With the beta coming to an end, I figured I’d give my feedback on the new disciplines. This is my first beta weekend with Reborn, so all of my feedback is coming from a first impression, low level, solo play point of view.
Paladin
The Paladin seems fairly basic, but my understanding is that its meant to be a simpler, more beginner friendly class, so that’s alright. It has a few fun concepts to it. I especially enjoy the hammer toss, the ability to use it as long range damage, a stun, and to pull mobs makes it quite versatile. Plus, it’s just a lot of fun to toss it and pull it back. The retribution concept of taking damage to deal damage, as well as raising your hammer to the sky to gain power are both very thematic and fit well.
There were only two big complaints I had about the Paladin. The first was that the librams felt like they were just kind of tacked on. Use them whenever they come off cooldown, or whenever needed, that’s about it. They didn’t really provide an interesting mechanic to the class at all, and I usually just forgot they were there. A couple ways I can think of that could make them more interesting are having the librams empower the hammer with the effect, which could give you more options on how to use them. Say you want to give your friend a buff or a direct heal; use your libram then tap him with the hammer, or way cooler, throw the hammer at him. Or maybe you want to provide a smaller buff/heal to everyone nearby; use the libram, then do the aoe ground slam. Another possibility would to make the librams into banners that you can place down to provide an effect within a certain area. It could create some more strategic play by allowing the Paladin to use the hammer toss(or even ranged party members) to pull enemies to the banners he’s already got set down, kind of making his own little territory.
The second complaint was that once you’ve raised your hammer and used all your charges, you’re just standing there waiting. It’s quite frustrating flailing the hammer about seeing single digit numbers, just waiting to take a hit for a charge to pop up or the hammer raise to come off cooldown. It’s even worse when the mob in front of you only has a sliver of health left. Maybe this is only really an issue in solo play or even just lower level play, where you’re trying to tackle one enemy at a time. I’m not sure but, to me this seems like an easy fix just by messing with some numbers. Maybe take a little of the damage from the charges and give it to the basic, uncharged attacks. Even if the basic hammer attack only does a fifth or even a tenth of what the charged attack does, giving it some killing potential for when you’ve run out of charges would make the Paladin more active and less frustrating in my opinion.
Shaman
The Shaman was the discipline I played the least over the weekend, though I can’t really give one particular reason as to why. I enjoyed the concept of throwing the spells, though I wish there was a larger selection of the actual throwing totems to choose from. The area of effect totems are neat and provide a decent way of altering how you choose to play the class.
I did notice a downtime issue similar to the Paladin’s, where I was just waiting on cooldowns, though it wasn’t as bad. The throwing orbs themselves could use a boost in cooldown time, or even give the different totems more drastically different cooldowns. Perhaps the fireball as the main single target damage has a relatively quick cooldown, so you can just keep tossing them out, whereas the lightning is more situational and has a longer cooldown and you just grab it occasionally. That way rather than throwing one, then the other, then waiting, its more of a consistent flow.
I should also note that shooting the balls by pointing your palm forward was nice for when the arms were tired or when frustrated with missed throws. That said it didn’t seem to have enough force, the spells shot forward a few feet, fell, then rolled a short distance. This meant that it was really only useful for when you’re already fighting a mob that was near you, replacing the short distance tosses instead of the longer range throws that were more taxing and tedious.
Scoundrel
The Scoundrel is probably the most confusing of the new disciplines, but it definitely does its job of dealing damage. Trying to curve shots was fun, but it seems a bit too touchy in my opinion and it was a little hard keeping track of the buff, which is something you’re trying to keep up all the time.
I enjoyed the card system, the variety of effects makes the Scoundrel feel very fleshed out. That said, even after reading what the cards and burn effects did, trying to remember and figure out which was which took a bit. Some of the cards are obvious, like vines and flames. For a while though, I thought Ice was Light and was wondering why I wasn’t getting healed, then I noticed the debuff. The colors for the burn effects were different than what I would expect them to be. I figured the orange glow was Potency, but it turned out it was Cheat which I figured would have been the purple effect. Most of this stuff will probably get cleared up by having journal pages for the new disciplines.
The only other feedback I have on the Scoundrel would be to give the charged shot a visual effect, so we can keep track of when its charging up still and when it finishes.
Bard
The Bard was the class I spent the most time with over the weekend, because it seemed like it would be the most complex. Since I was playing solo, I really only ever used the two damaging songs and the healing song. It took a bit to figure out exactly what was going on because my initial reaction was to just focus on hitting the notes, but once I realized that I was doing damage as long as I was looking at the enemy and had the songs active, it went smoothly.
As I’ve seen others say, having the songs on the bottom occasionally led to turning them off accidentally, same with trying to activate the Crescendos. There was also the issue of the amount of screen space that the instrument and everything were taking up. I’d suggest tilting the instrument down a bit more and moving the songs off to either side(like I’ve seen other people suggest) to both open up the screen space and alleviate some of the issue of turning songs off. Another possibility would be to just remove the ability to turn off songs and instead make tapping on a new song overwrite the oldest song selected.
One other issue I had was accidentally hitting mobs I wasn’t already engaged with. This happened for two reasons, either the passive damage from the songs would hit a mob nearby or the Crescendos would wiggle past the enemy I was aiming at and hit something behind it. Either of these might be intentional, but the Crescendo missing is especially frustrating. Spending the time hitting the notes to charge it up just for it to completely miss the target, even when aimed directly, just feels lame.
The final criticism I have on the Bard is that it feels very detached from the fight. Aside from looking at the mobs and activating Crescendos, you’re just kind of in your own world hitting the notes as they come down. I’d suggest making the effects of each song occur each time you hit one of the notes, rather than it just going off periodically. Or even remove one of the damaging songs and just make hitting notes deal damage.
Overall, I enjoyed testing out the four new disciplines quite a bit, and I think they all provide gameplay experiences that are quite different than what you can have with the existing four. That said, there’s always room for improvement and I’m excited to see where things go in the next beta and further on with the launch of Reborn.