Thornford, six against six at the top tier

Two parties meet in a village square. Everyone wears a complete top-tier build. Nobody stands still and trades blows.

What you are watching

The Karrak Dominion comes down the east street of Thornford behind a shield wall. Three knights with shields stand side by side, and every arrow aimed at the casters behind them stops on the shields.

The Aelwyn Concord holds the south-west corner of the square, behind a low stone wall.

You watch through the eyes of ByHTAPb, the Concord's pike knight. His job is simple and hard. Stand two tiles in front of the casters and make the wall pay for every step.

Six builds that need each other

The Concord can't break the wall alone. It breaks it together.

• The pike knight wears a Skirt of Tides, so every thrust leaves the wall Soaked. Impale roots whoever tries to slip past him. When the wall closes in, Last Stand keeps him on one hit for four seconds, and that is usually long enough for help to arrive.
• The archer wears the same skirt. Her volleys soak the back line too, and Mark Target tells the whole party who dies next.
• The storm mage pulls the wall tighter with a Gravity Well. Then he casts Lightning. On a Soaked target lightning deals double damage and jumps to every other Soaked enemy within two tiles. One bolt, five targets.
• The frost mage chills with every spell, and a Soaked enemy she hits freezes solid. Her Glacial Wall closes the street in front of any melee running at the casters. Her Frozen Tomb either saves a dying friend or locks the enemy's healer in ice while his patient bleeds out.
• The healer cleanses roots and burns. When a diver reaches the back line, the healer trades places with the knight, and the diver finds plate where the robe was.
• The assassin wears a Cloak of Shadows, which hides him from anyone more than six tiles away. He goes round through the market garden, steps behind the pyromancer, silences him with a garrote and stabs him in the back.

The Dominion hits back just as hard. Their pyromancer's burning ticks for hundreds a second. Their captain leaves the wall to dive the casters. And their priest keeps the plate standing for as long as the mana lasts.

Abilities do the fighting. Auto-attacks only fill the gaps between them. So a fight at the top is a run of wind-ups, roots, freezes, chain lightning and reactions, and the side that times them together wins.

How big the build system is

Everything you see comes from the gear. Your weapon gives three abilities, your chest, helmet and boots give three more, and the rest of what you wear changes how they behave.

• 189 kinds of equipment, each made in five tiers, from plain iron to valorite:
  • 52 weapons in 18 families;
  • 10 off-hands (shields, a torch, a tome, an orb, a totem, a quiver, a bandolier);
  • 36 armour pieces in six classes, from cloth to plate;
  • 60 pieces of clothing (shirts, trousers, skirts, robes, tunics, surcoats, cloaks and belts);
  • 21 jewels and 10 amulets.
• 187 abilities:
  • 155 come from weapons. Each family gives a choice of three for Q and three for W, and almost every weapon has its own E.
  • 32 come from armour: 10 for the chest, 10 for the helmet, 12 escapes for the boots. Any class of armour opens all of them.
• 16 runes that change how one ability works. Socket 1 changes your Q, socket 2 your W, socket 3 your E. A rune makes an arrow pierce, a bolt chain, a spell echo half a second later.
• 42 affixes for gloves, sleeves and leggings, 16 passives, 20 states and 10 reactions: Soaked plus lightning electrocutes, Chilled plus a hammer shatters, Burning plus Soaked turns to blinding steam.
• 10 amulets that change a rule at a price. Glass Heart: more damage of every kind, but you take half as much again. Pact of Echoes: every Q, W and E fires twice, but every cooldown runs 60 % longer.

Nothing in a fight is left to dice. A quarter crit chance means exactly every fourth blow, and you can see the counter.

A few builds we like

The Storm Pair. Two players. One wears a Skirt of Tides and soaks everything. The other carries a storm staff with a Rune of Chains. Alone each is average. Together they wipe a packed group in a couple of bolts. That's the point: some builds are built for a partner.

The Shield Wall. Three knights with shields in the same surcoat, standing side by side, become real cover. Arrows and bolts stop on them, and the casters behind them fight in peace. Break the line with a knockback and the cover is gone.

The Bladestorm. Dagger, leather, a Skirt of Venom and a Glass Heart around the neck. You Shadow Step behind the healer, Puncture through half their armour, Backstab for four times the damage, and Adrenaline resets your Q and W for the next one. You also die to almost anything that catches you.

The Frost Warden. Chainmail, a frost staff, a Skirt of Frost. She doesn't kill much. She decides who gets to move. One wall of ice in the right street wins more fights than any fireball.

Read your enemy

Click anyone and the target card shows their build: the six abilities on their keys, everything they wear with its tier and runes, and the states on them right now. You know what you are walking into before you pick the fight.