First off, I'd like to apologize for the lack of updates over the past few days. It's been a busy weekend, both for me and the game. The NY Comic Con just ended yesterday, and over the weekend there has been quite a bit of news, So much new info is now out there that I though I'd wait a little while for the dust to settle, and go over the news that interests me. Mythic debuted the Choppa and the Slayer at Comic Con, and Adam Gershowitz showed off the first hands-on footage for both careers in two videos over at Tentonhammer. There was also new info on improved mounts for high-level guilds.
On the whole, the Slayer and Choppa are shaping up quite nicely, Their rage mechanic icon, while different for each career of course, looked easy to read and the look of both careers at level 40 was great. I thought the Choppa looked nice and threatening in the demo, wiv lotsa spiky bitz stuck on his armor. I know the Choppa is technically medium armor, but the gear showed looked very close to heavy, with spikes, chains, heads on spikes and all that lot. He also had some cool-looking choppas, with what appeared to be either goat or ram skulls mounted onto the axes, very bad-ass. Adam also showed off character customization options for the Slayer. In addition to the default options, Slayers get to select some pretty awesome tattoos, as well as a few beard options that are exclusive(!) to the career. Even the mohawk has some nifty choices, ranging from the classic crest to a split mohawk and even a more ragged look to the basic crest.
Gameplay-wise the two careers came off looking pretty similar, which is expected. Lots of cool slashing and spinning moves and effects, and some nice autoattack animations as well. Adam stated that both careers would have Mastery paths split into Greatweapons, Dual-wielding and Balanced. The Greatweapon Mastery focuses on big hits that drain your rage bar, the Dual-wield path is based on getting your rage as high up as possible and staying in the redzone dishing out tons of damage/AoE while getting real squishy, and the Balanced is well, balanced. One interesting thing is that the AoE for these two careers will be significantly different from that used by other careers. Adam stated that their AoE will be more powerful, but with a caveat: it will be somewhat random. Your selected target will always be hit by the AoE, but surrounding targets will be hit at random. They will NOT be hit by every AoE attack, but when they are hit, it will hit them harder. So instead of the typical sustained dps of other AoE, it will be a sort of "burst" dps.
The unpredictability of this new type of AoE is crucial to the Slayer/Choppa's role of "linebreaker". The new careers will be best used to slam into bunched opponents and bursting down random targets in the with their AoE, with the random nature of their AoE making it difficult for healers to focus heal. Properly played, the Slayer and Choppa will be great for breaking up the assist train and breaking up the zerg. This sounds pretty stonking great, and I already have visions of slamming into a packed group and dealing out death left and right.
Some other shared abilities include a move in which the Choppa/Slayer lashes out at anyone attacking them for several seconds. now what makes this different from the other "backlash" type abilities is that it looks like it hits back for the same damage as a regular attack, instead of a preset value. This could lead to some pretty hard-hitting revenge hits. I didn't see too many morale abilities except for one Adam called "Doomseeker" in which the Slayer sweeps with both weapons around him in an arc twice, which I assume hits for MASSIVE DAMAGE.
That's mainly what I was paying attention to over the weekend. I hit 39 on my IB as well. I ought to hit 40 this week, and I have the boots for the Conqueror set and the Sentinel belt waiting for me in the bank. Thanks for bearing with me, and I'll be seeing you guys again in a few days.
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