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Leap a great distance forward and into the air while firing three projectiles in a line along the path, each dealing area damage and rooting targets hit for 3 seconds. Rotation control is enabled during cast.[1] The root effect is nature based.[2]
Throws a magical web of bolas at the target location. All enemies within are snared and build additional hate towards the tank every second. Enemies entering or exiting the radius will be tripped.[3]
Channel a massive blizzard around you, raining a barrage of hail shards upon your enemies while channeling. Periodically pulses Chilled to targets within the area. Each shard impact deals (50%🢆)icedamage in a small area around it and applies Frozen to targets with Chilled.[4][5][6]
Call forth spectral chains in a target area that stagger enemies within or stun enemies already under the staggered effect, then leave behind an area that deals radiant damage each second over 8 seconds.[7][8]
Takes aim for a moment before hurling a hooked chain in a line, damaging the first target it contacts and immediately pulling them to the caster. The target suffers a tapering snare for 3 seconds.[14][15]
Imbues your ammunition with weight. Enemies hit by your bow attacks suffer the Snaredstatus effect, reducing their movement speed by 50%. Each application applies 3 seconds of duration to the target, up to a maximum of 12 seconds. 10 charges.[16]
Bashes the target with your shield, dealing damage and applying the shaken condition. If the target is already suffering from the shaken condition, stun the target instead.[17]
Summons 3 fields of grabbing vines, one at the target location every .5s for 1.5s. Targets hit are damaged for 10% physical damage and snared for 3s, reducing their movement speed by 40%. Targets that have more than 10s of snare duration are rooted. This effect can only trigger once per target.[18]
The general approach that we're 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 the general design philosophy we're using to approach the overhaul.[19] – Tradd Thompson
A lot of abilities you have the capability of moving while casting. It's going to decrease your movement speed significantly or depending on the type of ability. We do reserve the cost- and that's really what it is when you tie ability usage to mobility- we do reserve the cost of requiring the character to remain stationary on some big effect type abilities.[21] – Steven Sharif
Most abilities in Ashes of Creation are capable of being cast while moving. Some abilities may slow the caster down during the cast, but only rarely will the player be rooted in place.[21][26]
Movement speed can decrease significantly depending on the type of ability.[21]
Skills with the greatest power may require the caster to remain stationary while channeling them. This is a risk vs. reward mechanic.[21][26][27][28]
Most abilities you'll find in Ashes of Creation are capable of being cast while moving. Some of those abilities might slow your movement during the cast, but you can continue to move. Very rarely, and depending on obviously the importance of the ability or the power level of that ability, you might be rooted in place. So, for example, the AoE ability [Chains of Restraint] has a lot going on. It has damage ticking over time, it is an area of effect, it also has a status condition application; and in those instances the player character gets rooted.[26] – Steven Sharif
That's the cat-and-mouse of these abilities. Like we've seen with the Ranger, they have a backflip, they have their Airdrop [sic] ability. The Mage has teleportation. There are going to be abilities that are tit-for-tat; and managing the resource of those abilities and the timing of when you use them to either correlate to your opponent's use of those things, or to save them for yourself when you want to get away, that's part of what makes the engagements dynamic and different each time.[29] – Steven Sharif
Unreal Engine 5 has enabled improved forms of locomotion, such as crouching, tilting and mantling.[30][31]
The ability to prone is not be in the game.[32][33]
Moving backward will likely not affect block and parry.[34]
Player movement speed during combat is balanced for both PvE and PvP.[35]
There's a balance in the game design between your movement speed on attack and the movement speed of your opponent. When you have a game that is both PvE centric as well as PvP centric, you have to make sure that combat is blended for both approaches; and we can always run into problems where, if you're significantly hampered in your movement speed, that has an effect on how we expect player versus player engagements to interact; and we don't want to restrict a player's ability to be mobile if they're the target of an attack. And as a result of that we need to make sure that we don't restrict the movement abilities of the player who is doing the attacking as well. So we want it to be relatively free for you to stay with each other. Your opponents move around the battlefield together and if we're hampering you on the attack action, we have to then implement some type of snare, or slow, or cc effect essentially on your opposing target; and that's not the approach we want to take for for PvP.[35] – Steven Sharif
If we're talking about Fighter, they're going to have a lot of heavy gap closers. They can probably be a little bit more liberal in the use of their gap closers because they have so many of them, versus let's say a Ranger that needs to choose when to use their escape abilities, because they have fewer of them. The same would be true for a melee character like a rogue. Their approach vector is going to be more stealth-driven than it would be perhaps let's say from a gap-closer perspective.[36] – Steven Sharif
Q: If a ranger is super mobile, what are the melee's options in order to catch them?
