Combat

PvP combat gameplay in Alpha-1 castle sieges.

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 rolled out during and post Alpha-1 testing.

• Alpha-1 testing is initially focused on core functionality rather than combat balance.

Combat revamp

Alpha-1 split-body melee weapon combat sneak peek.

I can move while swinging on this guy. I can back up then continue to attack him. Just have complete control over my character while attacking. – Steven Sharif

A revamped combat system will be rolled out during and post Alpha-1 testing based on player feedback.

• The goal is to give more agency to the player and achieve a more fluid flow of combat with greater mobility when using abilities.
• The current hybrid tab and action combat system will remain after the revamp.
• This revamp will not represent the final form of combat, but will set the general direction that combat will be taking.
• The revamp will be iterative and will be rolled out to testers in different phases.

The revamped combat system will feature split-body animations, where the character's upper body can be locked by weapon attack animations while the lower body is free to continue moving.

You'll be able to move forward while swinging your weapon; and this will allow you complete control over your weapon attacks for melee. – Steven Sharif

Alpha-1 testing is initially focused on core functionality rather than combat balance.

Q: Based on recent feedback, what direction are you leaning towards in regards to split-body versus root-motion?

A: We are leaning towards split body. – Steven Sharif

Combat targeting

Alpha-1 early hybrid combat demo.

You'll notice as I go into action mode, I have my reticle and when my reticle hovers over an enemy target, it'll turn red, essentially showing like "hey we know you have a valid target hit" that you can see; and when you press 'Q' you can lock on to that target. You can also hold tab to alternate between targets. So like that's an important aspect of the combat that we're trying to incorporate, which is mixing and meshing between tab and action, so you still have that action component but also are available to use some of your tab targeted skills. – Steven Sharif

Hybrid combat refers to the choice between tab targeted and action targeted combat in the Ashes of Creation MMORPG.

Q: Are you still considering whether the combined action/tab targeting combat will be replaced by either tab only or action only?

A: No, I think that we will find a healthy medium between the two. I think that really what it comes down to is the definition of action; and I think that there is a varying degree of opinions on what action targeting means so to speak. But as I've clearly defined in the past, and as you can research in on the Wiki, our opinion on- at least my opinion on- action combat is I think well represented in the way we want to hybridize that combat in Ashes of Creation; and I think that there is going to be a good balance between those two and it should be a seamless transition between the two as well. And you know we're going to be fleshing that out further as we move forward. – Steven Sharif

• A toggle button (default Z, but can be re-bound to another key) 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 player does not have to be in reticle mode to use an action combat ability.

  If you use an action combat ability that's going to be directional focused, you do not have to be in reticle mode to use that. It will fire where that reticle would be. So if you play by feel and you're in tab target camera mode, you can still utilize your action-oriented skills and abilities. – Steven Sharif

  • The reticle will highlight/change color (to red) to indicate if the current target is able to be hit with the currently prepared skill.
  • Action combat abilities will not have a lock-on feature but pressing Q while in action mode will lock on to the current target to enable the use of tab-oriented skills in action mode.

  Action combat abilities will not have a lock-on feature so to speak. Some of those are going to be skill shot only. However because you can have a mix and match of tab abilities that require a target, you will be able to target lock in action mode as well. Right now that's delegated to the Q key as default, but you can obviously set that up you could put it on you know your left mouse button, or you could put it wherever you want; and when your reticle hovers over a target, it rapidly swaps your target ability and when you press your target lock it will then lock that target; and if you have tab-oriented skills, you can use your tab oriented skills and they will be used against that target. – Steven Sharif

  • Holding Tab while in action mode will alternate between targets.
  • Pressing right-click while in action mode will switch to tab mode for the currently highlighted target.
  • The action camera is tied to the to player's reticle. There will likely be a hotkey that when held down will allow free camera movement.
  • In future the user will have the ability to choose from different reticle appearances.

• The tab mode (MMO mode) facilitates tab targeted combat. A tab-targeted ability requires a target in order to utilize that skill.
  • 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.

Hybrid combat is being tested in Alpha-1.

• Targeting modes are able to be achieved through choice of skills/abilities.
  • 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

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

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

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.

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

Directional attacks

There will be directional attacks (back attacks, flanking attacks, frontal attacks) that deal additional damage depending on the positional context of the attack.

• Rogues will generally have more of these.

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

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

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 armor (cloth, leather, plate) that they are predominantly wearing.

