Combat

Alpha-1 PvE combat early preview.

Combat is the most tactile system in the game. It's the thing you will experience most often; and outside of the systems and mechanics that are going to be present for the overarching core gameplay loop, combat needs to feel responsive. It needs to not feel floaty. It needs to feel mobile. It needs to be fluid. It needs to give a feeling of satisfaction. The audio components, the effects components, the animations themselves, the types of skills and those types of things: All of those are really our objective in fine-tuning the approach for our combat in Ashes of Creation. – Steven Sharif

Combat in Ashes of Creation is focused on strategy and tactics.

• Combat is the most tactile system in the game. It needs to feel responsive, mobile and fluid. It needs to give a feeling of satisfaction.

We want combat to be engaging, fun... Right now we've begun the sprint toward Alpha-1 first phase deployment, so we're really looking into the action side of combat right now; and we're building systems for that. And the reason why we are doing that is because tab-targeting has been a staple of MMORPGs for a very long time, even though there's a large interest now in action for MMORPGs and there has been some successful titles with action-oriented, like TERA and BDO. We want to be able to really delve into that development so that we can better understand how to merge tab and action together in the same game, because they are vastly different play-styles. – Steven Sharif

A revamped combat system will be ready to test in the Alpha-1 March preview testing.

• This revamp will not represent the final form of combat, but will set the general that combat will be taking.

Combat targeting

Players using action targeted and tab targeted skills defending a village node from world boss attacks in Alpha-1.

Alpha-1 early hybrid combat demo.

Players can very easily transition between tab targeting and action combat. By pressing Z I now tie my cursor movement to my camera and additionally a reticle has spawned. – Steven Sharif

Hybrid combat refers to the choice between tab targeted skills, action targeted skills, or a mix of both in the Ashes of Creation MMORPG. This is achieved through choice of skills/abilities.

• A tab-targeted ability requires a target in order to utilize that skill.
• An action skill is anything that can be utilized through placement of the player, such as a reticle, a ground template or a directional placement.
• It may not be possible to be able to fully spec into just action or tab targeted skills. There might be a 75% cap on choosing skills from any one type.
• Different ranks of the same skill can change the skill from tab to action targeted or vice-versa.

Skill progressions, skill point allocation is determined by the player. The player will be able to choose either more tab-target oriented skills or more action-based skills and customize their playable experience to what accommodates their preference. From a balancing standpoint for us developers, we need to make sure that certain abilities house certain functions so that there's a balance between skill shots and tab-target abilities. – Steven Sharif

A toggle button (default Z) allows the player to switch between action and tab targeted combat modes.

• The action mode utilizes a targeting reticle and is very close to a third-person action game.
  • The reticle will highlight/change color to indicate if the current target is able to be hit with the currently prepared skill.
  • Pressing right-click while in action mode will switch to tab mode for the currently highlighted target. Currently this is activated left-click in Alpha-1, but it will be changed to right-click.
• The tab mode (MMO mode) facilitates tab targeted combat.
  • Pressing left-click in tab mode will attack the target (with the currently selected weapon).
  • There will be a "target of target" capability on the user interface.

Action oriented and tab oriented versions of skills will have different characteristics. Variables will change based on which version is chosen.

• Damage.
• Charge up time.
• CC effects.
• Cooldown.
• Energy consumption.
• Cost to spec.
• Attack range will likely remain the same; as it is driven by the weapon or skill itself.

As an example: Let's say you're playing a ranged class. You could have an action-oriented power shot in your skill tree or you could have a single target power shot that ramps up and does more damage. – Steven Sharif

For the purposes of balance, certain skill types will be either tab or action oriented skills. For example:

• Hard CCs may be housed in action oriented skills because they are skill shots that are more difficult to land.
• Softer CC's would be housed in tab-targeted abilities.

Hybrid combat is scheduled for testing in Alpha-1.

Hitboxes

The developers are testing different approaches to accommodate varying hitboxes between the races.

• There may be a single unified hitbox with some exceptions or some special collision rules as opposed to having different sized hitboxes.

More than likely we'll have some sort of unified or unified-ish hitbox. But again it's going to probably have a unified hitbox with some exceptions or some special sort of collision rules based on them as opposed to kind of just making it smaller for one and not the other. – Jeffrey Bard

There aren't separate types of hitbox categories in the Ashes of Creation MMORPG as there were in Ashes of Creation Apocalypse.

We don't have separate types of hitbox categories, for example. There's no head hit box in the MMORPG like there was in APOC. So from a critical standpoint you're not going to see a greater risk of critting for a larger hitbox. – Steven Sharif

Cleaving

Weapon attack cone in Alpha-1.

As I attack I am hitting multiple numbers of these opponents; and that's important because all weapons, regardless of whether you are in reticle mode or tab-targeting mode will be able to have a action-based type weapon attack. Not active skill, but weapon attack. – Steven Sharif

All weapons have a forward attack cone, regardless of being in tab or action mode.

• The cone's arc and distance will vary based on weapon type.

Polearms for example will have a much wider arc and much further out. Daggers will have a more fine-tuned arc, so you have to be more precise in that regard. – Steven Sharif

This is described as a weapon attack not an active skill.

• It was previously stated that cleaving will be a class ability for some classes.

Time to kill

The Ashes of Creation MMORPG will have a time-to-kill (TTK) of around 30 seconds to a minute.

• Time-to-kill in the Ashes of Creation Apocalypse battle royale testing mode is adapted for a traditional battle royale setting.
• Time-to-kill in Ashes of Creation Apocalypse castle sieges will be slightly longer than in the battle royale.
• The developers do not want one-shots in the final MMORPG.

In the MMORPG we really don't want to see any one-shots. The time-to-kill needs to be strategic and tactical. – Steven Sharif

Headshot mechanics

There are no headshot mechanics in the Ashes of Creation MMORPG.

