Recently, Carbine Studios gave us an up close and personal introduction to their final tank class, the Engineer.
Meet The Engineer
Engineering class will be available to the following races:
Exile: Human, Granock, Mordesh
Dominion: Human Chua, Mechari.
Damage:
The Engineer may be a tank class, but it can still dish out damage. They’re flexible, able to jump right into the thick of battle, or pull back and let their bots (pets) and comrades take the hits while they do long range DPS damage. Engineers can cast on the move, but their movement speed is slowed when casting, unlike the Medic class.
“More of a shock trooper. Your DPS won’t be as high as a Spellslinger, but you will be able to take more punishment.”
Unlike Warrior and Stalker classes, Engineers are made for continuous ranged attacks. They can also restore their own shields and health, whereas Warrior class can only restore shields and Stalker classes can only restore health.
Previews
Target acquisition: Engineers can aim this attack and mark up to 12 different targets for damage… or put all 12 targets on a single target. For each mark, damage dealt increases. You get all 12 from marks from the get go with no need to level up to acquire more (though we’re guessing that damage will increase as skill increases).
Launcher: Engineers can use their Launchers, a heavy cannon that’s highly unstable and builds up Volatility with use to charge more powerful attacks. This generates unstable energy focused on dealing high damage.
Armor:
Engineers are a Heavy Armor class. In addition to the highest rated armor class, they also boast an Exo-suite, or as one WildStar developer put it:
“Armor on top of your armor.”
Exo-suites are useable with Engineer stances, and changes effect based on different stances. For instance, when you use a Tank stance paired with Exo-suite:
“It just makes you awesome… you’re almost invulnerable”
Using the Exo-suite with a DPS stance increases your Volatility, allowing you to more quickly build up a big attack. As of now, the Exo-suite has over a 2 minute cooldown, starts with 20 second active time and increases as your character improves.
Pets: “The one true pet class we have in WildStar”
“We wanted control for the bots to be fairly fluid to match our faster paced gameplay.”
Engineers will have access to Bots, making them the only pet class. Engineers get four bot pets to choose from (though you begin with less and unlock the full set through progression), and can have any two out at one time. Pets are summoned and permanent until the pet is destroyed.
(Names are subject to change)
Bots scale directly off the Engineer’s stats. The pets are intended to take a beating, and the WildStar dev team is watching closely throughout testing to see if tweaks need to be made. Presently, there is a 15 second cooldown on death for each bot.
What do you think?
If you got your hands on WildStar tomorrow, is Engineer the class you’d want to try first?
