We got you covered with a recap of Carbine's Saturday Warrior livestream.

If you missed Carbine's Saturday Warrior livestream, have no fear! I have you covered with the recap of some of the cool information and changes that were discussed regarding the fierce melee bruiser. Carbine also showed us a glimpse at a few other changes, improvements and additions to the game, including a first-look at the "AMP System". Let's begin!

Joining us this week were Carbine's very own Stephan Frost, Davis Bass, Hugh Shelton and Marc Matzenbacker.  Since this stream was primarily focused on WildStar's Warrior class, I'll start by highlighting some of the bigger changes the class has seen since the last beta. First, the Warrior no longer generates "Kinetic Cells" as a resource. Instead, the Warrior only generates Kinetic Energy (which works more like a standard rage bar in other games). This decision was made to help reward Warrior players who kept their combat momentum up and to help give an incentive to players to constantly keep building up Kinetic Energy and spend it instead of saving that resource for later.

In order to compliment this change, a lot of the Warrior's global cooldowns have been reduced, adjusted or taken off a shared GCD all-together in order to make combat feel more fluid and fun. While the next few topics of discussion focus more on overall abilities and systems, if you wish to find out more Warrior-specific information be sure to check out my Warrior AMA recap, which covers a ton of information about DPS and Tank builds for the class, then head over to the new WildStar Warrior class page.

Moving on to other things that were discussed in the livestream, we also got a chance to see the "Ability Tiering" and the AMP systems a bit. These are the two systems that players will be using to help strengthen and customize their characters abilities as well as help differentiate them from other players.

Ability Tiering is the act of powering up and progressing your active abilities. Abilities that qualify for Ability Tiering will all have 8 tiers. In these 8 tiers there exists 3 Minor Tiers (basic improvement such as increased healing or damage output) and 2 Major Tiers (powerful and unique functions and bonuses that get added to the ability).

There are also plans to include a "load-out system" that allows you to easily swap between abilities, AMPs and possibly equipment.

Next we have the Advanced Modification Protocols System, other-wise known as "AMPs". Now the AMP system is essentially WildStar's take on a talent tree. There are some key differences that set this system apart from other MMO talent trees, the first one being that this talent tree is separated into six separate sections which are labeled as:

Assault - For general offensive talents

PVP Offense - For PVP-related offensive talents

Utility - For general utility-related talents

Support - For healing and tanking-related talents

PvP Defense - For PVP related-defensive talents

Hybrid - For hybrid abilities which consist of both offensive and defensive play-styles

It's important to note that before players can begin putting points in the PvP offense, PVP Defense or Hybrid sections, they will first need to progress far enough in either Assault, Utility or Support, which serve as starting points for your character.

The second thing that makes the AMP system a bit more unique is that there are two types of AMPs (or talents) referred to as either "Series AMPs" or "Inlaid AMPs". Series AMPs work more like your standard talent branches. You level up the first talent, which then allows you to unlock the next talent connected to it. Pretty standard, right? However, this changes up when we start talking about Inlaid AMPs. These are talents that require you to meet special conditions or have a specific item in order to unlock them in your tree. Some of these items must be found by doing certain things in the world and can even traded, sold or bought among players.

Lastly, it's worth mentioning that the team has also made improvements to the telegraph system that allows you to see "cast-times" of the abilities being telegraphed. They are working extensively on color-blind features in addition to ones that allow you to customize color and opacity of the different telegraphs. There will also be plenty of incentives to group due to the fact that there will be a currency known as "Renown" that can only be earned through group-oriented activities. We didn't get a ton of information on this system just yet, but the currency will be used to purchase a wide-range of equipment and items.

While I feel like I've touched on some of key the topics of the livestream, I'm sure most of you are dying to see some live gameplay! If so, be sure to watch the full Warrior livestream here and don't forget to to say dialed into ZAM for more WildStar news and updates.

See you on Nexus!

Corey "Cyglaive" Jenkins

Follow Corey on Twitter @Cyglaive