This is my first Allods Online (AO) video. I dinged level 18 and wanted to show how effectively a Melee Healer (MH) can burn down mobs while maintaining high HP through HoTs and heal procs.
In the video my MH generated heals through 2 mechanisms:
Perpetual Healing HoT (95 on a non-crit)
AOE heal ticks (49 on a non-crit) generated by Brilliant Faith whenever the Fanaticism buff procs
Here are my thoughts on the mechanics of the spec:
2h is the way to go. 2h weapons in AO inflict excellent crit damage, e.g. the Verdict crit for 938 on the 2nd gargoyle. As you can see from the footage, there isn’t much point in wielding 1h + shield given how I am able to keep my HP consistently high
Don’t over invest in Devoted Plea. So far I’ve been able to solo heal groups with just the 1st rank of Devoted Plea. Healing groups should be even easier now that I have Brilliant Faith and Perpetual Healing 1. At some point this spec may not be viable for solo healing groups but I haven’t run into that wall yet
When Fanaticism procs you get 1 or 2 stacks of the buff, and each stack generates an AOE heal with Brilliant Faith. It’s important to note that even at max Fanaticism (10 stacks), you can still proc Fanaticism, which in turn generates the AOE heal
As with all healing, the HoT ticks and AOE heal ticks are subject to the Faith and Luck mechanics: i.e. some of the healing can be resisted and they can crit or anti-crit (glancing blow)
The Dodge buff from Divine Instincts is under-rated and the points are not a waste of rubies. I dodged about 5 of the elite mob’s attacks
Update (26 February 2010):
People have been asking about my stats in the video, so here they are:
Luck 68: 22.7% crit, 7.99% glancing
Intelligence 56: 8.96%
Perception 73: 17.4% resist
Faith 78: 13.4%
Wisdom 54
In the video I have the Gibberling (level 16-17) blue rep gear pieces and the level 17 Darkwater blue quest staff (30-62 damage, Luck +10). This is a very different mix of stats compared to what I have been leveling with. Previously I had enough Perception to be well under 10% resist. With the gear in the video I had boosted my crit rate from 5% to over 22%, and it seemed worth the tradeoff of suffering an increased rate of resists to get ~4 times as many crits.
I was on Vent this morning with guildees in the Happy Fun Guyz gaming community and found out some of them work in the gaming industry and at least one is traveling cross-country for the conference. Small world. I shouldn’t be surprised, given that a lot of people in the game industry are avid gamers. We’re going to meet up in person.
If you’re going to the conference drop me a line here or via email (gmail.com account, same user name), as it would be fun to say hello.
Allods Online (AO) started its Open Beta last week, and the playerbase is irate over the initial pricing of Item Shop virtual goods and the changes announced for version 1.0.07.07. Keen has written an excellent summary of the concerns of the playerbase.
AO’s Closed Beta was a very positive experience for many players. So what happened at the start of Open Beta? To understand the situation, let’s discuss the basics of a F2P (free-to-play) game from a player perspective:
you don’t have to pay for the game client
you don’t have to pay for game account(s)
you can play the game without having to pay, or you can optionally pay for virtual goods and/or in-game “buffs”
The success of a F2P game depends on the game’s ability to acquire new players and convert some of them into paying customers without alienating the non-paying players, who are advocates for the game and may eventually convert. Typically 10% or less of the playerbase of a F2P game spends real money on the game and the other 90% of the playerbase plays it for free.
