Part 2: Careers!
As stated earlier, I got a chance to play all 11 of the careers available at the demo. So...here's my thoughts! Please note, these are just my impressions, and they do not necessarily reflect Mythic's vision for the careers. Nor can I guarantee that any of the statements I make will reflect the power level or gameplay style of the careers once release rolls around. So basically...don't come crying to me if you play a career and it doesn't play the way I said it does.
Hammerer – My least favorite of the playable careers. That being said, the class still has tons of potential, and I’m sure there’ll be plenty of people that love it. It’s basically characterized by 3 things – knockdown abilities, positional attacks, and doing a crapload of damage. I feel like I can’t really give this career a fair review, seeing as I played it during the one Scenario where my side got absolutely slaughtered. I will say this, though – it’s a heavily Dwarf-flavored career. Lots of attacks involving feet and kneecaps, and knocking people on the ground so you can hit them better.
Choppa – The Choppa is a tough character. Out of the DPS careers, I’d say the Choppa is the one that can take the heaviest beating. The downside is that it’s kind of a tricky class. To get up to the damage output of the other DPS careers, you need to use Berserk, and you need to get kind of lucky with using your abilities. For example, one ability that requires Berserk roots you in place for 3 seconds, during which time you attack really, really fast. Unfortunately, people can counter this simply by…moving away from you. Again, for optimal effect, you need to catch people when they’re not paying attention to you. Not my cup of tea.
Rune Priest – This was an interesting career. It’s definitely more defensive, but it does have some very powerful buffs – some obscenely powerful buffs, in fact. One rune (I believe it might have been a “Master Rune” – you can only have one of them out at a time) gave the buffed target AoE attacks. I didn’t see the ability that knocks everything back, but even without the Runepriest is still a powerful class. You do have offensive attacks – there’s one that’s basically a lightning bolt…Rune of Smiting, if I’m not mistaken. However, if you want to do DPS, this probably isn’t your career. This isn’t to say that it’s a group-dependent career – I was quite capable of going toe to toe with other players. Just don’t expect to be anywhere near the top of the damage charts.
Bright Wizard – This was the one career that seemed to make everybody go “Oh !#&*!”. Forget tanks, forget healers – this is the career that, without fail, people went after immediately. Even the Mythic devs warned the Destruction players that “If you see the guy in the red robes, you need to kill him fast”. Ignite+Detonate is a classic combo – set your target on fire, and then blow them up. But for the most part, Fireball is your bread and butter skill. It hits everything, it does a ton of damage, and has a really neat animation when it hits. Another fun skill was Fire Shield, which causes the next attacker to take damage equal to the next attack they deal to you. Probably the 3rd squishiest of the careers that I tried. I didn’t top the damage chart with my Bright Wizard, but the guy that beat me was another Bright Wizard.
Squig Herder – The Squig Herder surprised me. With all the Squig-related gimmicks, and the fact that it’s a pet class, it’s easy to forget that this is the Ranged DPS career for the Greenskins. You can do a lot of damage with your bow. Squigs are more or less disposable – one skill (Farty Squig) detonates the Squig and damages all nearby enemies, and another (Tastes Like Chicken) kills your Squig, and gives you a large amount of health. The Squig battle armor wasn’t in when I played, and you could only summon one Squig at a time. One shot spines, the other had a big poisonous horn, and the standard Squig was kind of a tank Squig. As near as I can tell, there’s a Squig for just about every archetype. It’s a really cool class, and I was able to put out a lot of damage. Paralyzing Arrow is annoying as all hell, and Poison Arrow and “Plink” both do pretty good damage. The Herder also had a couple melee attacks, but to be honest I never used them. It’s a very fragile class, if you don’t manage your Squigs properly, so I wouldn’t recommend melee-ing with the Herder.
Black Orc – The Black Orc, on the other hand, is one hell of a melee-er. It’s not really a tactical tank – it doesn’t have great ranged or AoE abilities, but I’d say it’s about as good at offense as it is at defense. My basic attack strategy was “Whack with a builder, whack with a builder, Right in da Jibblies”. I’m sure there’s a lot more to the career, and my group probably would have died less if I had done something other than running around kicking people in the nuts, but…come on. Anyway, at the end of the Scenario, the Choppas had done about 13K damage, the Bright Wizards were in the 14K range, and I had done about 10K damage. Not too bad, considering I was using a shield, and Mythic was kind enough to pick all defensive Morale abilities and tactics for the purposes of the demonstration.
Shaman – Now we’re officially going from the list of careers that I somewhat enjoyed, to the careers that I absolutely loved. Let me start off by saying that everything Mythic has been telling you about healers in this game is absolutely true. The Shaman is an absolute %^*-kicker, and in my experience his single-target nuking was on par with the Bright Wizard. He’s a WoW Shadow Priest on steroids. I’d also like to state that this was the first career I played, and I was getting my %^* handed to me until Kilt-man wandered over to the Destruction players and murmured “Make sure you use your Morale abilities.” Once I got the hang of those, the Shaman became significantly more deadly. This was one of two careers I played where I topped that damage charts. Side note – Gork sez Stop is probably one of the most ingenious abilities ever conceived, and can absolutely devastate a player who doesn’t know how it works.
