A common question that people ask is, how will tanking work in an action based Role-Playing Game (RPG)? In traditional style MMORPGs, as most of you know, it involves tanks that build threat, hate, enmity, whatever… using their attack and taunt skills. As a result of this, the mob focuses on that player, and in most situations, everyone else is pretty free to do as they please aside from dealing with positional Area-of-Effects (AoEs) or mob adds. TERA does have the traditional aggro and taunt systems, but what about special attack patterns, target switches and projectiles in an action combat system? What can you do beside relying on building and maintaining a numeric value?

There have often been many complaints about Mana Point (MP) pools, MP regeneration, MP restorative skills and items in prior MMOs. Some games even attempt to abandon the system and switch to pure cast-time (CT) and cool-down (CD) balance with certain skills requiring meter charging gained from combat. So how is it handled in TERA? Different classes have different MP generation and recovery systems which can basically be broken down into 3 aspects.

Hitbox collision versus hitscan detection; what does TERA use for targeting? Both!

While some actions performed follow styles of arc, linear, or projectile type and require hitbox collision to register, other skills follow a hitscan style mechanism. For those don't know these terms, think of hitbox collision as objects having to travel and touch each other, while hitscan is registering that a hit has connected if the reticle is over a target's hitbox at the time of activation. This is a bit of a simplified explanation, but other factors can influence this including latency and netcode design. Many other games have been known to use one or both of these systems.

However, certain skills in TERA which follow the hitscan system have something additional about them that you will want to be aware of. Read on to find out what it is!

Different games have handled this in different ways in the past, including practically instant turns and facings with continuous updates, delayed updates in intervals, a turn speed independent of aim speed in which your shots won’t actually line up until your character’s facing catches up, or not actually adjusting facing at all until one performs a movement or action. So how does this work in TERA?

Advantage versus disadvantage is not talked about too much within the realm of MMOs, because of the nature of traditional role-playing game combat systems. However, due to the emergence of TERA as an action MMO with hybrid elements from other genres, this is an important concept to be aware of and put some thought to.

People are used to thinking about moves in terms of just cast times and cool downs. When the cast time is finished, the ability instantly takes effect, and you are back to neutral status where you become free to move and act as you please. When the cool down is over, you are ready to go again. However, when you get into many action systems, there are mechanics and phases of animations, such as startup, active and recovery time, that you should pay attention to.

Dear Warriors (or any other melee class for that matter),

Please stop whiffing.

For those who aren't familiar with the term, you may ask, "what exactly does whiffing mean?" It implies something more than just a simple miss, which could be no fault of your own. A whiff is generally more of an error in execution resulting in a miss, consuming time and potentially leaving yourself vulnerable or having other consequences. There are some times where you may want to whiff on purpose, but that's an exception and related to other tactics.

I’m sure many of you who browse TERA videos have seen many Warriors whiffing entire attack chains into the air and wondered if the animations are designed to be that long and restrictive and how this could affect game play negatively. These videos feature players who have not yet learned the art of properly positioning and spacing themselves, as well as not having a full understanding of some game systems. There's no reason to keep whiffing attacks if you’ve missed any of the hits and are no longer in range, and it's easy to learn how to avoid this.