AOC - General Information

[Draegan]

Looks like the other thread was rickshawed. I came across an interview on AOC crafting. Take a look if you're interested.

Age of Conan MMO Articles

[Clericnon2boxed]

A recent Ten Ton Hammer interview about the Priests of Mitra (a healer class in AoC):

Age of Conan Class Interview #8: The Priest of Mitra | Ten Ton Hammer

[Rayne]

Evan Michaels: The default size of the Priest of Mitra and all other Priest cone heals is a 120 degree cone, offset 60 degrees from the center of one’s character. This cone extends 6 meters from the caster, and targets must be in line of sight of the healer at the time the heal is cast. Provided these criteria are met, the heal will be applied to any friendly targets (even ones outside the group) within the area.

That sounds pretty cool. Reminds me of the old EQ term "battle cleric". If the class mechanics are somewhat similar to that, I might just get into playing a healer again The fact that its a directional AE means there won't be a need to tab around to spot heal an off-tank, as long as hes in the right area.

Evan: We are using many variations of this theme when designing the Priest of Mitra and, as such, a large number of their feats and abilities are molded around this concept. For instance, the “Spiritual Feedback” feat places short-term a stacking holy damage increase buff on the Priest depending on how many targets they succeed in hitting with a cone heal. There are also similar abilities which cause each tick of the Priest’s heals to provide an effect, such as returning mana and stamina to their group, or causing the Priest’s next damage spell to cost no mana.

To me, that indicates a HoT with a residual effect. Pretty cool indeed. Definitely better than hitting the Yaulp spell all the time.

I am however, a little more than curious about this:

Evan: When looking at the Priest of Mitra’s skillset from a PvP perspective, one would probably view their large array of crowd-control techniques as a primary point of interest. Once they reach level 80, a Priest of Mitra has access to stun, fear, knockback, snare, and blind abilities—granting them a rather formidable crowd-control toolset. The time gained by proper usage of these abilities should give the Priest the ability to support their group in many ways—be it via damage or healing.

So what do they use while leveling to 80? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

[Twobit Whore]

I would imagine that they get them as they level up, just at 80 that is what the full arsenal includes.

[Hatorade]

I wonder if in pvp if the enemy can block LoS...that would be both awesome and annoying for the healer. Cone healing looks like it will be more twitch based then most mmo's adding a reason to pay more attention to what you are doing. Which in turn I am hoping will make for a more excited time.

Also is that healer the only one with cone healing spells? I was looking at the bear shaman as my main and would also like some cone healing.

[Vatoreus]

I'm not completely certain, but I'm fairly sure all healing is cone based. They were talking about it a few months ago when the PoM was disabled.

[Rayne]

Seems plausible. I just hope they don't reserve too much for the upper levels, or it could get boring pretty quick. Hopefully they don't go with the old method of level 1,2,3 type spells. It'd be nice if stuns, fears, knockbacks, etc... had some variable effects as you gain more powerful levels of spells. The same base effect, with some sort of variation to keep your entire spellset in use.

It would have been a lot more interesting if Yaulp had different effects for each level of the spell. Like a DoT at one level, minor HoT at another, added haste at another, etc.

[Hatorade]

Anyone else think the "quest"(pun intended) for balance of each char is getting absurd. It sucks to play a class that is weaker then others but weaker doesn't always mean unbalanced.

I mean it seems the focus has been on what class can heal the best or kill the fastest. It has come down to number crunching the...well numbers. I hate it because it seems to limit what a class can and can not do. Not saying try and make things unbalanced but if you design a skill to do something fun/useful and it unbalances things but doesn't break it leave it be.

[Draegan]

It's how you make a game that isn't broken.

[Hatorade]

I guess it comes down to exploits then. Is it possible to have a skill that unbalances things that is not an exploit?

[Draegan]

So you're arguing against balancing classes at all?

[Big W Powah!]

I'm not against balancing classes, I don't want Eq1 warrior vs EQ1 bard ever again.

What I would like to see is something along the lines of if my snare and dots make it so I can kill you without getting touched? so be it. As long as class B can kill shit too, even if it is a little less productive.

[Hatorade]

Originally Posted by Draegan

So you're arguing against balancing classes at all?

No nevermind I guess not sure how to word it to make sense. Still waiting for some maul/blunt weapons gameplay, I like the head chopping but what about the smashing.

[ModernDayDruid]

Official System Reqs out today:

Required
OS: Windows Vista/XP
Processor: 3GHz Pentium IV
RAM: 1GB RAM
Video Card: Shader Model 2.0 and 128MB RAM: NVIDIA GeForce 5800 or ATI 9800

Recommended
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz (E6600) or better
Vdeo Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7950GX2 or better
RAM: 2GB or more

Enhanced for: DirectX 10, 64-bit processors, multi-core
Supports Parental Controls on Windows Vista

Not too much of a power whore in my opinion.

Age Of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

[bonanno]

I was expecting much much worse. This just reminds me that my graphics card is a p.o.s. and needs to get upgraded.