Reborn Beta Discipline Feedback

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.

2 Likes

Thanks for the in-depth feedback, it’s always great to hear what people have to say and we’re definitely taking it and everyone else’s reviews under consideration!

Pretty much agree with all of that

Paladin:

  • lightning stuff was fun, but very cooldowny slow. I consistently wished for some sort of DaoC thane AOE effect to chain lightning trash down… maybe a libram
  • When soloing I felt like this: I’m going to kill a mob… I hold my sword aloft!..wait… I hold my sword aloft!.. wait…I hold my sword aloft!.. huh hahh! swing a couple times . The idea of not being able to do ANYTHING when out of charge just felt bad but this may be the playstyle… sit back chill… heal… whack… chill some more… whack… heal.
  • Maybe it needs to fill your bar fully when you raise rather than requiring multiple attempts so charging into a fight is more fun – get more bang for your buck with cool Heman power, even if the raise cooldown was increased. Sustained ‘intensity’ is lacking (even if it helps shoulders, standing doing nothing can be dry). Probably needs a mid DPS regular swing to make the hammer not feel like paper.
  • throwing the hammer felt a bit awkward and oddly hard to consistently aim (WMR?)

Shaman

  • the thing I disliked about shaman was that I’d throw down fixed totems, then the monster would run behind me, I’d hop around, then my spells were out of reach, or a totem that used to not be in my way was in my way, then one that’s now out of view expired.
  • cord management of the headset was tough because you had to follow the mobs, and position yourself relative to your totems all the time… so unwinding wasn’t always an option, if that makes sense
  • throwing motions when rapidly changing direction in VR play spaces can be… hard on controllers :slight_smile:

Scoundrel

  • a theme favorite for sure
  • all of the glowy effects looked white against the sky so I misread a few of the burns when in a hurry judging more by shape of the sparkles than by the color
  • The waiting around to get cards right was unfun when you knew exactly what you wanted and were going to sit there until you got it anyways, but at least (unlike paladin) your normal shots were productive if you were fed up and just shot
  • The thing that really nixxed it for me was that curving was very inconsistent (WMR?) and unreliable, there’s no sights or anything so curves went all over the place with no feedback and not enough depth perception to see how far off you were or indicate how to correct it… so I’d take 10 shots trying to line up a half decent bonus and eventually stopped using the bonus altogether. Perhaps talents can help with curve consistency either with tracers or some sort of method of helping you aim with an indicator in game (conceptually similar to a precision ranger feeling and seeing the timing beats to hit so they’re not just randomly going ‘oh that was wayyyyyy off, let me take 3 more shots to dial it in’)
  • I just stopped curving at all and focused on just firing random cards during the dungeon (you’re not going to stand around and set up cards during a sustained fight probably so thats one ordeal at the start while people wait for you, but definitely more important solo) and felt useless as I frosted or healed myself while standing back from my tank
  • I might like it if there was no draw cooldown so you could ‘rifle through the deck for that heal’ when you need it, but that if you used a card you incurred a delay, and the subsequent reshuffle took a bit longer. I think I’d find myself skip the ice and heal most of the time, then decide to use or burn the useful DPS cards… but in a pinch I’d waste the DPS cards and get to that heal ASAP

Bard

  • I really think it needed more vivid sound effects to tell you what your instrument was doing while you were playing guitar hero or repositioning and your instrument was doing things. I felt I wasn’t aware of half of what I was doing or going on around me as I was focusing on hitting notes. Also the mobility issues when teleporting similar to shaman meant I was probably shooting damage not at the monsters while I was trying to re-position, and definitely also hit things in the distance by mistake.