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At-will abilities and Paragon Paths
kentheprogrammer
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users Posts: 37
I'm not sure if information is out about either of these things, but I had a couple questions about abilities (particularly at-will abilities) and how they might interact with Paragon Paths.
Do we know yet whether or not there is much variety in the at-will abilities? For instance are we limited to only using the lance of faith (or whatever it's called) as a cleric during the entire lifespan of the character? I thought I had heard that there was at least a third at-will ability for all characters, but I wondered if there might be more than that down the line.
Also do we know if the paragon paths give any new abilities to change the way that the class plays once they level up enough to start making paragon path choices? From the screenshots and videos I've seen, it looks like the paragon paths are more like an extension of the feats (+2 crit, +4 defense, etc...), but the selection to the far right in the paragon paths almost looks more like an ability than a normal feat choice.
I'm really excited to try the game - not nearly excited enough to spend $60 or $200 though - but I am somewhat concerned that the fighting might get stale (it certainly did for me in GW2 and there were significantly more abilities to use in that game).
Do we know yet whether or not there is much variety in the at-will abilities? For instance are we limited to only using the lance of faith (or whatever it's called) as a cleric during the entire lifespan of the character? I thought I had heard that there was at least a third at-will ability for all characters, but I wondered if there might be more than that down the line.
Also do we know if the paragon paths give any new abilities to change the way that the class plays once they level up enough to start making paragon path choices? From the screenshots and videos I've seen, it looks like the paragon paths are more like an extension of the feats (+2 crit, +4 defense, etc...), but the selection to the far right in the paragon paths almost looks more like an ability than a normal feat choice.
I'm really excited to try the game - not nearly excited enough to spend $60 or $200 though - but I am somewhat concerned that the fighting might get stale (it certainly did for me in GW2 and there were significantly more abilities to use in that game).
Post edited by kentheprogrammer on
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Nobody got to try out the paragon path classes this time around.
Paragon Paths sort of take two directions, from what I saw in the UI. First, there is choosing a paragon path. For cleric, there is only Divine Oracle as of BWE1. This gives you a paragon at-will, which (per the listed damage) was much better than your other at-wills. There were also PP-granted encounters, dailies and a few passives which are given at different levels.
Second, there is feat progression, which seem to be tied to your selected paragon path. I'm guessing that each PP will have three "talent trees". I'm not sure if they are really associated via path selection, or if only the powers granted at level vary, because there was only one path available. It would be nice to have 2 PP's and 6 talent trees (3 trees for each PP) but I'm not counting on it.
Based on feats alone, the play-style differs slightly between the three (and no, I don't need to "level up past thirty" to see how it changes - read the feats and what they do, and you can easily imagine how things change at higher levels). Path 1 basically works more on returning healing through dealing damage. Path 2 mainly buffs what you are doing in divine channel mode, and your ability to get DC recharged, make it last longer, etc. Path 3 uses more buffs, damage debuffs and HoT style healing, and seems to focus on AoE buff increases as well as attaching +damage resist to existing heals.
The one reservation I have about the talent paths is that they are not always additive to all abilities, thus, some powers will be more optimized than others based on talents. for example, path 1 will always be using the AoE heal ability, since it's buffed via talents, and it would be sub-optimal to take another in its place. So, instead of using either ability 1 or 2, you're going to have to use ability 2, otherwise you will be losing 15% healing by using ability 1. I'm not a big fan of that pigeon-holing. It makes you super-specialized, and reduces your options instead of giving you more options.
Granted, there are some feats in the PP trees which enhance all abilities (+10% recovery, or something), but most seemed specific-power focused buffs. It's one thing I hope they change prior to release, because there are no new abilities granted through the trees. They just enhance existing abilities.
It sounds like the paragon paths (in their ability to hand out at-will, encounter, and daily abilities) might actually make each class have 3 distinct feels or play styles to them. I think that this might alleviate the concern that people seemed to have that the Guardian Warrior class was more like just taking the Protection Warrior path in WoW (in terms of flexibility) but making each class at least as different from one another as other MMOs.
I would agree that pigeonholing in the way you described (taking a specific paragon path or feat making a specific spell mostly obsolete) would be bad for varying play styles. One thing that makes me worry less is that feats and paragon path stuff can be changed markedly during a beta (and probably will whether it be to a great or lesser extent). So if that's the main concern with how builds work, they have plenty of opportunity to "fix" that.
5 at-will powers up to 30 doesn't sound too bad - again as long as there is reason to use each and that there isn't one that's obviously better or worse than the others. Adding multiple at-will powers in your chosen paragon path doesn't seem bad as long as there is still sufficient variety. If the PP only bestows a single at-will that's much better than the others, you'll be forced to use only that one unless you want to be less than optimally effective - which won't be welcomed with open arms in group content for sure.
If nothing else, it sounds like there is a good foundation that with some potential tweaking/balancing could work out to be a really nice experience.
The choice was one of the few things that will really set characters apart. Choose Option A, you get one list of things. Choose Option B, you get another list of things that has nothing in common with option B. One rumor is we will have Option A, B and C for classes at Launch. This alone will create a lot of diversity.
I am not sure that is a totally bad thing. Having more emphasis on a certain powers or play styles might allow the class to appeal to more poeple. I am not sure you can differentiate a path if it does not do this?
However for asfar as i can see it has nothing to do with paragon feats, the feats will be the same for all path's but allows focus in a certain type (like AoE, more healing or more temp hp for clerics) whyle the paragon path (sadly only 1 was available at first beta weekend) gives you at will powers, encounter power etc depending on the paragon path you take over the lvl's.
The ability's you get from a paragon path depends on which path you take and has nothing to do with those paragon feats, paragon feats only make certain powers stronger depending on which feats you take
Hopefully they really pay attention to feedback and fine-tune it as the betas go on.
Agreed, and hopefully the rewards will compete with in house content