Age of Conan Class types explored

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 8:07 am

Warning lengthy post - worth reading though for all the AoC fans.

Can't decide whether you will be a sneaky barbarian, a dead raising necromancer or a death dealing conquerer? Read more........(and then try them all out in the open beta!)

From IGN

Part 1

Before tangling with any of the content in a massively multiplayer online game, you have to choose an avatar. More often than not, that means picking a class right from the outset, and such is the case in Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. There is no shortage of potential avenues for play in the game, and from talking with Funcom's class designers, one of their primary goals was to give each class a wide range of abilities so they're useful for solo and group play.

In combat, one of Age of Conan's more distinct features is the fact that many abilities, from basic attacks to healing spells, have an area of effect (AoE) element. Melee attacks, for instance, are all AoE. If you swing a sword in an arc in front of you, which you frequently must, it'll hit whatever enemies happen to be in the way. The same goes for many of the healing spells, which can sometimes be shot out in conical bursts, affecting a segment of the battlefield as opposed to a single target.

Basic combat in the game isn't just click to auto-attack. Instead, you'll need to kit keys that correspond to weapon arcs of varying directions. Starting out, three directions are available: an overhead swing and swipes coming from the left or right. Beyond simply cosmetic animation differences and the ability to strike multiple foes, these attack directions are important as enemies in the game are protected by mobile shields. In battle you'll see these shields represented as silver scales that enemies will shift around during the course of battle, which affects damage done. So, if a foe has stacked its shield all to the left side, you should attack from the opposite direction to inflict extra damage. These shields surround each player too, so in theory you'll need to maintain an awareness of your own shield orientation to be as effective as possible in player versus player (PvP) combat.
As your avatar progresses through levels one through 80, you'll gain abilities (combos and spells) per level without the need to visit a trainer. After level 10, you'll start acquiring feat points that can be allocated to three different trees per class. The easiest parallel to make with this system is World of Warcraft's talent tree, the points for which become available after level 10, one point per level, as it works in Age of Conan. This type of system reinforces Funcom's notion of making each class versatile, as investing points gained in the various feat trees allows for your avatar to gain diverse abilities and, ideally, play differently than another avatar of the same class who's invested in another feat line. For each class, you'll find a general feat tree along with two specialty lines. General feats are shared between all the classes contained within each archetype. So, for instance, each Soldier class will have the same general feat tree, containing upgrades for more generalized abilities like better health regeneration or invulnerability ratings. The specialized feat lines are more tailored to the classes' individual play styles.

Beyond that, there are sets of passive skills such as climbing, healing, and mana regeneration that you gain points for as experience points are amassed. These skillsets have a common core available to all classes, though they're also tailored to each class based on usefulness. For instance, a guardian (tank) has no use for the mana regeneration skill, since mana is used primarily for spells, and the bulk of the guardian's abilities revolve around performing combo skills, which drain stamina.

For the first part of our class feature we're going over half of Age of Conan's archetypes as they were described to us by Andrew Griffin, senior system designer, and Evan Michaels, associate system designer. Today we're looking at the Soldiers (tank-type damage dealers) and Priests (healers). Contained within the Soldier and Priest archetypes are three specific classes, which you'll find listed below.

Soldier

Guardian: This Soldier-type represents Age of Conan's traditional tank class. He's meant to basically be the last guy standing in a fight, and as such can absorb large amount of damage from attackers. While the other two Soldier-types can wear heavy armor, the guardian is the only one who gains access to the special full-plate category, giving him extra resistance to knockback attacks.
For assaulting targets, guardians make use of polearm or one-handed weapon and shield loadouts, which correspond to the two specialized branches of his feat tree. If you decide to use the latter, a key skill will be the counterstrike ability. It works to mark a target so that when that target attacks you, it'll take damage. This not only kills the target faster, but helps to build up the amount of hate the target has for the guardian, ensuring the enemy won't get distracted and direct its attacks to any more lightly armored party members.

