Warrior Preview Blog Post

We’ve got a new blog post for you all with some information on the Warrior changes that we’ll be including in the next Alpha test. Check it out:

See you in-game Friday!

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Really impressed with what you’ve thought up! Looking forward to trying it out.

Wow, I really like these changes to the Warrior. It adds that skill gap once you know the combos to differentiate between someone who just started and a long time player.

Wow this is REALLY nice an unexpected, I love it

Great work on the Warrior! I’m looking forward to checking it out.

A very minor note on the wording:
It could be just me, but I think the description of the movements could lead to confusion.

“The possible moves are Right-to-Left slash (called “Right” below), Left-to-Right slash (called “Left” below), and Bottom-to-Top slash (called “Up” below).”

The first movement names indicate the origin of the movement, but the third movement name indicates the direction. I had to actively keep reminding myself of that.

I feel it would be more intuitive to use the direction of the movement to describe the actions eg. “left” = right-to-left and “right”= left-to-right.

Good point, I updated it and changed it around, so that we’re consistently describing it by the general direction of the movement instead of where it starts.

So “Left” means a swing starting from the right going to left (so you’re swinging “leftwards”), and then Right is the opposite direction. Hope that clears it up.

Glad you all are liking it! I’m hitting the hay for now but I’ll check this thread in the morning and answer any questions that pop up. Thanks!

MOBILITY TANK! Finally someone understands how tanking should be =) I’ll have to try out Sword Rush to see how it’s used, but I’m really looking forward to it!

I really like the look of adding in combos. It will break up the boredom of the regular old swinging again and again. It would be nice if there was more than one combo for each type of attack though, just so you could spice things up a bit, add your own style, or if you just feel like one combo isn’t right for you. (ie have “provoke” be L, R, U, but also R, U, L).

I like the look of battle cry. It’s very nice that it’s not combined with your movement. Also, it’s great to hear that the shield will leave your hand open so you can grab loot and the horn. Will the new taunt continue to be <threat + 1> like the old taunt? or <threat + x%> (like in most MMO’s)?

I like that the shield is on your arm now instead of in-hand, but I strongly request you reconsider adding as a requirement for shield bash. The location of the shield has nothing to do with it accidentally getting triggered. Warriors are still going to into fights with their shields up and at the ready, regardless of where it’s positioned, and this is where the problem is. It may be possible that the new Sword Rush move will fix this issue somewhat, but the mobs will still be shield bashing themselves when they run through the warrior to attack the party should you lose threat. I’ll keep an open mind though, as we go into this closed test.

Fortify seems really interesting, but with the current lack of information on it, I’ll have to try it out in game to see how I feel.

A couple questions that weren’t addressed in the Preview:
-Has the angle of the sword been fixed as well?
-Will the shield be pulled out from behind your back with the grip button like before?
-Will the Sword Rush cooldown be added to the shield icons?

Finally, I’m surprised and excited that you guys were able to get both the Musketeer and Warrior changes up in time for this CBT. You guys rock! Looking forward to Friday.

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This was everything I wanted to see in the warrior + more. I am always amazed by the blog posts and the fact that so much effort and thought goes into everything before even trying it on alpha. Good job Orbus team, I am your fan forever! :smiley:

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Ya this looks amazing. How many combos bo you plan to be in the game at launch, and do you have any ideas on new combos post launch?

Just the ones in the blog post for now, which is 4. We may add one more depending on how tuning goes, but in general I don’t think there should be a whole heckuva lot, this isn’t intended to be like the Runemage where there’s 20 different things to choose from at any given point.

<3

If by that do you mean will it continue to be an area-of-effect taunt instead of a single-target taunt, then yes. If that’s not what you meant, then let me know what you meant, haha :slight_smile:

I think maybe you left off a word there? Add what as a requirement?

Not sure what you mean by the angle of the sword. Do you think it should be more vertical when you’re just holding your arm straight, basically?

The shield can still be put away or taken out by using sheathing gesture, yes. It’s just that even with it out, you can still grab things. It’s still nice to put it away when you’re not in combat though as it is rather large.

The Sword Rush cooldown icon is already on there, yes, it’s using the same icon as the sword throw was previously.

