XCOM 2
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[WOTC] Proficiency Class Plugin - Warden
   
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23.749 MB
16 Jun, 2024 @ 1:37pm
1 Jan @ 11:04am
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[WOTC] Proficiency Class Plugin - Warden

Description
Mod Description
This mod is a re-imagining of the excellent Warden class, originally made by Eramar.

Whilst I very much enjoyed playing with the Warden class in its original form, I found that it had a few flaws, particularly in the way that the stance mechanics were handled and explained to the user, which made it quite difficult to understand the how/when the class' key abilities could be used.

I was captivated however, with the idea of a class which utilised stances as a concept (having enjoyed playing with the Watcher in Slay The Spire) so I decided to take matters into my own hands and remake the Warden in a new (and hopefully more interesting) direction, whilst trying to stay at least partially true to the spirit of the original.

Further, after playing for some time with Shiremct's Proficiency Class Pack, I decided I wanted to follow in the footsteps of many other modders that I highly respect who have made 'proficiency plugin' type classes with three full perk trees and 'proficiency-style' bonuses & GTS unlocks.

The class contains a wide varity of custom abilities built from the ground-up along with custom PFX and animations - it's not just a re-assembly of existing base-game perks!

Requirements

Key Class Aspects
  • Weapons - Bullpup and sword
  • Stances - The warden starts with two stances, 'Ranged Stance' and 'Melee Stance'
  • Stance indicators - Stances are now clearly indicated with a flyover each time they are switched, and the Warden is surrounded by orange particle effects when in ranged stance and blue particle effects when in melee stance to help keep track of things.
  • Action point economy - This is the biggest change of all from the original class. The Warden now has almost no access to traditional abilities using normal action points. However, similarly to a templar, they gain an additional 'flow' action point (similar to momentum) if they make a turn-ending attack using the correct weapon/stance combination & this is what almost all of their active abilities use.
  • Flow action points - Whilst the new economy may sound a little complicated, in practice it plays out fairly straightforwardly - if you use the weapon associated with the stance you're in (e.g. Ranged stance / gun, Melee stance / sword), then access to the key abilities opens up all sorts of interesting tactical options. Whilst the abilities are generally quite powerful, this is offset by the (occasional) tactical inflexibility of the unit, especially if the enemy is in control of the action economy.
  • Perks - Almost all of the active abilities have custom particle effects, animations or both, which is something I'm altogether pretty proud of - please see the screenshots (& note that they look even better in-game!).

Perk Themes
  • Inquisitor - Focus on ranged weapons / medium distance combat, team support and fortifying tight positions
  • Spiritblade - Focus on close-range combat, melee damage and melee safety
  • Adept - Focus on counter-attacking and area-of-effect support
  • Disciple - Mixture of Templar, Ranger and Psi-Operative perks that fit in well with the broader class-theme

Full List Of Perks

Balance
Note: This mod is currently pre-balance testing. The class is fully working and playable, but I've not had a chance to complete a full campaign with it and tweak the abilities to provide a comprehensively balanced experience alongside other similar classes, in respect of damage values, ability cooldowns etc. & obviously there may be a couple of minor bugs to tackle for edge-case situations that I wasn't able to evaluate in testing so I expect there will be at least another one or two major updates to come in the next 2-3 months.

Credits
  • Iridar - I owe a huge amount of gratitude to Iridar for this mod. He was instrumental in helping me plan my vision of the class & turn it into a concrete specification, provided countless code examples and ideas on how to approach complex problems. My sincere thanks to him for all the help over the course of the many many months it's taken me to build this!
  • Fancyneer - Assistance & support porting some animations
  • RustyDios - Continual support, coding assistance and once again, for the mod preview image!
  • EvilBob - Assistance with the class icon & mod preview image
  • Eramar - To the original author for a great idea and for setting an example for how to build high quality PFX!
  • MEME & Others - In particular, Tedster, Lordabizi, Zelfana, Mitzruti for coding help, explanations examples & troubleshooting!