Dark Templar: This class is described by Funcom as an evil fighter, and is the only Soldier-type with spells. By properly assigning points to the specialized feat trees, the dark templar will be able to make it so every bit of weapon damage he does will also replenish his health reserves as well as having a chance to deal additional magical punishment on targets. Though he'll get the least number of hit points out of the three Soldier classes, he'll have a self-healing ability far beyond the other two.

Against a single target the dark templar won't be as effective as a guardian. Instead, he works best as an AoE tank, since the more things that are hitting him, the more he's healing himself and the more magical damage he's capable of doling out.

As far as specific abilities go, the dark templar has a number of spells called soul covenants, of which only one can be active at any time. When cast, these spells allow for a chance to increase damage output or healing when hit, and another kind can blast out AoE damage. He's also the only non-priest class with an actual healing spell, which acts as a team heal, capable of affecting multiple targets. These team heals won't have the power of a direct heal, but should remain a useful skill nonetheless. The caveat with the dark templar heal is it'll actually cost health to cast, so he'll be essentially trading his own hit points to replenish those of his group members.

Conqueror: Funcom describes this class as the most buff-oriented type in the game. He's capable of activating offensive and support auras, and can support one aura of each type. He'll have more hit points than the dark templar but less than the guardian. To make up for the fact that he won't be as well protected as the guardian and can't self-heal like the dark templar, he'll have the highest damage output of the Soldier-types.

Conquerors are the only Soldier-type unable to use shields, so to compensate he'll be able to dual-wield or use two-handed weapons. He's also armed with something called formation buffs, which play into the general role of how Funcom envisioned him being implemented into combat. He's meant to be the type of class capable of rallying troops around him with buffs and auras, and to play into that theme, he's capable of setting down position-oriented buffs.
In effect, what this means is he'll be able to set down buffs for players located behind him, in front, or to the sides. For each direction, there'll be three types of buffs than can be activated, classified as offensive, defensive, and utility. In a battlefield setting, this would mean he can run a forward-facing buff that increases the damage of all those in front of him, buff the regeneration rates of all those standing behind, and augment the defensive capabilities of those standing beside him. These can be switched around for whatever's best given the battle scenario, but it works to ensure players will rally around him and take advantage whatever combinations of buffs have been set on the ground.

Additional archetype notes: Soldier-types in general have two basic shared qualities. The first are stances, which are split into defensive and frenzy versions. The former is used primarily while tanking as it decreases damage taken, augments the ability to generate hate in targets, and unlocks a selection of abilities useful for tanking. In frenzy stance you take much more damage, but output is also increased. Funcom says this is basically so two Soldiers in a group can be effective, with one in defensive stance absorbing the hits while the other switches to frenzy to pile on the damage per second (DPS). And if the circumstances change, the soldiers can swap around their stances to accommodate, with the idea being that nobody is left out feeling useless.

The other Soldier-specific quality revolves around situation-specific buffs. If the Soldier's team is the victim of an attack, a buff will activate on the Soldier that differ between classes. The buff is called sadism on the dark templar, furious inspiration for the conqueror, and vengeance for the guardian. For furious inspiration, the conqueror will get a buff that gives him a chance to team heal or eventually even resurrect a group member. For the guardian's vengeance, he gets added damage output and can reduce damage dealt by nearby enemies. With the dark templar's sadism, he gets the chance build up the ability to siphon health more effectively and pulse AoE damage. Like with the stances, these buffs work to make Soldiers who aren't tanking more effective in battle, and can help out with drawing monster attacks back to themselves should the enemies switch focus to other group members.

Priest

Priest of Mitra: This class is Age of Conan's traditional healer type, though that doesn't mean he's incapable of attacking. The priest of Mitra does, however, have the lowest damage-dealing capabilities of the others in the Priest archetype to balance his more straightforward healing and holy smiting capabilities. His main strength, aside from healing, is crowd control. Area knockbacks, stuns, blinds, dizzy abilities, and snares but no roots to hold targets in place.
A level 80 priest of Mitra will have two ways to render himself invulnerable, the lower level version of which works only on himself. The higher-level version expands out to include friendly targets nearby within the protective field, while it simultaneously does damage over time (DoT) to hostiles. He'll also get access to various anti-undead and anti-demon abilities to complement the standard healing toolset. And as far as healing goes, the benefits extend beyond merely restoring hit points. The more a priest of Mitra heals, the more damage their attack spells do to targets, and sometimes the priest will even get free (no mana cost) damage spells. According to Funcom, that gives the priest of Mitra a certain rhythm to battle as he alternately heals and does damage, with the healing increasing his effectiveness at permanently knocking down foes.