I’m amazed at how many changes you’ve made in such a short time. We were discussing a “rush” type ability like the WoW warrior has but motion sickness was a concern. I love the instantaneousness (not a word) of it. Combo system is a dream for me simply because with practiced combos we can be more effective and automatic ( with muscle memory). Also love how each combo is easy on the arm. No jerky direction changes. Thank you for the shield position switch. That was really the only change I hoped for haha.

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Glad you like it! :slight_smile:

Haha, you’ve gotta set your sights higher! :wink:

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lol, I had some “>” in there that the BBC coding didn’t like from the looks of it.

I was wondering if the taunt would be “threat + 1” like before, or if it would be changed to “threat + x%” (probably either 1% or 10%). From my understanding, most MMO’s have their taunts set to give “threat + 10%” since that’s the standard that WoW set.

Would it be possible to add in holding down the trigger button on the shield hand as a requirement to shield bash?

The angle of the sword should feel like the sword is being wielded by the player, and it should feel like it’s being held in their hand. Currently, it feels like it’s an extension of the player’s arm instead.

If Sword Rush is using the old Taunt’s icon, will the new horn be added to the shield icon list then?

Wow this update looks awesome. I’ve not been a fan of the warrior so far (only really playing it to abuse the sword toss mechanic) and this actually has me excited to give the warrior another try.

To add my own input on false’s sword angle question - previously the sword has been angled just slightly off center from the controller. If memory serves I think it angles slightly to the right. In addition to that - this may be a personal preference - it might feel more natural if you were holding the sword further up the grip. I’d like it to feel as if the large circular portion of the Vive controller aligned with the guard on the sword. I haven’t used a Rift controller though and don’t know if the repositioning would cause issues there. Right now it’s almost like you’re holding the sword by the pommel, which just doesn’t feel right.

Edit: mobile keyboard corrections

Yeah, I’ll keep playing with the actual mechanics of Taunt, that’s more of a fine-tuning thing. Switching it to be Aggro + % seems like that might work better than it is currently.

I thought of adding the trigger to the stun for the shield, but I’m not a huge fan of using the Trigger for something that should be more of a natural action. Like, it makes sense that you need to use the Trigger to Sword Rush because there’s really no obvious natural way to do that. But with the shield stun, it seems like it would be better to add in some sort of velocity detection so that basically it would only trigger if you actually “shove” the shield forward or something like that…but yeah, I’ll think about that.

So the icons on the shield for cooldowns are now Sword Rush, Stun, and Battle Cry (taunt).

And I’ll take a look at the sword angle, it’s not too hard to change it so that’s something we can keep playing with pretty easily.

Thank you. Alternatively, it could be left as is if Sword Rush works like you said and mob pathing was added in so that enemies would path around the players instead of through them. I like the sound of velocity detection as well.

So then we’re missing the big AOE shield spell? Was the spell removed altogether?

Right, there is no longer any large “planted” shield. There’s a section on the blog post that covers how the shield works now and the changes we made to the combat…basically we rolled a lot of it’s functionality into the base shield that’s always in your hand, and then we removed the AoE attacks that weren’t meant to be dodged that you needed that shield for.

I am considering making it so that the Warrior super not only adds extra protection for the Warrior but also for everyone inside the range of the effect (you’ll know what I mean when you see it), which would allow the Warrior to use their super to protect party members who for whatever reason couldn’t get out of an AoE attack, but I haven’t made a final decision on that either way.

I know the dev team has a ton of work on their plate already, but it really is a shame to see this mechanic go. I really liked the idea of having to dive for cover from one of the end boss’ huge abilities. It also helped separate the boss AoE from the AoE abilities of the smaller mobs, which elevated the encounter a bit. You aren’t fighting those little ghosts anymore, this guy is for real.

Would it be possible to use the pillars on the side of the room in place of the warrior’s shield to take cover? Or maybe you could knock down an extra stalactite to hide behind so the melee fighters aren’t scrambling to the side of the room.

I know it’s a small thing, but I really enjoyed it. If reworking the mechanic for this encounter isn’t in the cards then I hope something similar to this makes a reappearance in future dungeons/raids.

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