Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Class Interview #2

Ten Ton Hammer is offering their second class interview for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, this time highlighting the Guardian class.

Ten Ton Hammer: Being a (tank) isn’t always a very exciting job when it comes to MMORPG gameplay. Why should players take a serious look at the Guardian when deciding on a class to play?

Jørgen: I think this depends on who you are. Remember that many individuals like to tank (and these people are often highly needed!). After all, it’s their task to keep the mobs off you and others, which is pretty important in order to succeed. *winks*

Taking your point, it’s true that people often deem tanks to be boring because they have low DPS ratings, so when they aren’t actually tanking they sometimes (suck) at what they do. I think we have found some cool ways around that problem with our stance system. The stances give all of our tanks Defensive and Frenzy stances. I spoke shortly about this in the Dark Templar update last time around, but if you, for instance, swap into Frenzy stance you can significantly increase your DPS, and thus become a serious DPS threat. This means you lose your primary tank ability though since you take massive amount of extra damage. Therefore, should you want (and dare), you can make a DPS-oriented tank, and there are additional lines of feats you can use to aid you along that road.

However, when you find yourself in situations where you can’t be in DPS uber mode (if you are soloing or if you are the tank), you simply exit frenzy and revert to normal or go over to defensive. This means that there won’t be a massive need for re-specing feats when you cross between being a survivable tank and a DPS-focused soldier. It is all done just by entering a stance.

Spotted on Blue’s News.