I think one of my biggest pet peeves is when I see another chanter running around and I stop to inspect them I notice something very very scary…..they are in cloth! Chanters and clerics for that matter can wear chain mail. Please for the love of Aion put some on. Chanters and Clerics are the only class whose highest available armor designation is chain mail. And while we chanters are a buff and debuff class we are also melee. You are going to get your ass smacked from Poeta to Themobomos wearing cloth. We apply our debuffs via melee fighting. You can’t melee fight in cloth. Period. You also get no bonus from wearing cloth. Chanters have one magic skill (smite) that gets no upgrade as we learn it at level 1 and it becomes a cleric only skill at level 10. (I personally only use it for pulling if I’m soloing.) Our mantras get absolutely no benefit from magic boost and you should have no problem with mana until your early to mid twenties and by the time it gets to be a real problem you will have mantras to counteract that. You need the stats from chain mail, such as physical defense and parry (especially parry because higher up you have skills that proc off parry). So get your chain mail set together early as you will be needed it.
Once you hit 10 and head to Sanctum/Pandaemonium for your acession you will gain the passive skill to wear chain. It’s important to have a few pieces before you even get there because you will need to buy all your skill manuals as well. With that said, you should take the chain mail rewards from the last few quests you have in the starting zones. The ones you get around level 8 and 9 are good enough to get you started in the level 10 areas. If you are Elyos they are Mercenary”s Mail from the Barring the Gate quest and Mercenary’s Chain Greaves from the Neutralizing Odium quest. I usually have enough kinah after buying my skill manuals to also pick up any filler chain mail pieces I need. So be smart about saving your money. Pick up everything and vendor it this way you will have enough saved up to get you started on the path of a Daeva.
Personally I am quite happy that we get to wear chain mail. After playing Wrath of the Lich King were Blizzard decided to homogenize armor it made for a real mess as priest and caster dps all started vying for the same gear. Each class in Aion is unique and comes with their own set of gear so there is little reason to argue when it comes to that…manastones on the other hand are a different issue. Which I’ll get into next time. Until then happy hunting.
Okay, yes I am a crackhead. Yes I woke up at something like 8 this morning so that I could check on the server pre-selection status. And yes the minute I saw my server was unlocked I rushed and created my character. So here she is, my soon to be Elyos chanter Jadzia. 5 bonus points if you can pick up the name reference. ^_-
My goals for head start:
1. Get Jadzia to 20-22. Most of my legion mates have Monday off and I want to make sure I don’t fall to far behind.
2. Finish the Krall quests in Verteron. For the love of Aion I must finish those.
3. Gather every stinking thing in sight. Gathering in Aion is a sort of secondary profession. There are a bunch of quests that require you to go out and pick up stuff for people. If your gathering skill isn’t high enough to complete the quest you are missing out on xp. Plus it will help my legion.
4. Not as important but still on the list get handicrafting, my profession of choice, to a level that will somewhat match what I’m able to gather. I doubt it will happen but one can dream. I plan to have a ranger alt eventually so I figured handcrafting would be a good profession to pick. I will be able to craft staves for my chanter and bows for my ranger. Plus they make accessories and that’s just good to have in general.
So that’s about it. Let’s see how well I do.
Well the day started with excitement. I pre-ordered Aion months ago so I knew all about the pre-selection that would happen today. My friends and I planned during open beta which server we would be on. It was a well planned and thought out process. Okay not really we just pinned a tail on a donkey and called it a day. LOL. Kidding. Either way the server was picked and today when I got home I was ready. However that was what awaited me when I tried to make my character. While I understand the reasoning behind trying to balance the servers its still really frustrating. Liv, associate producer for Aion, has assured us that the servers that are locked will be open again once head start begins. So at least I have that to hold me over. Balancing will still take place during that time, I’m sure, so its just a question of will I be able to make an Elyos on Triniel.
And speaking of balancing I’m surprised at the amount of Asmodians. In my experience I’ve noticed people like to play the race they believe to be the “pretty” and/or “good” race. I’m only rolling an Elyos because I lost the vote when we decided what race we wanted to be. The majority of my friends didn’t want back hair and claws. I wanted Asmodian because I’m a semi lore nut and just admired their side of the story when it came to the destruction of the Tower of Eternity. Plus they seemed like the underdogs to me so I liked that aspect as well. I had gotten that impression that most people felt Asmodians are evil from looking around at various forums. As pre-selection drew near I noticed a change towards people declaring they would be Asmodian. I just never knew how big the Asmodian population would be.
Despite the frustration overall I’m happy with the decision of NCSoft to maintain balance with the races. It will help to create servers that aren’t totally dominated with one faction. Which is a good thing cause we know how people love to complain if they are given an unfair advantage in an MMO. Cause gaming is serious business.
Make sure you check the link to keep up to date on pre-selection server status.
Well I have about a week until Aion comes out and thankfully I’ll be playing in the head start cause I need my gaming fix. I’ve been searching you tube looking at videos to hold me over until Ayase yells that the servers are up and I can play.
I’ll be playing a Chanter once Aion goes live and this is the video that initially got me interested in the class. When I saw the animations I fell in love. Normally I play a pure DPS class. I was a warlock in WoW and a Spellhowler in Lineage 2 just to give you an idea. Yes I go for the caster types but I have done melee too cause let’s face it stabbing someone with a pointy knife is fun. The idea of playing a hybrid class was a bit off putting at first but when I finally started playing the chanter I knew it was right for me. I will even admit I made a totally of 5 of them during all the Aion betas. >.< So be prepared for a lot of chanter talk in the weeks to come as I test things out cause I never like to go with what people say is good until I’ve actually tried it myself.
So this is actually a few days old but I didn’t get a chance to watch it until tonight. Skip to around 1:59 mark. Go on dooooo it! Don’t worry I’ll wait……….
Talk about flipping awesome. I doubt my chanter will ever be ranked high enough to get that but its still pretty neat. What this video also shows tells me is that thankfully they are planing ahead with Aion and the world we see at launch might not be the world we see a year from now. Hopefully they will be able to find that balance so that older areas don’t get neglected for the new and shiny which tends to happen a lot with MMOs. New content comes out and old content fades away. Overall I have high hopes for Aion.
With only a few hours left to the Aion Open Beta its time for me to say good bye to my little chanter. She made it all the way to level 25 and got to see some of the abyss before I had to call it a night. ’sniff I will miss her so. That is until pre-selection next Friday when I can make her all over again.