• Headshots were a part of Ashes of Creation Apocalypse battle royale.
• Previously it was stated that headshot mechanics may be implemented in the MMORPG along the lines of a higher critical chance and that they would not be one hit kills.
  • Headshots in action combat are equivalent to a critical hit in tab targeted combat.
  • Players relying on tab skills will have a fixed critical hit chance every time they use an ability or weapon.
  • Players using action-based skills are going to rely on getting a head shot or hitting a critical spot on the opponent.

Gear inspection/ Threat assessment

Players will have a buff on their nameplate that indicates the gear set they are wearing. Other players will be able to see this buff by targeting that player at a distance.

• This will indicate the type of gear (cloth, leather, plate) that they are predominantly wearing.
• The border will indicate the level and quality of the tier set.
• This also indicates if the gear is enchanted.
• The developers believe that inspecting gear to obtain an exact equipment list or gear score may lead to "unwelcome behavior".

When you see a player approaching you and they're wearing a transmog you know you don't know if that person is a high damage mitigation against physical damage or against magical damage and essentially the way we overcome that is through you being able to target a player at a distance and they will have a buff that's present on them that you will see, which indicates that essentially the piece set that they are wearing. It is important for players to be able to ascertain from a threat assessment standpoint you know what they're going up against if they're actively checking that and that will be available. – Steven Sharif

Being by default able to see a person's "gear score" / equipment list... may cause unwelcome behavior.

Character nameplate

A character's nameplate is displayed above their head.

• This can be the first or last name (family name).
• The name of the character's Guild is displayed next to their name.
• The character's nameplate will deteriorate to give an indication of how much damage they have taken.
• An icon will identify the character's class.
• Hovering over the user's nameplate will show information such as level, their class name and archetype combo.
• A buff icon indicates the character's gear and grade.

Summoner summons' creature type appears in the nameplate above the summon. This cannot be changed by the player.

Combat abilities

The aspiration for combat is for abilities to have corresponding counter-play abilities.

• The goal is to have special animations for parrying, blocking and evading.

They can be a challenge to implement sort of really reliably so you might not see them on every evasion or every block, but we do want that kind of stuff to show up. – Jeffrey Bard

Crowd control

Crowd control (CC/mezzing) abilities include root, snare, stun, sleep and slow.

• There will be diminishing returns on stuns, sleep and slows so as to avoid stun locking.

• Crowd control won't likely be tab-targeted skills. This is to avoid imbalanced combos with skill shot (action targeted) abilities.

• Summoner's summons will be able to use crowd control.

• Hard CC's are stuns, knock downs, sleeps, paralysis, some roots, some silences.
  • Hard CCs may be housed in action oriented skills because they are skill shots that are more difficult to land.

Diminishing returns in regards to crowd control and conditions like stun and sleep and slows and that kind of thing: Yes we will have absolutely diminishing returns. I think it's a necessary component to balance out classes that have high control ability. – Steven Sharif

We're trying to stay away from hard locks as much as we possibly can. We want to have the system be very play, counter-play, counter-counter-play kind of feel. – Jeffrey Bard

This section contains information from early testing phases. It will be updated as soon as new information is made available.

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Javelin		Pulls your target to your location. Generates additional threat.	Increased damage. Now pulls up to 3 targets.	Increased damage. Now pulls up to 5 targets. Stuns targets.
Jump		Dash with cooldown.	Cooldown is replaced by charges with individual cooldown.	Drops a bear trap at the location the ranger dashed from.
Snare		Foot pin roots target in place.	Adds a bleed.	Snares after root expires.
Trap		Place a bear trap under the caster that holds them in place and does damage. Also holds targets in place and does damage.	Traps stun instead of root.	Place up to two traps.

Mobility

Skills with the greatest power may require the caster to remain stationary while channeling them. This is a risk vs. reward mechanic.

• Prone and crouch will likely not be in the game.
• Moving backward will likely not affect block and parry.

I think that that generally we want to tend to be more mobile in our classes. I think that it's a fundamentally old-school philosophy to have a lot of stuck in place type skills. That isn't to say we won't have skills that have mobility restriction on them- that require you to channel or require a casting time where you can't move; but I think it's a blend between the two. It's neither extreme. – Steven Sharif

It'll be something that you can spec around to. Again it's gonna be a risk/reward thing. We put a lot of thought into what skills are overpowered or have kind of this overpowering nature to them and those are the kinds of skills that will generally find that will be like in-place type of skills; where you are now at risk if you are going to cast this spell, but there's a big reward if you do manage to get it off. – Jeffrey Bard

This section contains information from early testing phases. It will be updated as soon as new information is made available.

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Apocalypse:Alacrity		For the duration of this stance, your successful attacks will increase your run speed. Duration: 10 Sec. Cooldown: 10 Sec.	For the duration of this stance, your successful attacks will increase your run speed. Duration: 12 Sec. Cooldown: 10 Sec.	For the duration of this stance, your successful attacks will increase your run speed. Duration: 12 Sec. Cooldown: 8 Sec.
Apocalypse:Blink		Activate to instantly teleport yourself a short distance forward. Duration: 1 sec Cooldown: 30 sec	Activate to instantly teleport yourself a short distance forward. Duration: 1 sec Cooldown: 25 sec	Activate to instantly teleport yourself a short distance forward. Duration: 1 sec Cooldown: 20 sec
Apocalypse:Catfall		Activate to grant yourself exceptional jumping abilities, silent moving, and protection from falling damage for the duration. Duration: 10 sec Cooldown: 30 sec	Activate to grant yourself exceptional jumping abilities, silent moving, and protection from falling damage for the duration. Duration: 13 sec Cooldown: 25 sec	Activate to grant yourself exceptional jumping abilities, silent moving, and protection from falling damage for the duration. Duration: 16 sec Cooldown: 20 sec
Apocalypse:Super jump		The longer it's charged the more it costs and the higher and further the player will jump. A player can redeploy their Gryphon if they jump high enough.
Apocalypse:Warp Space		-	For the duration of this spell, any successful hit will swap your location with that of your target. Duration: 5 sec Cooldown: 30 sec	For the duration of this spell, any successful hit will swap your location with that of your target. Duration: 5 sec Cooldown: 20 sec
Blink		Blinks forward in the direction you are traveling.	Increased blink distance. Reduces threat on targets nearby upon activation.	Increased blink distance. Deals area damage upon impact.
Jump		Dash with cooldown.	Cooldown is replaced by charges with individual cooldown.	Drops a bear trap at the location the ranger dashed from.
Rush		Rush toward a target; and upon reaching the target, deal an amount damage with a chance to knock the target down.	-	-
Sprint		Increases movement speed. Using an ability ends sprint.	Increased resistance to disable abilities.	Clears crowd control when sprint starts and removes silence.

