In need of help!

[tigon]

Ok, so I can't make my mind. I'm not very good at it. I've trained my Magic and Melee skills up to Lv25 and now I feel the need to start really focusing on one or the other... But, I can't choose.. Magic or Melee?

I've always wanted to be a healer but all other MMOs I've played have made it really boring. Ryzom seems like it could be fun to heal. Is it fun? Is it more then just clicking "heal" over and over again? Is going up the heal tree something you might recomend? I'm a very social creature so would like to focus on something that is pretty heavy group oriented.

I've also always enjoyed tanking. Is there real tanking in Ryzom? I haven't played long enough to really get a good feel for the party system so I don't really know about the tanking thing. If so, is it challenging and fun? Is this something you might recommend?

Ahh, I'm so confused. Any adivce, opinions or pointers would be greatly appreciated! Anything to point me in one way or another!! Thanks

[nephy13]

Yeah, there are plenty of tanks in Ryzom (The perfect tank, I'd say, would be in heavy armour + large shield + 1-h mace. Why mace? For "slow" action since damage is unimportant for a purist tank. Slow should keep you alive and that is what it is all about. You'd also get a mage to enchant your weapon with, say, Slow Attacks or Fear, just to help you stay alive. Oh, and yes, I know that "slow" is considered broken, but any reduction in incoming damage is better than buffing damage out for a tank. Defensive stanzas like melee protection aura would be of more use to you than stanzas that boosted damage. Of course, that level of specialisation is uncommon, but it is how I would want to do it if I built a tank).

I personally found that, having to heal life, sap AND stamina added something to the dedicated healing experience. I had to decide who needed what most at any time...without life, someone dies. Without stamina/sap, someone stops doing anything or maybe they will swap from melee to spells - You need to make that call. Just saying that there are more variables to think about for the healer, which can only be a good thing. Of course, my healer is just level 51, so the experience later on may be more or less interesting. Personally, I'm worried that group-, rather than targetted-, healing might take a lot of the fun out of it, but I will see in another 50 levels or so...

Additionally, since you can take skills from anywhere, you needn't always heal if you don't want to. I heal or afflict, for example, depending on which is needed and how I feel.

You won't see many groups on the island, but I consider them critical on the mainland, since they are so much more powerful than a soloist. This nets me a lot more XP/higher quality drops since you can fight much stronger mobs in a balanced party than alone. I've heard others disagree with that, but perhaps they have min-maxed solo builds compared to my group-oriented build (I don't have effective attacks of my own!) *shrugs*

[iwojimmy]

there is no real need to specialise exclusively.

One day, you spend as a healer, trying to get the right heal to the right person in time to avoid the party getting wiped, while the tanks and nukers blither away about what was on TV yesterday, or some game 2 of them played five years ago.
the next, there are excess healers, so you grab your Heavy armour, and massive weapon of destruction, and deal damage whilst chatting about to the rest of the team or region

Melee ability is the path to high Hitpoints, and should not be ignored, and Healing is vital...

[fiach]

The best aspect of Ryzom is character versatility, you can be healer, mage or warrior.

Being a Warrior gives you extra HP, that you can use in spells as credits.

Being a Mage means you can be a damage dealer extrordinaire as you progress through levels.

Being a Healer means that if things start to go awry, you can be the difference between a party wipe or its survival, as mentioned above, you dont just heal HP.

I do all three and I think my game experience all the richer for that versatility.

If your heart is set on healer, then yes, its very rewarding in Ryzom, possible more than any other game that uses a pure healer, but I do recommend you augment it with some melee to get your HP higher.

Have fun

If you are on Cho and need any advice/help send me a tell

[nephy13]

Sorry, by specialisation, I meant in current role, not in skills. If you are a specialist tank, you should excel at taking punishment. If you are a specialist damage-dealer, you should have a punishing damage output. I've just not seen many pepole who aren't just general "warriors" in a fight - able to dish out and absorb a fair bit of damage, but not pushing either to the extreme of specialisation. Conversely, on the magical side, there seems to be much more specialisation in temporary roles assigned (healer, blaster or afflictor) within a given party, though it is still possible to be a general mage and cast whatever is required at a given time.

There is, as you said, no reason why someone who can tank one day can't be a damage-dealing warrior another day or a healer another because of the ability to generalise skills.

[fiach]

Sorry, by specialisation, I meant in current role, not in skills. If you are a specialist tank, you should excel at taking punishment. If you are a specialist damage-dealer, you should have a punishing damage output. I've just not seen many pepole who aren't just general "warriors" in a fight - able to dish out and absorb a fair bit of damage, but not pushing either to the extreme of specialisation. Conversely, on the magical side, there seems to be much more specialisation in temporary roles assigned (healer, blaster or afflictor) within a given party, though it is still possible to be a general mage and cast whatever is required at a given time.

