throwing weapons, and the use of crossbows by level 50.
2) How do they keep the enemy in meelee range (snares, etc?)?
some have snares , yes.
3) What options do they have to get out of snares?
active blocking can sometimes prevent this.. snares don't last for too long but probably long enough to really harm you if you're fighting a high DPS class. resistances, and items with immunity to certain effects found in rings and necklaces, can also do this.
I've tested the barbarian to 50 , as I said before on the previous answers,
There are two seperate feat trees for barbarians :
Berserker ( 2H weapons ) = CC's thru knockbacks, and Stuns lots of passive abilities. this feat tree also opens up to increased AoE abilities.
Reaver Dual weild specialist feat tree. highly aggresive, higher over-all DPS in this tree. no passive abilities ( meaning you need to click the abilities in this tree ) lots of debuffs and Damage Over Time.
barbarian is second only to the assasin in mellee DPS. limited only to light armor ( leather) and can use Bows.