You can target a player. You're going to see what type of armor they have based on a buff they have available to them because obviously cosmetics can change appearance. You might have different silhouettes as a result of that. – Steven Sharif

• 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, and optionally last name (surname).
• 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.

Mobility

Revamped Alpha-1 Mage Fireball ability.

The general approach that we're kind of taking based on a lot of feedback and just good combat design in general. You know philosophy is that we want to give more agency in the hands of the player and the antithesis of that is locking the player down for really long amounts of time. The sort of concept behind that is like you could make an animation effects as glorious looking as possible but if it's taking away control of the player, none of that really matters. Especially the 100th or thousandth time you're using the spell you're tired of that happening you don't feel powerful: You feel the opposite of powerful. So we're trying to like give a lot of control back to the player while they're using these abilities so they can still control their movements, they can react simultaneously while they're taking actions; and we just want to get overall more of a fluid flow, I guess, of combat. And that's kind of the general design philosophy we're using to approach the overhaul. – Tradd Thompson

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

The revamped combat system will feature split-body animations, where the character's upper body can be locked by weapon attack animations while the lower body is free to continue moving.

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
Blink		Blinks forward in the direction you are traveling.	Now deals damage to enemies surrounding your departure location.	Reduced cooldown.
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.

Sprinting will consume a percentage of a character's mana pool. Sprinting will not be permitted while in combat.

I've instructed design to incorporate a mana consumption that's percentage based for sprinting. So it'll be a similar amount of time that each class, regardless of their mana values, will have in order to sprint and it will not be accessible while in a combat. – Steven Sharif

There is a toggleable walk/run (autorun) capability.

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 developers have yet to finalize designs for active blocking in Ashes of Creation.

We're going to be discussing internally amongst the designers and the combat team and then we will likely share with the community once we've nailed down a few approaches and prototype them out. – Steven Sharif

• The developers were previously leaning toward using more traditional buff-oriented universal damage mitigation for the MMO, and were also considering interaction between action-based blocking and a passive block stat.

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

• The Paladin's Might shield in Ashes of Creation Apocalypse had its own hit box and hit points (HP); that could actively block projectiles.

In APOC when we had the active shield 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

Animations

There will be some animations that add flavor to specific races and classes, but generally animations will be reused as much as possible to decrease development time.

We will have things that are known as sort of like racial abilities which will key into the class that you've chosen and those will almost certainly have animations that are kind of like one-offs that are associated with that class. They'll help you get some more like you know Ren'Kai flavor or some more Empyrean flavor but we have to reuse animations as much as possible in order to get to the finish line here so it'd be a super nice thing to do but probably not in the cards. – Jeffrey Bard

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.
  • As of May 28, 2021, diminishing returns on CC effects have not yet been implemented in the Alpha-1 testing.

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

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

• 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.

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

• Some crowd-control abilities can dismount a mounted player. In that case the mount would persist with its own health pool and other stats.
  • In current Alpha-1 testing mounts are not separate from the player.

There's also going to be effects that just stun the mount or stun you on the mount. – Steven Sharif

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

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 a target enemy to your location.	Deals damage and generates a great amount of threat.	Reduces cooldown by 5 seconds.
Jump		Dash with cooldown.	Cooldown is replaced by charges with individual cooldown.	Drops a bear trap at the location the ranger dashed from.
Onslaught		Charge and deal damage to your target.	Reduce the target's attack damage temporarily.	Knock down the target.
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.

Interrupts

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

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

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Bulwark		Bash enemies in front of you twice. The second attack temporarily increases block chance. You must have a shield equipped to block.	Additional increased block chance.	The second attack knocks down enemies.
Onslaught		Charge and deal damage to your target.	Reduce the target's attack damage temporarily.	Knock down the target.
Rush		Rush toward a target; and upon reaching the target, deal an amount damage with a chance to knock the target down.	-	-
Thundershock		Shoots forward a beam of lightning that damages enemies in a line in front of you.	Increased damage.	Now knocks down hit targets.

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
Javelin		Pulls a target enemy to your location.	Deals damage and generates a great amount of threat.	Reduces cooldown by 5 seconds.

Animation cancelling

Animation cancelling will not be a combat mechanic.

Combat stances

The use of weapon stances in game is likely.

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 preview primary skills.

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.

Primary skills in Alpha-2 are expected to be very different to those in Alpha-1.

The ability list in Alpha One is nowhere near what the ability list will be, especially from like a level/progression standpoint. So you can expect it to be incredibly different. – Steven Sharif

Skill points

Alpha-1 preview skills user interface.

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

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

The ultimate skill is a very powerful skill.

