With 3.4 on the PTS, we've finally been given access to the Primalist. I've been testing the Primalist and have tested it at both level cap and as a leveling experience. I'm also unable to access the soul forums on the Primalist section due to a random 404 error. Unfortunately I also have to post individual soul feedback here as well. I'm going to assume there is a lot of number tuning needed for the calling as of this posting date, so I won't mention being able to crit for 120% of a players health.
Please keep in mind that this is a mix of feedback, thoughts, and opinions about the calling. Not everything I post will be a solid fact, there will be other forms of feedback. If something has been addressed in the other threads, please ignore my comments.
Souls;
Titan:
An interesting and fun tank. A simple rotation with a few powerful CDs to help with survivability. I would be willing to bet that the Titan would be a perfect learning experience for someone trying out tanking. It's involved, but not overly complex. My concern is with it's Primal Avatar ability.
Using the Primal Avatar heals the player for 100% of their health, grants a shield up to 75% of the Titan's health, and heals the players for 7% of their total health every second for 15 seconds for a total of 105% of the players health. To me that seems to be unbalanced, especially if you start talking in terms of PvP. While it is possible to cut through that health and shield with enough people, it seems to be leagues ahead of the other tanks currently on live.
Vulcanist:
The Vulcanist is the Elementalists' fantasy come true minus the pets. The Vulcanist seems to be the best of the four souls on the PTS for utilizing both ends of the Fury and Cunning bar by making it fairly easy to jump back and forth between the two ends with it's regular rotation.
Beacon of Synergy/Drake doesn't make a whole lot of sense to be an AoE ability for the single target soul. Molten Wave should be sufficient AoE damage considering how easy it is to force your bar back to Fury. Instead I would suggest that Beacon should instead attack the Mage's target duplicating whichever spell the Mage casts for 15 seconds with an appropriate CD. It would make for an interesting burst ability and would give the player's more opportunity to enjoy Beacon.
I noticed that Vulcanist has almost no cast time abilities and a just a few channeled abilities. I'm not sure if this is intended or not, however a ranged soul with that much mobility and no resource to restrict them makes me uneasy. Mages, Clerics, Rogues, and Warriors all have to manage their resource to make sure they don't starve themselves. Vulcanist on the other hand only have to worry about managing their incredibly short CDs and swinging their bar back and forth. As much fun as the Vulcanist may be, being able to just unload a ton of DPS at will without any drawbacks creates a heavy imbalance in the game.
Dervish:
The Dervish is an incredibly interesting melee DPS. It feels that balancing heavy hard earth attacks and a flurry of quick air attacks makes a fun contrast to most other melee souls in the game.
The Dervish doesn't utilize the Fury/Cunning bar very well. They're constantly stuck in Cunning, this makes them seem more like a Harbinger with a few random Archon or Elementalist procs than an entirely new combatant.
Their rotation is very chaotic, which is fine for more experienced and seasoned MMO players. Newer players may find this off-putting. Does feel a little spammy because of this though.
They also gain stacks of Tremor very quickly, it's incredibly hard to come down from the maximum amount of stacks. Because of this and how often Air Cutter procs, there is no reason to keep Lashing Wind on the player's bar, one of the two are always popped for use.
Preserver:
I genuinely find the Preserver an interesting mix of Warden and Chloromancer with a focus on single target healing. Though I feel like they are just Clerics who trained under a Chloromancer and Warden.
Balancing Fury and Cunning for the Preserver is kind of clunky, depending on the situation the Preserver can get stuck on one end of the spectrum for a while until things change. There is also no talent encouraging the player for reaching one end of the bar or other, this gives the impression that the Devs are rewarding the player for only halfway managing their resource bar.
General Thoughts
I love the visuals brought with the Primalist, they're absolutely stunning. Whether it's the animal heads, or the visuals for their spells and abilities they definitely outshine any other calling.
The idea of every soul managing two sets of elements to balance their Cunning and Fury is fun, helps to distinguish Primalist souls from other callings and their souls.
Resource
The resource bar under player health looks like a peacock's tail feathers tripping on acid. I would love to never have to see it again. No offense to the artist that took time to draw it up. Maybe the Primalist could just have a health bar? Assuming no future souls have any need for the resource bar.