Tempest of Set: Like the priest of Mitra, the tempest of Set is primarily a caster. Funcom says this class is almost like a mage, with an emphasis on nuking (dealing ranged damage) first and healing later. That being said, the tempest is designed to have the same degree of healing capabilities as the priest of Mitra.

With the tempest, his damage spells have the effect of helping out his healing spells, including getting a chance to cast free heals, a foil to the way the priest of Mitra works. Instead of being more oriented towards crowd control, the tempest of Set's feats work to boost his damage-dealing capabilities like nukes, lightning attacks, and area of effect blasts. Overall, Funcom says he's able to dole out the most AoE damage as far as spellcasting goes with around seven or eight AoE spells. These include pulsing AoE's, AoE's that cause DoT effects on foes, and AoE roots.
One of his highest level abilities strengthens his AoE skills by about double and render him immune to ranged attacks. If he's struck with melee strike while in this state, there's a chance he'll be able to knock back the aggressor, giving him some space to maneuver to a safer area or cast a few heals. In a group, a tempest of Set activates abilities that aid with mass mana regeneration or bestow bonus lightning damage. This, of course, is in addition to all their healing abilities.

Bear Shaman: While the tempest of Set and priest of Mitra are set up as healing classes with opposing strengths, the bear shaman behaves quite differently. He's focused around melee combat, with no ranged spells or attacks at all. Like the Soldier-type classes, a bear shaman relies on combos. He does still have heals, naturally, which take the form of cone heals and team heals, which are nearly instant-cast spells. Bear shaman healing is triggered by his melee attacks, so he's most effective when constantly attacking.

His melee attacks, based on how the feats points are allotted, will increase his healing, while blasting off cone heals will increase his damage output. So essentially, a bear shaman can augment his healing ability and mana regeneration by swatting at foes, and the more they focus on firing cone heals, the more damage they can do. And since their melee attacks can have an AoE effect, multiple targets can be affected with this type of curse at once.
Since the bear shaman is going to be more susceptible to attacks as he'll be on the front lines, he has a higher armor rating than the other Priest-type classes as well as higher hit points. To move across the battlefield more quickly, the bear shaman also has a charge ability. Additional skills include some armor break skills, basic crowd control, and a knockback ability.
While in combat a bear shaman is capable of putting a buff on themselves that either causes their own offensive power to increase or triggers debuffs on enemies. If he's attacking a target, the bear shaman can inflict a debuff that causes every target attacked to gain a positive effect. So it's kind of like the bear shaman curses a target, but that target then infects friendly players with beneficial properties.

Additional archetype notes: Though each of the priest classes concentrates on healing, Funcom didn't feel it quite fit the ferocious Conan lore to have them running around with gimped attack abilities. As it's been set up, none of the Priest classes are designed to simply sit around and heal. They've all been given what Funcom describes as significant damage dealing capabilities that differ quite a bit in how they function. In all, however, Funcom asserts the classes of the Priest archetype have roughly the same overall capacity for healing. Like with the Soldier archetype, Funcom's goal here was to give each class a hybrid aspect, mixing support, healing, and offensive abilities, instead of creating more pure, limited classes.

Part 2

Meet the Rogue and Mage-type archetypes, which include classes like the wild barbarian, shapeshifting herald of Xotli, and Diablo II-style necromancer.
If you're unfamiliar with how combat works in the game, set to release next month, we already went over the basics in yesterday's article. Before we get into the remaining six classes, though, we'll give a little more detail on character creation. In Age of Conan, you can pick a racial type of character before selecting a class, though doing so doesn't actually affect your statistics. Instead, it limits your class selection. Picking a Cimmerian restricts you to picking between guardians, dark templar, conquerors, bear shaman, barbarians, and rangers. An Aquilonian get access to guardians, dark templar, conquerors, priests of Mitra, barbarians, assassins, and rangers. To get access to the Mage-types you'll have to be Stygian, whose available classes include tempests of Set, assassins, rangers, demonologists, heralds of Xotli, and necromancers.
Continuing the trend of hybrid classes in Age of Conan, none of the following are strictly limited to their primary role. The Rogue-types are basically meant to be lightly-armored damage dealers, but all have ways of strengthening themselves in other areas. Same goes for the Mage-types, whose classes' strengths range from straightforward ranged damage spells to demon forms to commanding hordes of pets on the battlefield.