An Example of Savvy F2P Core Game Design: KnightOnline
There is a lot of cynicism among players regarding F2P games, but I have played a game, KnightOnline (KO), that had a savvy design for its “item shop.” Let me first state that KO had some major game design and implementation flaws – notably the game was very hackable and exploitable. I’m not here to say that KO was a “good” game, but KO elegantly supported its item shop via two game mechanics:
the magic anvil for upgrading items
the buff scrolls for PVP
The magic anvil was usable by anyone, and you could upgrade any gear piece or weapon to +1, +2, etc up to +8. Each plus rating granted a significant improvement to the item’s performance, and typically players tried to get gear up to +6 (very good) or +7 (excellent) or even +8 (amazing). And for the cool factor +8 weapons glowed! However, there was a catch: when you attempted to upgrade an item, if the upgrade failed the item was destroyed, and as you tried to upgrade the item to higher plus ratings, the probability for an upgrade to fail increased. KO’s item shop allowed you to buy an item called a “trina” for $15 USD which would increase the success chance of an upgrade by ~20%. This may not sound like a good deal, but consider that upgrading from +6 to +7 had a ~25% success chance, so a trina brought that up to ~45% or almost double. For some players, the risk of having a very rare weapon or item burn in the upgrade process wasn’t worth the time it would take to farm it again, so they would purchase trinas (in my case mostly through a monthly subscription) to use when upgrading very rare items starting from +5 and up.
In KO, you could get equivalent buffs from either a player priest or from buff scrolls. Enemies could place a debuff on you that would cancel out a priest buff or scroll buff. But here’s was the catch: when you removed the debuff, any priest buffs would need to be re-applied, whereas if you had a buff scroll, once the debuff was removed you still had the buff effect. Simply put, buff scrolls were simpler and more reliable from a playability standpoint.
So when I played KO back in 2005 you didn’t have to pay to play the game, but I and others in my guild eventually signed up for the optional $15 USD monthly subscription because we felt it was worthwhile to do so. And that’s how the F2P model should work – you get hooked, you see the benefit of paying, you become a paying customer. Some of our guildees paid more than $50 USD per month – more than triple your typical P2P monthly subscription – to buy virtual goods such as trinas. One guildee, a business owner from Brazil, was paying $100+ USD per month.
KO’s game developer made some F2P changes after I quit playing in 2006 that I thought were poor ideas, such as login queues for players who didn’t pay. But I saw firsthand how the trina concept and buff concept successfully motivated players to pay real money for virtual goods. It was incredible to witness from a business perspective.
Currently you can remove the debuff by getting resurrected by another player. However in version 1.0.07.07 resurrection will not remove the debuff so your options are:
spend in-game coin, or
wait until the debuff wears off, or
use an Item shop consumable called Perfume, or
some combination of the above
Perfume costs $13.50 USD for a stack of 20, and they last 30 minutes each. Therefore if you die 20 times a month and decide to use Perfume to remove the debuff each time, you’ll be spending $13.50 USD per month, which is conspicuously close to the industry-standard monthly sub of $15 USD. The FoD / Perfume mechanic effectively turns AO from a F2P game into a P2P game because the game experience of not paying will be lousy. The game operator and developer are not going to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes about this.
The kicker is you get the FoD debuff if you die in PVE or PVP. This is more harsh than the item repair costs incurred when dying in PVE in WoW. The FoD mechanic has major implications in terms of growing the playerbase and the extent to which players will participate in activities such as PVP where death is part of the experience. I was hoping to see robust, active PVP in endgame for AO, but with the FoD mechanic, it’s not going to happen.
Who is to Blame for the Allods Online Situation?
Some players are claiming that the game operator gPotato is pulling a “bait and switch.” Certainly, gPotato has culpability in terms of the initial outrageous Item Shop pricing, e.g. $20 USD for a backpack with 24 slots instead of the 18 you start with.
