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Introducing The Cleric!
Zarriya
Member UncommonPosts: 446
Introducing: The Cleric
It is the Frail Age of Terminus. After the Deicide War, interaction with the celestials is virtually unheard of. Thus, the Cleric can scarcely rely on their Pantheon directly. Instead, they must bind themselves to the ancient tomes of their Order; fading vestiges of remembrance from the celestials of ages past.
At its core, the Cleric is focused on healing himself and his allies - in this role he is unrivaled. In addition, the Cleric can dramatically improve the defenses of his allies through powerful signets, writs and ethereal armors. Though rare, a Cleric can perform feats of unusually great ability when granted a measure of his celestial’s influence - certain elder Clerics have been mistakenly revered as celestials themselves. Because of the Cleric’s searing devotion to celestial ways, he has evolved the ability to turn Undeath and other malignant beings.
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Group Role: Healer, Support - Armor: Heavy Plate Armor, Plate-Woven Raiment
- Weaponry: Clerics are trained in several types of 1h Blunt weaponry. Most have discarded the use of staves in order to carry their large tomes into battle, filled with powerful signets, writs and edicts.
- Ability Arsenal: The Cleric has mastered the restorative arts of their Order, allowing them to use powerful and diversified healing abilities. Therefore, Clerics excel in most forms of healing, including : Self, Target, Group and Raid-oriented abilities. Clerics will have a variety of healing types as well, including: Direct, Heal-Over-Time, and Heal-On-Hit. In addition to their powerful healing abilities, Clerics also excel in defensive support through ethereal armors and signet blessings.
- Iconic Ability:
[Manifest: Pillar Shield] - High level Clerics can manifest, place and even carry massive, luminous barriers of energy called Pillar Shields. These towering, ethereal shields create an immovable barrier that enemies cannot pass. If necessary, or advantageous, the Cleric can choose to sheath his weapon in order to carry the shield short distances.
Latest News
The Cleric Reveal
Posted date / 02.10.16
Hello all, Aradune here, and welcome to our next Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen newsletter! I’m really excited to start revealing information about Classes! It’s something we’ve been wanting to do for some time and I know the community has been quite curious as well.
Before you dig into what the Cleric is all about, I wanted to talk a bit about our philosophy and goals as it relates to all of Pantheon’s classes:
- We want our classes to be both traditional and iconic. We know a lot of you identify with certain classes and we don’t want you to choose a certain class only to discover that we’ve changed the classic role of that class into something different just for the sake of change.
- We then want to build on the traditional class and evolve the role in new and exciting ways without changing their core identity. A lot of this will be accomplished by adding flavor and distinctive abilities to those classes.
- Even with this innovation and evolution, class interdependence is still extremely important. In recent years many MMOs have steered away from those core roles. Allow me to quote from the FAQ: Pantheon does indeed use a class based system, and those classes do fulfill roles, especially in group and raid contexts. There will also be opportunities to focus each class on more specific and specialized roles, especially at higher levels. That said, because we feel it’s important that classes fulfill distinct roles, creating interdependence is vital to a fulfilling social and cooperative experience. If everyone is the same, this simply cannot be achieved. Likewise, if every class is absolutely unique, grouping can become overly complicated and, in some cases, certain classes could be less desirable to have in a group than others. To avoid this, Pantheon will use a ‘quaternity’ system consisting of tank, healer, DPS, and crowd-control.
- With our emphasis on truly engaging the world, making player vs. environment means more than only fighting NPCs. Most classes will also have abilities and spells that allow them to change the environment in a meaningful way. A great example would be the Druid. He will be able to influence the weather and by doing so truly affect that region of the world. Certain spells and abilities will work better or even only be possible during, say, a lightning storm.
- We want to see synergistic or sympathetic spells and abilities. In other words, certain powerful spells and abilities will only be possible if two or more different classes work together.
- We want to make sure hybrids are distinct yet still desired for a group. A Crusader, for example, will be able to adequately heal but not as well as a Cleric. That said, his other abilities, his diversity as a hybrid, will bring significant value to a group. In fact, all of our classes, core or hybrid will have unique roles and identity. Another example: the Ranger will be able to adequately fill a DPS role -- perhaps not the best, but his auxiliary abilities will bring to the table enough to make him desirable and, in some situations, even more desirable than a core class.
So, there you have it. I hope you find this as appealing and exciting as we do. We definitely have some interesting new twists and ideas to build upon the traditional iconic MMO classes. Read on about the Pantheon Cleric and let us know what you think!