Player movement

Walking and running shown in pre-alpha gameplay.

There will likely be a toggleable walk/run (autorun) capability in the game.

• There is not going to be any "go to waypoint" (auto-pathing) mechanics.

Back-peddling (walking backwards) and strafing are slower than normal movement speed.

Collision

There are player and spell collision mechanics in Ashes of Creation.

• Inertia and momentum physics will help prevent blocking doorways/access points. This is based on a character's direction and movement speed, and can be used to push people out of the way.

Dodging

Dodging in Alpha-1 early combat.

Another thing that's important about these action combats is the ability to dodge and moving out of the way of certain skill shots. – Steven Sharif

Dodge rolling type skills is housed in the action skill sets of agile classes such as Rogues or Fighters.

• Hybrid combat will likely have true evasion skills relating to action-oriented combat and also have I-frames (invincibility frames) that apply to tab targeting.

Q: Will there be evade frames/ I-frames on dodge?

A: I would say it's a safe bet with regards to how we're approaching the hybrid combat that not only are gonna have true evasion skills that apply to more action-oriented skills that are coming your way, but you'll also have you know I-frame type skills that would apply perhaps to a tab targetable skills coming your way. So I think you're gonna have a healthy balance of both with it when it comes to skills that you can spec into. – Steven Sharif

Active blocking

The Paladin's Might shield in Ashes of Creation Apocalypse had its own hit box with hit points (HP). It can actively block projectiles.

• The developers have not yet decided on whether active blocking will be part of the MMO. They are currently leaning toward using more traditional buff-oriented universal damage mitigation but are also considering interaction between action-based blocking and a passive block stat from the waterfall stat system.

In APOC when we had the active sheild stance- that was an active shield block action-based system; and when we collected design data on essentially the efficacy and essentially the accuracy of players who used that wasn't very high; and there is a concern at least on the front of implementing a action restricted type active shield block as opposed to what would traditionally be along the lines of activating a buff that grants a shield block rate adjustment and is universal on incoming damage- and interfaces with the stats- is really something that we're leaning towards in incorporating for the hybrid combat system. – Steven Sharif

This is something we're still actively iterating on and actively going to be testing in our hybrid system but you know as we're as we're doing that we are taking into consideration. Obviously we want action based components to also interact in some way shape or form with the waterfall stat system as well; and you know that seems like it might be an oxymoron from an action to tab sense, but it doesn't have to be. There can be components of action- so say for instance you could have a dual component where you activate that shield stance and if you accurately intercept an incoming projectile or a skill that's been initiated from the forward arc, you get 80% damage mitigation or 80% application of the physical defense of the shield; and if it comes from an area outside of that forward arc then you get a lesser bonus; and that essentially what would happen is let's say you take into account the stat of the shield's physical defense value, you apply it as a mitigating factor to the incoming damage, but in addition you augment that system with the waterfall stat that is responsible for shield damage mitigation or shield rate; and maybe you know the default skill says 80% damage mitigation from forward arc but that gets augmented up to 87% because of your stat essentially; and if it's not in your forward arc then it gets you know 50% efficacy- maybe it's 40 something percent. So just to give you kind of insight into what goes into kind of determining these skills and how they interact on an action-based front. – Steven Sharif

Interrupts

Abilities with a cast bar can be interrupted during the cast.

• There are abilities to counter interrupts.
• Some interrupts are better than others.

This section contains information from early testing phases. It will be updated as soon as new information is made available.

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Apocalypse:Arcanic Power		Channel raw arcane energies to instantly knock nearby foes back, deal damage, and give yourself some breathing room. Duration: 1 sec Cooldown: 10 sec	Channel raw arcane energies to instantly knock nearby foes back, deal damage, and give yourself some breathing room. Duration: 1 sec Cooldown: 9 sec	Channel raw arcane energies to instantly knock nearby foes back, deal damage, and give yourself some breathing room. Duration: 1 sec Cooldown: 8 sec
Bulwark		Strikes your target and increases your block chance. Generates additional threat.	Increased damage. Increased duration. Increased block chance.	Increased damage. Increased duration. Increased block chance.
Meteor Storm		Summons forth a Meteor Storm, dropping 3 meteors in the target location. Each meteor deals large area damage upon impact.	Increase damage and number of impacts. Stun enemies as they are hit.	Increase damage and number of impacts. Stun enemies as they are hit.
Onslaught		Charge your target. Provides a small damage-absorbing shield. Generates additional threat.	Increased damage. Increased shielding. Knocks down target.	Increased damage. Increased shielding. Knocks up targets along the chargepath.
Rush		Rush toward a target; and upon reaching the target, deal an amount damage with a chance to knock the target down.	-	-

Aggro abilities

Aggro (Threat/Hate) will matter in the game.

• Aggro is based on a hate table.

