True to its name, the Tempest — one of the four new souls arriving with Rift‘s first-ever expansion, Storm Legion — is a literal shock trooper. It calls on, absorbs and shoots out lightning like a living Tesla coil. I appreciate how Trion Worlds made the effort to tie the class flavor with the drench-and-drown theme of the expansion.
There’s a bit of disconnect though with how the new soul is portrayed between the Tempest preview page description and the teaser screenshots above. Trion Worlds classifies the Tempests as “heavy-damage lightning rods, unleashing torrents of damage from long range [emphasis mine]” but the screenshots make it appear as though the Tempest is melee-focused.
It would be great for the next batch to show off the Tempest spewing charged bolts from afar, which unavoidably conjures the image of the Star Wars the Old Republic’s lightning-lobbing Sith Inquisitor. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
via Rift Storm Legion preview page | photo credits: Trion Worlds
