Animation canceling

Animation cancelling will not be a combat mechanic.

• Players will be able to cancel channeled abilities.

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

Evasion moves such as dodging and weaving will be present in Ashes of Creation combat.

So you see an animation windup that's a telegraph on what's coming; and then you have response actions that you can take as a result of that in order to dodge, weave, move, do whatever. It is both a combination of what your rotation is but also how you have reaction abilities ready to go that you save for certain circumstances that are important. – Steven Sharif

• The developers are considering the inclusion of dodging in a subset of universal skills that apply to all classes.
  • Dodge rolling type skills were previously 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 are considering the inclusion of active blocking in a subset of universal skills that apply to all classes.
  • 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

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 Alpha-1 testing. It will be updated when new information is made available.

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.

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

Gear inspection/ Threat assessment

You decide to gank the player, but find out that you have been ambushed!

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, along with visual effects associated with enchanted items.
• 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

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.
  • Diminishing returns on CC effects have not yet been implemented in 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

• Lockdowns 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

• Soft CC's are in the tab-targeted abilities

• 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.
Onslaught		Charge and deal damage to your target.	Reduce the target's attack damage temporarily.	Knock down the target.

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

See also

• Combat
• Animations