Guys if u r really do not understand what is going on, i will explain to you from Russian point of view. Firstly – original developer team stopped developing Allods Online at CBT1-2 at Russia, because Nival – company developer, merged with astrum and mail.ru, main game designer left this project because he had another point of view on this game before he could finish it, new director came, after that Allods progress stopped almost completely, mail.ru bought AstrumNival so at this point game was destroyed, because mail.ru is the most greedy russian game service platform.That explains why they cannot fix music and sounds easily, why it tooks so long of them to fix bugs, why animations are partly ruined and Kanian fem for example run through ground, and explains why there are bugs in game that were already fixed before, they just do not know the code well, and they are not capable of further Allods creation. Allods original developers and designer are working now on project that has Dota like gameplay, and that explains why you have a feeling of unfinished good game,because allods creation was stopped at Closed Russian Beta. But however they see the situation so they r trying to make the maximum profit out of game until it will be too late, because they r not capable of programming anything really new, because they have not developed this game, period. even russians not happy with shop, not even game not finished but i found myself not able to afford stuff
When a game has contuinity in the development team’s leadership and staff, it’s reasonable to expect the following positive outcomes:
there is clarity on the game’s business model
there is consistent alignment on the game design: the core game mechanics, the direction for content, and how to improve and evolve the game over time
there is consistency in the quality of implementation because the development team has learned over time how to architect, design, develop, test, and scale the game, and they know the code base inside and out
there is a consistent feeling of ownership by the people working on the game – it’s “my game” as opposed to “someone else’s game that I’m working on”
there are strong relationships between the game developer and its customers (the game publishers and game operators) and they collaborate to create a compelling player experience that drives revenue
However, as noted in the comments above, there may have been significant turnover in the AO development team at both the leadership and staff level. It’s unclear to what extent there is a development team that is continuing to work on the game.
I truly hope gPotato and the game developer can sort the situation out in a way that makes sense from a business perspective and from a player perspective, because AO is an excellent game property.
Update @ 8pm PST, 22 February 2010:
There is a great thread by galethbg regarding the ownership structure and history of the companies involved in AO’s development. This at least gives me some hope that there may be some stability and continuity on the AO development team. Hopefully the game developer will heed the worldwide player feedback on the upcoming changes and adjust them in a more reasonable fashion.
gPotato has posted an article that communicates the development team is intact and that gPotato is evaluating the Item Shop prices based on the feedback thread listed in the previous update.
When I set this blog up last summer, I had two objectives in mind:
to provide my class guides in one place. I’ve lost several guides that I posted on forums for various reasons (my threads were deleted due to age, the forums they were hosted on shut down, etc) and I didn’t want to risk that happening any more
to share my narrated online videos, especially the PVP ones, with richer interaction with viewers than is possible on YouTube given its limited comment functionality
I didn’t want to create another blog that documented a player’s experiences with MMORPGs – there are dozens of good blogs that do that already. My goal, long before this blog existed, has been to share helpful content with other players so that we can learn from each other and elevate our gameplay, especially in PVP.
But I’m curious to hear from YOUR perspective…why do you read this blog?
This is a guide for the Melee spec for the Healer class in Allods Online.
Revision History
2010 March 28: because of the issue with Holy Avenger, dropped 3/3 Holy Avenger and 3/3 Bearer of Light to free up 6 rubies to take Divine Foresight. Updated ruby grid images and link to calculator
2010 March 19: added 3rd PVP video and updated the content for Holy Avenger and Condemnation. HA-generated Fanaticism buffs do not proc Brilliant Faith heals
2010 March 12: added links to my narrated PVP videos
2010 March 9: updated the ruby progression numbered chart, fixed some tooltip descriptions, and added section re: PVP
2010 March 3: updated the ruby progression numbered chart to get Banished Words at 23 for Holy Lands PVPVE
2010 February 27: added the ruby progression numbered chart and commented on Perpetual Healing
2010 February 23: added more content to the tips for beginners
2010 February 20: added tips for beginners
2010 February 19: clarified that all our damage is affected by the same set of stats. Updated names of abilities and rubies to match to the in-game tooltips
2010 February 17: updated names of talents and rubies and their descriptions per in-game tooltips and updates to allodsbase.com calculator. Also made 1 change to the filler ruby placement in the Cleansing Flame tree
2010 February 12: posted original version
1. Melee Healer Class Mechanics
In AO, Melee Healers (MH) are viable because of 4 synergistic mechanics:
Their two core melee abilities (Verdict and Holy Rage) have a chance to apply a stacking buff called Fanaticism, and each time the buff stacks it generates an AOE party heal and decreases the cast time of non-instant-cast spells by 0.5 sec
They can deliver excellent melee burst damage with 2h weapons
They have multiple ranged CC abilities (snare, knockdown, mez, and silence) which are great counters against kiters and runners
They have very good survivability – thanks to plate armor, self-heals, and a bubble
The closest analogy to an AO MH is a WAR Warrior Priest (melee-based healing) blended with a WoW Retribution Paladin (plate armor + bubble + burst).