Rogue

Barbarian: This is the class many think of when somebody mentions the name Conan or references the mythos. He's got the ability to dual wield or smash on enemies with two-handed weapons, and he can focus his feats on either armament type. His play style with a two-handed weapon centers more on knockbacks and crowd control whereas the dual-wielding focuses on extremely high damage per second (DPS) on single targets. His high-end combos will consist of chains of attacks up to around 10, though you won't actually have to enter 10 attack inputs to pull them off. When activating a combo skill in Age of Conan, a small user interface (UI) screen pops up, indicating which attack buttons need to be pressed to successfully execute the attack and the benefit from whatever special effects it triggers. In a 10-hit barbarian combo, Funcom is referring to the amount of times the on-screen avatar will swing at the target, not the number of attack buttons needed to pull off the combo. After all, this isn't Tekken.
The barbarian is meant to be a raging, out-of-control fighter class, but is grouped under the Rogue archetype simply because he won't have the number of hit points of the tank classes, and therefore can't last as long as Soldier-types on a fight's front lines. But, for a Rogue-type, he's pretty survivable. He's also capable of affecting more targets than the assassin (listed next), who deals in large part only with single targets. A few armor breaks and damage-over-time (DoT) effects are available to him, as well.
To further make up for the fact that he's not as heavily armored as Soldier-types, feat points can be allocated to his dual-wield tree that allow him to get a chance to avoid incoming damage when his hit points get hacked down to certain levels. Since Funcom didn't want to make the barbarian a class that runs away from battle, he'll also gain new abilities as his health drops, gaining the ability to charge forward with a short-duration invulnerability buff. When he's surrounded by enemies, he can activate another skill to power up his attacks in accordance with the number of enemies present. The more enemies there are, the larger the bonus.
Essentially, the worse the odds, the more dangerous the barbarian becomes. He's not built for survivability. Rather, he's built so he can kill his enemies before they get a chance to do anything.

Assassin: When compared to the barbarian, Funcom asserts that the assassin is a more straightforward class since he won't be dealing with crowd control or managing multiple enemies. Instead, the assassin is almost exclusively about locking in on one target and eliminating it, though they do have limited splash damage and area-of-effect (AoE) capabilities. The assassin is built to have the highest single-target DPS in the game.
The assassin's feat trees, according to Funcom, change how they play more significantly than any other class, mostly because their functionality would otherwise be too limited. There are corruption and lotus branches of the feat tree. Assigning points to the corruption branch give the assassin unholy DoTs, life and stamina leeches, and they shore up his armor rating to a degree. Abilities triggered from this branch will require varying numbers of soul fragments, which are gained by successfully completing combos.
While the corruption tree works to make the assassin a little more hardy, the lotus tree veers more into the realm of poison, concentrating on multiple DoTs and chances to do additional damage. Though it's a higher damage output in lotus, the assassin only gets one heal ability this way, so he'll be more fragile. Also in this branch, the lower a target's health, the more powerful the assassin becomes. That doesn't mean the lotus branch is all about killing, though, as the assassin eventually gets an AoE confuse ability by continuing to assign points in this line.
Funcom says the lotus and corruption lines are not only represented by differing feat trees, but also by stances. The assassin will have to be careful about switching stances, since moving from corruption to lotus destroys any soul fragments in his possession.

