Bleaksword

“The Bleaksword of Naggarond are the favored warriors of the Witch King Malekith, and are given the sacred task of not only serving as his personal bodyguard, but as his heartless enforcers on the field of battle. A Bleaksword has no family ties to distract them, they are children of hatred and war and are raised from infancy steeped in battle and blood. “

Class Information

Archetype: Standard Tank / Support

Class Mechanics

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.