To give you an idea what a MH is capable of, check out this video of a level 40 MH:
Video of 40 Melee Healer (Russian AO) – not Taugrim
It’s important to note that unlike games such as WAR and Aion, AO does not have a consistent auto-face opponent mechanic. So in AO a skilled meleer can circle-strafe an opponent, just as the player in the video did.
Here are the downsides to the MH spec:
The spec is incredibly mana-intensive
It lacks the burst healing and sustained healing of a healing-centric Healer spec (duh!)
It has limited nuke capability. Its damage mechanics require the MH to get up close and personal
The spec I’m going to describe below is a MH with strong DoT/HoT capability. Here is a link to the spec on a spec calculator:
In AO, there are two ways you spec your character: via talents (abilities) and rubies (buffs and procs for talent abilities, new abilities, passive defenses, etc). Here is my endgame talent tree:
Specific abilities:
1/3 Holy Blast: this is a caster DPS spell and you automatically have 1 point in it. No reason to invest more points in it
3/3 Verdict: the first of our two core melee abilities
3/3 Cleansing Flame: ranged (spammable) instant-cast DoT. I’ll go either 2/3 or 3/3. Some MH specs do not max this out
0/3 Spiritual Focus: grants immunity to spell casting interruption and buffs the next spell or heal
0/3 Devoted Plea: this is the bread-and-butter cast-time heal, but most of this spec’s healing will be generated from melee abilities and instant-cast heals. It is worth investing 1 point in this ability early in the game so that you have an on-demand heal as you level up to 40
3/3 Blind Faith: ranged 5 sec snare and disorient, 21 sec cooldown with 3 points and rubies (see next section). Surprisingly useful in PVE and incredible in PVP
1/3 Heavenly Smite: 1 point just to get this ability because it is a ranged AOE knockdown. It has a fixed 4.5 sec cast but with 9 stacks of Fanaticism buffs this becomes instant-cast
3/3 Holy Shield: 12 sec invulnerability bubble on a 3 min cooldown with 3 points
1/3 Calming Prayer: 1 point just to get this mana regen ability
3/3 Perpetual Healing: maxed out (spammable) instant-cast HoT
0/3 Resurrection: it’s not usable in combat. At endgame you can complete a World Mystery to get an AOE rez, at which point you don’t need this ability any more. I did end up putting 1/3 Resurrection to have a rez for grouping
3/3 Holy Rage (HR): the second of our two core melee abilities. What’s nasty about HR is that it creates a stacking buff which increases the ability’s damage by 10% and mana cost by 20%. This is what you see generating huge crits in MH videos. This ability requires a ton of mana to use so it’s best to spend talent points here last
3/3 Divine Prayer: maxed out emergency instant-cast heal. Very mana inefficient but it complements the mobile playstyle
1/3 Purification: removes a debuff
1/3 Holy Rejuvenation: 1 point to get the ability. This is a large burst heal with a fixed 6 sec cast time but remember that Fanaticism buffs reduce the cast time
1/3 Binding Light: this is a mez ability. 1 point just to get the ability, to complement our arsenal. Should be very valuable in small-scale PVP and gapping an opponent
3. Rubies (0/22/16)
As discussed above, rubies are used to obtain buffs and procs for talent abilities, new abilities, passive defenses, etc.