Ranger: Out of all the Rogue-type classes, the ranger is the hardiest, capable of wearing medium armor whereas the barbarian can only wear light and the assassin is limited to cloth. Bows or crossbows are his primary methods of attack. A few melee skills are in his arsenal, but for the most part they're more useful for getting him back to range than trying to employ them as a primary method of attack.
As with most other classes, many of the ranger's skills have an AoE element. With the crossbow foes tend to be affected in columns directly in front of the ranger, mimicking the effect of a bolt piercing through targets. With bow abilities, the AoE elements are more generalized, affecting a more spread out area than with the more concentrated crossbow fire. In addition, the bow attack will have more DoT side-effects, whereas the crossbow's more directed fire will work more to damage armor and cause splash damage. A ranger also benefits from the ability to pierce through and even destroy the directional shielding surrounding every enemy.
Ranged attacks use the same combo system that the melee classes do, so the ranger doesn't miss out on an entire element of the game just because he chooses to fight from a distance. Traps are brought into combat as well, and can be laid down while in the midst of a battle. Funcom pointed out that a ranger won't need any kind of reagent to activate a trap ability. In fact, no class in the game really requires reagents for any skills, aside from the assassin's corruption line soul fragments.
For added versatility, a ranger can swap into fire stance which imbues all their attacks with flame, something Funcom says is especially effective for sieging. In splinter stance, ranged attacks will explode upon impact, doing splash damage. And then there's the knockback stance, which, as you might expect, helps to knock opponents away from you.

Mage

Demonologist: This is Age of Conan's most traditional mage class, focusing on both single target and AoE lighting and fire damage. True to the name, a demonologist also gets an actual demon, though it's not really a central part of his play style. A pet can help out with damage, but it's useful primarily for the team buffs it activates, which could include things like increased regeneration rates and increased armor depending on which demon is summoned.
With regards to their damage types, fire is more for direct punishment though it does have unique effects. As would make sense with flinging around fire, the spells have DoT effects on their target as the magic continues to burn. If a target is killed using fire, there's also a chance a DoT effect could spread to others nearby. Electrical damage is less focused on damage and more on control, giving the demonologist knockback abilities and chances to stun, giving him more of a use controlling crowds.
Funcom wanted to stress that since the demonologist isn't a pet class, there won't be any need to have him frequently micromanage pet commands or anything to that effect. He'll be more or less free to concentrate on blasting out fire and electrical damage.

Herald of Xotli: A melee mage or shock trooper is how Funcom describes the herald. He doesn't have ranged spells like the demonologist, instead concentrating on melee combos that can be augmented with spell effects. To help out in combat, the herald benefits from a polymorph ability that physically transforms him into a demon for a short period of time, increasing his damage, hit points, and inflict periodic damage to all those nearby. Investing in the proper parts of the feat tree allows for further customization of your demon form's effects, such as becoming more fearsome, actually stunning surrounding enemies, and draining their mana and stamina and adding it to your own pool. This is an important ability, since because the herald utilizes both melee attacks and cast spells, he'll need to keep a close eye on both stamina and mana bars.
The herald does have the standard complement of Mage-type abilities as well, such as an absorb shield and a few other damage reduction buffs. For attacking, he's got a hellfire breath ability, a magical blast that injures targets within a small range in front of him. Other abilities allow him to convert mana to stamina, as well as more quickly regenerate mana outside of his polymorph ability, giving him the option to replenish whichever resource he happens to need most.
Compared to the other Mage-types, he's the most survivable. He also benefits from complementary abilities like chaining melee attacks that cause his hellfire breath to increase in strength, occasionally removing the mana cost associated with casting it. Chaining his hellfire breath can work the other way around, buffing his melee attacks.
As the herald moves through the levels, the graphical representation of the polymorphed demon form will evolve somewhat, appearing with new pieces of armor. The final form of the polymorph you can acquire with the proper feat choices, called the avatar of Xotli, is significantly more powerful than the standard form, gaining a the ability to potentially do AoE damage as melee attacks are inflicted.
In PvP this could have interesting effects, as the herald could use his temporary demon form to abruptly switch the momentum of battle. He'll have to be careful, however, as the priest of Mitra could then target him with anti-demon abilities that otherwise wouldn't have affected him.

