Specialization (a.k.a. sub-classes)

[nazgulking]

Hi there folks!
This suggestion have been delivered by some people, sometimes in a blurry fashion.
I have tought of it a bit and I would like to share my thoughts with you all.
We all know the abilities points will expire at some point, I think at level 60 or so we will have spent all our points, and I think we have to adress this problem as soon as possible.

I suggest at level 50 we have the opportunity to choose a specialization class.
Every class will have two sub-classes to choose from, one attack-oriented and one defensive-oriented.
Here are the sublclasses I have thought of:

Bear:

- Berserk - Attack-oriented, looses Iron Blood and taunt and gains:

Speed: The Berserk will charge into war doing damage on impact on any enemy during the spell duration, with a possibility to send flying the enemies (same as stomp).

Berserk: Every successful attack during the duration of the spell adds an additional bonus to damage.

Passive ability: Gains additional dmg and evade while wearing 2h weapons.


- Knight - Defensive-oriented, looses the restore and vengeful slash and gains:

Retaliation: All the damage taken from the allies are conveyed to the knight, when a certain amount of damage have been accumulated, a nova starting from the bear will damage all enemies around him.

Resurrection: For 1 time only a knight can resurrect on his own. After he needs to respawn (or beign revived by a enchantress) to reuse this skill again.

Passive ability: Gains armour and h/s while weaing 1h weapons and shield.


Enchantress:

- Cleric - Defensive-oriented, looses ice storm and frost-bite and gains:

Magic intervention: All allies are invulnerable to damage, apart from the caster, for a certain amount of time; if the caster dies all allies are vulnerable again; during this magic the cleric armour is lowered. Only the allies around the cleric, on the moment of casting the spell, gain the invulnerability buff.

Martial strike: With a special attack the enemies are stunned in place

Passive ability: Armour requirement for STR items are lowered and INT boosts while weaing 1h weapons and shield.


- Druid - Attack-oriented , looses drain life and magic shield and gains:

Shapeshift: Change form into a forest animal, gains boost into damage and speed.

Summon forest friend: Will summon a friend of the forest that will aid you and your allies in battle (If you shapeshift and summon at the same time, your summon dmg will drop) possibly a squirrel.

Passive ability: H/S boosts and DEX while wearing daggers, staves ans hand-to-and weapons.


Bird:

- Ranger Defence-oriented , looses Restore and meditation and gains:

Follow trails: Debuff that disbales invisibility and lower dodge.

Herbs of the forest: Heals ranger to half is health instantly and gives a small bonus to health to allies, and himself, for a duration of time (active only if allies are injured at the time of casting)

Passive ability: H/S boosts and dodge while wearing 2h bows and crossbows.


- Assassin Attack-oriented looses evade and thorn root and gains:

Invisibility: While active none can target you - no one can see you; you have a dodge boost during the spell duration and when you attack you gain an additional dmg to your attack disabling the invisibility effect; if successfully attacked during the duration of the spell with an AOE spell, your invisibility will wear off.

Poison: AOE spell that drains enemies healt very fast, does not disable invisibility.

Passive ability: Dodge and health boosts while wearing shiled and dagger or talon.


These classes will have certain abilities that retain using any kind of weapon, but if they use specific weapon (close to the role they assume), they will get some more bonuses.
The way to 100 will be full-filled by perks - which I have already adressed in another post.

Feel free to contibute and add any idea to this suggestion.

Suggestion delivered.

P.S. Sorry for the long post

[Necrobane]

Great idea, never thought of loosing an ability to make room for others. Great suggestion!

[Otukura]

When I first started reading this... didn't like it, but by the time I reached the end, I loved it...

The only thing that I would change is the option to not go into any of the subclasses, and I'd personally like to be able to switch between them, although changing every other run might be.... idk..

[giayuan]

This is by far one of the best ideas ive read on the topic for developement/what to do with skills in the future! :D hope this gets implemented!! My only concern is mages losing ice.. this means their combo will be ruined, maybe some other skill?

EDIT: now that i think of it, those 2 skills are the only ones that can be taken away LOL. unless buffs are taken away.. but for all the other games, clerics are the buffers -_-

[morph4290]

Sub classes would be a nice addition. I believe to keep them balanced we should have to spend plat to respec out of them. Sub-classes shouldn't be something we can switch out on the fly or even between matches, they need to have some permanency.

[nazgulking]

Thanks for the appreciation :) I'll address some of your feedback tonight :)

[nazgulking]

Ok guys here I am :)
Thanks for the good feedback and I will answer your concerns:
@ giayuan: loosing the abilities is a key process into specialization IMHO - you start from a generical class (warrior, archer, mage) and you have to loose something to gain something else. The suggestion to loose the ice branch is not written into the stone :) It's just an idea, so maybe other spells may be better suitable for the task, but I think you have to loose something important to gain something more important. This means that other combos may be performed with the new skills, both self-combo and duo-combo.
@Otukura: I agree with morph on the sub-class respec. It would highly imbalanced if you could switch freely from one subclass to another. If you respec you still can change your sublcass, but, like attributes points, must be a well thought of idea.

