Mana

Resting and mana regeneration.

As you know, a classic MMO thing to do is to sit and rest as you get your resources back. – Steven Sharif

Mana is a universal resource/energy in Ashes of Creation that keeps corresponding stats for mana pool, consumption and regeneration relevant.

• All archetypes use mana to varying degrees.
  • Even pure melee players use mana to manipulate The Essence for their extraordinary abilities.
• There are various ways to mitigate mana consumption, such as gear and set bonuses, tattoos, enchantments, and specs.
  • Sitting increases mana regeneration while out of combat.

Mana management I think, not just for mage players but for really every class, is a relevant resource mechanic that they have to take into consideration when they're utilizing their rotations; and there are going to be abilities that will sap your mana faster than others; and they're going to be situational. Now, with that blanket statement of mana is always relevant, there is also going to be mechanics and/or class energies and abilities that you can spec into to help mitigate that. There's itemization that you can utilize from a set bonus perspective, or certain types of weapons and tattoos that you can acquire. There are certain enchantments that you can acquire that might reduce the cost of mana use, that might increase your amount of regeneration, that might increase your mana total pool. There are even specs that you can build towards if mana management is your issue. So we want to make it a compelling case that you need to think about mana use because you don't just want to go 100% all the time with no downside to that. That's a very boring type of interaction. – Steven Sharif

Stats

Waterfall stats.

Primary attribute	Stat
Constitution.
	Max Health
	Health Regeneration
	Physical Mitigation
	Physical Disable Evasion
Dexterity.
	Physical Critical Chance
	Attack Speed
	Physical Evasion
	Physical Disable Accuracy
Intelligence.
	Magical Power
	Magical Critical Power
	Magical Penetration
	Magical Accuracy
Mentality.
	Max Mana
	Mana Regeneration
	Magical Mitigation
	Magical Disable Evasion
Strength.
	Physical Power
	Physical Critical Power
	Physical Accuracy
	Physical Penetration
Wisdom.
	Magical Critical Chance
	Magical Casting Speed
	Magical Evasion
	Magical Disable Accuracy

Stats in Ashes of Creation are derived from primary attributes (Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Mentality, Strength, and Wisdom) via a waterfall system.

A waterfall stat is a derivative of an attribute. So, if dexterity is your attribute stat and a waterfall from dexterity is critical rate, that would be considered a waterfall stat: the critical rate.

• Base stats are defined by a character's primary archetype.
  • These can be improved based on gear, tattoos, and other enhancements, such as socketed items.

• Concentration will be a primary stat for spell casters.

• There will be diminishing returns on certain stats, but there won't be hard caps.

Roles

Ashes of Creation has the traditional trinity of Tank, DPS (damage dealers) and Support (healer or non-healer) roles.

We have our eight base archetypes; and the trinity is a pretty strong influence with regards to the eight base classes. However the area in which we actually begin to play with that line between the trinity is in the secondary classes that you can pick. That's where we begin to blend those spaces and allow people a little bit of influence over their role and whether or not they fit perfectly within a particular category within the trinity. – Steven Sharif

• Although traditional roles are present, players should not feel branded by their primary archetype.
• Skill augments available through the class system allow characters to be personalized outside of their primary role.
• Players can also double down on their archetype choice to strengthen their primary role.

Class abilities

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.

See also

• Stats
• Health