Throughout WildStar’s pre-launch existence, the Carbine team has done an excellent job of keeping all their details shrouded in mystery. Between fan demands and website snooping, you’d think some things would leak over time. Nope. WildStar’s reveals have been under their control with only morsels slowly fed to us. With the shouts from the fan base demanding more, WildStar has once again agreed to reveal some new information. Let me introduce you to the last two classes before launch: the Engineer and the Medic.
The Engineer is the build it yourself, rough and tough, gadget master you’ve been waiting all your life for. This is the third and perhaps most unique of the tank classes. We’re talking both heavy armor and a ranged weapon – a rocket launcher at that. Did I mention that the Engineer is also the pet class of WildStar? Because it is. So as an Engineer you can do DPS and tank while operating an array of different mechanical pals.
There are a few aspects that makes this class stand out in the MMO genre. First of all, at release, the Engineer will have four total pets… AS A TANK! Each pet will fulfill a different role, and the Engineer can have two out at any given time. These pets are actually bots which can tank, crowd control, do AoE damage, or repair shields. The bots scale with the Engineer’s stats and can be improved with tiers.
Other than ALL that, since the Engineer is a ranged class, it has a unique style of tanking. Picking up adds, keeping aggro, and doing wacky maneuvers are all possible due to the fact that you don’t have to be adjacent to the bad guys. If that wasn’t enough, the majority of the Engineer’s abilities can be cast on the move. Mobility is your ally, and with the Engineer you can readily capitalize on this. No tank is complete without stances, and in WildStar you can rely on your Exo-Suit. This feature allows you to go either HAM or nearly unkillable depending on your current role.
Medic is to Engineer as healer is to tank (I smoked that section of the SATs). However, don’t think of the Medic as some pushover heal bot — this class has heavy damage over time and heal over time powers. While you’re playing the Medic, you won’t be pigeonholed into just healing. You can also go straight DPS or even hybrid into some medical-destroyer of worlds type thing.
If you’re wondering, the Medic uses shock paddle type weapons called resonators and dawn medium armor (the heaviest armor for all the healer classes). Through probes, the Medic can attach HoTs or Dots to their target and at the time of your choice explode the probe to do a massive spike of healing/damage. Other probes will buff or debuff the target depending if they are friend or foe. The Medic’s resource tool is called power cores.
The downside to the Medic is that your abilities are fairly close range and are often AoE that stay persistently on the ground for a while. This means you’re going to be putting yourself in danger, and you'll have to cooperate with teammates to stay alive. Ultimately, the Medic is going to be a challenging class to play with a high skill cap and high rewards providing you can pull it off. If you’re an MMO vet who enjoys the option to heal, you've found your class.
Well there you have it! TWO new classes are always better than a single class reveal. With the Engineer and Medic, we now know every class that will be available at WildStar’s launch. Speaking of WildStar’s launch, HOW have you not signed up for beta yet? If you haven’t got on it, wait patiently with baited breath. Now that we know all the races and all the classes, the only real question left is this: what are you going to roll?
Historian, teacher, writer, gamer, cheat master, and tech guru: follow on Twitter @AndrewC_GZ
