Neverwinter Preview

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Written by BuckGB on February 26th, 2013

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As you might guess, this can make specific targeting difficult, especially in crowded melees. To compensate, most skills are area-of-effect based even support skills like healing and buffs. For example, the healer class has a healing laser that you can direct at a single player, a radius heal similar to WoW's Holy Nova, and an energy javelin you can throw to heal players in a line.

This creates combat that's fundamentally different from the WoW template of (hammer out your rotation) and (don't stand in fire.) It's more about the relative positioning of you, your party, and the enemies. I'm hoping that the game will have content difficult enough to force parties to have marching band precision, moving in and out of AoEs, and lining up at the precise time when skills pop.

Speaking of skills, Neverwinter's stat and skill system is loosely based on Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, though it bends the rules a little where a strict interpretation wouldn't be very much fun. For instance, you get two daily skills, but they're not really daily. As you fight, a giant D20 fills in the middle of the screen, allowing you to trigger a powerful skill once the die tops off. It's a fun, action-oriented take on D&D that should bring a smile to anyone that's spent an evening with a group of friends and a bag of dice.

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