[Translation] Stigma

[Heretique]

Originally Posted by Karukan

Why does everyone automatically think the worst?

I believe the stigmas are going to be used to allow us to make ourselves hybrid in the way that we will have our main proficiencies/skills/gear but we will be able to modify ourselves to perform well in other varying situations.

Example 1: A mage who tends to run low on mana alot could use a Stigma for using a Dagger and Leather (and possibly active Dagger skills if that is implemented later on). When he runs out of mana, instead of sitting there he could just switch gear and run around killing until his mana refills. In PvP a mage could use this once his opponent got within melee range to finish him off instead of trying to cast and getting interrupted over and over.

Example 2: A ranger who may solo alot may want to add stigmas for wearing plate and healing. It may slow his killing down but may allow him to survive hard hitting mobs that he normally couldn't take solo. In PvP he could use the heal after a hindering ability to give himself an edge over his opponent.

Example 3: A tank could get stigmas for that allow him some minor buffs for defense and offense. This could help him out soloing by giving him enough power to kill mobs faster and could help in a party by allowing them to not be dependent on a buffer.

It will basically come down to creating combos of Stigmas that will work together with your class to help you in certain situations in either PvP or PvE. Since you probably won't swap them out often, you will have to decide what is more important and stick with it for a while. It will likely take some effort on your part to tweak this to work with your style of play but, to me, that is a welcomed effort when you are talking about such an open character enhancement system, that truly could have endless combinations.

But just to **** everyone off i'm going to make my Mage wear Plate and Stealth around ganking people lol

To me, this is the post that made the most sense or any typical relation to what would be to come. But like many have said, we just don't know yet so we're all on speculation.

The Stigma system seems very cool when it comes to customization and in a sense gives an average class an ability to create a "new class" if you know what I mean. What I am saying is, for example lets take a mage for instance. Said mage is a basic mage that wields her spellbook(s) but with Stigma said mage can advance to something of the sorts of a "Archmage" or something more Grand due to Stigma, giving her the ability to switch from cloth armor to leather/mail type and giving her the ability to lets say use a sword that wields m.atk/p.atk at the same rate.

Like Karu has gone into, I believe we're going to see something where the average classes in PvP will take a turn out from your Rock, Paper, Scissor combat by giving people more options to take their character into.

Great post, great replies, hope it all works out for the best.

[mikebmac]

Thanks yet again for this information.

[Chaos_Theory]

Originally Posted by IceTea-OW

U cant switch stigmas in fight... u need to go to a NPC to change them..^^

If this directed at my post then all I have to say is did you even read my post? I never said changing stigmas mid fight, I said changing weapons and armor accordingly to adjust to changing cercumstances . For example if you have 2 warriors on you then you could switch to a high defense/evasion set of armor/weapons so you take less damage from them opposed to wearing the armor you normally do when casting spells. Same goes for energy/mp. Lets say you start with a set that gives you 30mp and when you are in a situation where you are casting spells faster than you can regen with pots/items switch to a high energy/mp set that gives you +50 energy.

Originally Posted by Heretique

The Stigma system seems very cool when it comes to customization and in a sense gives an average class an ability to create a "new class" if you know what I mean. What I am saying is, for example lets take a mage for instance. Said mage is a basic mage that wields her spellbook(s) but with Stigma said mage can advance to something of the sorts of a "Archmage" or something more Grand due to Stigma, giving her the ability to switch from cloth armor to leather/mail type and giving her the ability to lets say use a sword that wields m.atk/p.atk at the same rate.

Like Karu has gone into, I believe we're going to see something where the average classes in PvP will take a turn out from your Rock, Paper, Scissor combat by giving people more options to take their character into.

Great post, great replies, hope it all works out for the best.

I have to disagree with your archmage example. The stigma system should not change the base class. It should give them added benefits but only so much of said benefits. For example lets say your mage used some stigmas so they can use shields and wear plate armor. This shouldn't mean they turn into a mini tank and can melee effectively. It should only give them extra defense needed when they are getting spiked assuming they have the armor on.

I do somewhat agree with the change in rock, paper, scissiors gameplay so many MMO's follow. I would hate to see mages running around owning assassins/rangers of the same level just because of the stigmas they are using. The mage should be harder to kill but the assassin/ranger still should be its kryptonite.

[Karukan]

Whoops another thread linked to this and I posted my reply here instead of the applicable thread. My bad.

[Gatz]

Errr... I will stick to plate and the usual weapons (melee user ones).I feel less obliged to used a stave or some fancy-boy dress.

[Marten Knbk]

I play Guild Wars, and it's full of elitism. Most groups only accept you if you have a good build. One of the main things a good build needs is focus. You should focus on one job, and if you have that job done with the skills you have, you can add another job and try to do it. If you spread focus on too many jobs, you become inefficient. I think it's a bit the same with stigma's. In grouped PvP, Mages need to kill people. You can use Stigmas for better armor, but then you can't use stigmas to futher enhance your offensive abilities. You try to focus on 2 things, but your main job gets harder to fullfill. Thus you lose efficiency. Same goes for melee weapons. If you fully focus on spells, you should be able to deal more damage than when being a spellcaster/melee hybrid. Only if you are able to take out enemies efficient without the use of stigmas, it might be smart to use them for better defense or whatever. And only if your abilities synergyze well with the abilities you get from stigmas, you should use them. A GW example: Elementalists (kind of Sorecers) have a spell which increases their damage output with weapons. Warrior/Elementalists use this to improve their damage, and use it efficiently. They are made to deal melee damage, and it's good to increase this with other proffesions. However, there are also Elementalists who use an Assassin secondary proffesion and use these spells to increase their damage capability with their secondary. They negate their primary purpose (using spells to either deal damage or support), and thus are less efficient. They are less efficient than Assassin Primaries, and should not use that build. But there are cases where it's better to use your secondary proffesion skills. Elementalists have a very large energy (mana) pool, and are able to cast expensive Monk (Cleric-like) Spells to support and heal their party, which the Monk couldn't do. (Back to Aion) In such a case, where a class uses stigmas to make better use of their primary roles and skills, stigmas are the way to go.

I should stop now, it's getting too long. Sorry

[mydoom]

mmm i dont know about u guys but getting merchant stigma stones is'nt gonna be the first thing i do it will more likely be farming skill/abilties stigmas excluding weapon and armour stigmas cause there is no reason to use these over much better and rarer skill/abitlies ones that grants spells both actice and passive one.

E.g tank picking up a evasion passive ability better to be not hit then beening hit
. tank also picking up Rapid Attack
Its a close combat attack, that when used it rapidly attacks an enemy.
Cool time 2 seconds.



Wound
A closed combat attack skill that its used after "Rapid Attack" so
it can cause a bigger damage output.
Cool time 4 seconds.

for higher dps and hate control

just something of the top of my head atm till we get a concerte skill list


i'd list more but not knowing anymore about the current skills it's abit hard

[Heion]

I really liked Ultima Online back in the day, an MMO without "classes", sort of. Characters were entirely made up of a set of skills of your choosing, which meant you could customize your own Warrior, your own Mage etc.

Therefore, I'm quite excited about Aion and this stigma system, which let's you customize your character to a certain degree.
This increases the chances of one Gladiator not being entirely the same as another Gladiator, we'll have diversity which I like a lot. I think this might make PvP more exciting as well.

I hope this will help balance the classes, so that in a 1v1 situation all classes have an even chance against eachother. In my opinion no class should be able to easily kill one or two other classes. I prefer a balanced system.