There is, as you said, no reason why someone who can tank one day can't be a damage-dealing warrior another day or a healer another because of the ability to generalise skills.

I really dont get the point you are trying to make Nephy, you can choose as a mage to be an elementalist at a pretty early level and just do that until 250.
But the way the skills are structured, you will not have enough HP to effectively cast enough spells unless you have some melee under your belt, which gives you the constitution to add HP credits in your stanzas. But the spells deal out huge damage.

Warriors can tank, using Taunt, which holds the mobs aggro, but they can also dish out a whopping amount of damage. are you saying that you want them to just stand there and not do damage? I have a tank in Lineage 2 a Shillien Knight and he could deal a tremendous amount of damage, but conversely if you had 2 tank classes from Archlord, eg. a Berzerker and a Knight fight each other, it would go all day, becase you cant kill a knight, neither can you be killed by them, whats the point of a class like that in what is ostensibly a PvP game.

Healers in Ryzom are Pure Healers, they cannot solo, all their XP is from healing in a team.

I'm still not sure of the point you are making so sorry for the waffle

[iwojimmy]

the standard roles still apply.
even tho a warrior can deal a lot of damage, a nuker can deal 3 times as much, and from further away.
conversely, a tank can have over 6000 hp, and take half damage due to armour, while a caster would be lucky to get over 4500 (MA would take you over 5000 ) and takes 80 - 90% damage ( or 66 - 75 % in MA )

so in a classic team, its the melees job to soak up the attack, and the casters job to dish it out. This doesnt mean tanks cant kill things, just they arent as good at it as the nukers.
Personally, I dont like teaming with elementalists, because they kill too fast, and can prevent other team members getting any xp ( only some are like that, but that type of player gravitates toward nuking roles )

And with all this damage flying around, its up to the healers to keep everyone up and functioning. Its possible to win a battle or two without a healer, but long term, you just have to have one ( or two, for real efficiency )

[olepi]

A common progression is to level melee first, get some HP and credits first. Then level healing, so you can help the other melee's level. And then nuking. I figure every character should be pretty high in these three. It is satisfying as the tank, to turn and heal sap on the healer

Once these basics are in place, then you can start looking at range, affliction, etc, skills.

I am actually trying the "pure" tank: 1-H mace with Slow, and shield with full HA. On Cho, seems that nobody is making maces though.

Olepi

[nephy13]

I really dont get the point you are trying to make Nephy, you can choose as a mage to be an elementalist at a pretty early level and just do that until 250.
But the way the skills are structured, you will not have enough HP to effectively cast enough spells unless you have some melee under your belt, which gives you the constitution to add HP credits in your stanzas. But the spells deal out huge damage.

Again, I am talking about specialisation of role, not skills here. I agree that to be the most effective mage (of any kind) requires you to level melee for the HP. When a party gets together, I've found that one person ends up being given the healer role, another a nuker role, another an afflictor role. Thus they are taking on specialised roles. The role that I see most meleeists in is more that of an all-purpose warrior (commonly 2-handed weapon + heavy armour).

Warriors can tank, using Taunt, which holds the mobs aggro, but they can also dish out a whopping amount of damage. are you saying that you want them to just stand there and not do damage? I have a tank in Lineage 2 a Shillien Knight and he could deal a tremendous amount of damage, but conversely if you had 2 tank classes from Archlord, eg. a Berzerker and a Knight fight each other, it would go all day, becase you cant kill a knight, neither can you be killed by them, whats the point of a class like that in what is ostensibly a PvP game.

From your description, I would guess that an Archlord knight is a "tank" and a berserker is a "damage-dealer". I think the confusion stems from using the word "tank" to describe all "warrior" roles, rather than its more MMORPG-specific usage to describe a high-defence, low-offence melee character.

You are quite correct, though, to say that the "tank" role is one suited more to PVE than PVP though - usually because players can ignore a taunting tank and just focus on the squishies (blasters/healers) since they realise that kicking a brick wall won't get them anywere.

[nephy13]

I am actually trying the "pure" tank: 1-H mace with Slow, and shield with full HA. On Cho, seems that nobody is making maces though.

Ah, well done! I hope that you are finding it effective. Incidentally, the next weapon plan that Sal intends to master is the 1-h mace, but he is only making q40 weapons at the moment, so depending on what your level is, I imagine he can't help you (He is concentrating on crafting at the moment, so I hope he can move along rapidly to q60 or so). He will be trying to follow recipes that maximise parry bonuses rather than damage when he does make them, though