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Bulwark		Strikes your target and increases your block chance. Generates additional threat.	Increased damage. Increased duration. Increased block chance.	Increased damage. Increased duration. Increased block chance.
Lacerate		Slashes your target, dealing instant damage and bleeds the target over time. Generates additional threat.	Increased damage. If the target is bleeding from previous Lacerate, explode remaining bleed damage as instant damage.	Increased damage.
Myrmidon		Strikes your target and increases your damage mitigation. Generates additional threat.	Increased damage. Increased duration. Increased mitigation.	Increased damage. Increased duration. Increased mitigation.
Onslaught		Charge your target. Provides a small damage-absorbing shield. Generates additional threat.	Increased damage. Increased shielding. Knocks down target.	Increased damage. Increased shielding. Knocks up targets along the chargepath.
Resounding Smash		Smashes the ground in front of you, dealing damage to all targets. A second hit resounds on the primary target. Generates additional threat.	Increased damage.	Increased damage.
Shockwave		Stomps the ground in front of you, knocking down and dealing damage to all targets. Generates additional threat.	Increased damage. Now deals damage over time in the affected area.	Increased damage. Increased effect radius.
Weapon Toss		Throws your weapon at your target, dealing damage. Generates additional threat.	Increased damage. Bounces up to 2 additional targets.	Increased damage. Bounces up to 4 additional targets. When the weapon reaches its final target, explodes into extra area damage.

Animation cancelling

Animation cancelling will not be a combat mechanic.

Combat stances

The use of weapon stances in game is likely.

This section contains information from early testing phases. It will be updated as soon as new information is made available.

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Apocalypse:Stamina Drain		For the duration of this stance, your attacks will drain your opponent's stamina and stop their stamina regen for 5 seconds. Duration: 10 Sec. Cooldown: 10 Sec.	For the duration of this stance, your attacks will drain your opponent's stamina and stop their stamina regen for 5 seconds. Duration: 10 Sec. Cooldown: 10 Sec.	For the duration of this stance, your attacks will drain your opponent's stamina and stop their stamina regen for 5 seconds. Duration: 10 Sec. Cooldown: 10 Sec.
Apocalypse:Stillblade ability		For the duration of this stance, your attacks will slow your opponent's movements. Duration: 10 Sec. Cooldown: 10 Sec.	For the duration of this stance, your attacks will slow your opponent's movements. Duration: 10 Sec. Cooldown: 10 Sec.	-

RNG

RNG elements pertain to combat relating to stats such as Critical hit, Evasion, Blocking chance.

• RNG plays a role in both PvP or PvE.
• Action combat is far less dependent on RNG.

RNG is always going to play a role in Ashes of Creation whether that be in PvP or PvE, but one way to mitigate that is through the action system. The action system is going to be far less sort of dependent on those you know dice rolls and there'll be far more in your own hands. They won't ever completely eliminate that but it's a way for us to sort of reward skilled play versus sort of tactical strategies type play. – Jeffrey Bard

Primary skills

Alpha-1 Tank primary skills early user interface design.

If from the eight archetypes whatever you choose as your secondary, you're going to receive a choice of augments that relate to some core ideal of that class. You know like a tank is about controlling the battlefield, is about surviving. The mage is about dealing damage and elements and ability in AoEs. The rogue is going to be about stealth and critical damage. So those augments are going to to play towards those identities. – Steven Sharif

The idea behind the system is that you're kind of skirting the line through these augmentations of your role, right. We have the traditional holy trinity that's present in class designs for MMOs and it's often that those either are not deviated at all or completely deviated from entirely. The augment is to kind of offer a balance between that where you still maintain the semblance of that trinity system while offering the opportunity to customize your play experience towards one of the other angles in the triangle. – Steven Sharif

Primary skills (class abilities) are based on a player's archetype. Players can personalize their primary skills with augmentation from a secondary archetype.

The design behind augments is to not just change the flavor so that it reflects the secondary archetype, but it also fundamentally changes the core components of a skill. – Steven Sharif

• Each secondary archetype offers four different schools of augmentation. Each augment school affects a primary archetype's skills in different ways.
  • For example: A Mage offers Teleportation and elemental schools of augments. These augments will affect a Fighter's primary skills differently than a Cleric's.
  • Each augmentation has a level requirement and number of skill points required to activate it.

  There's going to be a certain threshold at which you can no longer augment your active abilities based on the decisions you've augmented previous abilities, so you'll have to pick and choose which ones you want to apply the augments towards; and certain augments will have more expense required on the skill point side. – Steven Sharif

• Choosing the same primary and secondary archetype increases focus on that archetype.

• Augments to primary skills will fundamentally change the way the ability works: Adapting what the ability once did to incorporate the identity of the secondary archetype.
  • The progression system for augments is very similar to the class progression system.

• Changing the augmentations on your skills will require you to go to a NPC in a Village node or higher.
• Some spell colors and general FX change based on augments.
  • Active skills could look totally different after an augment gets applied.

Skill points

Alpha-1 early preview skills UI.

This is where players allocate skill points into either their active skills, their passive abilities- which can augment their usage of weapons and armors and health regeneration and passive stats and stuff like that-- but on the weapons side of things, that's where you will spec into certain types of procs based off of weapon groupings. So we've talked a little bit about this in the past: If you have a dagger, daggers might have a chance to proc a bleed on your weapon attack and that would synergize with an active skills' ability like let's say Backstab that does additional damage if the target is under a bleed effect. Now we have said in the past that players will be able to allocate skill points into their active skills that are more geared towards either action combat or tab targeting. – Steven Sharif

Players receive skill points as they level. These can be used to level up skills (increase their rank) within their active, passive or combat/weapon skill trees.

• It will not be possible to max all skills in a skill tree.
• In terms of skill progression, players can choose to go "wide" and get a number of different abilities, or go "deep" into a few specific abilities.
• Players are able to reset and reallocate their skill points.