Here is my endgame ruby spec (note I do not put any points in the Holy Blast tree):
Specific Verdict tree rubies:
3/3 Blessed Steel: +30% to physical damage. Our two core melee abilities are physical
2/3 Ray of Light: when health is < 50%, healing received is increased by 20%
1/1 Banished Words:6 sec silence ability, with a 21 sec cooldown with 3/3 Condemnation (see below)
3/3 Power of Faith: reduces cooldown of our two core melee abilities by 20%
2/2 Devout Servant: increases the chance for Verdict and HR to proc a Fanaticism buff by 20%
3/3 Divine Instincts: increases Dodge by 100% with a 2h weapon
3/3 Condemnation: reduces cooldowns for Blind Faith, Binding Light, and Banished Words by 30%. This is one of our best rubies, don’t underestimate it1
3/3 Brilliant Faith: when Fanaticism buff procs, it generates a party heal
As you can see, Power of Faith and Devout Servant synergize to increase the number of party heal procs with Brilliant Faith. That combination of rubies is what makes this build tick.
Specific Cleansing Flame tree rubies:
3/3 Surge of Faith: +45% increase to output of HoT and DoT abilities
3/3 Illuminated Mind: +15% to Wisdom which reduces the target’s armor and increases our mana pool and regen
3/3 Enlightenment: +15% to Intelligence stat, which drives all our damage (both physical and light damage types) and healing
1/3 Ascension: 1 point to get the self-buff that increases our crit chance by 200% and reduces threat by 200%
2/4 Blaze of Faith: filler rubies. Note that Guardian of Faith only works against demons, so I don’t take it
3/4 Unshakeable Faith: +15% to Faith, which drives all our healing
1/1 Divine Foresight: creates an auto-heal on the target when their health drops to 35% or less. This can save the target in situations when damage taken would have dropped the target’s health to 0. Note that the mana is spent on casting the buff not when the heal procs, and each time the cooldown expires you can place the buff on an additional target
Some MH specs invest points in the Holy Smite tree to get the ability Entreaty, which is an excellent instant-cast self-heal on a 30 sec cooldown, instead of Divine Foresight. However, I don’t like like the 4 required rubies to get to Entreaty.
4. Melee Healer Stats
As a caster class, the following stats affect our damage:
Intelligence increases our damage (and healing)
Luck affects our % to crit and % to have a glancing blow (i.e. an anti-crit)
Perception reduces our chance to miss and the target’s chance to dodge/block/parry
Wisdom reduces the target’s armor (mitigation)
Another important stat for Healers is Faith, which affects how much “wound complexity” our heals ignore. There is an excellent thread on the Allods Online forum that describes the mechanics of the these 5 stats.
It’s important to note that regardless what abilities you use (melee or ranged, physical vs spell damage, etc), the stat mechanics are the same. E.g. Intelligence increases our damage for melee abilities and for spells. I think this was a great design choice by the developer as it simplifies the game.
The conventional wisdom among Closed Beta testers is to keep stats balanced, so you don’t want to go overboard on stacking any one stat (e.g. Intelligence).
dchipeev, a veteran poster on the AO forums, recommends the following stats (excluding Luck):
I’m planning on spending my stat points 75% on Wisdom and 25% on Luck. Your mileage may vary!
5. Ability Rotations
I would cast the HoT and DoT abilities before engaging in melee and refresh them as needed. Melee attack spam would be mostly HR and Verdict.
Use of CCs would be dictated by the situation. We can use our snare (Blind Faith) and silence (Banished Words) frequently due to their relatively short cooldowns against casters and kiters. Our AOE knockdown (Heavenly Smite) has no cooldown – it just has a long cast time of 4.5 sec but with enough Fanaticism buffs stacked that won’t matter. Keep in mind that Heavenly Smite can be “pre-casted” without a target so that when you cast it with a target it’s instant-cast. Our mez (Binding Light) is a great oh-crap CC against humanoids.
In tight situations we can use our bubble (Holy Shield) and / or instant-cast self-heal (Divine Prayer).
