Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Class Interview #1
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Q: The Dark Templar, while being a solid melee combatant, seems like he falls into a sort of hybrid-class when compared to some of the other melee classes like the Guardian or Barbarian. Is this a correct assumption? What sort of benefits will a Dark Templar bring to a group-oriented situation? You list one ability - "Martyrdom" - in the class preview, but how else will a group benefit from a Dark Templar compared to the other melee combatants like the Guardian or Barbarian?
A: Well, I guess that is partially true, but the Dark Templar is first and foremost a melee class, as his primary abilities are with one-hand edged and one-hand blunt weapons. He can also equip a crossbow at level 50. However, in essence, he shares the role as tank with two other classes in the game. Still, he has been given several special abilities that the other tanks cannot access, for instance his dabbling with dark forces and the constant stream of life he can drain from enemies (or give to his team). As a consequence we have given the Dark Templar less health than the other two tanks (but still way more than other classes). A well performing Dark Templar can therefore, at times, be quite self sufficient, allowing the healers in a group to be a bit more (careful) on buffs on them compared to, say, a Guardian. That is also a weakness, of course, for by securing most for himself the Templar also has less to spare for others, in many cases.
We have tried to ensure that our tanks, in general, are good damage dealers. This is in order to ensure that there can be more than one tank in a group. There are also some other aspects about the Dark Templar I find intriguing, and I think Templars played by skilled gamers have interesting ways of shifting combat outcomes. For instance, we have a mode in the game called Frenzy, and a Dark Templar going into this mode can deal around 150% extra damage, so say you hit 100 normally you would deal 250 with this running. On the other hand that gives (approximately, differs from class) three times the damage if someone hits you, so you would need to time the attacks carefully. Since the Dark Templar also gets increased life drain (and more), when hitting with this kind of extra damage it means that a correctly timed Frenzy can really bring the Templar back into the fight, giving you the upper hand when you were about to lose.
