My suggestions for changes to classes (long post)

[Umbra]

So I’ve tried every class in the game so far and while playing I’ve come across a few changes which I think should be made to classes for gameplay improvements or general QoL while in combat. These are, of course, my own opinion and if anyone more experienced in a class has a correction to make or there’s a counter-suggestion I’d be open to editing my ideas to reflect these. I’ve also had experience using training swords and bows, which is where I based some of these suggestions from. Apologies in advance for the text wall:

Warrior

Diagonal attacks- Quite a few of the attacks in the warrior combos are vertical attacks, which to me doesn’t feel natural. If you’re going to attack upwards you need to move your sword around to an appropriate position which really slows you down and a slash downwards has a wind-up which makes it feel like it would make more sense as an attack of its own- perhaps a guard-breaker. I tried performing the combos substituting the vertical slashes for diagonal ones just to see how it felt and the movement was more of a flair than a wind-up which to me makes more sense for a combination attack. In addition to that, it just felt better. If vertical attacks were to stay in, I think it would make more sense to have them in follow-up to a diagonal attack as it requires less movement before you’re in position to perform the slash. Say for example you could have a guard-breaking combo which would increase damage taken for a short time by slashing diagonally down and then back up again vertically (which would make sense, a light, fast attack to get your opponent to guard and then a strong upward strike to break their guard).

Hitting your own shield- I feel like the sensitivity for when a shield will intercept your own attack is a bit too high. It seemed like the only way to stop yourself attacking your own shield was to have it completely out of view (e.g. behind you). Given that when you attack you’ll naturally move your sword arm in front of your shield it doesn’t make sense to me that unless it’s completely out of view that you’ll hit it. Perhaps with the larger shield it would make sense, to only be slightly less sensitive given you’ve less space to move your arm in front of the shield but with the smaller shield I don’t think it should really behave the way it is now.

Ranger

Anti-spam changes to damage- At the moment I see a fair few rangers spamming arrows instead of making use of the charged shot mechanic, which I think will make it somewhat difficult to get an accurate balance on the damage of the class if changes are required in future. Your damage is based on the distance you pull the arrow back as well as the charge time, however I think that it should only be based on the charge time and only when the bow is fully drawn. So for example to get a full damage shot you need to fully draw your bow and use the charge time to aim then release at maximum charge. Bows are rather ineffective if fired improperly and so encouraging players to use their bow properly would make the class more immersive but would also encourage the use of an archery stance (which I’ll comment more on in my next suggestion).

Side-quiver for special arrows- At the moment you have your special arrows on separate sides of your body. Because of this you’re not really able to stay in an archery stance where you wouldn’t want to be turning your body enough to reach to your other flank as this will take too much time. I think that having both of the arrows on the side of your body opposite to your bow arm would make more sense as it places all of your arrows in convenient reach to your draw arm. I’m not sure if there’s a technical limitation behind this as each item appears to take a slot on what I can only assume is a grid system which equips item per-cell but if this could be worked around it would be a massive improvement to the class.

Musketeer

Static orbs- While I think the orbs rotating around your weapon looks nice, it can prove to be more of an annoyance than anything else in a lot of cases. Going to grab an orb only to find that it’s moved ever so slightly out of reach so you then missed maybe two chances to fire is a big hit to your DPS and as mentioned- is pretty annoying. I feel like if the orbs were static, perhaps in a line under your weapon or in a special series of pouches on your chest it would allow for a more reliable style of play, especially with how you can order your orbs so that you can remember which one does what without having to identify them by appearance so it’ll be almost like a hotbar.

Runemage

Tracing spells- I’ve had a… “mixed” experience with drawing out spells using my wand. I understand that the class is supposed to be 100% skill based and requires plenty of practice to get down. The problem I encountered was that I thought the best way for me to learn would be to use my book in one hand to trace the spells out (like the Arcanist from FF14 for example). Unfortunately no matter how many times I tried this, tracing on my book simply wouldn’t work. In the end I tried to get the fireball cast down reliably, the pattern which worked maybe 95% of the time really didn’t look like the pattern in the book in terms of it being precise. I think that if the class is going to require precise patterns, they should be exactly what is in the book as there’s no point in having a point of reference if that reference is incorrect. I tried this with other spells and I’m able to reliably cast the fireball and frostbolt with next to no failures and I can cast the shadowball somewhat reliably however tracing the book for any of these never worked.

