I’m a little disappointed with the strategic choices presented to me in Wakfu at the moment, at least as a level 15 Huppermage’s Rune. Despite having many different spell types, I’m only ever using either my single target or frontal cone fire attack. I have several debuffs in my toolkit but I never use them because the number one need I have during an engagement is to reduce the number of enemies I’m facing quickly. Rather than waste a round reducing the critical hit chance of one of six targets, the most important thing I can do for my own survivability is reduce the number of mobs I’m facing. This means using the one, high damage single target ability that I have.
Because skills are leveled as you use them, this problem perpetuates itself. The ability I have leveled the most is the single target fireball which only increases the gap between that skill’s damage and everything else in my spell book. I’d love to use more of my skills but there’s never a point to do so, that is unless I was going through these fights and dungeons in a group. That’s what I’m starting to suspect anyway, that the turn based combat was intended to be done primarily with a group with one or two characters spending a round to debuff the heavy hitters while the others focus down the weaker mobs.
It could also be my class choice though, which is why I went ahead and started a second character. I haven’t spent much time with him yet, but it’s a melee class called Sacrier’s Blood. It’s a berserker style class that gets stronger the more damage it takes. Other abilities are used to create a shield against enemy attacks, push and pull friends and foes around the combat board, or sacrifices health for greater damage output. My hope is that this kit will allow for greater diversity in gameplay instead of pigeon holing my choices to a single, high damaging attack.
The game has a lot of potential and I do like the idea of an MMO with turn based combat, but if after trying a few more classes I end up in the same position, I may start looking for other turn based games, likely of the single player variety. Hopefully it’s just the class I chose, and with so many unique options I’ll probably try a few before moving on completely. However if anyone has any suggestions for other games with turn based combat that requires positional strategy, I’d love to hear them.
Waiting For Rez 