As Neverwinter gears up for the release of Undermountain, more and more information continues to trickle out about the huge changes that it will bring. The folks at Perfect World Entertainment have already talked in general terms about the class revamps coming with the expansion, but a couple of recent dev diaries give us our first look at the specifics, starting with the game’s divine classes, the Cleric and the Paladin.
As the devs have already announced, Undermountain will make some major changes to the game’s tanking and healing systems, and perhaps no class is going to be so affected by these changes as the Paladin, who is capable of filling either role. Paladins, like Clerics, will now use the divinity resource to cast many of their encounter powers. Those encounter powers that rely on divinity will no longer have cooldowns, allowing them to be cast more often while requiring the Paladin to carefully manage his divinity pool, which should add an extra layer of flexibility and depth to the class’s gameplay.
By virtue of the fact that the Cleric also uses the divinity resource, its changes are similar to the Paladin’s. Long-time clerics will notice that the divinity resource has been reworked, removing Astral Change as well as “the entire concept of divine and empowered versions of powers.” Like Paladins, Clerics will be able to cast their divinity-consuming encounter powers as often as they want, as long as they have the divinity to do so. This means that “healing will become more flexible and more active” as Clerics can “make up for mistakes by spending extra divinity to heal more,” but they’ll have to be careful not to run out.
In addition, both classes are having some of their abilities reworked and receiving some new ones to boot. On the Paladin side of things, Divine Touch now includes “a powerful targeted healing effect,” and the new Radiant Charge daily power can “summon divine cavalry to trample the enemy.”
While the dev diaries don’t detail any changes to the Cleric’s existing abilities, they do unveil one new spell, Celestial Prominence — exclusive to the class’s damage-dealing Arbiter paragon path — which “will allow the Arbiter to summon a mote of concentrated astral energy at a location, detonating it immediately to deal damage to nearby enemies or allowing it to grow in strength first before unleashing its full potential.” Sounds flashy. If you want to check out all the Paladin and Cleric changes for yourself, you can find the full details over on the game’s official site.
