Passive skills

Passive skills are used to augment weapon usage, armor usage, health regeneration, and passive stats.

• Passive skills can be levelled up by allocating skill points on the skills UI.
• Passive skills enable players to work toward mastery of a weapon.
• Passive skills are based on the player's choice of primary archetype.
  • Some passives may be introduced with the choice of secondary archetype, but this hasn't been finalized yet.

All these passive abilities: mana regen, attack damage, critical hit damage, health regeneration, defense mitigation, maximum health: A lot of different changes from the passive side of things and these are based on what archetype you've chosen. – Steven Sharif

Passive skill	Icon	Archetype(s)	Base skill
Caravan Trail Speed Bonus			Minor speed boost for travelling on a simple trail.

Skill upgrades

Skill upgrade	Icon	Primary	Upgrade to	Description
Act of War		Fighter		Switching forms no longer triggers cooldowns or costs Combat Momentum.
Brutality		Fighter		Weapon combo finishers and extended finishers apply 5 Wound stacks, plus an additional Wound for every 10 stacks already on the target. Each wound stack reduces target healing received by 0.5% and target damage mitigation by 0.15%, up to a maximum of 100 stacks.
Climactic Whirlwind		Fighter		Perform a final swing in an area in front of you after ending Whirlwind's channel, dealing heavy damage and generating 5-10 Combat Momentum based on number of targets hit.
Concentrated Scatter Shot		Ranger		Scatter Shot becomes a held ability. After being fully charged, you instead fire a single projectile in a forward line that pierces through enemies and deals significantly increased damage. 30m range.
Consuming Lethal Blow		Fighter		Lethal Blow returns 50% of overkill damage dealt as health and mana.
Ensnaring Vine Field		Ranger		Enemies are Snared while within Vine Field's area of effect.
Expeditious Barrage		Ranger		Reduce Barrage's movement penalty while channeled.
Greater Brutality		Fighter		Overpower and Brutal Cleave apply 10 Wound stacks to enemies hit.
Hasting Snipe		Ranger		Gain 20% increased attack speed for 5 seconds after casting Snipe.
Heartseeking Snipe		Ranger		Snipe has a 30% increased chance to critically hit against enemies beyond 20 meters.
Meditative Form of the River		Fighter		Form of the River increases your mana regneration by 0.01% of your maximum mana per point of Combat Momentum you have.
Mortal Headshot		Ranger		Headshot deals 50% additional damage to targets below 50% of their maximum health.
Multi Trap		Ranger		Bear Trap now has 3 charges, but the cooldown is increased by 15 seconds.
Multi-Scatter Shot		Ranger		Scatter Shot has an additional charge.
Omnidirectional Disengage		Ranger		Disengage now moves you in the direction of your input instead of always backward.
Overdrive		Fighter		After completing the final spin, you may continue spinning at maximum speed while rapidly depleting your Momentum. Ends after Momentum is fully depleted or after stopping the channel.
Raging Blitz		Fighter		Blitz generates 20 Combat Momentum.
Recharging Lunging Assault		Fighter		Lunging Assault gains an additional charge and generates 5 additional Combat Momentum when dealing damage to one or more enemies.
Refreshing Headshot		Ranger		Headshot refunds 4 seconds of its cooldown when it hits a Marked target.
Reinvigorating Disengage		Ranger		When you hit one or more enemies with Disengage, its cooldown is refreshed and can be used again. This can only occur once per cooldown period.
Reinvigorating Exert		Fighter		Exert additionally refreshes all ability cooldowns by 1% per point of Combat Momentum the caster has upon activation.
Reinvigorating Lethal Blow		Fighter		Killing an enemy with Lethal Blow resets the cooldown of Blitz.
Relentless Form of the Avalanche		Fighter		Form of the Avalanche causes your weapon combo attacks to apply 3 stacks of Staggered to enemies hit, plus 1 additional stack per 30 Combat Momentum you have. Staggered reduces physical accuracy by 0.1% per stack and physical disable reduction by 1% per stack.
Slicing Maim		Fighter		Maim launches a piercing projectile that deals damage to enemies in its path.
Trap Slinger		Ranger		Bear Trap becomes a thrown projectile and arms itself instantly upon landing. Deals double damage when triggered.
Unstoppable Exert		Fighter		Exert additionally breaks all hard control effects on the caster, and may be used any time while under a hard controlling effect.
Weapon Mastery: Bows		Ranger		Lowers the Cooldown of Barrage and Scatter Shot by 3s upon: Completion of a bow weapon combo; Firing a fully charged Longbow.

Skill points

אלפא-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.

חלק מהמידע הבא לא אושר לאחרונה על ידי המפתחים וייתכן שלא נמצא במפת הדרכים הנובחית של הפיתוח.

• 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.

Respeccing

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

I am still conflicted on whether or not I want to allow respecs on-the-fly. I believe that respecing should be done at a particular location that requires a bit of transit and some strategic thinking ahead of time about the encounters that you're expecting, but respecing your class should be relatively easier obviously with that constraint of being at a particular location. – Steven Sharif

• Swapping between multiple saved specs may be able to be done after a suitable cooldown period.