A: Different class kits will provide different gap closers. They'll provide different mobility skills. They'll have lockdowns. They'll have chains to pull back. They'll have a lot of different things in the rotation. That's part of what an MMORPG experience is. You're not just restricted to three or six skills, you have a rotational suite; and depending on the type of challenges you face is going to help determine which of those rotations you spec into from your skill tree.[37] – Steven Sharif
Leap a great distance forward and into the air while firing three projectiles in a line along the path, each dealing area damage and rooting targets hit for 3 seconds. Rotation control is enabled during cast.[1] The root effect is nature based.[2]
Consume your Combat Momentum rapidly, gaining 20% increased attack and movement speed and immunity to disabling effects while active. Must have at least 20 Combat Momentum to activate, and the effect ends when all Combat Momentum is fully depleted.[43]
Spend 15 Combat Momentum to lunge in a direction a short distance and perform an upward swing upon arrival, dealing damage to enemies in front of you. You are immune to hard crowd control effects while performing this ability.[47]
Bashes the target with your shield, dealing damage and applying the shaken condition. If the target is already suffering from the shaken condition, stun the target instead.[17]
Channeled Ability: Deal physical damage to all enemies around the caster with each spin while channeled, increasing the spin rate the longer it is channeled. The caster is immune to hard disabling effects while spinning. Activate the ability again to end channeling early.[51]
Sprout phoenix-like wings and leap to target ally, then grant a small amount of temporary health to that target on arrival.[52][53] An ally is defined as any non-combatant player or non-mob NPC.[54]
Player movement
Walking and running shown in pre-alpha gameplay.[55]
Sprinting will consume a percentage of a character's mana pool. Sprinting will not be permitted while in combat.[56]
A sprinting/dash skill with a cooldown was confirmed to be part of a class kit.[57]
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.[56] – Steven Sharif
There is a toggleable walk/run (autorun) capability.[58]
There is not going to be any "go to waypoint" (auto-pathing) mechanics.[59]
Back-peddling (walking backwards) and strafing are slower than normal movement speed.[60]
Double-jumping has been considered as an option for player mounts.[61]
Another thing that's important about these action combats is the ability to dodge and moving out of the way of certain skill shots.[63] – Steven Sharif
Previously it was stated that hybrid combat will likely have true evasion skills relating to action-oriented combat and also have I-frames that apply to tab targeting.[66]
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.[65] – Steven Sharif
CC effects do not apply to Non-combatant (green) players. The target of a CC ability must be flagged in order to suffer the CC effects. This prevents players from opening attacks that stun non-combatant players during a pull for example.[72]
Leap a great distance forward and into the air while firing three projectiles in a line along the path, each dealing area damage and rooting targets hit for 3 seconds. Rotation control is enabled during cast.[1] The root effect is nature based.[2]
Throws a magical web of bolas at the target location. All enemies within are snared and build additional hate towards the tank every second. Enemies entering or exiting the radius will be tripped.[3]
Release a powerful streak of lightning that hits your primary target and then chains outward to up to 5 nearby enemies from that target, dealing (175%🢆)lightningdamage to each. Applies 20 stacks of Shocked to targets with Volatile.[76][77][78]
Call forth spectral chains in a target area that stagger enemies within or stun enemies already under the staggered effect, then leave behind an area that deals radiant damage each second over 8 seconds.[7][8]
Call forth a line of jagged earthen spikes in a line in front of you, dealing (175%🢆)piercedamage, applying Staggered, and launching each enemy hit.[82]
Takes aim for a moment before hurling a hooked chain in a line, damaging the first target it contacts and immediately pulling them to the caster. The target suffers a tapering snare for 3 seconds.[14][15]
Imbues your ammunition with weight. Enemies hit by your bow attacks suffer the Snaredstatus effect, reducing their movement speed by 50%. Each application applies 3 seconds of duration to the target, up to a maximum of 12 seconds. 10 charges.[16]
Held ability: Slam down, causing a powerful earthquake around your character that deals (200-500%🢆)bludgeondamage depending on how long it was charged. Additionally this ability applies Staggered to all enemies around the caster, unless fully charged, in which case it applies Tripped.[84]
Applies the sleepingcondition to targets affected within a small area around the primary target, rendering them unable to move or take any action. Any damage dealt to a sleeping target will break the effect. Duration is reduced by 20% for each additional target hit, to a minimum of 40% of base duration.[86][87][88]
Releases a thundering shout in a forward cone, applying the staggered condition on enemy targets. Also stomps the ground dealing damage around the caster and tripping enemies affected by the snared condition.[89]
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 diminishing returns on stuns, sleep and slows so as to avoid stun locking.[71][90]
Diminishing returns on CC effects have not yet been implemented in Alpha-1 testing.[91]
Diminishing returns in regards to crowd control and conditions like stun and sleep and slows and that thing: Yes we will have absolutely diminishing returns. I think it's a necessary component to balance out classes that have high control ability.[71] – Steven Sharif
Hard CCs may be housed in action orientedskills because they are skill shots that are more difficult to land.[93][94]
Lockdowns won't likely be tab-targeted skills. This is to avoid imbalanced combos with skill shot (action targeted) abilities.[94]
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 feel.[71] – Jeffrey Bard