6. Other Game Mechanic Considerations
As you probably know, AO is a F2P (free-to-play) game with a CS (cash shop) from which players can buy in-game items with real money.
One of the CS items is a consumable called incense, which increases the player’s max HP for 30 minutes. Many players are unhappy that this item exists because the HP buff is regarded as essential for some endgame PVE encounters and makes a huge difference in survivability in PVP.
For PVP, classes that can meaningfully heal themselves, such as MHs, will probably be less impacted by not using incense than classes that can’t heal themselves. In most games healers stack enough HP to survive a reasonable amount of burst, then they focus on other stats. So if you are concerned about incense and don’t plan to quest for it or buy it from the CS, a healing class may be a wise choice for you.
7. Class Tips for Leveling
Stat Points Allocation
I recommend putting 75% into Wisdom and 25% into Luck, because those stats are rare on gear relative to Intelligence, Perception, and Faith.
Talent Progression
I recommend the following talent point progression through level 12, which enables you to kill quickly while still being able to heal in groups:
Verdict 2
Devoted Plea 1 – it’s worth taking this heal for leveling because without it you have no healing whatsoever until the upper teens. Useful all the way to 40 because it’s a spammable heal and generates Fanaticism proc heals
Verdict 3
Cleansing Flame 2
Cleansing Flame 3
After level 12, you have the option of taking Blind Faith, Heavenly Smite, or Holy Shield. I took Holy Shield 1 then Heavenly Smite 1. However BF has surprisingly strong utility in PVE so I would recommend getting BF 2 before obtaining either Holy Shield or Heavenly Smite. BF 2 has a 1 min cooldown but CC’s a mob for 10 or 15 seconds, which is a long time, and you can continue to DPS on that mob without breaking the effect. Definitely get BF3 by level 25 if you can for PVP in Holy Land.
Perpetual Healing is available as early as level 18 and it’s a very good HoT.
Ruby Progression
Here is the order of rubies I recommend taking:
Divine Instincts 1-3: the Dodge bonus is good so this is not a useless talent by any means
Power of Faith 1-3: the mana cost and cooldown reductions do work, even though the cooldown isn’t reflected in the tooltip; see my comment below to Kikiz
Brilliant Faith 1-3
Blessed Steel 1 in the upper-right hand corner
Devout Servant 1
Banished Words
Devout Servant 2
Blessed Steel 2
Condemnation 1-3: these rubies are key for lowering the cooldowns of our CC. You could take these before Blessed Steel 2. Depends whether you want more CC or more damage first
Ray of Hope 1-2
Blessed Steel 3
At level 23, you will have Banished Words for the silence which is key for PVP. I managed to get two World Mystery rubies (I think via clearing Dark Citadel and all but the last boss of Castle Blight) which enabled me to get Condemnation 3 by level 26.
Once you fill out the Verdict tree, it’s up to you whether you pursue Divine Foresight or Ascension first in the Cleansing Flame tree.
Gear and Healing
It’s totally worth getting the blue reputation gear at level 10 and throughout the leveling process. What you can do is quest until you are close to hitting level 10, then do the rep repeatables (e.g. the flour quest on League side) to get to 25k rep. I had to run the flour quest 9 times to get to 25k rep and it took about 20 minutes – boring but well worth it. It’s easy to solo heal the first level 10 instance (e.g. Oreshek on League side) even as a Melee Healer so long as you have DP1 and the level 10 blue rep gear. With the level 10 blue rep gear you gain a massive improvement in your ability to heal, because the gear boosts your Faith into the upper 40s (or higher) which causes your heals to land more effectively.
For leveling 2h is the way to go. I tried alternating 1h and 2h on the same mobs and the difference in kill speed was very noticeable. Once you reach level 18 you can obtain the talent Perpetual Healing which tips the scales even more in favor of 2h as the HoT will keep your HP high.
8. PVP
Instead of writing out a detailed description of PVP, please watch the narrated PVP videos I have posted on this blog. If a picture is word a thousand words, a narrated video is worth a million :)
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