• Respeccing artisan skills is going to be more difficult than respeccing adventuring skills.

Active skills

אלפא-2 Tank action bar (hotbar) user interface.

Players can build their characters with the active skills they want on their action bar (hotbar).

• The maximum number of skills a player can have on their action bar will be around 15-20.
  • Each archetype will have roughly 35-40 skills to choose from on average.
• There will be an option to include multiple action bars (hotbars) on a player's UI. For example: One Fighter will be different from another based on what active skills they have chosen.

Some people like to have a very minimalistic number of hot bars. They don't need necessarily to have three, four, five hot bars that are available; but some people do like that: They want to have all their items listed on their hotbar as well as their abilities, as well as as their mounts, as well as anything that they can essentially interact with as an icon. – Steven Sharif

• Players are not given skills as they level up, they must choose what skills they take.
• There is no spellbook requiring memorization.

There will be multiple hot-bars that you obviously have available, because you're going to have consumables, you're going to have active skills and whatnot. But the number of active skills are not going to overwhelm necessarily the character and be irrelevant especially at certain stages. – Steven Sharif

Primary skills

אלפא-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 אלפא-2 are expected to be very different to those in אלפא-1.

Universal skills

Universal skills, such as active blocking and dodge rolling, are able to be unlocked by all archetypes.

Outside of your class-specific skill tree, there's going to be a subsection of a few skills that are universal, like active block, like dodge; and I think what we're going to do- or at least what we're going to be discussing here- is those universal skills will have progressions that might align with your passive tree; and you can spec skill points into progressing additional features of those universal abilities that you will have access to. So I think that's probably going to be the direction that we're going to take. – Steven Sharif

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

Q: Will each archetype be equally efficient with universal skills, like dodging and active blocking, or will each of them have their own versions and flavors, or will some people be more powerful than others?

A: We want to provide a progression path that's shared for those universal skills across all the archetypes. So when you spend skill points, you can choose to spend them within the universal skill set and unlock particular ability types for the universal skills as well, but you will be spending them from the skill points that you would normally spend within your class-specific skill tree; and this offers again a different wheel of customization that I think is interesting. – Steven Sharif

• The developers will be testing the use of separate energy mechanics for universal skills in אלפא-2.
• Universal skill progression may align with a player's passive skill tree.

Weapon skills

אלפא-2 work-in-progress Greatsword weapon skill tree.

The intent here is to give you choices. Either I want to extend and improve my combo, or I want just passive benefits that increase my attack speed or crit chance. – Brian Ferguson

Weapon skills grant passive skills and proc effects and other status conditions rather than usable skills on a player's action bar. The more skill points that are allocated to the weapon tree, the greater a player's weapon familiarity. This influences things like the number of attacks, attack speed, and increased chances of proc effects from carrying out basic attacks with that weapon. These procs may offer synergy with the player's active skills. This synergy also applies to active skills from other characters.

Weapon skill trees are skill trees that you can unlock and invest points into as you continue to develop your experience with certain weapon types, certain weapon groups, like a dagger; and when you're doing your basic combo attack with those weapons, which is universal for all classes- anybody can use any type of weapon because stats can be changed on these weapon types through crafting and through drops- there will be certain proc effects that live on the weapon skill tree as you advance in them; and those proc effect effects will be able to interact with your archetype skills because they will have promotion type effects that occur when they synergize with one another. – Steven Sharif

• The weapon combo system determines special effects that proc based on weapon progression.
  • These procs may reduce or reset cooldowns on other skills on the player's hotbar.
  • Certain rotations can ensure the best chance of triggering a weapon proc, but there is no reliable way to ensure that proc activates.
  • Weapon progression such as set bonuses may change at what level any proc effects occur.

Our approach is not going to be providing skills through weapons. It's going to be providing skills through classes. – Steven Sharif

• Players can spec into weapon skills on their weapon skill tree (also referred to as Combat skills, and Combat tree) based on their preferred weapon types and the grade of the weapon.
  • Dual wielded weapons count as a single weapon type on the weapon skill tree.

Let's say a dagger has some slashing effects that bleed the target or that cripple the target... Every time you attack you have a chance to proc that effect. That effect then can synergize with what your active skills tree has available to it. So let's say your backstab deals 30 additional damage to a bleeding target. If you attack with your main weapon first and the target gets the bleed proc off and you do your backstab skill then you're synergizing your effects. – Steven Sharif

Let's say backstab that you can apply to deals damage to the target and it'll have a conditional modifier on that damage if you're behind the target, and it'll have a conditional modifier deal additional 50 damage if the target is under a bleed effect. So you want to synergize essentially your weapon proc conditions with your active skills so that you're timing your certain active skills appropriately with the status conditions that the target has taken. – Steven Sharif

• Certain higher-end weapons (and שריון) have active abilities, but the intention is that these abilities will not radically redefine the way an archetype is played.

See also

• מיומנויות
• מקצועות
• קרב