Contact
As always, I welcome comments and am an active face in the modding community so if you experience bugs / issues please reach out to me & I'll do what I can to resolve your issues. If possible, please try to be specific with errors (redscreens, logs, screenshots etc. & I will be much more able (and willing) to help you.
Popular Discussions View All (1)
0
29 Aug, 2024 @ 4:12am
Pexm No Will Drain & Alterd's Psionic Mec Trooper Rework Compatibility
TrooperCoon
55 Comments
henrykhaung 25 Jan @ 11:33pm 
how do i train the class ?
Dragonhero 22 Jan @ 4:57am 
@BlackDog
Yo sup.
The priests do have guns. The issue here is not the animation itself, it is where their point of interest is. What I mean is, have you noticed that the animations from soldiers tend to ''aim'' to certain directions? Like they are facing to a specific point and with your warden they face either the ground or the ceiling. That is what causes janky animations. So for the animations to play correcty, they have to face straight ahead somewhere.
The animations you used from the enemies are fine imo so dw about that.

And I agree with making a big update rather than doing quick fixes for now. Hope you will be satisfied when it is done!
BlackDog  [author] 21 Jan @ 9:38pm 
Yeah you're right - those anims are priest not shieldbearer, sorry. I'm not sure what I can do to improve the way that looks to be honest because obv. the priests aren't holding a gun so it does look a bit janky. I'm not really a graphics/anims guy at the heart of it so I'll probably have to reach out to someone else to port and adjust the animsets for those as it's not my strong point at all. There are a couple of folks on the modding discord I can reach out to, so it may get done eventually but there's also quite a few changes I want to make to the class makeup generally as well so I'll probably roll it all up into a big update in a few months time or something like that.
Dragonhero 16 Jan @ 2:14pm 
@Blackdog
Nice to hear from you again. About the animations, perhaps I should have clarified it more what I exactly mean with kneeling because I know for a fact the shield bearer only has 2 unique animations and those two aren't present with the warden last time I checked. The shield bearer has one unique pod activation animation and his shield ability, where he does a big wind up and slams it into the ground.

What I mean with kneeling, the warden uses the animation from the advent priest whenever you activated one of their pods. The warden uses 2 pod activation animations from the advent priests.

Advent priest kneeling --> Switch stance animation

Advent hand on chest and then holding it up high --> Reflective Barrier.

Hope this helps!
BlackDog  [author] 16 Jan @ 1:57pm 
Hi, thanks for the comment - I'll take a look at the anims. The kneeling animation for the stance change is one of the shield bearer ones iirc, it was never quite perfect but I don't remember it being as broken as you describe. Brand should just be the pointing animation I think. It's been a while since I worked on the class and it's still probably only about 80% of where I want it to be, still needs a bit of finessing for sure. I'll try and find some time to revisit it and see if I can make some improvements :)
Dragonhero 13 Jan @ 7:35am 
(PS. Do others have animations issues aswell with the bullpup run? Idk where to ask it so I just try it here. Whenever the soldier who isnt a skirmisher moves somewhere, the legs kind of walk very strange. In a way that its just like a duck or something.)
Dragonhero 13 Jan @ 7:35am 
Got to try this mod finally after getting a soldier promoted to it and I gotta say its very fun to play this class. The flow point system makes this character very unique, specially with its own set of abilities.

On the side note, I have encountered the same glitch the ADVENT Testi talks about. For me it is both female and male warden, where the animations for the class are kind of glitched.
Basically what happens is:

Entering stance --> looks down/up(yes it happens either the warden looks way down or looks at the ceiling for some reason) and move their arms way behind their body

Brand --> Arm goes with the Bullpup and basically breaks their arm while performing it. I think it uses the Bolt animation for the templar right? Perhaps that creates the issue.

Reflective Barrier: Also the same with entering stances. The warden looks either directly up or directly down and performs the animation.

On these the animations has been always glitched. I haven't tried the others yet.
TrooperCoon 27 Aug, 2024 @ 12:17am 
requesting for dedicated pistol slot support?
BlackDog  [author] 9 Aug, 2024 @ 1:22am 
Hi, thanks for the feedback - I tend to use the 'Extended Information' mod more often than not and this generally gives information on how many actions things cost & what ends the turn etc. so some of the localization may be a bit lacking because of that. In general, the class is still a bit of an open project - there are a few things I'm still not fully satisfied with. I have a few other projects on-the-go at the minute though but when I get back to revising this I'll see what I can do to improve the localization as well.
ADVENT Testiculator 6 Aug, 2024 @ 12:01pm 
Also, one more thing, the animation when entering stances on my female warden is glitched, her arm or arms glitch but the rest of it stays the same. This might be a problem on my end with conflicting mods, but just reporting it in case it's not.