Hey all! This week, I've got a bit of a look back at how each class in the AVCon build has been performing, and what we might be looking at in the future for them. Huge thanks to all who gave Crystal Horizons a shot over the weekend; we got heaps of feedback and are already in discussions for what direction the game should head from here.
To start with, Knight performed as consistently as always, taking plenty of damage and striking back with powerful basic attacks. We're overall satisfied with how the class felt to play, and how intuitive Active Defense is. We may look at some changes to the order at which they acquire skills, but don't have any major plans to change it at this stage.
Lumimancer was given a few more tools this time around, including the Blessing passive (Healing an ally grants Blessed, granting them additional healing whenever the Lumimancer deals Light damage to an enemy). This ability allowed players to perform a quick heal on an ally in danger, then continue dealing damage while passively healing the ally further, which made the class feel more fluid than before. The real star, however, was Judgement, a new single-target damage spell. Despite it's extreme MP cost, players still ended up using it a lot, draining the class of it's MP very quickly. Our intention was for Judgement to be used with the critical damage bonus from the Illuminated status, while Flash was used as a cheaper damage spell, so we may look into better communicating this or making some changes to the skill.
Enchanter made it's debut performance here, and results were all over the place. Due to it's expansive kit, we saw many ways the class could be played. Some players used it as a buff-bot, ensuring the rest of their team had haste, regen and lifesteal as often as possible. Some played it as a pure spellcaster, using Aspected Spark and Aspected Flare almost exclusively. The few times we did see a player interacting with the Cut and Tie mechanic, the class performed extremely well, so we're mostly just looking at improving communication for the class at this stage.
Thief unfortunately was lacking in this build. While the class does have the highest potential damage in the game right now, it does not feel particularly good to spend two turns just applying buffs and then doing a massive backstab. We also saw very few players interact with the Dirty Fighting skills, which are meant to be a core aspect of the class, inflicting debilitating debuffs.
I'll go on a brief tangent here to talk about Move skills. Initially, these skills, which consume the unit's movement for the turn instead of their standard action, were granted only to a focused selection of classes. Knight's Active Defense and Pyromancer's Invocation were originally designed as Move skills, as both classes are incentivized to not move for various reasons. Elemental shift skills on Archer and Enchanter were later changed from standard actions to Move actions, as the class flowed significantly better when they didn't have to spend a turn not dealing damage to switch element.
As the game has developed, we've come to appreciate Move skills as tools to massively increase the fluidity of classes, and have been implementing them on more classes to great success. Lumimancer, and other classes that wield the Staff weapon, have access to the Staff Weaponskills list which include a number of Move skills. Thief, however, we were initially very reluctant to grant a Move skill to, as the class was carefully designed and calculated to function using purely standard actions.
Recent playtests have shown us that Thief has some issues, and can be one of the less engaging classes to use. We're still early in on concepts for this, but we're looking at giving it a unique Move skill that helps blend their Dirty Fighting skills into their setup and burst backstab combo. The current damage combo involves using Fade Out to gain Elusive, increasing Critical damage, using Sharpen to empower the next basic attack, and then attacking the enemy from the rear to do tons of damage. While dealing over 100 damage in a single hit feels good, the setup turns are boring, and the class isn't interacting with the powerful debuffs applied by Rending Slash and Rupturing Strike.
Our current plan is to grant Thief access to a Move skill that can be used only after executing a Critical hit with a Dirty Fighting skill. Using this Move skill will allow the Thief to move while applying Elusive, at a shorter duration than using Fade Out. This change should allow the class to deftly weave between setting up for backstabs and applying powerful debuffs when needed. We're still working out the details, but feel pretty good about this direction for the class.
This post ended up being pretty long, so I'll stop here for today. Our next upcoming goal is the Closed Beta, invites to which will be offered to members of our Discord server! I can't give a definite time on when that will be, but we're working extremely hard to get it all ready. I'll keep you posted in future updates; until then, thanks for tuning in!
(Additional note: Due to technical difficulties, this post was delayed by a few days. Future posts will be back on schedule!)