Skill types

The combat system offers a varitey of Skill types.

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 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 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.

• A player may choose a secondary archetype when they reach level 25. The player can then augment their primary skills with effects from their secondary archetype.

• Outside of class-specific skills there may be a subset of universal skills, such as active block and dodge.
• Class skills are not affected by the type of weapon that is equipped.

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

Skill points

Alpha-2 Ranger skill tree user interface.

What you're seeing at a high level here is just what you'd pretty much expect of a traditional skill. We're doing something a little more advanced than just like a bottom up structure, because we're being a little bit more free-form in this iteration. This will obviously see more UI iterations in the future, but you'll see a mix of active and passive abilities here. Actives are indicated by their square shape, while the circular ones are representing passives; and one thing to note as well is that these passives are aiming to be a little more interesting than just like, this ability does more damage now, or it has a lower cooldown. We do have some of those too, but the goal with a lot of these passives in addition to that is to allow people to lean into unique play styles. So you'll notice that some of them are are changing your gameplay in meaningful ways; and that's the direction we want to take um player and character customization as a whole. – Tradd Thompson

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

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

• Skill points will accrue at specific XP milestones, such as 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 progress through the level, so as to avoid creating an imbalance with experience debt.

We do have this concept of experience debt that does accrue and we don't want to create an imbalance between skill points acquired versus experience, so we're going to predicate your skill points acquisition based on benchmarks you reach when leveling through a level. So these are going to be at specific points in the level, like one quarter progress, to half progress, to three quarters progress: you're going to get an influx of skill points and then you'll be able to allocate them into your skill tree. – Steven Sharif

• Skill points can be used to unlock universal skills at the expense of unlocking class-specific skills.

• Respeccing (resetting and reallocating) adventuring skills may require travelling to a specific location rather than being able to be done on-the-fly.

• Augments do not cost skill points. It was previously stated that certain augments will have more expense required on the skill point side.

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

• 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.

Weapon use combo system

Alpha-2 greatsword weapon combo animation.

Whenever you get stab hits on the third and the fourth hit, those are actually procs. So, if you connect with the second hit of that proc hit you'll receive the additional effects, but you actually have to connect with a monster or player to receive the effect; and I think the proc rate is at a static 25 percent right now. We're looking at other ways to scale that. Maybe it scales with a stat, or maybe it scales with additional nodes, but right now it's kind of low. – Brian Ferguson

A weapon combo system (also referred to as Weapon use combo, Weapon attack combo, Weapon combo, 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.
  • Combos are triggered by performing basic weapon attacks (default Q or left-mouse-click).

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

• The number of steps and passive effects that trigger during weapon combos can be customized in the weapon skill tree.

We wanted to have a combo length progression available to players so that certain builds could have longer weapon combos and other builds can have shorter weapon combos with more passive effects.; and this has been the result of our exploration. So, when you start out you've got a pretty quick four-hit combo, but whenever you unlock the additional hits you get the fifth and sixth hits, which are at approximately 50% to the overall combo length. But we found that that gave a pretty satisfying floor and ceiling to how long the combo can be. – Brian Ferguson

• Depending on class skill choice these effects will have synergy 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 a basic attack will in general reset the combo.
  • The developers are considering specific abilities that 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

Ultimate skill

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

Ultimate skills are very powerful skills that can be used when enough focus has been accumulated from using the Weapon combo system.

- None -

Utility skill

Alpha-2 Ranger Camouflage skill.

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 sometimes "story mode". – Steven Sharif

A utility skill is a typically non-combat skill that interacts with the environment and offers counters and horizontal progression against other archetype abilities. Utility skills lend themselves toward how classes navigate and deal with hazards in the world.

When we think about utilities, some of the examples of those utilities might be a Rogue has invisibility. How do you address invisibility? Well, a Ranger might have a utility ability that spawns a Hound that trails invisible targets within an AoE radius of the Ranger and you get that location. Whereas, a Mage might have an Arcane Eye that actually reveals them to the party of the raid. Those are the types of utility skills that we want to create. They offer counters and horizontal progression against the other archetype abilities. – Steven Sharif

• Classes will have different 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. This is not a free-form ability. It will likely be restricted to certain quests, locations or objects.
  • Certain classes (such as Rogues) will have stealth abilities.

Q: What kind and how many special or unique activities can we expect classes to perform outside of combat, such as rogue's opening locks, tracking enemies as a ranger, or removing corruption from the ground as a cleric?

A: Just thirty minutes ago I was talking about those utility abilities like finding tracks, or cleansing poisons, arcane eye to reveal secret passages. The idea is how do we blend the traditional tabletop RPG role of utility and/or skill checks into the setting of a graphical MMORPG; and I think that it's both a complement of the skill kit that's available and how it interacts with the world for those curated or special designs within these locations. So to answer that question: that is intended- we've shown a little bit of that in the past and it is something that we want to make feel compelling and rewarding and viable as a use-case scenario in many different settings that you might find yourself in within the world. – Steven Sharif

• All classes will have maneuverability/traversal utility abilities.
• Utility skills exist that can help players discover hidden paths and entrances and may lead to discovering hidden quests while exploring.
• Certain objects exist in the world (such as ladders and slides) that aid player mobility.

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

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

• There will be a grappling hook utility skill or item.
• Rogues may also have a spyglass utility skill.

See also

• Classes
• Combat