🛠️General Mechanics
Last updated
Last updated
Let's start with the very general mechanics of Neverwinter and the topic of tanking! Then the Vanguard Fighter Mechanics are presented. This section ends with a look at how to tank against strong damage dealers!
Stating 'Damage' here may seem a bit too simple minded, however there is a good reason to state it: There are 2 things associated with it in Neverwinter! The Damage Stat in your Stat sheet and your inflicted / received Damage shown as numbers when fighting. To make things easy the term 'Damage' is used here when naming the inflicted / received damage and the term 'Damage Stat' is used here to name the Stat.
The Game also calls the 'Damage Stat' 'Base Damage'. The Damage stat equals for Tanks the Item Level of your character. Healers gain 10% more Damage and damage dealers gain a bonus of 20%.
Magnitude is used in the tooltips of your powers and gadgets. It describes - in a comparable manner - the amount of Damage your Power may deal (Well at least it is a coefficient in the Damage formula, it is not the exact amount of damage that the Power deals. But you get the point).
The absolute basic formula for your inflicted damage is:
Damage = 'Base Damage' * Magnitude / 100 * several offensive stats of your toon, countered by several defensive stats of your enemy * other coefficients.
Powers also come with various attributes
The Cast Time describes the amount of time to perform the action. In the case of Brazen Slash it takes 0.5 seconds to perform it. Sometimes you can cancel your animation but still deal the same amount of damage that action would perform if not canceled. We call this animation canceling. Some powers have some potential to increase damage by canceling them earlier, however for the Vanguard Fighter, this is barely important and thus it will go unnoticed in this guide for most parts.
How far away you need to be to perform the action. Melee means that the enemy must be directly in front of you. Otherwise they state something like 50'. Brazen Shlash has to be performed in Melee range.
When Encounters and are used, you can not use them immediately again. They go on cooldown! The number over the Power states how long it takes until you can use the Power again. You can reduce the Cooldown by the stat Recharge Speed, which is described in a later section.
The D20 cube shows the amount of Action Points you have. When it is full (yellow filled), you can perform one of the powerful Daily Powers that consumes Action Points shown next to it. Worth to note is that you gain Action Points for any action performed in combat. Each Power generates for each second animated 22 Action Points. When you hit 1000 Action Points it is completely filled. This means that you have filled your Action Points every ~45.45 seconds in combat.
The Combat Advantages mechanic is so important to state, because it makes a huge difference in fights when not forgotten. The game already has a nice description in its tutorial. I will restate it: "You gain Combat Advantage when you have successfully flanked your foe. You can achieve this by putting your foe in between you and an ally. If you can manage this, you will both deal more damage with your strikes! Note the ring on the ground when you target your foe and watch as it changes color when you have moved into the proper position. Then, when you are ready, strike the flank!"
It is important to note that the damage can be increased by up to 90% via Combat Advantage. With additional debuffs it can even go higher!
