Both of Dreadmark's classes got their soul rewritten this week, which took more than bolting on new skills. Each one got a new answer to the question what is this class actually about? And both were built on one shared idea, that a skill is either a noun (it puts something on the enemy) or a verb (it acts on what's already there). Once we saw the kits that way, each class finally had a sentence you could say about it.
The Witch, the debt ledger
She decides when you die. Every affliction she lays is a debt on the enemy, and her whole kit is about choosing when to collect.
There are three kinds of debt, and each one works differently. Poison is many small debts, weak on a fresh target and monstrous deep into a long fight. Rot compounds with age. It's a single instance that ripens from fresh to festering to putrid and hits harder the longer you keep it alive, so uptime is the build. And Doom is the balloon payment, a shadow debt that deals nothing while it grows and then detonates all at once when the bell tolls. Pile enough onto a wounded foe and it executes them.
Her spells became verbs to match. Witchfire is now Transmute, which consumes every debt on a target and cashes it out as one spike. Circle of Woe is now Preserve, a fence where debts refuse to expire and rot keeps ripening while you pour more in. Reap still detonates, and now pays more the older the rot it catches. The whole class runs on one tension, whether to collect now or let it mature. And you pick your generator at level one, either the single-target Hexbolt or the pack-seeding Hexbloom.
The Templar, the answerer
If she decides when you die, he answers. Nothing done to him or by him goes unanswered.
Vigor became Wrath. It's the same bar with a new soul. It fills from fighting (hits and blocks both pour in) and it decays the moment he leaves the fray, so there's no more strolling between packs with a full pool banked. The top of the meter is the White-Hot band. Push Wrath high enough and your verdict skills, like the new heavy-overhead Smite, hit like an executioner. It's a state you earn in a fight, and the bar tells you when you're in it.
A stagger finally means something, too. Enemies you concuss enter a readable Broken state, a cracked-armour window sized so your follow-up lands inside it. Elites and bosses carry a poise bar you grind down for one big opening. Frost left the class entirely (fire is his pillar now, lightning his accent), and he gained Benediction, a heal that flashes outward and scorches what's near you, because even his mercy has a wrath face.
She decides when you die, and he answers every blow. Numbers on both are still being felt out by hand, but for the first time each class has an identity you can build toward instead of a pile of skills that happen to share a tree.