[WOTC] Proficiency Class Plugin – Warden – UPDATED

This mod is a re-imagining of the excellent Warden class, originally made by Eramar.

Whilst I enjoyed playing with the original Warden class, I found that it had a few flaws, particularly in the way that the stance mechanics were handled and explained to the user and this made it a bit difficult to understand the how/when the class’ key abilities could be used.

I was captivated with the idea of a class which utilised stances though and decided to take matters into my own hands and remake the Warden in a new (and hopefully more interesting) direction, whilst trying to stay at least partially true to the spirit of the original.

I also wanted to make something that fit into the general Proficiency Class architecture.

The class contains a load of custom abilities, built from the ground-up, along with custom PFX and (mostly ported) animations. This is not just a re-assembly of existing perks.

• Highlander
• Community promotion screen

• Weapons – Bullpup and sword
• Stances – The warden starts with two stances, ‘Ranged Stance’ and ‘Melee Stance’
• Stance indicators – Stances are clearly indicated with a flyover each time they are switched. The Warden is constantly surrounded by orange particle effects when in ranged stance and blue particle effects when in melee stance to help keep track.
• Action point economy – This is the biggest change of all from the original class. The Warden now has limited access to traditional abilities using normal action points. However, similarly to a templar, they gain an additional action point (similar to momentum), called a ‘flow’ action point if they make a turn-ending attack with the correct weapon/stance combination. This action point can be used on powerful psionic abilities.

• Inquisitor – Focus on ranged weapons / medium distance combat, team support and fortifying tight positions
• Spiritblade – Focuses on close-range combat, mobility and safety
• Adept – Focus on counter-attacking and team support
• Disciple – Mixture of Templar, Ranger and Psi-Operative perks that fit in well with the broader class-theme

Please see original design document[docs.google.com]

After significant testing this year, I concluded that the class needed an overhaul to make it more fun to play and better balanced against base-game classes. I have reworked most of the ability tree, bringing psi-chip damage to ebb & flow, bringing rewind to squaddie level and pulling various more powerful abilities earlier in the tree to better match the power curve of base game. The ‘seal’ abilities have been updated to have some immediate effects and a larger ones at turn-end. Major and colonel ranks have been completely overhauled with new capstone perks and to create greater synergy between soul-blade / astral bullet charge mechanics. Momentum has been added at Sergeant level and reflective barrier now arrives at corporal and can target allies. Tons of improvements to localization and overall function have been made & I really hope this helps to get people on-board with this class a little more!

• Iridar – I owe a huge amount of gratitude to Iridar for this mod. He was instrumental in helping me plan my vision of the class & turn it into a concrete specification, provided countless code examples and ideas on how to approach complex problems. My sincere thanks to him for all the help over the course of the many many months it’s taken me to build this!
• Fancyneer – Assistance & support porting some animations
• RustyDios – Continual support, coding assistance and once again, for the mod preview image!
• EvilBob – Assistance with the class icon & mod preview image
• Eramar – To the original author for a great idea and for setting an example for how to build high quality PFX!
• MEME & Others – In particular, Tedster, Lordabizi, Zelfana, Mitzruti for coding help, explanations examples & troubleshooting!

As always, I welcome comments and am an active face in the modding community so if you experience bugs / issues please reach out to me on the discord & I’ll do what I can to resolve issues.