Animation canceling

Animation cancelling will not be a combat mechanic.

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 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

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
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.	-	-

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

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.

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.

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