Aion review

[Gordion]

More info:

There are four types of armor: cloth, leather, chain, and plate.  Mages are limited only to cloth, and so cloth armor has stats that benefit the mage classes.  Leather is for the scout classes (Assassin and Ranger).  Chain is designed for the Priest classes, and although Clerics and Chanters could wear cloth for magic bonuses, they are really much better off with the defensive protection offered by chain--this is especially apparent when fighting tougher mobs or when fighting PvP.  The fighters, Templars and Gladiators, use plate, although they could equip any type.  The Tailoring profession allows players to craft both cloth and leather armor, while Armorsmiths make chain and plate.

[Thales]

Hi, all.

I played Aion pretty heavily this weekend and was really impressed with it.  I have been playing my cleric as my main but I also played my spritmaster (the conjuring class) this weekend.  I grouped a lot on the cleric.

The grouping dynamic in Aion is pretty nifty.  Because there are only 8 classes, a 6-slot group can be made well-rounded very easily.  In particular, because the sole healing class, clerics, are actually robust (as Gordion just pointed out), you can have two of them in a group without your DPS falling through the floor.  The tank doesn't have to spend all of her time defending the healers and, with two healers, one can go DPS when not needed.  My cleric wears chain armor and caries a mace and shield.  He holds his own and I am having a crapload of fun with that. 

Gear in Aion is so awesome I'd need swear words to express my enthusiasm with sufficient vigor.  If you go to the area above the crafting area in Sanctum (I can't remember what it's called), you can see all the cool armor available to end-game types and try it all on.  It looks so amazing.  The divine armor, which I think is for appearances only, also kicks supreme ass.  You have to *see* this game.  It's also fun customizing your gear.  I love playing the Manastone Shuffle.  You can set many of the stats of your gear by equipping it with manastones.  Unlike the adornments in EQII, manastones in Aion actually substantially alter the stats of the gear and they are freely available.  They drop from mobs routinely.  The challenge isn't in finding them, it's in getting the right setup.  Do I want 30% more HP or better defense or stronger attack skills?  Hmmm....

Now, about the spiritmasters.  Why the hate for us?  Why does every game always have a line in the manual somewhere which reads something like "While not as powerful as Sorcerors/Wizards/etc, Spiritmasters/Conjurors/Beast Masters/etc. are very useful"?  This just makes people think the class is useless.  Well, my Spiritmaster is definitely not useless.  If he is a second-tier DPSer, I'd hate to run into a first-tier one in PvP.  He kills *fast*.  Lots of fun to play, except for the need to rest frequently to recover MP.  Guess I will be learning to craft mana potions.  Also, his pets look awesome and he has *two* tanky type pets, one high DPS tank for soloing and one low DPS tank for replacing the MT in a group in a pinch.  Isn't that nice?  A conjuror who is *intended* to be able to pick up the role of tank.  Now that's the respect I'm looking for!  In fact, I think every class but sorceror can tank in a pinch in Aion, with the right gear.  I have seen chanters and assassins tank just fine, with two healers. 

See you around.

Thales

[Reginald]

I've never heard of the Spiritmaster being a 2nd class DPSer.  Actually in Beta the Spiritmaster was the preferred class for those that were more solo oriented.  For exactly the reasons that you state.  The class can do it all with it's pets and is a particularly fast killer with practically no danger to the caster since the pets hold aggro quite well.  There were constant discussions in Beta that the class needed to be nerfed since they were so powerful, but it seems like the devs haven't acted on any of those suggestions yet.

[Leon]

Good write up's guys, a real pleasure to read.

[Gordion]

Warning here...

I've been seeing unplayably bad lag over the past few days (starting Friday, I believe).  Other players have reported similar problems.  Based upon tracert info posted in support forums, it seems that one of the server groups along the path to NCSoft is not routing correctly. 

When you're in-game, you can type /ping to check your network latency.  My normal latency before this started was 300-500 ms (which isn't very good anyway).  Now it's rare to see it below 1000 ms, and it frequently spikes much higher (like over 100,000 ms).

If you're considering playing this, please check the forums before you start to see whether these issues have been resolved.  If I decide to continue my subscription, I'll try to post a note here when it gets fixed.

== edit Tuesday
I played this evening for a few hours and it appears the lag problem has finally been fixed.  Posts in the Aion forums described a routing problem between some players and the game servers (but it wasn't confirmed by NCSoft).  There was speculation that it was hitting only Time Warner customers.  Whether or not that's true, I don't know, but I'm back to my old latency now.