Making active skills capable of receiving additional skill point allocations and unlocking additional features so that from a player agency standpoint it's going to be up to you whether or not you want to be more diverse but less depth- wider and not taller, in some of these skill choices. Or if you want to be very very tall, that's going to be something that is up to the player in that regard. – Steven Sharif

Active skills

Alpha-1 Tank Action bar early user interface design.

Players can build their characters with the active skills they want on their action bar.

• The number of skills on the action bar will be contained (fewer than 30).
• There will be an option to include multiple hotbars (action bars).
• For example: One Fighter will be different from another based on what active skills they have chosen.
• Through skill choice, players can customize their combat experience to focus on tab targeted skills, action targeted skills, or a mix of both.
• Players are not given skills as they level up, they must choose what skills they take.
• There is no spellbook requiring memorization.

There will be multiple hot-bars that you obviously have available, because you're going to have consumables, you're going to have active skills and whatnot. But the number of active skills are not going to overwhelm necessarily the character and be irrelevant especially at certain stages. – Steven Sharif

Ultimate skill

The ultimate skill is a very powerful skill.

• Can be used when enough focus has been accumulated from using the Weapon use combo system.

This section contains information from early testing phases. It will be updated as soon as new information is made available.

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Hail of arrows		If your focus is at 80%, use this skill to summon a template and launch multiple arrows within the template.	Adds movement slow.	Adds damage over time to targets in the area.
Ultimate Defense		Provides increasing mitigation based on missing health, up to full invulnerability. Reduces movement speed while active.	Increased duration.	Increased duration. Now applies a large mitigation increase to nearby group members.

Elemental skills

The idea behind magic is you're manipulating the elements. They don't just have to be fire, ice, water and air. They can be darkness, they can be light, they can be planar; a lot of different types of "elemental influences". – Steven Sharif

This section contains information from early testing phases. It will be updated as soon as new information is made available.

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Apocalypse:Chain Lightning		Activate to charge your next attack with lightning - lightning will arc between foes, dealing damage to each one. Duration: 5 Sec. Cooldown: 5 Sec.	Activate to charge your next attack with lightning - lightning will arc between foes, dealing damage to each one. Duration: 5 Sec. Cooldown: 5 Sec.	Activate to charge your next attack with lightning - lightning will arc between foes, dealing damage to each one. Duration: 5 Sec. Cooldown: 5 Sec.
Apocalypse:Fire Potion		Generates a fire explosion.	-	-
Apocalypse:Frost Potion		Swap your explosive potion for a potion of frost. It will burst on the first bounce, leaving an area of bitter cold that slows your enemies. Duration: 10 Sec. Cooldown: 30 Sec.	-	-
Fireball		Throws a fireball at your target. Deals instant damage.	Becomes a burn (damage over time).	Area of effect around the target.
Flame line		Shoot an arrow that leaves behind a trail of flames.	Arrow explodes upon reaching the end of its distance.	Enemies take burning damage for entering the flames.
Lava Storm		Creates a field of lava at the selected location. Deals additional damage in the center of the ability. Deals area damage around the caster upon cast.	Increased damage. Increased duration.	Increased damage. Increased duration.
Lightning Bolt		Shoots forward a beam of lightning that damages enemies in a line in front of you.	Adds damage over time to targets hit.	Chains to nearby enemies that are not hit. Anyone who is outside the line has a chance to get a bolt jump to them.
Meteor Storm		Summons forth a Meteor Storm, dropping 3 meteors in the target location. Each meteor deals large area damage upon impact.	Increase damage and number of impacts. Stun enemies as they are hit.	Increase damage and number of impacts. Stun enemies as they are hit.

Balancing

The sixty four (64) classes are partitioned into eight primary archetypes. Balancing of active skills only relates to these eight primary archetypes.

• There are four primary groups of augments assigned to each base archetype. Balancing of augments relates to the four augment groups for each of the eight archetypes.

Even though augments do radically change the way your active skills provide you abilities, there's still a primary focus on the base archetype itself and not the 64 whole classes. – Steven Sharif

We're not really talking about 64 true classes, we're talking about eight classes with 64 variants... There isn't as much variance between the 64 classes as you might expect. It's not like there are you know 64 different versions of... radically different classes. – Jeffrey Bard

Balancing in Ashes of Creation is group focused not based on 1v1 combat.

There will be match ups in 1v1s where one class will be superior to another; and that application should be a rock-paper-scissors dynamic. We want there to be counter-play between the different classes... Instead it's going to be a group focused balance, where as long as you have the diversity of classes present, that's going to be an equal level playing field. It's going to be very dependent on skill and strategy. – Steven Sharif

Certain secondary archetypes are capable of "bridging the gap" between their counterpart.

Certain archetypes are capable of moving the gap between their counterpart per-se. If I am a Tank archetype and a Mage is my counter, I can take a Mage secondary and kind of bridge the divide slightly; and then move my identity that direction ever so slightly. – Steven Sharif

Roles

Ashes of Creation has the traditional trinity of Tank, DPS and Support/healer roles.

• Although traditional roles are present, players should not feel branded by their primary archetype.
• Skill augments available through the class system allow characters to be personalized outside of their primary role.
• Players can also double down on their archetype choice to strengthen their primary role.

We have our eight base archetypes; and the trinity is a pretty strong influence with regards to the eight base classes. However the area in which we actually begin to play with that line between the trinity is in the secondary classes that you can pick. That's where we begin to blend those spaces and allow people a little bit of influence over their role and whether or not they fit perfectly within a particular category within the trinity. – Steven Sharif

Power creep

Power creep is a balance issue... When it comes to gear progression specifically, the idea is to create an open market that is not heavily dependent on soulbound items; and having many item sinks and gold sinks within that economy that allows for the potential degradation and loss of assets within that closed economy; and not introduce items from the market that companies put in from a pay-to-win perspective or from a pay-to-convenience perspective that undermines the economy that players have built. That is a huge mistake that companies have made in the past and that lends to the imbalancing of what designers maybe have actually balanced well. – Steven Sharif

Weapon use combo system

A weapon use combo system (also referred to as Combo system, Combat skills, and Combat tree) is utilized instead of a traditional auto-attack ability in Ashes of Creation. No traditional auto-attack system is present in Alpha-1.