Necromancer: Funcom compared the necromancer to Blizzard's Diablo II version of the class type, where he's capable of summoning large hordes of undead to do his bidding. As the necromancer levels up he'll gain additional pet command points that allow him to summon more to his aid. At high levels, he'll get a total of eight of these kind of points, which can be used to summon different types of pets. The basic melee pets cost one point, for example, so you could summon eight of those at a time. There's also a class of single-target nuker (ranged damage) pets that cost two points, and at the highest levels they get pets capable of AoE ranged blasts, costing four points. These can be mixed and matched however the necromancer sees fit.
Within the single-point melee pet line are several types, all with different secondary effects beyond their direct damage. The mutilator, an early pet type, builds a stacking debuff on the target it's attacking. Once that reaches a certain point, all attacks against that target from any source do bonus damage. Another melee pet has a chance to activate a team heal, and others can drain the stamina and mana of the target or inflict additional unholy damage.
One of the necromancer's core spells, called pestilential soul swarm, can, if it kills a target, give him a chance to gain another temporary pet for about a minute. There's no real upper limit to the number of these types of pets, so in a large battle it's possible to for the necromancer to generate a small army in addition to your core pets.
For the core pets, attack and defend commands will be available to the necromancer to keep them in line. The commands lend themselves more toward ordering the pets as a whole rather than individually.
A line in the necromancers feat tree allows for their pets to be powered up, giving them more resistance to punishment along with more damage output. Further investment in that line will allow the necromancer to sacrifice pets for a mana return or a damage boost. Or, in the other line, it's possible for the necromancer to weaken himself for the purpose of powering up his active pets.
To defend against enemies who close to melee range, the necromancer can use a number of close range AoE attacks along with roots and snares to try and gain range or give his pets a chance to attack. Unholy and frost attacks are at his disposal, the latter of which can slow or freeze enemies. An end tree feat ability that relates to a necromancers frost AoE actually instantly kills any minions hit that happen to be frozen

Joined: Nov 12, 2006 Posts: 218

ima guardian

Community Founder Joined: Jun 30, 2005 Posts: 2371

Nice useful find Very Happy

have made it a sticky!
cheers
|2es-mrix

Joined: Jul 01, 2005 Posts: 478 Location: Watching You

I love it when they say (unlike other mmos) when they actualy mean wow i realy realy hope this game kicks ass and its looking good and from reading this its taking alot of tips from wow e.g the tallents and alot of the class roles are simular.

imo thats a very good thing cause weather your a wow player or not wow has been tailored to perfection in the last few years so to not take ideas from wow would be very stupid. The thing im most concerned about is that like pirates of the burning crap sorry sea is that the game will have no seamless e.g loading screens every 10 seconds although i dont think thats the case from what ive seen.

Wows succes is based on nothing more than the way the world intergrates with the story so well for instance when you go to an instance (group dungeon) you have to acttualy go there and enter the temple which gives a realy good sense of were you are in the world i hope is the same with aoc i dotn want to see some stupid group signup crap were you get auto teleported there and your left thinkiing were the hell am i.

One thing that bugs is this crap about all classes being able to stealth to some degree imo ONLY the rogue classes should be able to stealth attal im guessing they have done this because in wow atleast at first the rogue was extremely popular compared to most classes because of this one skill which ofcourse on pvp servers is incredibly powerfull.

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 1:43 pm

|2es-MooK wrote:

One thing that bugs is this crap about all classes being able to stealth to some degree imo ONLY the rogue classes should be able to stealth attal im guessing they have done this because in wow atleast at first the rogue was extremely popular compared to most classes because of this one skill which ofcourse on pvp servers is incredibly powerfull.

I think it is more to do with the world of Conan, everybody and his dog is a sneaky bastard! Seriously Mook me young friend go read some Conan, it's all sex, violence and thievery! I'm sure you'll enjoy it Smile

Obviously ideas about gameplay and such have been borrowed from WoW, as you say but it also looks like they have attempted to bring some new stuff to the party and made it more adult orientated Very Happy

Joined: Nov 12, 2006 Posts: 218

yea the world isnt a seamless one like WoW, but because of this, each area isnt a massive flat landscape with the odd tree here and there