![]() ![]() In return, the skill will gain bonus effects. While no skill requires that you have any charge, many skills will consume some or all of your charge if any is available. The fact that you don't lose any charge with this skill (and several others like it) help make the “race to the top charge level” a fun and rewarding experience. This is the “reward” part of the risk-reward aspect of building up charge if you were able to build up charge without spending too much mana, you'll be able to use the fully-empowered Ember Hammer more times (and you'll get a better return on your mana than if you used Ember Hammer more times at a lower charge). Since Ember Hammer doesn't spend charge or have have a cooldown period (some skills do), you can unleash a flurry of consecutive extra-damage attacks – provided you have the mana. For example, the skill Ember Hammer can be used regardless of your charge level, but does an extra 10% damage for each level of charge you have. Some skills don't spend charge, but instead just gain bonuses based on how much charge you currently have. ![]() Get too stingy with the skills, however, and you won't have enough charge to spend, which will greatly limit your defensive and offensive abilities. This creates an interesting bit of risk-reward gameplay – use your charge-generating skills overzealously and you won't have enough mana to use skills later in the battle. Fortunately, the Engineer has access to skills that will generate more charge than a normal hit, but cost some mana to use. Meanwhile, your mana is sitting there at full, so your mana regeneration is going to waste. You can build up your charge rather slowly by using your basic attack, but doing so means that you're delaying access to your charge. Since charge quickly fades when you're out of combat, you'll usually enter a battle with no charge and full mana. Let's take a look at the faces of charge and why they work so well for the Engineer: There's simply incredible risk-reward action going on, and the need to balance mana, charge, offense, and defense keeps things fresh and exciting in a way I just didn't get with the more passive charge mechanics of the other classes. ![]() The way these three facets of charge interact both with each other and the Engineer's mana pool creates some of the best action RPG combat I've ever seen. There are three things you can do with an Engineer's charge: build it, spend it, or use it to empower skills without actually spending it (we'll call this “accessing” charge). Sure, you can have 3.5 charges, but that extra half a charge won't have any effect on skills that are based on charge level – it's just progress toward your next charge. The first thing you need to know is that the Engineer is the only class whose charge is measured in discrete stages, from zero to five charges. Let's take a look at how the Engineer's charge mechanic brings some much needed depth to Torchlight 2 and makes it more than a potion-drinking simulator. However, I found that the charge mechanic didn't bring enough to the table to make resource management interesting, with one massive exception: The Engineer. Of course, Torchlight 2 has another resource, the class-specific “charge” resource, which is built by damaging enemies but has class-specific effects and usage. Need mana? Drink a potion! It's not an incredibly deep system, especially compared to how resources are implemented in Diablo 3, with each class having various ways to spend and recover their skill-using resource. The biggest problem I had with Torchlight 2's actual action was the lazy resource management system. However, the Engineer class offered a glimpse into what the future could hold for Torchlight. A lot of things about the game felt carelessly designed, which can't be shrugged off with a “well, it's just a beta,” especially with the expected release date so quickly approaching. My time with the Torchlight 2 beta featured some incredible highs and some disappointing lows. Why The Engineer is the Best Thing About Torchlight II ![]()
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