Other skills actually build charge alongside standard weapon attacks.
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If you’ve got charges stored up, damage is boosted, and unlike with the Flame Hammer skill, using Ember Hammer doesn’t actually consume charge, so you’re free to swat at enemies with the damage buff so long as you have enough mana to support it. The Ember Hammer ability normally slashes an electric arc in front of the Engineer and shatters enemy shields. With built-up charge, more fire fingers are emitted by the blast zone, greatly boosting its effectiveness in big groups. The Flame Hammer skill normally slams into the ground and sends out fingers of fire to seek additional targets not singed by the initial blast. As you fight with normal attacks the bar builds, and consuming its charge enhances a variety of skills.
When actually engaged in close-range combat, the Engineer’s charge bar comes into play. If you’re looking for more firepower, Gun Bots can be deployed to fire machine guns at monsters, and Spider Mines tossed onto the field of play will follow the Engineer for a limited time before detonating or until they run into an enemy. The Engineer can construct a healing bot that tags along and periodically blasts out waves of healing. This means a powered up version of Blast Cannon could serve as a good opener to a fight, softening the defenses of packs of monsters from long-range before you switch over to a two-handed mace and smash creatures into tiny pieces.īefore entering a fight it’s probably also a good idea to spawn a few helpers. Using a gun enables the Blast Cannon skill, which initially does bonus damage but when ranked up adds a blindness effect and increase’s a target’s vulnerability to damage. Some skills can only be used with certain weapons, so the option to equip two weapon sets simultaneously and swap between them with the W key is welcome. In case you don’t want to waste hotbar space with potions, you can simply hit Z or X, which will automatically activate your most powerful health or mana potion. In the hotbar spaces not occupied by skills, you can drop in scrolls of identity to reveal stats on magic items, scrolls of town portal to head back to safe zones, as well as mana and health potions. Skills can also be assigned to your mouse buttons, and by pressing Tab you can cycle through two tied to the right mouse click. Unlocked skills can be fitted into a hotbar at the screen’s bottom, letting you activate whatever you want at any time. You also get skill points, which can be dumped into categories to learn and power up individual skills, so you have to balance investing in and unlocking a number of skills against the value of heavily investing in only a few skills. When leveling, you unlock stat points to dump into skill categories to manually boost things like attack power and health reserves. Consuming health potions is still important to survival, especially while playing a close-up fighter like the new Engineer class, but you have to wait for the regenerative effects of one potion to wear off before guzzling another. Health and mana potions are in, for instance, but they can’t be spammed.
It also retains many classic mechanics born in the days of Diablo, modified for the better. Instead of descending through multiple layers of a single dungeon, you run across a large expanses of outdoor terrain, giving your journey a sense of progression and adding a thrill of exploration not present in the first game. Similar to the changes made between Diablo I and II, Torchlight II actually features an overworld instead of Torchlight’s single town.