Dagger- While I tested this class I couldn’t help but feel like it was missing something in terms of a (very) low damage melee weapon. This wouldn’t be to allow the Runemage to participate in CQB however there have been so many occasions where an enemy has had a slither of health left after a cast which really looked like it should have been a kill. This dagger would then be reserved as a hold-out weapon to allow you to chip away at that last bit of health after the enemy has approached you instead of then dying to being unable to cast with the enemy so close to you. This would then also open opportunities to implement enchantment spells where you could enchant the dagger with single-use effects such as DoTs or some form of health-drain (which would make it even more of a high-risk, high-reward class).

If you read through all of this, thank you for taking the time to look through my ideas and I’ll appreciate any feedback or dev consideration for my ideas. As said these are all my opinions so if you want to make constructive feedback I’m open to changing some of these!

[Metris_Marshmallow]

Ty for all the ideas, they are sure inspiring - frankly, I only read Ranger and Musk because the others are less level 10 and I lack experience to say anything about them.

As for Musk I am honestly not sure if static orbs would help or make things more complicated/tedious. Playing hours in a row I try to do so without getting health issues and the rotating orbs allow to not always perform same movements, but grab them from above, below, often, once tired with one arm, I also move the weapon towards them, after letting an orb “roll” into my left hand.
I am all for making them easier to distinguish though, after playing the Musk for like 80+h I don’t have any issues seeing what is what while questing in daylight, but things are different if you fight in pitch-black dungeons, specially the 3 yellow (renew, cure wounds, shield) are a pain in the dark, and being surrounded by bright flashes of mage-spells makes things worse.

Another thing, I use the “rounds” to figure timers, for example, there is no need to use renew before it is expired (and waste 1 shot on it), so I count 1-2 or 3 rounds, using others first, before doing so. Sure, that could be avoided if they’d add actual countdowns on buffs and debuffs - i’d prefer this, in Wow there been great 3rd party tools for that also -, but don’t know if that is ever happening.

As for Ranger, if spamming means shooting multiple arrows in a row, if I’m not mistaken you still do have to fully draw your bow, if you don’t you won’t get anywhere, spam all you want, dmg imo is way too low, least for same-lvl or higher mobs.
And then the speed or number of arrows you can shoot is limited, physically. Same like the warrior I thought spamming arrows is part of your skill, don’t see few doing this, but literally every higher or good player. Also in vids of endgame fights you can see pretty good what people do who mastered this class. Just like warriors, if you are in good shape you will do much more dmg than other players. Now the difficulty is hopefully not adapted to those super-athletic, but to someone in between.
To archer down same level mobs I need to use spamming, which I can’t do for hours, physically, so I wouldn’t be too sad if it works like the Musk rather. But I also wouldn’t mind it the way it is. If that is changed a lot of other things would need to be balanced after, too.

[Umbra]

Thanks for reading through my ideas!

My point about the orbs being static to create a sort of hotbar would be exactly what would solve your issue of being unable to identify orbs in dark places, which was one of the things I considered when thinking it up. If you could identify the orb by remembering which slot you put it in then the game can continue to include dark areas while not making this class take a bit of a hit. Even if they were made easier to distinguish between you’d still have issues with it in the dark, so it’d be like solving one issue and turning a blind eye to the other I think.

Yes you would still have to fully draw your bow as a ranger for DPS reasons even while spamming, but I found it takes minimal effort to fully draw the bow while spamming. I don’t feel like other things will need balance if archer was changed as I recommended, but it would help to “normalise” the class so that there was a standard way to play the class for which balance can be based off of. The devs can’t exactly make the class based on people spamming arrows like their actual life depends on it because then the people who may not be able to move their arms so fast for whatever reason just won’t be able to play the class due to having barely any damage potential.

Most of my ideas here are based around making the game balanced and immersive but at the same time accessible to everyone, which is a direction that I really want the game to go in. It just feels like while the classes are indeed skill-based (which is great) they have certain flaws which serve as limitations which I don’t feel should be present.