• Players can spec into weapon abilities on their combat skill tree, based on their preferred weapon classes (weapon types/weapon groups) and the grade of the weapon.
• The more skill points that are allocated to the combat skill tree, the greater a player's weapon familiarity. This in turn unlocks various proc effects on weapon use that can offer synergy with other active skills. This synergy also applies to active skills from other characters.

  Let's say a dagger has some slashing effects that bleed the target or that cripple the target... Every time you attack you have a chance to proc that effect. That effect then can synergize with what your active skills tree has available to it. So let's say your backstab deals 30 additional damage to a bleeding target. If you attack with your main weapon first and the target gets the bleed proc off and you do your backstab skill then you're synergizing your effects. – Steven Sharif

  Let's say backstab that you can apply to deals damage to the target and it'll have a conditional modifier on that damage if you're behind the target, and it'll have a conditional modifier deal additional 50 damage if the target is under a bleed effect. So you want to synergize essentially your weapon proc conditions with your active skills so that you're timing your certain active skills appropriately with the status conditions that the target has taken. – Steven Sharif

  • These procs may reduce or reset cooldowns on other skills on the player's hotbar.
• Using a skill/ability will in general reset the combo.
  • The developers are considering specific abilities might be able to be used without resetting the combo system.
• The combo system will not have the quicktime event that was seen at PAX West 2017.

It acts similar in the sense of you know the core loop of what an auto attack is so to speak; where you know typically your other skills have a cooldown period, they have a rotation or whatever: Our combo system is a repeatable you know skill effect that you can continually attack with but it's a little bit more involved than what a traditional auto attack is; and it has components from a from an advancement standpoint when it comes to the types of procs that your weapon can have during that combo system... It's not going to have the quick time event that you know you guys saw early on in PAX and gave great feedback on, but it is going to have development with regards to the power of the weapon the type of weapon you're using, the additional proc effects that you can skill into: Those types of things are going to make it a little bit more complex of a system capture. – Steven Sharif

Classes of weapons

Weapon classes (also referred to as weapon types and weapon groups) in Ashes of Creation.

• Blunt weapons
• Slashing weapons
• Piercing weapons

Weapon swapping

Weapon swapping in Ashes of Creation Apocalypse.

Weapon swapping in the Ashes of Creation MMORPG will be subject to a cooldown period following any damage taken or done by the player.

• The cooldown will be in the range of a few seconds.

For the MMORPG we want there to be some time between damage received or damage done before you can swap your weapon. It's not going to be substantial. It will maybe be a few seconds. – Steven Sharif

Players cannot switch armor while in combat.

Raid mechanics

Raids contain intricate combat mechanics.

• Multiple phase boss fights.
• Adds.
• Random oriented skill usage.
• Telegraphed animations, but no obvious telegraphed templates on the ground.
• Fights will require location, mobility and strategy.

Combat itself will be pretty intricate mechanics-wise. We're going to have different phases of the bosses, there's going to be a lot of adds stuff, there's going to be random oriented skill usage. We're not going to have telegraphed templates on the ground, but we will have telegraphed animations, so it's going to be location, mobility, strategic. It will be something that can not be repeatable in the exact same way from raid to raid, but has a variance between the combat, so raiders are going to have to be fluid in thinking on their feet. – Steven Sharif

Telegraphs

In specific circumstances there will be telegraphs (tells) to communicate something that's happening.

• Animation tells.
• Templates.

Utility skill

Pre-alpha rogue climbing a Metropolis wall.

We have what are called utility skills and a lot of MMORPGS really only focus on active combat skills, but some of the favorite things that I've had as a gamer is tabletop RPGs like Pathfinder or Dungeons and Dragons, and there are skills in those games that are relevant to either your environment or the quest line; and they're a little bit you know sometimes "story mode". – Steven Sharif

A utility skill is a non-combat skill that interacts with the environment. Utility skills lend themselves toward how classes navigate and deal with hazards in the world.

• Different classes excel at different skills.
• All classes will have maneuverability/traversal utility abilities.
  • There will be a grappling hook utility skill or item.
• Classes will have utility abilities, such as detecting traps and other hazards. For example: The Mage's detection spell casts light and reveals magical explosive hazards.
• Certain classes are able to climb/parkour in certain areas.
  • Climbing/parkour ability is not free-form and will likely be restricted to certain quests, locations or objects.
• Certain classes (such as Rogues) will have stealth abilities.
  • Rogues may also have a spyglass utility skill.

We don't just have the approach of your class being reflected in your combat abilities but also there are utility abilities that certain classes have that other classes don't have. – Steven Sharif

This section contains information from early testing phases. It will be updated as soon as new information is made available.

