The wait is over WildStar fans. The epic drop of the two unnanounced WildStar classes is here!

The Medic: Keeping Your Party Alive--in style!

If the Engineer is the guy that brings his home made MP3 player to school; the Medic would be the guy that buys the newest IPod--and related accessories--on day one.

The Medic is the final healing class to be released with the launch of WildStar and, despite the name “Medic”, can also fulfill the roll of a dedicated damage dealer or DPS. Additionally, the Medic is the only healing class that gets access to Medium Armor and once we talk about where on the battlefield this class likes to tread, you’ll know why.

You see, the Medic is a medium-ranged Healer/DPS that uses “Resonators” or high-tech shock-paddles to deliver its Medic-y goodness. Because of the medium range, players who choose this class won’t have the luxury of firing off abilities from far distances like the Esper, Engineer or the Spellslinger, but they also won’t be right up in the enemies face like a Warrior or Stalker.

Because of this, whether you’re healing or DPSing, you’ll have to pay close attention to your positioning in order to make sure you don’t get caught in a nasty enemy telegraph or miss your own. As a healer, who generally wants to be as far away from the action as possible, this might serve as a challenge. Hence the access to medium armor that allows you to dive into the fray. This class is also the game’s only fully-mobile healing class so you can keep the heals and DPS coming, even while on the go.

Adding to some of the high skill cap needed to play this class, the Medic has access to only two targeted healing abilities, meaning majority of the class’s arsenal are free-form targeted damaging and healing skills.  The first of these Medic abilities come in the form of “fields” that either do damage to enemies or heal allies, as long as they’re within the field’s radius. These can also do increased damage depending on what part of the telegraph the target is in. Healing stations work similarly in the sense that, when allies get close enough, the station activates and grants them beneficial healing or buffs.

While Medics will have to do a good job coordinating with their team in order to position enemies and allies effectively, if played well, there will be a higher pay-off in the form of greater sustained healing and damage than you might otherwise see from the other classes. Marc Matzenbacher also commented on this.

“Because of the higher skill-cap and because you have to work a little bit closer with your team. You get rewarded and your team gets rewarded by positioning themselves well by staying inside of your fields. You can do a lot of persistent healing rather than necessarily having to line up a big burst heal. If your team is staying within your heal they’re going to be getting a lot of healing kind of passively.”

So basically a higher level of play grants a higher reward. In a game that requires a lot of movement in most cases, solving the puzzle of laying that field down in just the right spot may not be easy, but will be well worth the effort. Great Medic healers will definitely stand out.

On a side note, the Dev team also mentioned that the Medic’s abilities look like they’re trying to re-create the next Tron movie all on their own. Who needs a set when you have Resonators that shoot neon lights on command?

Moving right along, the next major ability type that the Medic uses is its “Probes”. These probes can be fired off in order to latch on to enemies or allies and grant various effects.  Devastator Probes deal damage while attached to enemies, Repair Probes heal allies they’re attached to, Empowering Probes grant offensive buffs and lastly we have Protection Probes that grant defensive buffs. While these probes have passive effects while attached to a target, some of them can be detonated for a quick burst of damage or healing to the host.

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s talk about how these abilities tie into the Medic class resource.  

Along with the “Focus” healing resource that all healing classes use, the Medic also uses “Power Cores” as a second source for using abilities. Power Cores begin fully charged and are consumed by using some of the stronger class abilities in combat. They recharge over time or while out of combat and allow the Medic to have significant burst healing or damage at the start of a fight, followed up by the Medic’s natural sustained damage or healing as the fight progresses.

Additionally, through the use of the Medic Innate Ability, “Energize”, the Medic can output significantly higher burst than normal by keeping Power Cores fully charged while this effect is active. And because the Medic has access to a wide variety of support abilities, and abilities that do both healing and damage at the same time, it has access to a variety of support builds and loadouts with the help of the limited action set. This may prove useful when in need of an “off-healer” for the more difficult dungeon encounters.

Races that are able to become a Medic are Mordesh, Granok, Humans, Cassians, Chua and Mechari.

That about wraps it up for the Engineer and Medic reveals. Don’t forget to grab a napkin on the way out, you know for the drool and what not. Additionally, I’d like to thank the team at Carbine for inviting me to this round table and being a part of this epic class reveal.

On that note, I think it's time for a little something special. Wrapping it up for today Carbine has left us with an awesome video detailing all six classes. Check it out!

WildStar Class Flick >>