We can’t wait for the Open Beta Test to really begin my characters, especially after a taste of what dungoneering as a Lancer is like during PAX East. At the booth for TERA, we were brought into a secluded room with five individual PCs set up for one of five classes.
We’ve long been of the opinion that where TERA shines is in its group content. The combat makes for a grand time solo-ing, but eventually grinding out kill 10 or collect 10 quests gets old. It’s a good thing that the combat system lends itself so well to party-play, because the most fun we’ll all have in TERA will be with its dungeons and group content.
Play with Tera to be a ton of fun. The Twilight Valley is one of the game’s endgame instances, and while we just got a brief taste of its sprawling expanse, we have to say we impressed by it. The questing in the open world left us hanging in TERA, but again the group content is its bread and butter.
We loved how our Lancer literally ran full-steam into the fray to take charge with AOE shouts, keeping the mobs facing me so my opponents took to the rear to maximize their damage output. It’s the truest definition of tanking, because as the mobs turn to face your allies, you really do have to be on the ball to work to get them to face you again. And when they do, your shield-button finger better be at the ready or you’ll wind up getting a lot of hate from your healers. Blocking really does mitigate a ton of damage, and it wasn’t long into our boss fight with a corrupted BAM turned Argon that we learned when we needed to raise the shield and when we needed to use my taunts… and when we could just lay into the bugger with our massive oversized lance.
If a lot of the other classes in TERA about movement, the Lancer is perhaps the slower and more methodically paced counterpart. You still move, but in group context, your goal is to make sure you always have the attention of your foes. So you move to draw them in, to shout nasty things at them and then bring up your shield while your allies do the stabbity-stab and castity-cast. The dungeons in TERA power leveling really seem to be the cream of the crop for the game, so you can’t wait to use En Masse’s dungeon finder to get in there and mix it up. See you all on Valley of the Titans.
MIKE'S THOUGHTS
We also agree that TERA's PvE strengths lie in its group combat. Our first experience with TERA was playing a Berserker at this year's GDC, and since then we've played the closed beta events several times as a Slayer. The run-of-the-mill overworld PvE isn't so hot outside of the moment-to-moment coolness of the game's combat system, but both of high level experiences, first at GDC, and now at PAX, have convinced me that the dungeons definitely show a bit more promise on the PvE side of things.
We jumped into the dungeon as a Slayer, whose job is fairly simple: don't die and do tons of damage. we was certainly up to the challenge! The trash leading up to the final boss was fairly easy, especially since we were a bit overleveled, so we focused on the Slayer's considerable AOE damage to help churn through the groups of mobs. All while keeping the larger mobs on their backs with knockdown strikes that enabled us to do extra damage to them.
Once we got to the boss, things got a bit hairier. We did an awesome job with tera power leveling keeping the creature's aggro, but to stay behind the thing and pump out damage while avoiding his massive special attacks.
If you're looking forward to TERA, we highly recommend the Slayer class for both PvE and PvP combat. But find the dungeons as soon as you can on the PvE side of things, as the game feels like a totally different experience when playing alongside others and tackling challenging encounters.
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