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Warhammer Online - Disciple of Khaine: Class Overview
Recently, Managing Editor Jon Wood had the opportunity to talk to two of the developers from EA Mythic's upcoming MMORPG, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, about the Disciple of Khaine class.
Recently, I had the opportunity to talk to Adam Gershowitz and Nate Levy from EA Mythic. Adam is the lead on combat and careers and Nate is one of the designers working on the Disciple of Khaine, the class that just happens to be the focus of this article.
For those out there who might not be following Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, the Disciple of Khaine is a class available only to the Dark Elves that fills the healer role in a unique way.
Typically, healer classes cast from the same pool of magical energy as everyone else. You can only cast so many spells before that blue bar is empty and you have to wait until it re-fills enough to cast your next heal. It’s pretty standard practice. Still though, they wouldn’t be making Warhammer Online if they didn’t take that convention and twist it to fit the original Warhammer lore more closely.
In order to understand why there is a difference, it is important to understand a little more about Khaine, so, being the intrepid reporter that I am, I asked the guys just that. Khaine, I am told, is not strictly a Dark Elf god, although they take his worship to a new level of perverseness, but is also worshiped by the High Elves.
To the High Elves, Khaine is a god of war and rage and is seen as a kind of “necessary evil”. While no one in High Elf society wants to be seen as a worshiper to this violent god, he is called upon and embraced in important situations.
This though, is where “the many aspects of Khaine” come in. While the High Elves see Khaine as representing the necessary evils of war and rage, the Dark Elves embrace the god’s violent nature. Martial prowess, murder, sacrifice, pleasure in pain… these are the attributes that Dark Elven worshipers revel in when they become Disciples of Khaine. As a result, Disciples draw their energies from the blood of their enemies. Khaine rewards slaughter and suffering in the form of spells so that in order to gain the energy necessary to heal, the Disciple has to first draw blood in melee combat.
While this makes for an interesting story element, it makes for a much more interesting game mechanic when you apply the functionality of the Disciple of Khaine to an MMORPG.
Generally speaking, when people hear the term healer, they think about that guy who stands in the back and fires off healing spells. That just isn’t how the Disciple works. Instead, we are told, the Disciple is going to look more like a tank class to veteran MMORPG players.
“At a high level, in terms of where things start to fall out, they can hold their own in close combat. He won’t put out nearly as much damage as a melee DPS class, but he’s more comparable to a Tank class. Rather than being able to mitigate damage through armor, he’s able to do it through magic. He’s considered more of a defensive fighter.”
“He’s more like a Dark Paladin type class,” Nate told us. “With the Disciple we wanted to take a more aggressive approach to healers.”
“We wanted to have a feel for Paladins without the balance issues,” Adam said.” The Disciple is all about trade-offs and balances, you’re trading melee damage for the amount you heal, etc.”
So, now we know what they were looking to accomplish and we have an idea of how it works. Now, let’s get into the nuts and bolts of the mechanics behind the Disciple of Khaine:
;)
Action Points: All careers in Warhammer Online use Action Points as their main power source. The Disciple needs Action Points in order to make attacks. Every time he uses his attacks, he loses action points.
Essence: Disciples of Khaine have a second reservoir of energy known as “essence”. When he causes damage, he gains Essence. This essence can be used to heal. With other healing classes in the game, the attacks and the healing all comes from Action Points and they often have to make a decision as to which to use. This isn’t a problem for the Disciple.
This interesting class structure will be mirrored by the Empire class, The Warrior-Priest.
“Mechanically, they are very similar,” I was told. “The types of abilities are different. The Warrior-Priest inspires while the Disciple steals power.”
While the Disciple has a large array of de-buffs to choose from, the Warrior-Priest will buff. While the Disciple worships Khaine and draws their power from cruelty and vengeance, Warrior-Priests worship Sigmar and draw power from their own righteousness.
However you slice it, playing a Dark Elf healer, in the form of the Disciple of Khaine, won’t be your run-of-the-mill stand back and heal kind of experience. If you’re the kind of person who likes to heal his allies, but still wants to crack a few skulls along the way, the Disciple of Khaine might be for you.
Pictures speak a thousand words. We are back to concept art again.
There must be a vacancy on Warhammers marketing staff that needs to be filled. Either that, or something worse. Heck, if it's a budget issue, put me in beta and give me a max character so I can wander around taking screenshots for you guys
Now that some of the luster of AOC is rubbing off as details emerge, I'm paying more attention to Warhammer Online. That would be pretty bad luck if both of them bombed.
What's really funny, is there is still SOOOOOOOOO much talk about Warhammer being a "WoW Clone" but if you take away the Warhammer Tabletop inspired graphics, Warhammer is proving again and again to be fundamentally different then WoW.
Age of Conan, on the other hand, is proving more and more with every new release of information that they are the true "WoW clone."
I find it hillarious...
Still, back to the original topic, the Disciple of Khaine:
This may be the first "healer" class I'm interesting in playing.
Do damage at melee range and then use your blood-thirst-induced essence to heal yourself and allies? Sounds like a blast to me!
It's like a Warrior from WoW with the rage mechanic, but you heal/debuff with your built-up essence.
Sounds hot.
I love the concept art of everything but once it's in the game it's sooo low polygon and bad low detail smudged textures that it ends up looking like crap, i just hope the pictures they taken are using low settings or something.
Noone cares about the WOW/WAR argument anymore........... yes they look similar but so do alot of things.
Still i could be wrong but thats what the info we have atm says.
Regardless it sounds fun , but im not sure if i would not rather be a arch-mage or shaman who it soudns liek will be able to do pretty good single target ranged damage.
