Template:Primary skills

Alpha-1 Tank primary skills early user interface design.^[1]

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.^[2] – 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.^[3] – Steven Sharif

Primary skills (class abilities) are based on a player's archetype.^[4] Players can personalize their primary skills with augmentation from a secondary archetype.^[5]^[4]^[6]

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.^[7] – Steven Sharif

Each secondary archetype offers four different schools of augmentation.^[5]^[8] Each augment school affects a primary archetype's skills in different ways.^[9]
- 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.^[5]^[9]
- Each augmentation has a level requirement and number of skill points required to activate it.^[10]
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.^[10] – Steven Sharif

Choosing the same primary and secondary archetype increases focus on that archetype.^[11]

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.^[12]
- The progression system for augments is very similar to the class progression system.^[13]

Changing the augmentations on your skills will require you to go to a NPC in a Village node or higher.^[14]
Some spell colors and general FX change based on augments.^[15]
- Active skills could look totally different after an augment gets applied.^[16]