Today we're pleased to unveil the 3rd class that will be coming to OrbusVR: Reborn -- the Paladin! The paladin is a tanking class which focuses on reactive play, as opposed to the pro-active (or "anticipating") play of the Warrior.

Equipped with a mighty hammer and the power of lightning, the Paladin's play revolves around the energy that it builds up in its weapon. As a Paladin, every time that you take damage, 50% of the damage is taken directly, and 50% is converted into energy which is stored in your hammer. Your attacks and abilities make use of this energy to deal damage back to your foes. On your hammer you will see a series of 5 globes. Most attacks (such as just dealing damage to an enemy with a hammer swing) use up one globe of energy. As you are attacked, you will see that your globes slowly fill up, allowing you to use your abilities as long as you are taking damage during a fight.

Obviously you'll want to keep your hammer powered up so you always have energy available to do damage to your enemies. However, at the same time you must be careful, because if your hammer is fully charged, it can no longer store energy; at that point, any damage that you take will not be converted into energy, and instead you'll take the full brunt of the attack. This means that a Paladin tanking an enemy must constantly be balancing saving up energy to use to attack new foes (and generate aggro on them), while at the same time making sure there is enough capacity available to fully absorb the split damage of incoming major attacks such as tank busters.

In addition to this core mechanic, the Paladin has several special abilities revolving around the various uses of their hammer, including:

Hammer Throw: Press the Grip button to throw your hammer forward, dealing damage to enemies if there is energy available, stunning them for a short time and interrupting their casts. You can also press the Trigger button while the hammer is in mid-air to use up a globe of energy and teleport to that position on the battlefield. If you press and hold the Grip button while the hammer is flying, it will return to your hand.

Lightning Strike: Heft your hammer into the air to call down a lightning strike on yourself. This ability gives you an instant charge of two globes of energy, and also acts as an AoE taunt to all nearby enemies forcing them to attack you. Note that this ability has a cooldown that is time-based unlike the other Paladin abilities.

Hammer Slam: Slam your hammer into the ground, dealing a massive AoE attack around you. Requires 3 globes of energy, but does significant damage per globe.

The Paladin's talent tree will further play off of its capabilities, giving it a more offensive style (more damage per energy globe) or defensive style (more ability to absorb damage from each incoming attack), as well as some buffs which will be valuable to allies in your party.

We're still working on fully fleshing out all of the new classes we've introduced (such as the Bard, Shaman, and Paladin) but all 3 will be available for testing in their current form in the next Beta test on January 11th! Look for future blog posts next week introducing the new zones, new dungeon, and more coming in the next Beta. We'll see you then, and we look forward to watching you sling your hammer around like a master of lightning and thunder.