Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Age of Conan - Dark Templar Impressions

Last week, patch 1.5.5 was applied that did a revamp of the Dark Templar in Age of Conan. You can read more about the changes here...Since you can read these, I do not want to run on about the changes overall. I want to talk a moment about how the Templar "feels" now with these changes.


I have noted first that depending on the trees you choose for feats, that you must either go "Survivor" or "DPS'er". Before I could spread out the love and be a good Hybrid of sorts (get some decent damage and not die so easily).
Now, if I do DPS, I can feel the danger of death looming at my feet.
the two pictures show that right now, I am testing the DPS tree, which closely matched what I had before revamp.



Another change is new abilities that work against casters specifically. The Dark Templar is a killer Anti-Caster Tank now.
One noted ability can crank your protection from magic damage up to 2500+ points...holy smokes. Mainly invincible. Others drain mana like crazy.

Basically, if you have a casters dungeon crawl coming, better add a DT.

I tested this against a particularly cranky caster boss in the Slaughterhouse solo dungeon. This boss can have you running and hiding behind various poles in the room to avoid damage and downing pots to live.
The magic damage has been pretty bad.
Now, I am able to stand in front of him longer and smack on him thanks to the protection spell, and had to run just once (and without a pot) and then took him down on round two of attacks.



Finally some trees can get you so many skills, that trying to figure out which ones to use, makes you crazy.
Several skills allow you to stun, drain, protect...oh and summon a demon.
Still feel some skills are quite odd to this class, but I digress.

I am still getting used to the changes, so I still need to play with him a bit. I also have not run a raid in a while, and I am not sure how viable he is or where the Dark Templar actually fits in.
But, for now, the changes were quite different, and I am still playing with my spec, and seeing if I need to go down a new path. I will try the protection set...but, with no raids, I am unsure if I need that

I will report more on if any changes take place and how they work.

Cheers

2 comments:

Marty Runyon said...

Very cool. Sounds like they hit a good place for the class. Let us know how your testing progresses!

Yasmina said...

I still haven't managed to decide on a second level 50 character class -- but you make the Dark Templar sound like fun!