Dissecting the New Combat Gameplay

Izkimar

So I went really deep on the new combat videos, buried my face in them for the last couple of days. At the same time I've been "racing" to get a video out on them, but when it comes to editing my racing is like a turtle in slow-mo. 

I originally was going to break down the overall changes and the individual classes as well, but the video would have been a million years long. So I cut it to just the general changes, and I will cover the individual classes in upcoming videos

Summary

Skill Count: I’ve seen some people complaining about the shrunk skill bar, and I want to emphasize that we are now getting much more skills than before. 

• Even if you didn’t count the Combo Skills and the Stance Swaps, we would only be getting slightly less at 10 vs 13. Before you had 9 Regular Skills, a Core Skill, 1 Shift Skill that functioned as a CC Break + A Skill Component, and 2 Reaction Skills. 
• On some classes the Reaction Skills were so conditional that you wouldn’t even use them in most cases. Also they were all engaged upon conditional effects like landing a Critical Hit.  
• Now you have 3 Chain Skills per Stance and 4 General Skills which equates to 10. 
• The Combo Skills in most cases are so impactful that they should also go towards the skill count. Generally there are 6 Skills per chain skill, in some cases there are more. 
• The Stance Swaps both engage new Class Mechanics and also have their own Active Effects applied to the character upon swap, so they arguably could be counted as skills as well. They will also very likely have playstyle altering Passive Effects tied to them.

Immunity Frames: Shift skills now appear to be gone, and have either been integrated into the Chain Skills or thrown in the General Skill Pool. 

• Shift Skills used to function as both a CC Break and a Skill. For Mage it was a Teleport, CC Break and I-Frames for the Animation. For Ranger it was a CC Break, Backflip, and I-Frames that extended for a small time after the actual animation. For Berserker, it was a CC Break, a short Dodge Roll, and a short phase of i-frames. These also cleared all de-buffs as well. 
• Shift Skills consumed a resource known as Energy that from what we can see has been removed from the game. The Energy cost varied from class to class. This is very impactful, as with high gear and high energy amounts, this was a huge part of the meta game. As characters built towards high energy they could use their Shift Skills quite often. 
• It appears that parts of the I-Frame Skills have been dispersed to different areas of the kits as well as they now have cooldowns. 

Stance Swap: Stance Swaps change your 3 Chain Skills to a new bar, but they also have Status Effects tied to them. For example, when a class swaps you often see a short duration buff appear. This will likely add some play to utilizing whatever the empowering effects are, and add extra layers to building your character when choosing your stances for certain builds. 

Cooldowns: Skill cooldowns appear to operate differently now. The management of Cooldowns will be more about Stance Flipping and Chain Initiators. The reason I say this, is because if you examine the Mage Video, there are some overlap Skills Within 2 of the Chains. 

• On the Fire Stance the Mage uses Flame Burst -> Incineration -> Meteor. 
• The mage then swaps to "Tri-Element Stance?" Uses Lightning Fire, and this stage has the option to use Incineration again. 
• It appears cooldowns are tied to Chain Skills and not Combo Skills in most cases, and some Chain Skills don't appear to have cooldowns. 

Overall, I think in most cases the changes look good for the game. There are some wonky things, some weird combo chains, but in general I think the classes seem to have better flow and options than before. There are more questions that rise with this video though. Such as, how will old passives work, and can players build out certain aspects of the combos? Some of the interviews have made it seem like a possibility. 

Izkimar

DMKano said:

99.9% of the western playerbase will only know the new chain and stance system since they never played the pre-rebuild combat.

I am not a big fan of the stance swapping mechanic and I also think that removing shift skills is a mistake.

But hey its their game and they are free to make changes as they please.

I like the new combo chains in theory, just dislike the stance based system

Hmm, interesting thoughts. I think removing Shift was also a mistake, I just think that the CC Break should have never been a part of the Shift Mechanic. Because, by design you wanted to hold it, "that is until you reached ridiculous energy levels." Also, it could remove all DoT's and de-buffs which was bad as well imo. I wish they kept the old Shift and just built in CC break elsewhere. 

I actually like the Stance Swaps, but it depends on how it ends up being executed. With different Stances having gameplay altering effects, both passive and active I could see that being fun. However, if it is all completely locked down, "if you can't choose any of the skills." I will be pretty disappointed. 

MagikrorriM

You missed the passive tree, you had streamers who were playing very badly, and never played bless at all. I suggest you go through all the videos again, the passive tree is on a different tab. To point out how bad they were playing Paladin not a single streamer popped the judgement buff (the buff that increases damage)  @ 52:00