Massively goes to WAR: An overview of Ranged DPS careers for Order
The Warhammer Online NDA has lifted. So let's get to the good stuff. We're kicking it off with a series of guides to the careers in WAR.
Ranged DPS classes come in three flavors in Warhammer Online: steampunk pet class (Engineer), bow-and-blade Legolas clone (Shadow Warrior) and classic glass cannon (Bright Wizard). But which one is right for you? If race isn't a deciding factor, check out a brief overview of all three careers below to help you make your choice.
Dwarf Engineer
The good news is these Dwarfs can make gun turrets, flash grenades and throw out barb wire to trap your enemies. The bad news isn't so bad, but your turrets don't move. Whereever you drop them is where they stay. You can stay by their side and shoot your enemy with your gun or melee with your enormous wrench while lobbing grenades for extra damage output. But in many situations, your group is going to be running amok, so be prepared to replant your turret on a regular basis.
Rifleman: Focuses on long-range combat
Grenadier: Focuses on bombs and grendades
Tinkerer: Focuses on deployables and turrets
The Tinkerer path is particularly interesting. It gives you access to abilities that allow you to use your turret to restore your Action Points or heal your group. This class's mirror on the Destruction side is the Chaos Magus.
Empire Bright Wizard
Empire is the WAR term for humans in the Order faction (Chaos is the term for the Destruction humans.) These humans do one job extremely well: blow things up in a spectacular fashion. As you can imagine, the Bright Wizard has a number of abilities to set enemies on fire to accomplish this task.
However, every damage spell cast builds up Combustion. The more Combustion the Bright Wizard has the greater chance to crit and to do more damage when he does crit. It also gives a greater chance the spell will blow up in his face, damaging him. The key to avoiding this the Meltdown ability which channels all available Combustion into a damage spell. So ride the edge of danger as long as you can, then funnel all that Combustion into extra firepower.
Like all careers Bright Wizards have three Talent trees to invest in starting at level ten:
Incineration: Direct damage
Immolation: Damage over time
Conflagration: Area effect spells
Like the class mechanic, but don't want to play a goody goody Order toon? Check out the Dark Elf Sorceress.
High Elf Shadow Warrior
Earlier last week we wrote up an overview of the Shadow Warrior class as well as covered the skills they receive from levels one through five. They can specialize in long range damage, melee damage or close range dps. Any way you slice it, they do great damage. Just don't name them a variation of Legolas. %Gallery-21881%
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