PREVIEW: TERA's Valkyrie Class Brings the Power of the Gods

Next Tuesday, April 11th, En Masse Entertainment will drop the latest "Honorbound" update into TERA. The largest part of this update is, of course, the new Valkyrie class. Getting the particulars out of the way; yes, it's a female only class, yes it is race restricted to the Castanic only (although the lore has been molded to "explain" that), and yes it is a damage dealing class. (Where are new healing classes??)

Anyway, this week I had the chance to sit down and play the new class with the team from En Masse including Product Manager Michael Santora, Writer Scott James Magner, Associate Product Manager Robin MacPherson, and Community Manager Sean “Spacecats” Gibbons. As is typical for these previews, we were supplied with a max level Valkyrie in pretty boss gear stat wise and we rather enjoyed just pummeling things with the Valkyrie's damage combos.

Time to Slash Through Anything That Moves

Starting off, the Valkyrie uses two core "build and spend resources" systems. One, Runemarks, are applied to the enemy you are attacking each time the Valkyrie lands a critical hit with any of a wide variety of the class's assorted slashing abilities. Spending those runemarks on abilities such as Runeburst, which explodes runemarks on a target doing damage to all surrounding targets, becomes not only a lot of fun, but also essential to the Valkyrie rotation. Build up to seven runemarks, explode them for additional damage and crit chances, and repeat. You don't have to wait until you have 7 runemarks but the increase in damage output is worth doing so if you can. If you kill an enemy before spending any runemarks you've stacked on them, you'll be able to temporarily take those marks back and move them to your next target if you move quickly.

Runemarks tend to stack up quickly since the Valkyrie not only has evasion moves like...well, Evasion, to better position them for critical hits from behind targets, but because the class has a myriad of combo chains that end up using abilities to knock the cooldown off of certain other abilities. In short, find a chain you like that keeps almost all the skills off of cooldown by using certain other skills and you'll be pumping out the damage with each ferocious swing of your runeglaive.

The REAL Resource Spender

Once at max level, Valkyrie players will open up the TRUE resource spending mechanic of the class. Upon each hit on an enemy, the Valkyrie accumulates Ragnarok points. Get 1000 of these bad boys (they do diminish slowly when not continually whacking away on targets) and you can unleash the Ragnarok ability. This spend not only increases attack speed, power, and range, but ALSO resets the cooldowns on a number of abilities. Combine this with the level 65 ability Titansbane and you can not only dish out some serious punishment but you'll also be buffing yourself AND allies.

In short, I enjoyed my romp through Kaprima (again) and rather enjoyed the smooth and slick style of the Valkyrie and think that TERA players looking for melee combat that's slick, fast, and able to be tailored a bit based on combo preference will likely have a fun time with the Valkyrie. You don't have to wait until April 11th to see some more details though as En Masse is streaming Valkyrie content right now and plans to do so tomorrow as well on their Twitch channel.

Our thanks to the team over at En Masse Entertianment for the preview and if you want to check out more details about the new class be sure to visit the Valkyrie Class page!