Sorcerer -> Dominator of Ulgu, Ghur, Shyish
Sorcerers use the fickle winds of magic as their primary mechanic. Every 3 seconds, they will gain 1 stack of magic at random (Shadow, Beast, Death) with each type of magic being able to stack up to 3. Whenever you cast a spell from that lore of magic, it will consume one stack if present, and augment the spell.
Augment is an Interbellum effect that several abilities across different classes have and their are multiple ways to create augmented abilities. Augmented effcts apply additional damage/healing, or extra effects to the skills. So sorcerers can constantly augment their skills with the collected winds of magic, but do not always have control of the income of those winds.
Sorcerers have access to a 4th “lore” of magic which is Dhar. Dhar magic skills do not use your mechanic and exist as a way to use abilities whenever you do not want to augment your skills, such as saving them for an opportune momeent.
Each specialization of Sorcerer will have spells from the other lores of magic, but they will gain their specialized wind of magic more often. Example Dominator of Shyish will gain Winds of Death more often than Shadow/Beast. They will also have slightly more spells from their lore, and their passives/tactics will modify spells in a way that fits the theme of their lore of magic.
Bleaksword -> Blackguard, Dread Knight, Corsair
Bleakswords still use Hatred as their primary mechanic. This starts at 0 and caps at 100. You will gain 5 hatred each time you use any ability. You will lose 3 Hatred any time you are hit by an enemy ability with a 1 second internal cooldown. These are the base values and can be adjusted by different passives in the three trees.
The gains are based on an ability being used and not the number of targets that it strikes.The loss has an internal cooldown to prevent Bleakswords from being Hatred starved in large scale combat situations. This will even out the mechanic in all styles of combat which is important for the next parts.
Secondary mechanic for Bleakswords are their Hatred spenders. Bleakswords will now have our version of the aura system rather than Chosen instead of their old dark protector single target buffs.Dark protector no longer exists.
Each aura costs 35 Hatred and has no cooldown. Whenever you cast an aura, you will apply an 8 second duration blessing to every groupmate in range with a powerful effect. In addition, you will apply a 60 second duration enchantment to every groupmate within range with a lesser effect. In this system, you can re-use the same one over and over again for the powerful effect, or you can cycle different ones to stack different lesser effects to your party.
Obvious counter is classes with offensive dispels. What hasn’t been stated yet is that Interbellum effects are reclassified to lesser effects (Enchantments) and greater effects (Blessings) and dispels have been handled in a similar way. Also the stat stage system reduced the amount of enchantments and blessings in the game, which also means the number of abilities that can dispel are reduced.
Another intentional counter is the fact that you can target the Bleaksword to reduce his Hatred income. But this ties into what 2/3 of the specs definitely want to happen anyways. as for the offensive support, Corsair, the fact that their interval of their auras can be lowered allows us to let them do more damage. Overall, you don’t want to be ignoring a Bleaksword unless you want them stacking auras everywhere.
Bride of Khaine -> Witch Elf, Death Hag, Hag Queen
Bride of Khaine still uses Bloodlust as their primary mechanic. Abilities will generate Bloodlust on you up to a cap of 5.
Frenzies are still the secondary mechanic. Frenzies no longer scale with the number of Bloodlust points when spent; they always do maximum effect and are signficantly better than all your other abilities. Bloodlust skills cost 150 action points and have no cooldown; but this cost is reduced by 20% for each Bloodlust point you have becoming free at 5 Bloodlust. This means you can toss them back to back if you have the AP needed to do so, such as doing a free one into 2 costing ones if you have 300 AP.
Bleeding is a status effect that works as a tertiary mechanic. Some of your abilities apply Bleeding, usually Frenzies, and other of your effects deal additional things if the target is Bleeding.
Poisons are another tertiary mechanic. Each specialization has two of them, but you can only have one active though they are oGCD to apply. These are on-hit effects that work with the fact that many BoK abilities are multi-hit skills to go alongside their berserker combat style.
Hag Graef -> Disciple of Khaine, Khaanite Assassin, Executioner
Animosity is the new mechanic for Hag Graef Druchii. This starts at 0 and caps at 100. You will generate 1 animosity per second. Some abilities generate Animosty, other abilities reduce it, and some abilities don’t move it at all. Animosity has 5 break points:
- 0 – 20
- 21 – 40
- 41 – 60
- 61 – 80
- 81 – 100
Most of your abilities target a specific breakpoint and gain additional output at that break point. They gain standard output on breakpoints directly beside it, and they lose output on break points that are 2+ steps away. I will use Cleave Soul as an truthful example; the ability deals X piercing damage and reduces your animosity by 10. It targets the 4th breakpoint and the following happens (and is on the tooltip)
- 0 – 20: Deals 60% damage.
- 21 – 40: Deals 80% damage.
- 41 – 60: Deals 100% damage.
- 61 – 80: Deals 120% damage.
- 81 – 100: Deals 100% damage.
Each of the three specializations use this mechanic a bit differently as you can imagine by us stating individual abilities target break points.
In general DoKs healing skills are more potent at low values of animosity, and they don’t move animosity. This means they need to lower their animosity with damage skills, and then they can heal better and only need to manage the 1 animosity gained per second. However, some of their additional effects will generate animosity forcing them to deal damage to use them unless they want their heals to get to a break point where the output drops.
Khaanite Assassins are stealth users so their break points are generally set to the higher side with being in Stalk (stealth) being their primary method of restoring Animosity. This means they come out of stealth and start high but drop in output over time until they get back in stealth.
Executioners have a more varied use of the mechanic due to them being brawler mdps, but overall they work to set up “execution windows” with their high AP cost skills at the right break points