Engineer – I loved this career, but I have to say…it seems powerful to the point of game-breaking in it’s current incarnation. It’s a very well-rounded career – excellent single target damage, easily the highest of the ranged careers in my personal experience. Also available are powerful AoE attacks, in the form of bombs, turrets, and grenades. Melee abilities aren’t too shabby either. In the Scenario where I played the Engineer, I topped the damage chart without breaking a sweat. They’re seriously, seriously deadly. They have a Tier 4 morale ability called “Mini-Helga” that’s just…wow.
Magus – The Magus is another career that really, really surprised me. What drew me in initially was a special ability recently cooked up for the disc – I think it’s called “Flailing Disc”, or some such nonsense. What they should call it is “Ability wut Bites People that Come Near You”. It’s freakin’ cool, sort of like a personal “Thorns” ability. The disc rocks. Anyway, the Magus, like the Bright Wizard, is at their best when they can nuke the crap out of a lot of people. Devastating Indigo Fire rocks. Another neat ability is Orange Fire, which boosts toughness by 20% - the Magus is a much tougher career than I originally expected. In comparison to the Bright Wizard in particular, this is a hard career to bring down. I wouldn’t recommend trying to melee with one, obviously, but they can definitely survive at least one concentrated attack effort.
Zealot - Hands down, my favorite class not just in this game, but in any MMO from UO to date. We've all heard Mythic talk about how casters will be able to hold their own in melee, and I'm sure that like me, you've smiled politely while thinking to yourself "BS." However, 5 minutes into playing my level 21 Zealot, I had an epiphany - they're not just capable of holding their own in melee. They're bloody freaking good at it. I'm not talking about taking hits on the chin, ripping your opponents to shreds. That's far too simplistic. Zealots, on the other hand, are one of the most beautifully innovative and complex careers in recent memory. The Harbinger I was most fond of reduces all damage done by a whopping 25%. After that, I'd put down a ritual which debuffed opponents considerably. Predictably, a melee class would charge at me, and get hit with a debuff the second they entered the ritual circle. My own buff, a Mark of Chaos, boosts my fighting skills by a good amount. The speed with which I was able to drop enemies with auto-attack after my debuffs, buffs, and DoTs were stacked was pretty surprising. I barely even needed to heal. There were also some very powerful nukes (my eyes popped out of my skull when I saw the numbers on the Tier 3 morale ability for the zealot, I can't remember what it was called, but goddamn that thing was amazing), most of them in the Morale section. It's not that the Zealot is any better at melee combat than any other caster, but didn’t seem nearly as prone to interrupts. As of now, it's definitely my career of choice - hopefully Black Guard will be up to the task of luring me away once I get to try them out. If they end up being as cool as the Zealot, there's a good chance I'll be playing this game for years to come.
Note: As you can probably tell, I raved about the Zealot, and yet there’s still one career left to talk about. I wrote my impression of the Zealot on Friday night, after trying all the casters. You can imagine what I think of the following career, but feel free to read on. By the way, both buffs and debuffs seem to last quite a while. Buff durations for the zealot were 1 hour, and Harbingers linger on your target even after they die.
Ironbreaker – I put off playing the Ironbreaker until the very end. Why? Because I don’t like Ironbreakers. I don’t really care for Dwarfs. I’ve never really gotten into the whole idea of Grudges. A career described as heavily defensive typically translates to “A career that is heavily mocked by DPS careers”. However, before leaving PAX, I finally decided to bite the bullet and play one. Oh. My. Freaking. God.
I’ve never experienced tanking like this in any game, let alone a PvP-based MMO. The defensive capabilities of this career are mind-boggling, I can’t even begin to describe it. DAoC fans will be happy to know that Mythic has brought back the “Guard” ability, which splits damage between you and a targeted ally. Then there’s of course “Taunt”, which by itself is probably the most powerful defensive ability since the fabled-Bubble Hearth-but without the crap. Ironbreakers also have “Stances”, which I haven’t heard talked about. One of them increases Morale gain for your group, the other increases your defense. I’m sure there will be others, but I only saw those two. This is the first time in the history of MMOs, for me, where I’ve felt like tanking is as significant as healing in PvP, if not moreso.
To give you an idea of the Ironbreaker’s defensive power, myself and a Runepriest held our ground against a group of 6 Greenskins for several minutes before we finally went down. I have no idea where our group was, but there you have it. And that’s without even touching on the Ironbreaker’s offensive potential. You’ve been told that the Ironbreaker’s gimmick is Grudge. This is a lie. The Ironbreaker’s gimmick is hitting like a freaking freight train if you so much as look the wrong way at one of his groupmates. Morale abilities included an attack that did either 4 or 6 instant attacks, depending on how close to death your opponent was (Your Time is Now, I believe), an ability that instantly gives Grudge points, an AoE attack that does heavy damage over 9 seconds, and a Tier 4 ability that basically made me all but invulnerable. Great, great stuff.