Resource management seems to have translated into swinging your Cunning/Fury bar back and fourth as needed for bonuses for the Primalist, and CDs. I'm concerned about Primalist being able to just unload their abilities with no drawbacks or no limitations to how hard they can push.
Leveling:
I did a short stent leveling a Primalist through introduction content and some Freemarch content. As of right now there isn't much in the way of Primalist weapons, they're all strength based 2-handers.
Obtaining soul points is either really enjoyable as a Primalist when you get some, or really crappy when you don't. Because the effects of putting points into a tree are more potent, it's noticeable when you use points. When you level up and don't receive any points it's frustrating because the entire time you're leveling you're eyeballing the next ability you're sinking your points into. This could be particularly frustrating when you're close to unlocking a Primal Avatar ability and you miss out on a point and have to grind out another level before you get the chance at a soul point.
It's also a little strange to be randomly be receiving two points at a time while leveling when you just missed some points a few levels prior. My suggestion would be to spread out those extra points where they might be a little thin, would help to streamline point distribution.
Soul Trees
The Soul Trees accompanying the Primalist have been reduced to 31 points for a total of 39 points available to them. The reasoning as I understand it is to help reduce fluff talents, and to probably help balancing issues. In all honesty though these trees act and behave in the same manner that the other calling's trees do. There are still fluff talents present in the Primalist's trees, and you still have to pick certain talents because they are just that good. That's okay.
The idea of pruning the soul trees makes me very nervous, this is the exact same thing Warcraft did back at the launch of Cataclysm. They pruned their talent trees to help manage unwanted hybrid builds, remove boring fluff talents, and better balance the specs. From there Blizzard removed those talent trees entirely and replaced then with the system they now have in place. To give you an idea of what this evolution looked like, I'll link a progression of these trees in chronological order. Here is the Wrath (3.0) calculator, here is the Cata (4.0) calculator, and here is the MoP (5.0) calculator. These builds are based around a PvE Combat Rogue build, something you would see in an instance or a raid. Keep in mind I did not spend very long figuring out the highest DPS output build, just something to help form an idea.
While I am aware that someone from Trion has said that they will not go down this path, I am a little cautious about that. We've been burned before, so I hope the devs understand my hesitation here.
All that said, I do think the Primalist shorter trees are at least aesthetically pleasing. At the very least a newer player wouldn't feel overwhelmed looking at those trees versus say something like the Void Knight.
Along with the smaller trees we've also seen the amount of buttons a soul needs to manage reduced. This is a change for the better. No one enjoys filling three bars full of abilities or macros, it also encourages players to try out new builds and roles.
Questions;
Is the Primalist going to have it's own unique starting armor when they start out at level 1 or share the leather set with the Rogues? Would like to see them do more to stand apart from the Rogues.
Any chance we'll see a bow based soul in the future? With the idea of managing two sets of elements, it seems like the Primalist could make for a truly unique bow based play style. Maybe manages fire and death along with a few bleeds for some sort of ranged DoT specialist?
Concerns;
I do have a few concerns I want to share about the Primalist. The first one is gearing. Someone is getting screwed when it comes to gear drops. Either the Rogues and Primalist are going to be at each other's throats for gear, or Warriors, Clerics, and Mages are going to be getting shafted and see less gear drops. Unless the loot system changes how it functions. Though I am curious as to how raid compositions are going to be changing to accommodate the Primalist.
My next problem is with the "pay to win" debate that could erupt on the forums if Primalist isn't balanced very carefully. The devs are in a very difficult situation with the Primalist. If the Primalist isn't powerful enough when it launches players will feel as if they were ripped off and had their money stolen from them for a broken class. If the Primalist can outperform any other calling in enough areas (tanking, ST healing, ST melee DPS, AoE melee DPS, ST ranged DPS, or AoE ranged DPS) the pay to win argument begins to hold water. So I genuinely hope Trion can hit the sweet spot with this new calling.
My last concern is with the legitimacy of the Primalist as a fifth calling. I do not believe that the Primalist and it's souls are different enough to warrant a fifth calling.
Before I continue, I want to state formally that I understand that Trion has sold the Primalist pack on the store already and has a contractual agreement with it's patrons to push these six souls to the live client. I also understand that all of the devs have put an incredible amount of time and heart into this new calling, for that I thank the devs for all of their continued hard work and passion they've put into not just the calling but the game itself.
