Wanderer Groo
TMF Novice
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2010
- Messages
- 50
- Points
- 0
(Note: I only played ranger and didn't hit the upper levels, so this is speculative. Take it with a grain of salt.)
The mage and slayer seem like glass cannons. The mage should presumably outshine the slayer when the mage can make full use of the elemental weakness system. Elemental vs non-elemental is enough of a distinguishing point that I can understand both being present.
I'm okay with those two.
Soldiers soak. The player can't tank for others in this game, so the defense only matters if it translates into a significant amount of extra turns (less turns spent healing). I didn't play a Soldier, but if the defense isn't significant enough to PALPABLY translate into "extra rounds," I would dump my soldier for something else. One option to make soldier work as described: give them about twice as much HP as anyone else and correspondingly increased benefit from potion items.
The adventurer is kind of a middle-ground utility character. You have plans for it; I'll reserve my opinion for after I see those plans.
The thief and ranger are utility characters too. I would have consolidated them with the adventurer if not for their unique spots/scripts.
"Steal" isn't compelling enough to be a differentiating ability unless you tuck away equipment/riches that's well beyond reach of other characters that's only available to the thief. ("Sure, my character sheet stats suck, but can YOU afford a gun this big?") Otherwise, it'll just be, "being a thief means you grind slightly less, but the grind is more painful," which isn't fun.
One way to balance "fast" characters is translating their speed into spiky mitigation (dodge/evasion/parry/whatever). Spiky damage actually sucks to balance around; evasion tends to either be worthless or overpowered. I seldom see a middle ground. With boss fights as long ("hard") as you want them to be, I think spiky mitigation would represent too large of a gamble and end terribly. I'm mainly bringing it up as way of saying, "Hey, please don't do this."
I tried the ranger. I didn't find Snare worth using. I liked being able to see weak spots, but I'm not sure it makes a good class-defining feature. (On that note, it would be nice if there were some indication of when a player targets a weak spot, other than having to hit several places and attempt to compare damage while also accounting for the RNG. Maybe monsters emote in response?)
My apologies if my understanding of the classes and their intent is misguided.
Endorsed
-Groo