Hello dragon hunters,
Since the beginning of the Tracker update, you’ve been sharing your thoughts on the new class. Some of you are going for a more roguish playstyle thanks to her melee abilities, others embracing her archer playstyle if not going for hybrid builds.
However, we’d like to highlight a lesser-known aspect of the Tracker that was important during the design process: the Draghurss.
For the Qhongirat Clan, fighting while mounted is core to a Tracker’s identity.
In today’s DevBlog, we’ll explain how this mount shaped the design of its associated skills and talents, and share with you 3 builds that put those abilities into practice.
Making skills & talents
We always have many skills and talents we’d like to add for each class, so when picking a new one, we focus on what best fits the class’s playstyle and needs.
As we just mentioned, one of the elements that define the Tracker design wise, definitely is the Draghurss you probably met in the prologue.
How do we translate that idea into actual abilities?
It quickly made sense to let the Tracker summon a Draghurss into battle that fights alongside the player. From this idea came the skill Draghurss’s Call and the talent Pack Hunter.
At the same time, we wanted players to eventually ride a Draghurss, which led to Mounted Hunt. Figuring out how it should function, and how useful it would feel in practice, was more complex and required several iterations.
A side note about talents: We strongly believe that talents add a massive amount of depth and satisfaction to gameplay by creating extra layers to player interaction.
Draghurss’s Call
Draghurss’s Call build showcase
This endgame build uses a set of ranged skills as the main damage dealer and enabler, allowing the player to stay at a safe range while summoning Draghurss and insects to increase the overall damage output.
To support our main damage, we use Draghurss’s Call modified by the wyrmling skill Insect Ally, this to summon an Insect unit alongside the Draghuss.
Obviously, many Bonus Summon modifiers are added to both Draghurss’s Call and Insect Ally to increase the total number of summons each skill can generate.
Pack Hunter
Aside from putting traps on the ground, Pack Hunter also triggers whenever a crowd control effect is applied to an enemy. This summons Draghurss to appear temporarily, passing through enemies and dealing damage.
Pack Hunter build showcase (By Bunzine)
This endgame build uses Treacherous Rain as the main damage dealer, while all other skills can be anything, usually leaning towards utility skills meant to improve survivability and / or increase mobility.
How does Treacherous Rain synergize with Pack Hunter?
Combined with the Safe Distance modifier for even more control, it turns every instance of Treacherous Rain into an area that maximizes the chance for Pack Hunter to proc, allowing multiple Draghurss to be summoned.
Every arrow continuously stacks Control Marks dealing extra damage.
Mounted Hunt
Mounted Hunt definitely is tailored for exploration and moves fast across the map.
However, besides pure mobility, what does the player need or want while exploring?
When navigating, the player might get caught by enemies. In some games, a single hit or a damage threshold can knock you off your mount, but in Dragonkin we felt that would be too frustrating.
Instead, while mounted, the player can move through enemies and take damage without being dismounted. On top of that, you take less damage from DoTs (damage-over-time)
It might not seem like much at first, since most damage comes from direct attacks, but with enough Reflex, which the Tracker naturally stack, part of that damage is converted into DoTs, making this reduction quite noticeable.
When does the Dismount happen then?
The player can dismount whenever a skill is used, turning Mounted Hunt into both a combo finisher and a repositioning tool in combat.
It’s worth mentioning that any crowd control that affects the player can dismount.
Currently, the skills that trigger Mounted Hunt are Blinding Retreat, Acrobatic Strike, Merciless Evasion, and of course, the fan-favorite Dance of Daggers.
Mounted Hunt build showcase
This mid-game build focuses on a set of melee skills as the main damage dealers, while Mounted Hunt serves as both a disengage finisher and a high-mobility roaming ability.
The combo revolves around using Blinding Retreat as our enabler for Mounted Hunt, letting the Tracker disengage while dealing damage.
The goal is to take advantage of the Tracker’s innate ability, Targeting, as much as possible.
To do this, we pair Blinding Retreat with the new modifier Lightning Mark.
Each time Blinding Retreat is used, it applies a layer of marks, which immediately triggers Targeting. A few seconds later, when the Blinding Retreat trap detonates and deals damage, enemies are marked again, allowing Targeting to activate a second time, eventually executing enemies.
While this particular synergy isn’t intended to deal with tougher enemies like elites, champions, or bosses, it’s rather effective when dealing with swarms of weaker enemies.
Closing thoughts
Most skills got designed a few years ago and potential builds and main interactions are planned by our Lead Game Designer beforehand, imagining what kind of character builds you can make.
That said, it happens that skills or talent like Dance of Dagger and Mounted hunt are integrated later leading to several adjustments to retroactively work. At times, multiple iterations are necessary to refine the design and prevent significant balance issues.
We hope our community on Discord will be a huge aid to uncover problematic interactions that need to be rebalanced or simply get our attention on unpopular skills.