Until next time,
Brad “Aradune Mithara” McQuaid
Chief Creative Officer & Gameplay & Tools Programmer
Comments
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It is too early to judge, obviously some of this needs to be seen in action to get a better idea of what issues may arise, but I am concerned about a couple of things.First off, it appears as if they chose the "class vs class" balance approach, or at least it seems that way due to the comments about the cleric being predominately the top healer and the mention of a Crusader being adequate, but not as good as the Cleric.
The reason this concerns me is that the players will immediately latch on to this and it will be the trump card to any occurrence where another class may find a niche (through emergent play). As we have seen in games over the years, such will likely be the cause of strife due to the position that "class xyz" is mentioned as being "the best" as the player points to the fact that they are not praised or picked as the best in that given situation. Basically, it already sets us up with complaints demanding buffs/nerfs in order to promote that given "best at".
This may be something that could be adjusted simply in the description noting a more generalized focus (ie strong healer in many healing focuses as opposed to implying them as "best at") without any hard lines where players can take such absolute positions. This would also allow you to adjust performance of classes without shattering a players expectations of some specific ranking. A cleric may still be predominately the best healer, it is just that you are telling the players such and so you don't put yourself in a corner if you have to make some changes, nor do you have to justify anything when the Cleric may not perform in a given situation as well as another.
The second concern is the hybrids utility as it concerns this hierarchy. A Crusader for example is said to not heal as well as a Cleric, but has many other hybrid abilities which bring significant value to the group. This is the danger area in a class vs class system. How much better does the cleric heal? Is it significant, a no contest evaluation over the Crusader or another class with healing abilities? If not, then the concern becomes the content and its requirements. That is, unless the content is designed to absolutely require a cleric, with no substitutions, then due to the versatility of a hybrid it can very easily result in the hybrid being the more logical choice due to the added functions that they provide. This then results in the primary classes being limited or only useful in specific situations where their role of "the best" is absolutely required.
If great care is not given, the result could be walking right into the "only the best class need apply" making hybrids simply the "filler" at the end of the group or the result of hybrids dominating most of the content with primaries being situational (raids or testing group content). Class vs Class comes with a lot of issues to attend to that can produce major issues in both game balance and community health. I am interested to see how VR handles this. Maybe they have an ace up their sleeve on how to deal with these issues.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I liked Vanguard's approach better. All healers were equally good, it was the flavor of their healing and the mechanics behind them that differed, along with different extraneous abilities and mechanics. People were just as happy to have a Bloodmage along as they would a Disciple or a Cleric or Shaman.
If they are insistent with this approach to classes, why can't they make the cleric great at killing undead, the druid at dot damage, the shaman at buffing and the crusader at tanking, while giving them equally strong healing abilities?
Their descriptions are for the most part pretty good. I think my biggest issue with the cleric description really sits on a single word (ie excel) as it implies a pecking order and people will latch on and complain if that description is not always met.
What I liked about original EQs descriptions is that they explained the general focus and even praised how good at a given role a certain class was, but didn't establish a class vs class pecking order (that was later and mainly due to urgency of the players).
At the end of the day, I personally don't want all the healing classes healing equally in all situations, class homogenization is bad form in balancing in my opinion. You don't balance classes to compete with each other, you balance them to a role and the content they will be of use to. There also means you don't make class abilities and focuses commonly redundant (ie several classes that can heal, heal equally well in similar situations) as this runs you into problems of them competing. Best to have all classes be their own puzzle piece that fits together with the rest to provide the complete view.
I am hoping the plate woven raiment winds up looking a bit more elaborate than flat out plate. I play a female character and whenever I play a plate class I do like a bit more embellishment. I know I know its there to protect me not make me look good. I am not asking for TERA like plate design, but I would like to look a little more elegant.
Loved the hybrid bit. Good balance should be something not OP vs something thats not LOL .
Druid is starting to sound a lot like FF series Geomancer. Wonder if it was the inspiration for this direction?
A little disappointed no list of race restrictions.
Looking forward to more Class reveals. Particularly whatever ends up being debuff master.
Discussion on the "possibility" of such is no negative. It is not a detriment to discuss the positive and negative aspects of given designs or focus. I would argue not discussing, not speculating, not contemplating on the their progression would be far more pointless and detrimental to this game.
- We want our classes to be both traditional and iconic. We know a lot of you identify with certain classes and we don’t want you to choose a certain class only to discover that we’ve changed the classic role of that class into something different just for the sake of change.