Keep the feedback flow continue :)

P.S. I have changed some typos and not-so-clear abilities dynamics.

[Israr]

Hi Nazgulking, Hi everybody

This is a great idea of class specialization. I like that druid subclass, I like that summoning and shapeshifting spell, make it! make it soon Devs!! Reading your post, i got an idea of a subclass for enchantress:

Summoner
Abilities: Summon a companion for the enchantress. This enchantress subclass loose almost all of its abilities, leaving only the resurrect, heal and the two bless spell (or just resurrect and heal spell), but gain specialized knowledge in summoning. They can summon various kind of entities, replacing their lost spell. The summoning spell (assuming the lost spell is 8, the enchantress could cast only one at a time):

-Summon Sentient Plant (only works in forest consisting place, the enchantresses give life to the forest of Alterra to assist them in war)

-Summon Shamael (Hyena from Hell, split to two when dead, each having attributes lower than the previous generation, only works on dungeon)

-Summon Ifrit (this spirit of the desert/djinn will permanently accompany you until it's dead, and will level up, but level up lost with dead, its power is melee, with a great punch that can throw away a weak enemy and knocking back boss, it takes the form of a djinn, a man with spirit smoke replacing it's feet, resembling the Ursan, more taller, and will always move next to an enchantress as she moves)

-Summon Forest Fairy (it takes the form of three green orbs surrounded by green fairy dust-the number doesn't do anything with the spell performance, this summon will heal their master at battle)

-Summon Spirit of Avian's Ancestor (called upon by the enchantresses to assist them in war, the Avian's Ancestor will provide their marksmanship, this summon take the form of an avian ghost with no feet--they are replaced by spirit smoke)

-Summon Turtle of Mother Earth (the Mother Earth herself sends the turtle to protect the enchantresses in battle, it takes the form of flying exotic turtle in vertical position, orbiting the enchantress, it will move to the front of the enchantress in combat, to protect the enchantress from incoming attack with its shell)

-Summon Hell Bison (This bison will knock every enemy of the enchantress to hell, it takes the form of bison with a fiery head, blast and knocking back enemies when it rams them)

-Summon Zomorrodnegar (Zomorrodnegar The Sword was once used to banish demonic entity from the land of alterra, now its spirit is called upon by the enchantresses to do its job once again; this is an out-sized living sword, it is basically a sword so it will appear in the enchantress hold as a big sword, it has its own mind and therefore greatly increasing the %hit and dodge of the enchantress, it will sometime knock-back enemy with a blast, its strength is doubled when fighting against demon--zombies, that pinky demonic boss, skeleton, etc,)

The summoner is supposed to arm themselves with weapon with great attribute, preferably dex or str weapon, because by loosing all agressive spell, they will not rely on enchantress spell anymore, and hence they would not need to max their int, instead they are better to be a dex or str, battling with dex/str weapon and their summon.

What do say? (^_^)v I dont have any experience playing as ursan or avian so I can't give any feedback.
Thank you

[Zbooo]

There is one issue with Druid in my opinion, the fact that we could morph into beast(which is pretty cool) but think of our AoE spells, assuming that we get like let's say a "Cat" just like wow, there is no point of being an full int druid when your morphs is based on physical not on spell attacks, other than that its pretty cool..... I like summoner since its more Mage oriented.

But back to the Druid thing, if it ends up happening then it should be less spells and more physical attacks, oh or even better more debuffs. I'll have to think a bit more.

[View]

Just like ffxi main / sub class's would be great!

[xyoz]

im loving this suggestion +10000000000

[nazgulking]

There is one issue with Druid in my opinion, the fact that we could morph into beast(which is pretty cool) but think of our AoE spells, assuming that we get like let's say a "Cat" just like wow, there is no point of being an full int druid when your morphs is based on physical not on spell attacks, other than that its pretty cool..... I like summoner since its more Mage oriented.

But back to the Druid thing, if it ends up happening then it should be less spells and more physical attacks, oh or even better more debuffs. I'll have to think a bit more.

I think I have to agree with you!
It could be that, when shapeshifting, you loose all offensive spells, but the more INT you have the more raw damage you deal.
I think this would be a decent compromise for loosing your spells.

What do you think?

@Israr: Thanks for taking your time by making more ideas flow in my suggestion :) I think that binding certain summons to certain environments (E.g. forest, water ...) would make those summons useless in other campaigns and give the summoner a poor spell-book, since he can't summon everything he wants on the battlefield. I think that summons should be of two different types: one suppport passive and one support active.

The Passive one would be like a small animal that stand by the side of the summoner and buffs him. For example a spell could be "Summon golem" which adds a small passive golem always following the summoner that boosts the caster armour by one. The more you upgrade this spell the more golems you can summon at time - and therefore the more armour you can have, (at level 6 you can reduce pets number and just add 1 strong golem, to reduce lag :) ). When an enemy (both PvE or PvP) destroy the summon, the caster will loose its buff.

The offensive one would be a creature that will aid you in battle. I don't have particular ideas in mind, but you can have different summons that debuffs when attack, deal more DPS, etc. :)

P.S. I would love to see a necromancer (a plus would be a squirrel necromancer :p)