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Apocalypse:Alacrity		For the duration of this stance, your successful attacks will increase your run speed. Duration: 10 Sec. Cooldown: 10 Sec.	For the duration of this stance, your successful attacks will increase your run speed. Duration: 12 Sec. Cooldown: 10 Sec.	For the duration of this stance, your successful attacks will increase your run speed. Duration: 12 Sec. Cooldown: 8 Sec.
Apocalypse:Bolt of Revealing		-	-	After activating this spell, the next bolt you fire will reveal all characters hidden by terrain, structures, or invisibility in its area of effect. Duration: 10 sec Cooldown: 15 sec
Apocalypse:Crimson Blast		This spell will invoke a destructive cone of force and flame at enemies in front of you. Duration: 1 Sec. Cooldown: 10 Sec.	This spell will invoke a destructive cone of force and flame at enemies in front of you. Duration: 1 Sec. Cooldown: 9 Sec.	This spell will invoke a destructive cone of force and flame at enemies in front of you. Duration: 1 Sec. Cooldown: 9 Sec.
Apocalypse:Divine Light		For the duration of this spell, your attacks will mark your foes with a divine light that can be seen for miles. Duration: 10 sec Cooldown: 30 sec	For the duration of this spell, your attacks will mark your foes with a divine light that can be seen for miles. Duration: 13 sec Cooldown: 25 sec	For the duration of this spell, your attacks will mark your foes with a divine light that can be seen for miles. Duration: 16 sec Cooldown: 20 sec
Family summon		Long duration cast (30 seconds to a minute) with an approximate 30 minute cooldown that slowly summons each of your family members to your location (up to eight members). Players cannot be summoned in the following cases: While in combat, if they are corrupted, or if they are engaged in an event, such as node wars, guild wars, sieges, arenas or participation in the caravan system. If they have mats, gatherables or certs in their inventory. This will be tested in Alpha-2.	-	-
Harvest		The harvest skill allows players to gather resources. The skill displays a green circle. Placing the green circle over the resource will start the keystroke skill. If the player hits the harvest skill whilst in the red area they can crit on their harvest.	-	-
Mount Potion
Pathfinding		Reveals corrupted player locations on the bounty hunter's map. Activating this ability will flag the bounty hunter for combat only to corrupted players for a period of one hour from the time of activation. The pathfinding ability can be toggled on or off.	The accuracy of the pathfinding skill is determined by a player's progression in the bounty hunter system.	The accuracy of the pathfinding skill is determined by a player's progression in the bounty hunter system.
Stealth		This does not render a player completely invisible. Instead, there will be indicators that can help players "feel out" where stealthed individuals may be.	-	-
Track		Use this skill to show nearby tracks, leading to unknown adventures.	-	-

Player death

Player death in an open world dungeon in Alpha-1.

We don't have deleveling, instead what we have is experience debt. Now the more experience debt you accrue, the greater the detriment to your character; not to the point where you can not get out of the debt. There will always be a way forward to remove your debt. – Steven Sharif

• A non-combatant (green player) who dies suffers normal penalties, which include:
  • Experience debt (negative experience).
    • Skill and stat dampening.
    • Lower health and mana.
    • Lower gear proficiency.
    • Reduction in drop rates from monsters.
  • Durability loss.

  When players die and they take durability loss, our durability loss isn't like other games where it's a gold sink so to speak. It's a combination of both a gold sync and a material sync. So in a sense, even if you only have completed items, when you take that durability loss you are losing out on materials. It's just a debt to the materials that you are losing instead of the active loss of that material in your inventory. So now you are accruing a material debt if you want to repair and increase again the performance of those particular items that take that durability loss. – Steven Sharif

  • Dropping a percentage of carried gatherables and processed goods.
    • This also includes a percentage of the certificates a player is carrying.
    • If a player dies there will be a period of time before their mule despawns. Other players must kill that player's mule to be able to loot it.
    • If a player's mule dies its corpse will contain the same percentage of lootable items as the player.

• A combatant (purple player) who dies suffers these same penalties, but at half the rate of a non-combatant.
• A corrupt (red player) suffers penalties at four times the rate of a non-combatant, and has a chance to drop any carried/equipped items based on their current corruption score. This includes:
  • Dropping weapons and gear.
  • These dropped items may be looted by other players.
  • Corrupt players respawn at random locations in the vicinity of their death, not at regular spawn points.
  • Dampening (due to corruption) only affects PvP combat.

Death penalties do not apply to objective-based events (such as caravans, guild wars, and node sieges).

There will not be death penalties applied to event-based deaths. The penalties are in the outcome of the event. So your number of deaths is likely going to impact your ability to win that particular event and that's going to be the penalty. This is it to encourage players to opt in to the events right because the more participation we have the more fun it can be; and we understand that the community at large- there's already a risk versus reward component to these events. We don't need to stack on additional risk versus reward to inhibit kind of- to increase the barrier to entry for players who may not be as interested. – Steven Sharif

Death penalties do not differ between PvP and PvE, but this is subject to change.

Death by drowning is possible.

Mounted combat

Certain mounts will have combat abilities.

• Players can't use their class skills while mounted.
• Mounts can be targeted separately from the player while mounted.
• Mounts can be killed by players, but can be resurrected after a certain cooldown period.
  • Potions can be used to reduce the cooldown.

Mount abilities and stats

Mounts will have different core attributes and stats.

• Mounts will provide resistances, defensive abilities, skills, charge abilities, and attacks.
• Mounts will have varied speeds.
• A player can dismount and have their mount follow them.

Dragon abilities

Dragons are epic flying mounts with strong battle abilities, such as AoE breath attacks, swooping flyby attacks, and others.

• Dragons have PvP capabilities relating to Castle sieges and Node sieges.

The dragon will have a lot of capability in PvP. It's primarily its purpose, because as it relates to Castles and the sieges they're in, or Nodes and the sieges they're in. We want dragons to have large scale ramifications against player raids. – Steven Sharif

Combat pets

Combat pets (also referred to as Item pets or Universal combat pets) may be tamed from certain creatures in the world.

• Combat pets will not increase a player's power and will require a sacrifice from the player.
• Combat pets have a horizontal progression, not a vertical one.
• Combat pets are categorized by class and will adhere to a simple trinity structure (Tank/DPS/Support).
• Combat pets will also be categorized into different rarities.

It will participate in combat. It will allow you different options sometimes, but it won't necessarily increase your power and... you'll be sacrificing something for it. – Jeffrey Bard

Combat pets are not the same as Summoner summons.

Naval combat

Tea transport PAX East 2018 exclusive cosmetic ship skin.

