So something I've been pondering a fair bit lately is the core balances that seemed to have escape ROSE over the years.
First off, you have the holy trinity [Healer Tank DPS] core types.
Within those core types you have the archetypes:
Healer: Direct Heal, Heal Over Time [HoT], and Mitigation [Damage prevention/ protection]
Tank: Health Wall [tanks for a long period due to high HP], Mitigation, Prevention, Defelction.
DPS: Single Target, Cleave [AoE], DoT [Damage Over Time], Pressure Control
Within those further you have:
Ranged, Melee
But something I'm beginning to notice is an erosion of those basic concepts.
For example, the fundamental properties of Ranged are:
Long Distance gains initiation advantage, typically softer in defenses, relies on kiting and control of the battle to be victorious.
Then we have the fundamental properties of Melee:
Close range, higher damage, typically access to stronger defenses and survival cooldowns, relies on proper reaction and preemptive cooldown usage to be victorious.
But if we look at say a Magician in ROSE.
The fit the DPS core type, and Ranged sub-type. However, if you look at the properties of Ranged classes, their role suddenly breaks. They have higher damage with ranged advantage, along with build options of all DPS types. So what's wrong with that? Well, when you give a Ranged sub-type a close range sub-type's damage potential, you take away the Melee Range role purpose. Why get close to your target for a damage advantage when you can just stay away from them, and deal the same damage. [Arguably more, but that's a different point with statistic inbalance].
How many of these Ranged Types have this issue? Almost all of them.
Mages, Cannon Bourgeois, Cannon Artisans are prime Examples.
But a good show of offensive balance is:
xBow Knights, xBow Scouts, Bow Scouts [in current patch], Gun Artisan/Bourgeois, Battle Clerics.
Their DPS potential isn't so large that Melee never have a chance to engage the target, whereas Mages and Cannons can quite literally terminate a target who's already approaching before the Melee character can reach them at all. Now, this isn't necessarily true in all situations all the time, but the fact remains that it happens quite often, and break the roles purpose.
Something else noteworthy, is that there are no Tanks conforming to most properties of the Tank role.
Knight have a mixture of most properties, but also lack in many elements that make those properties effective.
For example, High HP Tanks are great for tanking DoT Damage. As DoT's while scaling are static when compared to Max HP. HP and DoT's are in a direct relationship with each other.
But, we have no classes that can Taunt/Aggro and tank Magic Damage. This in the past has been justified by the 'class lore'. But that's not an excuse to not have a tank capable of managing magical targets. Typically games assign Diversion/Prevention tanks to this. Instead of giving them large reductions to Magical Damage [which is typically outside most class lore] the give them tools to manage magic damage.
Lastly, we do have Mitigation Tanking of Physical Damage.
So in effect, we're missing:
Diversion/Prevention Tanks
Lastly, I want to talk about Melee DPS.
In ROSE, we have in effect 2 melee DPS classes. Raider, Champion.
going off the atypical roles of the Melee DPS combo, you would expect
Good Damage + Pressure. Good Defensives, Effective Cooldown Utilities.
Raider:
Good Damage + Pressure: Yes.
They have access to good attack power, augmentations to offensive stats,
Survival Cooldowns: Yes.
Access Stealth and Cloaking, Blind and Mental Storm, Evasive Guard and Mirror Phantasm.
Good Defensives: Yes.
Dodge, Defense as primary stat, both effective. Self Healing CD's and Sleep to escape.
Champions:
Good Damage + Pressure: No.
They do have augmentations to their offensive stats, however their attack power in addition to the skill damage or attack speed means they lack damage + pressure when not under the effect of a heavy CD like Enraged Berserk. Rendering them ineffective when the skill is on cooldown [for about 50% of the time]
Survival Cooldowns: No.
They simply don't have any.
Good Defensives: No.
While they have a strong HP Maximum, they do not have any good reductions that make the high HP effective. No do they have access to a selection of controling status mechanics that help control the fight.
These are just some thoughts to get people going as I wanted this to be an open forum discussion.
