[WOTC] Proficiency Class Plugin – Warden

This mod is a re-imagining of the excellent Warden class, originally made by Eramar.

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

I was captivated however, with the idea of a class which utilised stances as a concept (having enjoyed playing with the Watcher in Slay The Spire) so I 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.

Further, after playing for some time with Shiremct’s Proficiency Class Pack, I decided I wanted to follow in the footsteps of many other modders that I highly respect who have made ‘proficiency plugin’ type classes with three full perk trees and ‘proficiency-style’ bonuses & GTS unlocks.

The class contains a wide varity of custom abilities built from the ground-up along with custom PFX and animations – it’s not just a re-assembly of existing base-game 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 now clearly indicated with a flyover each time they are switched, and the Warden is surrounded by orange particle effects when in ranged stance and blue particle effects when in melee stance to help keep track of things.
• Action point economy – This is the biggest change of all from the original class. The Warden now has almost no access to traditional abilities using normal action points. However, similarly to a templar, they gain an additional ‘flow’ action point (similar to momentum) if they make a turn-ending attack using the correct weapon/stance combination & this is what almost all of their active abilities use.
• Flow action points – Whilst the new economy may sound a little complicated, in practice it plays out fairly straightforwardly – if you use the weapon associated with the stance you’re in (e.g. Ranged stance / gun, Melee stance / sword), then access to the key abilities opens up all sorts of interesting tactical options. Whilst the abilities are generally quite powerful, this is offset by the (occasional) tactical inflexibility of the unit, especially if the enemy is in control of the action economy.
• Perks – Almost all of the active abilities have custom particle effects, animations or both, which is something I’m altogether pretty proud of – please see the screenshots (& note that they look even better in-game!).

• Inquisitor – Focus on ranged weapons / medium distance combat, team support and fortifying tight positions
• Spiritblade – Focus on close-range combat, melee damage and melee safety
• Adept – Focus on counter-attacking and area-of-effect 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]

Note: This mod is currently pre-balance testing. The class is fully working and playable, but I’ve not had a chance to complete a full campaign with it and tweak the abilities to provide a comprehensively balanced experience alongside other similar classes, in respect of damage values, ability cooldowns etc. & obviously there may be a couple of minor bugs to tackle for edge-case situations that I wasn’t able to evaluate in testing so I expect there will be at least another one or two major updates to come in the next 2-3 months.

• 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 & I’ll do what I can to resolve your issues. If possible, please try to be specific with errors (redscreens, logs, screenshots etc. & I will be much more able (and willing) to help you.