Sailing will be pretty in-depth and it's going to be based on the size of the ship that you're using. So there will be components for seamanship that other players you will need to have on board if you want to operate a vessel to the best of it's abilities: Let's say in combat or traversing just the world. – Steven Sharif

Naval combat involves different types of Ships with varying capabilities, armaments and roles to play out on the high seas. There will be a balance and counterbalance between ships from PvP and PvE perspectives.

• Naval PvP is between ships.
• Naval PvE includes open sea raids and sea-based bosses.

Battles at sea will be epic. They will have some supreme rewards and/or losses if the battle succeeds or fails. – Steven Sharif

Addons/ DPS meters

My decision is not to allow DPS meters nor add-ons. I feel we have adequate measures in place to prevent a majority of potential third party trackers. I know this subject has passionate voices on both sides and I respect the various opinions and positions many of you have expressed. – Steven Sharif

Addons and DPS meters will not be allowed.

• The developers don't want addons/mods to be necessary to experience the game.
• The design of the game API is still under consideration.
• There will be integrations available for streaming services such as Twitch and a few other services, but it's not something that will be exposed through an API just yet.
• The developers believe that parsers (DPS meters) can have negative effects.

The idea is to make a one-stop-shop from the company when it comes to in-game systems... We don't really want to have addons in my opinion. – Steven Sharif

There will be leader boards.

Combat logs

There are combat logs in Ashes of Creation.

We will be providing combat data for individual players in their chat window, that players can filter and analyze for themselves. The goal is to mitigate and make the practice less prevalent through the ease that DPS meters provide. Also to place actionable enforcement for players who attempt to circumvent the decision by use of 3rd party programs, for which we will be monitoring. – Steven Sharif

Factions

There are no predefined factions in Ashes of Creation.

• There are pseudo-factions (temporary factions) in Ashes of Creation.
  • Node wars flag the citizens of the warring nodes and their allies as enemies for the duration of the node war.
  • Guild wars flag the members of the warring guilds and their allies as enemies for the duration of the guild war.
  • Social organizations offer quest lines to assault other organizations.

We present the player with these soft friction events and then that determines who your friends and your foes are. – Steven Sharif

Because we are non-faction based, you want to grant the user the ability to either do things that are "evil" or "good", so there has to be a plethora of choice on the evil side for them to participate in. – Steven Sharif

Ashes of Creation Apocalypse

Ashes of Creation Apocalypse combat targeting

Ashes of Creation Apocalypse combat targeting reticle.

Action combat in Ashes of Creation Apocalypse utilizes a targeting reticle.

• A hot key can be used to toggle reticle mode on and off.
• Left mouse click is used for basic weapon attacks.
• Right mouse click is used as a "focus" button. It can also be used to activate root motion attacks for melee.
• Combat targeting uses hitbox registration in three separate regions: Upper body, lower body and head.
• Certain weapons and skills have ADS (Aim Down Sights) functionality.

There will be aim down sights. You may have seen it that you can aim down sights on weapons; and there will be scopes on like crossbows and stuff that - arcane scopes - that you can use. – Steven Sharif

Some spells do have ADS. There's a long-range meteor blast that can be used from one of the spell books; and that has an arcane zoom in. It lets you zoom into a target. – Steven Sharif

Alpha-1 will test hybrid action/tab combat.

Ashes of Creation Apocalypse class kits

Classes in Ashes of Creation Apocalypse castle sieges and Ashes of Creation Apocalypse horde mode. Emblem designs by Ryan Richmond.

Six classes will be present in Ashes of Creation Apocalypse castle sieges and Ashes of Creation Apocalypse horde mode.

• Warrior classes
  • Guardian
  • Weapon Master

• DPS classes
  • Archwizard
  • Hawkeye

• Support classes
  • High Priest
  • Engineer

These classes relate to the trinity of classes: Tank, DPS and Support.

• Skills/abilities are not tied specifically to weapons in castle siege mode.
  • It was previously stated that weapon skills are applied to augment a class' base skills.
• Base class skills may be able to be selected from a host of available skills for that class based on a player's progression within that season.

We had a little bit of an idea that we're going to explore with regards to each of the classes having a range of skills and abilities that players can customize that skill kit based on their progression within a season, let's say; and that progression can be gained from any of the modes and it would grant you the ability to kind of customize that skill kit for the before the siege mode or the horde mode. But that's something that might come at a later date. – Steven Sharif

Ashes of Creation Apocalypse classes only apply to Ashes of Creation Apocalypse castle sieges and Ashes of Creation Apocalypse horde mode.

Ashes of Creation Apocalypse healing

Healing in Ashes of Creation Apocalypse will be reticle based (action targeted).

• Healing skills are proximity based: Centered on self or centered on projectile impact.
• There will be healing potion bursts (healing grenades) that will grant life to allies.
• Healing is part of Class kits that come into play during the testing of Ashes of Creation Apocalypse castle sieges.

We have a few design theories on action combat and healing to began with phase one. Part of that will be the implementation of a class system into the castle siege and horde mode of phase one. Those will be kits that play out as skills available from an action perspective. You'll be able to target in proximity, basically so positioning is going to matter. Importantly, for healers being close to the individual party members you wish to heal. Additionally, you'll have reticle based healing methods. This would be a template that could be launched in that direction as a pulse of heels or augments. So there's a lot of different systems are playing with that you'll see more of when we get to those when we get to the castle siege system and the Ashes of Creation Apocalypse horde mode. – Steven Sharif

Videos

• 2018-04-04 Video - PAX East Pre-Alpha Gameplay
• 2018-08-17 Video - Ashes of Creation Apocalypse - First Look at Action Combat
• 2018-09-01 Video - Ashes of Creation Apocalypse Alpha Gameplay
• 2019-03-08 Video - Ashes of Creation Apocalypse Castle Siege Gameplay

Community guides

• Ashes101 - Combat

See also

• Archetypes
• Classes
• User interface
• Looting