We were excited to get the chance to meet the En Masse Entertainment guys (The NA publisher, in Europe the game is published by Gameforge) for a new reveal in their free to play action MMORPG TERA for the new Gunner class that would soon be released. We've met the guys a few times so it's always a pleasure, hooking up with Tyler the PR Rep, Scott one of the Lead Writers and the Producer and our main tour guide for the day Patrick. Hooked up to Skype and logging in, we found ourselves in control of a level 65 Gunner and surrounded by a bunch of Spring Valley Intruders that would be our cannon fodder for the showcase.

For those unfamiliar with TERA the game is touted as being an action MMORPG, which essentially means no auto targeting and players must aim using their reticule cursor to fire off their attacks, basically bad aiming means you ain't hitting anything and as a Gunner that's kind of a big deal. The actual gun we were wielding was the best available one in the game, craftable with a fiery wings attachment the thing looked magnificent and stood taller than our character at its full length like a classic anime hero. Though the oversized gun length is a feature of all the Gunners weapons they do come in different varieties and styles, ranging from classic rifles, mobile cannon like weapons and even crossbows.

We were told that there are two key differences with the Gunner class when comparing it to other classes in the game, most importantly other ranged classes generally have to stand still while casting and aiming at their weapons whereas the Gunner has a more versatile "run and gun" quality of where you can move and fire at the same time. As a heavy armour wearing ranged DPS then the majority of their skills focus on mid ranged attacks, but giving them enough durability to handle a couple of mobs that may get within melee range.

The other difference is the newly introduced Wisdom bar, this bar acts the same as similar Rage bars seen in other games (though the Gunner does still have a mana bar for performing skills), with each kill the Gunner makes in the early levels they gain Wisdom, where at later levels simply attacking will generate Wisdom as will one of their key skills. When the Wisdom bar is full players are able to unleash some ultimate abilities that deal truly devastating amounts of damage in an explosion of lights, fire and epicness. Players need to stay in combat and continue churning out attacks and damage in order to keep their Willpower up, or otherwise it will depreciate over time.

Whilst re-familiarising ourselves with the controls, we were guided by Patrick and Scott over the new skills, telling us how to use them and how they might best be used in different situations, though to be honest the Gunner is extremely easy to learn and we seemed to pick up the ropes fairly quickly. The skills we had were:

• Basic Attacks - bound to the mouse keys the left mouse is your standard shot whereas the right mouse lets players roll in and out of battle and reload at the same time adding a little extra dexterity to the class


• Arcane Barrage - here we fire a ball of energy towards enemies at a slow pace that we then get to fire at again with the same triggering skill button that shoots a beam of light at the ball exploding it amidst your enemies


• Mana Missiles - this attack is a charged ability, holding down the triggering button for longer initiates more missiles to be fired off to deal more damage


• Arc Bomb - players throw a grenade into a group of enemies to deal some explosive splash damage on anyone unfortunate enough to be in close proximity


• Rocket Jump - this lets players perform a TF2/Quake style jump with their rocket launcher, useful for jumping in or out of the fray


• Time Bomb - players throw the time bomb into the air which explodes causing damage and then drops another bomb to the ground which explodes two seconds later throwing enemies all over the place


• Replenishment - with this skill players are able to keep getting Mana and Wisdom boosts, useful for that little extra push when in battle or helping to keep your Wisdom bar up when there's no one around to immediately attack, it also has a secondary effect of instantly refreshing some of your abilities on cooldown


• Burst Fire - your first Wisdom attack, you don't actually need a full bar to trigger this attack and once initiated it allows players to keep hitting the spacebar as fast as they can to fire off continuous shots while slowly draining their Wisdom bar, so the more Wisdom you have when it is initiated the longer your Burst Fire will last


• Bombardment - an excellent skill that requires a full Wisdom bar and allows the player to pull up a large ground targeting reticule that, once selected, will call down a huge AoE missile attack on the area


• Balder's Vengeance - our favourite skill by far, using a full Wisdom bar the Gunner charges up their super shot, leaps up into the air and fires at their enemy with a huge energy beam so powerful it sends you flying backwards and looks glorious

Players also get two Constructs that they are able to summon; a turret that they can throw into battle and will take out adds and give you a little extra firepower against bosses, and also a droid called "HB-7" that looks like Marvin the depressed robot out of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. HB-7, or Marvin, can be summoned with the push of a button and will stick around for about 30 minutes and follows you around with a command or can be told to stay at a set position using the same key. Marvin will give a little health and targeting boost to players, but most importantly he's there to get them out of danger when they need it using his recall ability where players can trigger an energy lasso that will drag them to Marvin's location, even if they are unconscious, and has a range of up to 40 m; pretty handy we think. When you're done with your constructs you can explode them all with the push of a button which also deals damage to nearby enemies.

Moving on we mounted our EX TRM mount, a sort of gold mechanical spider (only has 4 legs though), which players can get access to with the Gunner's release and Is free for players logging in for two weeks but will then be made available on the game store. Mounted and ready we got the chance to try out all our abilities on some more challenging Orisk's to wrap up our session. Altogether it was a blast and the Gunner looks and plays fantastically, it'll definitely be a favourite with players and is well worth checking out. Unfortunately for many it is only available as a female High Elf or Castanic, which might frustrate a few players that don't like to play female characters or either of these classes, but it's worth getting past that.

The Gunner will be available from May 5th, accompanied with the new EX TRM mount as well as various events for the games 3yr anniversary celebrations!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2015 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Puedes dejar una respuesta, o un trackback desde tu sitio web.