Mirror career

From HammerWiki

Mirror career is a career within a realm (either realm of Order or Destruction) that has a similar gameplay mechanic to a career from the opposite faction. The mirror careers are created in order to maintain balance among the factions, and also to give the players with certain gameplay preferences a choice between Order and Destruction, not forcing them to forego the preferred realm in order to get the desired gameplay.
Mirror careers are also called Pairs or Paired careers.

Contents 1 Paired careers 1.1 Tanks 1.2 Melee DPS 1.3 Ranged DPS 1.4 Support

[edit] Paired careers

These are the careers of opposing factions that share the main aspects of gameplay mechanics.

[edit] Tanks

• Swordmaster (High Elves) - Black Orc (Greenskins)
  

Both these careers' gameplay mechanic is based on chaining several attacks together, creating powerful combos.

• Knight of the Blazing Sun (Empire) - Chosen (Chaos)
  

These two careers share a gameplay based on auras (special abilities that buff allies and debuff enemies within a certain radius around the tank). And the overlapping effects of having several auras working at once, called twisting.

• Ironbreaker (Dwarfs) - Black Guard (Dark Elves)
  

The similar element in these two careers' mechanic is a special attack meter (called Grudge by the Ironbreaker and Hate by the Black Guard), which fills as the tank or his allies are under attack and allows him to unleash his most potent attacks when it is filled up to a certain amount.

[edit] Melee DPS

• Witch Hunter (Empire) - Witch Elf (Dark Elves)
  

Although these classes share the main mechanic, the combo points (called Accusations by the Witch Hunters and Bloodlust by the Witch Elves), there is certain difference in gameplay as some of the Witch Hunter's finishing moves are ranged attacks, resulting in slightly different combat tactics - while the Witch Elf will stay close to her target until the end, the Witch Hunter will usually try to get further away after a while to set off his finishing move.

• Slayer (Dwarfs) - Choppa (Greenskins)
  

These careers are both based on a meter that fills during combat (called Rage by the Slayer and Frenzy by the Choppa), causing them to deal more damage, but eventually causing them to become more vulnerable to attacks as well.

• White Lion (High Elves) - Marauder (Chaos)
  

These careers both possess stance-based combat, and the ability to grab a foe from afar, by using either the White Lion's War Lion, or the Marauder's Tentacle Grab. They also share several skills not found in other Melee DPS classes.

[edit] Ranged DPS

• Bright Wizard (Empire) - Sorceress (Dark Elves)
  

These careers both have the role of magic using ranged dps, and besides similar gameplay, they share the main mechanic - a meter which keeps filling up as the caster uses certain spells, increasing the deadliness of their spells as it fills, but also increasing the risk of the spell backfiring, severely wounding and often killing the caster. Bright Wizards call this the Combustion meter, while in Sorceress' terms it is called Dhar or simply Dark Magic.

• Engineer (Dwarfs) - Magus (Chaos)
  

These two careers share the role of area-defending ranged dps thanks to stationary "pets" such as Engineer's turrets and Magus' daemons.

• Shadow Warrior (High Elves) - Goblin Squig Herder (Greenskins)
  

These careers both use a mix of long and short range bow attacks as well as minor melee abilities for versatile damage-dealing, and share the ability to shoot while moving.

[edit] Support

• Warrior Priest (Empire) - Disciple of Khaine (Dark Elves)
  

These are the healers who are required to engage in melee fight to fill up their special ability meter (Righteous Fury for the Warrior Priest and Soul Essence for the Disciple of Khaine). Therefore, in order to heal effectively, they have to remain in the front lines of battle most of the time.

• Runepriest (Dwarfs) - Zealot (Chaos)
  

These careers use certain aids (Runepriest's Runes and Zealot's Dark Rituals), rather than direct spells, to buff allies and debuff enemies. Of course, they also have direct healing and damage spells at their disposal.

• Archmage (High Elves) - Shaman (Greenskins)
  

The common mechanic here is the ability to increase the potency of healing spells by casting damage dealing spells and vice versa. This is called High magic when playing as an Archmage and WAAAGH! when playing as a Shaman. These careers are the only ones to have two separate special ability meters (one for healing and one for damage).

As you can see, the Support careers are mirrored much more similarly than the other archetypes. This is presumably because of the fact that the variation of healing careers might cause more imbalance than it would with other roles.