The Dark Elf Sorceress was the next class we got a look at. Keep in mind that you can have Dark Elf Sorcerers as well. The Sorc for short is a straight up nuker. This class can blast opponents from a distance. However they pay the price for their nasty spells by wearing little armor and being very squishy.

The Sorc has standard “safe spells” that it can use to attack. They also have “dark magic” spells which are more powerful but create a chance for the caster to blow his or herself up. The way magic works in Warhammer is that few races have enough discipline to wield magic properly. Though the Dark Elves wear tight leather armor and whip people around, their discipline with magic is not the best. Players will have to balance their casting between safe and dark magic to get the best results as a nuker.

After these great examples, Josh and Adam expanded the session to discuss how these career paths work overall. They basically give the player three choices. Fight to fight ways of specializing their character is one choice. The second choice can be for an entire play session. Finally, the career system gives players an over all life time choice to make their character unique to a player’s style. Do not worry; you will be able to respec your character plenty of times. EA Mythic is considering a monetary cost, or possibly a small quest to get a respec option.

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As you progress down your chosen path, the more points you spend the better you get with those abilities. Every ability that a character has is tied to a career mastery path. There are twenty four classes in the Warhammer Online game. Each class has three master paths to choose from. This really creates seventy two career specs that a character can choose from. Needless to say you will not see seven classes running around Warhammer using the same abilities over and over again.

Josh and Adam explained from ranks one through ten players will be getting used to their characters. Once they reach rank eleven, they will get a Mastery point to spend. This starts the player down the path of strategic options. Different players will definitely fill different roles, but there are many options so that players do not get stuck in one role. No one likes being the healer all the time.

Within the career system you might be able to get up to the high levels of two of the three mastery paths. So if you are a healer you can also specialize to be a good nuker as well. The core tools for a character will never change, but at high level there will be many specifics to choose from. You will be able to unlock more tactics as you journey down the mastery path.

In line with skills and attacks players will also have tactics to further spec their characters. The tactic sets are in the UI so you can switch between tactic choices depending on the situation you are in. It will switch quickly, but not necessarily in the middle of a fight. Tactics offer smaller self buffs and advantages to damage or healing in combat.

So you have skills, career mastery choices, and tactics to choose from. However, Adam and Josh had to throw one more spec into the mix for players to choose from. The Renown Abilities give a player advantages in RvR. You can choose to spend your renown points to become a better killer or dwarves or humans, to fight better against single opponents or groups. These stats impact RvR fighting only. They do not carry over into the PvE aspects of the game.

To advance in the PvE side there is a whole group of Tome of Knowledge tactics that players will be able to unlock. If you kill a lot of squigs, you will naturally become very good at that task. Using the Tome of Knowledge to gain adventure knowledge players will become more capable at fighting monsters.

Whew, still with us? Adam and Josh gave a very in depth presentation and there is certainly a lot to think about when creating your character in Warhammer. Happily, it seems like no players will have similar character. There are plenty of options to choose from even within the classes themselves. Our thanks to Adam and Josh for taking the time to explain the career mastery system, start thinking of your character spec now folks.

Class Mastery certainly seems to be shaping up for Warhammer. How do you think it will work for players? Let us know what you are looking for with Class Mastery on our forums.