- We then want to build on the traditional class and evolve the role in new and exciting ways without changing their core identity. A lot of this will be accomplished by adding flavor and distinctive abilities to those classes.
*Droll*. They still target me as a player. They really do. Hell yeah. Finally a game that at least promises to cater to me and not the millions of "i want NOW!" - kids.MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
That is what iconic means. Traditional classes filling traditional roles.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
There was nothing homogenized about the healing classes in Vanguard. While all were perfectly functional as healers, they all played very, very differently. People hail FFXI as the epitome of class design, I hail Vanguard.
The only systems I think are ideal are those that did not cater to balance in classes, but sought class designs to the content. AD&D was not concerned about tit for tat class balancing, it was only concerned that each class met a given usefulness in play. This is what I think games should focus on rather than the idea that all classes should be equal in ability or balanced to a specific idea of balance between each other. That is what leads to homogenization.
You can't control people being left out without making everyone exactly the same. In order to give meaning to variation in classes, you have to have situations where one will excel over the other at times, that is what gives depth to game play. The key is to make sure there is enough content in the game for all classes shine in. If there is enough and it is varied throughout, then there will always be options for people. Not only that, but without situations where a class may be less than ideal, there is no urgency or goal to find ways to make it work (ie emergent play).
I think if EQ were designed by today's standards, many of the emergent features that came about through EQ's player would have never existed. There needs to be winners and losers as it concerns being ideal to content or there is no point, it just becomes a social exercise in catering to insecurities.
Thing is, they might as well be the same class, they achieve the very same result. It is just smoke and mirrors with no real point. Where is the choice and consequence in the class selection? Where do you say... hmm... this healer can do well in this situation, but not this one, or against these types, but not those. That brings about actual game play where the player deals with their strengths and weakness in play. Making them all heal the same kills game play and panders to the whole "class envy" issue.
I didn't say "leaving people out of content", I said "situations where one will excel over the other at times". This means that one healer might do exceptionally well in one case, but poor in another which may require reliance on another class to shore up the differences. If you design content in a marbling style of design (ie content changes within itself making the ideal become less than in phases) then there will never be the "perfect" class for every situation, even in some group environments there will be changes in content as the group moves through.
This is how you create dynamic and challenging game play where no class is perfect and each class must deal with their short comings as they encounter them, causing more reliance on other classes, making the skill of being able to adapt to a situation on the fly coveted, and promoting emergent play.
Homogenization needs to stop. Class need to be special, and they need to have a best this best that.
Class Balance needs to be like EQ...Where everyone did not try the same thing... you did what your group could do..... For example... No Cleric? Then find an outdoor camp, use a druid. No Tank, well find a more open area and kite.....
Want to delve deep in the dungeon... well make the balanced group and do that....
Basically class balance needs to be non-existent ... The game world needs to support multiple balancing options...
Could you do a quick summary my argument so that I can see if you understand what I am saying? Your points aren't entirely in conflict with mine.
The original EQ descriptions were generalized in their focus. They did not place a hierarchy of class ability, they simply stated the strengths of focus various classes have. You could infer from a description that the class was a really good healer or defensive class, etc..., but you could not establish which was best over another as this was not the point.
My discussion was that by establishing a hierarchy, you start players off with class wars and envy. So, if a druid for instance ends up doing better in a healing situation with another class over a cleric, the cleric then throws a tantrum proclaiming themselves the "best healer" and that the druid healing better in a given situation should be nerfed. This kills all forms of emergent play declaring that any class that falls outside of that dictated hierarchy is "not playing the game right and should be corrected!". This also bolsters the social behavior that accompanies these games with players building their groups based on the preordained "best of" book of classes and telling all others they are not worthy.
My second point was the balance between hybrids and primary classes. Since as I said they "appear" to be heading down the road of class hierarchy and class vs class balance, then a hybrid vs a primary is a very important consideration as it was one of the largest problems with power balance in EQ.
That is, once people started to try and "force" rigid roles in EQ, hybrids began to complain about being "useful" and so you ended up with many hybrids doing comparable to the primary classes AND also having numerous utility which made them the perfect choice for all content that the class could handle, which even included some raid encounters. Why take a cleric for instance if another class can heal close to them, but comes with numerous other utilities?
This isn't about making classes the same, it is about recognizing key issues that come up with classes. Sure, class balance should not be the focus, but class usefulness should. If the content does not establish a need for a given class, then the one with the bigger bag of tricks will always be the best selection.