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Official M16: Class Roles and Adjustments to Tanking and Healing

asterdahlasterdahl Member, Cryptic Developer Posts: 1,258 Cryptic Developer

Class Roles in Module 16

In this post I’ll be discussing some of the overarching changes coming to tanks and healers, as well as the general design rationale behind those changes and the direction for class roles in Neverwinter moving forward.

I’d like to preface the discussion of class roles with a bit of Neverwinter history to provide some context. If that doesn’t interest you feel free to skip ahead.

The History of Class Roles in Neverwinter

Early in development; before launch, there was no distinct effort to make the game’s classes fit into the classic trinity (tank, healer, dps) or the even more classic quaternity (tank, healer, support, dps.) However, being a high-fantasy game with D&D classes, many actions and spells were created which skewed towards a specific role.

Fast forward to a bit after release, the lack of focus had allowed crowd control and other support effects to get completely out of hand. The game presented classes that appeared to fit into neat roles but then failed to provide an environment where those roles made sense.

Remaining in this bizarre limbo was not an option, so the team debated which direction to take the game and ultimately decided to move towards solidifying the role of each class. Although the decision was made; the damage of directionless early development was done. A number of fundamental design choices were simply incompatible with providing enjoyable role based gameplay.

Little by little, changes have been made over the years, but the problems were widespread. Many fundamental issues were impossible to change without destabilizing the balance of the entire game.

The State of Class Roles on Live

On the live server, the game acknowledges three distinct roles: tank, healer and DPS. These roles are enumerated in the queue system but referenced almost nowhere else. More importantly, anyone playing at endgame will know that no one need play a dedicated healer and that in reality a “support” role exists.

This support role is fundamental, and a party should be comprised of as much support as can be mustered. With the multiplicative nature of buffs, supercharging a single DPS is far superior to forming a group with multiple DPS. Healing is barely required due to the abundance of ultra-powerful mitigative abilities and passive sources of healing.

Moving Forward With the Trinity

The game’s concept of class roles being divorced from reality serves no one, and so we are taking this opportunity to correct course and that means making sweeping adjustments so that the suggested 1 tank, 1 healer, 3 DPS party composition (for 5-player content) is the actual ideal composition. These changes will mean that when a player rolls a healer, tank, or DPS during character creation, they’ll be able to play that role as advertised at endgame.

Improvements to Content Thanks to Role Adjustments

Endgame content is currently built so that any valid group composition can clear it. This means that groups with very little support can actually clear the content but that they must often execute the mechanics flawlessly. Meanwhile, groups at the same item level that maximize the use of support can deal exponentially more damage, often initiating early stage skips in encounters or circumventing mechanics entirely. As such, completing the content with a less support heavy group is significantly slower, and generally viewed as impossible or at least not worth it.

With the changes in Module 16, we can finally assume that any valid group composition at the same item level and player skill level should be outputting a fairly similar amount of DPS. In addition, major overhauls to tanking and healing allow for two new axes of challenge.

These changes aren’t just allowing the team to provide more difficult challenges, but more accurate challenges as well. Enemy abilities that felt un-survivable under many circumstances due to the overwhelming mitigation some groups could muster can now be brought in line. Adjustments to healing also allow us to bring down the damage values of enemies and bring combat back to a place where your health bar actually moves up and down at a fathomable speed.

Support — Neither Gone Nor Forgotten

All of these changes do not mean that support or utility actions are being removed from the game. Although some actions will see major overhauls or removals, new actions will be added and support and utility actions will continue to be available. Support actions will merely be brought in line with other actions. An action that increases the target’s damage taken will no longer also itself be an excellent source of direct damage. Support abilities will be best put to use, of course, in a group, where there are others to take advantage of their effects.

Various classes and paragon paths will have more or less support options, so those that enjoy providing support can look to build their loadouts with that in mind. One of the largest changes to support actions is that increasing the target’s damage taken is now split among three different effects that enhance damage taken from various categories (physical, projectile, and magic.) A post on adjustments to status conditions will address this more in-depth, but this change will allow opportunities for synergy when choosing which powers to bring as you form your party and note the group composition.

As a final note on this topic: we did consider what it would mean to maintain a fourth role in the form of a dedicated support. Ultimately, even had we moved to a quaternity with a required support role, many of these same changes would have been required to prevent bringing more support from remaining optimal. Those who enjoy the focus on buff stacking would still have been disappointed and we would have simply placed an additional hurdle on group formation.

Alternatively, if we established a paradigm where support was interchangeable with 1 or 2 of the 3 DPS in the group that would differ little from our current approach of offering DPS with some support actions. Support classes in that world could not provide significant mitigative or healing utility due to their not being required, and would have to provide some additional DPS since they are taking a slot that could have been used for a DPS.

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