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

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		Become immune to damage for 3 seconds.	Duration is increased to 5 seconds.	Grant damage mitigation to all party 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
Fireball		Hurl a ball of fire toward your target, dealing direct damage upon impact.	Increased damage.	Burns the target for additional damage over time.
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 area damage over time.	Increased damage. Increased duration.	Increased damage. Increased duration.
Thundershock		Shoots forward a beam of lightning that damages enemies in a line in front of you.	Increased damage.	Now knocks down hit targets.

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.

• 1v1 matchups will have a rock-paper-scissors dynamic, where one class will be superior to another.

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

Alpha-1 testing is initially focused on core functionality rather than combat balance.

Roles

Ashes of Creation has the traditional trinity of Tank, DPS (damage dealers) and Support (healer or non-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

Meta

The effectiveness of classes, skills and gear is going to depend on the adversary or the encounter. There will be optimal builds for different challenges and difficulty ratings. This design aims to avoid any obvious meta or "cookie-cutter" builds in Ashes of Creation.​

• Different challenges are presented dynamically to players based on node progression and destruction. Situations that are based on a rock-paper-scissors design will inspire a horizontal gear chase. These dynamic challenges will change from month to month, causing a shift in demand in the economy as different builds are required by the new content.

• Increasing difficulty ratings inspire more of a traditional vertical power progression that is common in other MMOs.

Oftentimes you just have a very vertical power scale and that determines chase, but when you have a variety of relevance across certain types of adversaries and that variety changes over time because of player activity- and then that affects the economy and the crafter system and who was producing what for what demand- and everything gets shaken up. That's a very kind of fun environment to exist in. It presents a more dynamic situation rather than a quote-unquote cookie-cutter type selection. – 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, and Weapon use ability) is utilized instead of a traditional auto-attack ability in Ashes of Creation.

• The combo system consists of a sequence of combat animations based on the weapon type, referred to as a combat animation montage.

Let's say for example you're using a two-handed warhammer or something and you have a number of weapon combos that play animation style based on how many combos deep you go into an attack with that warhammer. So the first is going to be like a forward swing. Second is going to be a back swing. The third is going to be swing down and the fourth is going to be some twirl that you do; and that's what we call the combo animation montage. – Steven Sharif

• This system plays heavily into the weapon skill trees, which are planned for Alpha-2 and beyond.

The way that the weapon skill tree works is that at different stages of that combat montage you have available procs that can occur. The first swing might be a small stagger that decreases your opponent's accuracy by 15, that could be a proc that you could that you could spec into that decrease in accuracy- might be a status condition called stagger or bewildered or whatever- and that might exist for three or four seconds. Your second option from a skill tree perspective might be on the swing back. You have some type of tapering slow effect that lasts over three seconds- some type of tapering snare; and then the third step strike down might be some potential one second stun status modifier; and each of these you can spec into additional points to increase the chance that these proc. – Steven Sharif

• Depending on class skill choice these effects will have synergy effects with the combat montage.

Depending on what your class skill choice has been those are going to have synergy effects with the weapon skill tree. So my skill called spin-to-win might do 30 additional damage on a staggered target. So I see when my proc occurs with the stagger effect on my first swing, like for me as a player I might be only interested in landing that first swing, so every now and then I'm gonna swing once and then I'm gonna use a skill and then I'm gonna come back and swing again because that'll play my first swing montage, because it's been interrupted. So I won't move to the second one because I'm really just wanna hit that stagger effect. So that's going to be how my rotation lines up. However I might have some skill that on a stun target it might be an immediate cast and it's like some power you push or power hit; and that does- it knocks back a stun target. So if the target's stunned when this skill plays, it has an added effect of knock down and now they're gonna get knocked down for an additional two seconds. Now I might spec into that and as a result I want to finish through: swing, swing, and then knock down. So I get my chance at stunning that target with that weapon skill. – Steven Sharif

• Weapon progression such as set bonuses may change at what level any proc effects occur and therefore enable different combo rotations.

You may have items or set bonuses that change at what level those proc occurs. So I may have a full set of battle armor that changes all third hit combo procs to second hit requirements and now I have a chance not only on my second hit to land that tapering slow but I also have a chance to land my one second stun proc because I have the full set that changes my weapon progression. So that's the way itemization works with your weapon skill tree, is you can enhance when those weapon skill trees become available in your combat montage and that can be a relevant factor in how your skill rotations come to play; and mixes with your weapon attacks.

• Weapon skill choices and rotations will vary based on whether the player is more focused on PvP or PvE.