Maybe they are scared to show real in game pictures or footage, maybe because they are only now just making the class.
Anyway, nice write up Jon, Sigmar FTW!
I'm not saying I care. I know that WAR is not a WoW clone. I've said this many times on many different forum posts.
The fact that I've said it many times on many different forum posts in the past couple of days proves that indeed people are still making WoW-WAR comparisons.
I just find it funny that the more info that comes out about WAR and AoC, the new information makes WAR look like LESS of a WoW clone and AoC like more of one...
even though I don't think any game is a clone of any other game... but I won't go into all that.
Point is, I'm excited that EA Mythic is re-examining the "healer" role and including melee pwnage fun with the Disciple of Khaine and Warrior Priest.
You cant really say AoC is becoming more like a WoW clone and try and say even though I don't think any game is a clone bull.
If you want to dig at AoC do so, but let me just say imo and many others - it plays nothing like WoW, it looks nothing like WoW, and there are no freaking elves, dwarfs or greenskinned playable class'.
I still think Mythic should show the warhammer fans footage to make up after that terrible Video of the Month: Inevitable City i know my guild are craving something better than the same old concept art.
I liked this write up, it opened my eyes a little more to the war lore, might even play the game in the future now!
The reason they only show concept art is simple.
They are revealing the classes & lore for the 6 different races, not in-game footage.
Generally, they start by creating concept art and straightening out all aspects of the lore behind WAR.
Secondly, they reveal the class unto the public through podcasts or in posts like the one we just read.
Lastly, they create the models to resemble the art and insert them into the game after animation is added.
You will see WAR combat footage of each class in the future, but for now they are simply showing classes.
I'm tired waiting for this dam game
There is plenty of in game footage out there, go look for it. That being said AoCs in game footage release of late have been 1 sec clips next to 1 sec clips and so on. No offense but that does not rank much higher on my scales.
Oh ps what about end game pve that is wowish.
Personally, I think I'm gonna have fun layin the smack down with my DoK.
D.
Well I'm not talking about the look of the game. Obviously, AoC has a gritty, bloody, violent look and feel and I look forward to experiencing the Conan world in this way.
I'm just saying that in terms of game play systems, every new bit of information on AoC I find looks more and more like they are focusing on the same kind of end-game PvE systems that WoW has.
I say I don't think any game is a clone of any other game because it's true. Clone = identical in my view, and obviously no two games are exactly the same. I'm just saying AoC's focus, their overall design resembles the overall design philosophy of WoW more so then I believe Warhammer does.
But I do agree with you, why just show us a concept art shot of the Disciple of Khaine? From what I remember, wasn't the disciple one of the playable classes in the Dark Elf sneak peek in beta? Why not show us some footage of that?
Theres always several options for whining on a game forum when playing a hybrid class.
These guys can(and most likely will) cry about tanking, healing and dps'ing all of which they can do, just not as good the one-job-joe classes.
Everyone needs to remember that MMORPG.COM is usually a little bit behind with their info. This stuff was from last month's newsletter. THIS month's newsletter has a beta journal about a Disciple in the DE starting zone with screenshots.
http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/community/betaJournal/january2007.php
Also remember that WAR's marketing department has an iron grip on the info being released. They only let little bits out at a time to match their internal schedule. Mythic was working on Dark Elves for over half a year before they released ANY information at all about them.
Nope. Disciples are in the game and operational as you can see if you watch the lastest Video of the Month.
http://mythicmktg.fileburst.com/war/us/media/flash/2008-01_VotM.html
Disciples wield " twin ritual blades" so any Dark Elf you see who is dual-wielding and NOT a crazed almost-naked Witch Elf is a Discple
WAR doesn't change their character classes at the last minute 
j/k
On a side note - The "X game is a clone of Y game" argument is pointless. WoW copied EQ. EQ copied UO. It's the normal evolution of games.
Thanks hadn't seen that clip yet :)last minute isnt 4 months before launch :)
I'm not trying to pick a fight with you becuase I respect your opinion, but I found it hilarious as well that you say WAR is different than WoW, but then go on to describe how the mechanics of playing this class is like a warriors rage build up from WoW.
Yes, I'm looking for something different than WoW too, and I hope this game will be different enough to keep my interest. However, we all know regardless of whether it is or isn't like WoW, in about 2 years, we will all be looking for the next best thing anyway. It's human nature to become bored and move on. You could just do a find and replace on all the "I hate WoW" posts that we see now to "I hate WAR" posts two years from now.
I know I went off on a tangent, but getting back to the topic, this class does look like it will be fun to play
I can't wait for the game!
Now to only hope I make it into the beta before release lol.
To tell the truth, it sounds more like a Druid from WoW. In bear form they would save up Rage and convert it to health with Frenzied Regeneration. Or even more simply, as a Druid I would go in with cat form or bear form, beat the thing silly, swap into caster form for heals and whatnot, then switch back to animal form for more damage.
Sure, not "exactly" like the Diciple, but hardly anything new. Now that I think of it, in Vanguard the Diciple's did this too. Had to beat things up before being able to cast heals (if I remember correctly...).
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not here to bash Warhammer. I'm looking forward to this game too and have been trying to keep my hopes up somewhat about it. Just also trying to keep some perspective about this kinda stuff.
-Naaz.
this will be the first healer class i ever roll , i am now offically excited about WAR.
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
they are using concept art because they first built the game engine and then started on the game world they got alot done on the greenskins and the dawrfs but the elves have remined just concept work and they just build up the rest of the world at this point the elves are still almost intirely unfinished
you can see this from how they are handling it as well as from the way they are releasing info
its not really that surprising though its how they go about making their games
they got to much lore that right now what is in and what is out its likely not clear to even them