The Primalist does not bring anything to the table that did not exist before in the Warrior, Cleric, Rogue, or Mage. A gimmicky resource bar and an animal head doesn't change the fact that the Dervish is just a Harbinger mixed with an Elementalist or an Archon. The Preserver is the love child of a Warden and a Chloromancer. The Vulcanist is an Elementalist with a bit of Pyromancer splashed in. The Titan is just a Warlord tank with some Paladin thrown in for seasoning.
Having said that, these souls deserve to exist within the game. They are fun, they are enjoyable, and they will make a great addition to the Warriors, Clerics, Rogues, and Mages. My suggestion is to salvage the Primalist and distribute the souls amongst the four callings. I understand that my suggestion would require the devs to go into the Primalist soul trees, add some talents to them, and balance them around their new home.
I know that this would make things more complicated, but I have some suggestions for mechanics and abilities and how to distribute the souls.
The Cunning and Fury mechanic is a simple solution. Throw in a talent into each of the trees that grants a buff for reaching 90% or more of your resource, these could be your Cunning buffs. Subsequently, if you reach 10% or less of your resource bar you gain the Fury buffs. This would reward players not only being efficient with their resources, but would also encourage players to burst at appropriate times.
Keep the Avatars as they are now and at the top of the trees. Some would need modifications (e.g. Wind Serpent granting full cunning) however those are absolutely beautiful VFX and shouldn't be wasted, not to mention their buffs are nice too.
Add in a few extra "increases -insert element type- damage x%" to each of the trees in the lower tiers to help encourage some mid-performance hybrid builds. These souls present huge opportunities for hybrid builds to come back in some form or another without upsetting 61 point builds being the top dog for balancing.
As far as distributing the souls from the Primalist, here is my suggestions. There would be two soul packs, 6 from the original planned launch of the Primalist plus 2 extra souls from the four that were suppose to be pushed post Primalist launch.
Primal Soul Pack 1 -
Four damage based souls;
*Warrior: Dervish. The Dervish would stand as a nice medium between Tempest and Paragon. Plus it'd be nice for Warriors to get a soul that isn't ranged based.
*Cleric: Berserker. For Melee AoE DPS, as far as I'm aware Clerics only have Shaman and their few AoEs. Do a little touch up work on Shaman, make them potent ST melee DPS with decent survivability, rework Druid to be a decent pet spec, and then bring the Berserker in.
*Rogues: Typhoon. This one feels a little off to me, might have to re-approach this one, however the Typhoon would be a unique play style for the Rogues and give them a chance to play something other than Sab or Tact. Plus Warriors have the ST counterpart.
*Mages: Vulcanist. The Vulcanist would be a perfect fit for Mages. Especially for those who are tired of the melee and tanking souls they've been given. Vulcanist would be a welcome change. Not to mention they'd synergize well with Pyro, Ele, and Archon.
Primal Soul Pack 2 -
One tank soul, one healing soul, one support soul, and one damage soul;
*Warrior: Titan. The Titan would be a welcome addition to the Warrior, along with the Void Knight the Titan would be a great tanking soul to compliment this calling. Now currently as it stands Paladin is not up to par, so it would be counter productive to introduce a new tank to the Warrior calling while one of their tanking souls is non-functional. So my suggestion would be to take the Paladin and convert it to a sword and board melee DPS soul. This would create a unique DPS that no other calling has. Not to mention that if the Titan kept the tanking with a two-handed weapon, it would be a great opportunity for players to try out a new role without having to get a ton of gear.
*Cleric: Preserver. Given that Clerics have a nice variety of healing souls available to them, the Preserver would fit in with the Cleric souls. It'd give Clerics access to a life based healer and an alternative to Sentinel. I'd be willing to bet there's a nice Warden/Preserver hybrid in there somewhere.
Unfortunately that is all of the souls we have knowledge of at the moment, so I cannot try to justify which souls would go where.
Having said all of that with a long and lengthy response I understand that anything and everything I said may be completely ignored and deemed as not being helpful. I'd love to hear what the community has to say about their impressions of the Primalist as a whole.