Right now some people might just say, "I don't care at all about my weapon attacks. I'm not going to invest a lot of points into that. And if I do, it's going to be primarily PvE focused where I'm more comfortable using just swinging my weapon, and I may not use them as much in PvP. I'm just going to be focused on skill rotations." That's okay, but the reason for those skill montages- back to your question- is they have a very relevant role in when certain procs come online from a weapons skill tree perspective. – Steven Sharif

• Using a skill/ability (other than the weapon attack Q or left-mouse-click) will in general reset the combo.
  • The developers are considering specific abilities might be able to be used without resetting the combo system.

It acts similar in the sense of the core loop of what an auto attack is so to speak; where typically your other skills have a cooldown period, they have a rotation or whatever: Our combo system is a repeatable 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 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

In-game achievable weapons concept art.

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.

List of raid bosses

• Brood Queen
• Elder Dragon of Flame
• Elder Dragon of the Tundra
• Elder Dragon of the Wood

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

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

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

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
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.	-	-
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

When a player dies they disintegrate into ash. The ashes contain any items lost by the player due to applicable death penalties. These ash piles are immediately lootable by any player. Player flagging is not triggered by looting.

• 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 sink and a material sink. 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.
    • Non-corrupt players always respawn at the closest active respawn point (to their death).
  • Dampening (due to corruption) only affects PvP combat.

Experience debt will scale to approximately 2 or 3 percent of the total XP for a max level player. These numbers are subject to change based on testing.

• As of May 28, 2021, the experience debt in Alpha-1 testing is "completely off mark" and will either be changed or disabled prior to the next spot test.

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 obtained from the Alchemy profession can be used to reduce the cooldown.
  • Mounts that die a certain number of times within a set period might gain a debuff that requires a different material component to assist with their resurrection.
  • 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.

Mount abilities and stats

Noble Warhorn Sprint mount ability.

All mounts will have certain types of abilities: Whether those abilities are utility, or sprint, or some type of combat charge through that knocks down players or something. It just depends on the type of mount and the skills associated with that mount. That's also one component of the animal husbandry system is in creating these mounts you can have unique skill sets associated with them that obviously creates an economy for mount types and and puts some relevancy on the profession of animal husbandry to present unique mounts. – Steven Sharif

Mounts have different core abilities, utility skills and stats.

• Based on skill choice, mounts can be used as initiation vehicles, escape vehicles, utility vehicles, and traversal vehicles.

Mounts have obviously many different applications and that's also going to speak to its identity when it has a skill selection choice too. Like do you- are you more aggressive in initiation with your mount? Okay well you probably want the ones that are going to be able to charge through and do some type of CC effect on players in front of you. Are you more about kind of using them out to dodge and avoid you know different types of things? Well then you probably want some type of invulnerability skills or some type of protective skills that you can activate at certain times. Are you going to be more traversal and focus on kind of speed you use your mount just kind of go around the world and you don't really care about the combat aspect? Well then you probably want some skill sets on your mount that reflect that. – Steven Sharif

• Mounts will provide resistances, defensive abilities, skills, charge abilities, and attacks.

• Mounts will have varied speeds.

• With some exceptions, mounts are able to be summoned during combat in the open-world.

There's definitely a difficulty from a balance perspective obviously on the design side when you're having to incorporate speeds that are so radically different from the normal player movement speeds; and mounts do have a obviously a significantly faster component there. But that's why you build into the to the skill sets that players have obviously those types of cc's which can either, as we spoke about previously, knock the player off of their mount, kill them with some massive damage, or stun the player. Those are components that are taken into account when balancing out these skill selections. – Steven Sharif

• 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.
  • Power is delegated to the pet when it is summoned and returned to the player immediately when the pet despawns.
• 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.
• Combat pets may not be able to be summoned in certain dungeons, instances or other spaces.

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

Ships are owned by the player who has the ship item in their inventory. Only that player can summon the ship.

• Ship creation is generally delegated to players. There won't be many non-player-owned ships.
  • Quest lines may have NPC driven ships.
  • NPC ships will be present on the ocean that are adversaries or monsters that will be targets for players to try to raid or hunt for treasure.

For the most part all ship creation will be delegated to the player. You have to build up a ship or find somebody who has one if you want to get across the seas. – Steven Sharif

• Permissions will be present to allow other players to access ship functions who are in the same party or raid, such as weapons, anchors, utility items, and the ship's helm to navigate the ship.
• Players will have quests that navigate them toward creating a personal vessel at around level 10-15.

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

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