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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
About Utility Skills
raylegh
Member
Hello everyone! 
It's been over a year since the last topic I've seen talking about this, so I want to talk a bit about it again as I haven't seen any new information or anything, and I'm in love with that kind of stuff in MMOs.
Recently I checked the skills/abilities for the few classes we know, and knowing that there will be more than we know today (since was stated to be less than 30) I was wondering something.
I saw a bunch of cool ones but almost all of them are all direct combat oriented. Steven said that there will be skills to interact with some dungeons, for example Mages have "Mage's detection", and all classes will have utilities like that, ok. But in terms of mobility/utility in general we don't know too much. I mean, at the moment we have Blink, Jump, Rush and Sprint if I'm not mistaken and are more for combats use. And Levitation seems to be removed.
So for me who played WoW so long, and maybe because the lack of information I'm a bit afraid to think that there will be not enough utility skills for the different classes that would make them more interesting, unique and versatile in every sense. Putting WoW as example, we had some interesting ones like:
- Slow fall (Mage): Not a combat skill but can save your life if someone push you or you want to fall from some high place.
- Create food & drink (Mage): Not a combat skill. Usefull but not essential.
- Teleport & Portals (Mage): Not a combat skill. Mage can teleport to the important cities. Those will not be in AoC since there is no fast travel.
- Jump back (Hunter), Double Jump & Glide (Demon Hunter), Jump and kick to the selected point (Warrior's Heroic Leap): Could be used to reach some elevated terrains.
- Faster base movement on ground and water using transformations (Druid): Not a combat skill.
- Water Walking (Death Knight, Shaman) and Breathe Underwater (Warlock, Shaman): Not a combat skills but really usefull.
And many others. Personally I would like to see Water Walking for the Mages otherwise I will be pissed like in WoW where I felt pathetic as a Mage, always having to swim. xD If they can freeze an opponent then definitely by lore can freeze the water under their feet.
Maybe it's just a thought, and Intrepid will do it great but: - Is there any information that I have missed about those kind of skills? What do we know about it? And if not, any opinions?
Thanks for reading and sorry if my english is not the best ^^
It's been over a year since the last topic I've seen talking about this, so I want to talk a bit about it again as I haven't seen any new information or anything, and I'm in love with that kind of stuff in MMOs.
Recently I checked the skills/abilities for the few classes we know, and knowing that there will be more than we know today (since was stated to be less than 30) I was wondering something.
I saw a bunch of cool ones but almost all of them are all direct combat oriented. Steven said that there will be skills to interact with some dungeons, for example Mages have "Mage's detection", and all classes will have utilities like that, ok. But in terms of mobility/utility in general we don't know too much. I mean, at the moment we have Blink, Jump, Rush and Sprint if I'm not mistaken and are more for combats use. And Levitation seems to be removed.
So for me who played WoW so long, and maybe because the lack of information I'm a bit afraid to think that there will be not enough utility skills for the different classes that would make them more interesting, unique and versatile in every sense. Putting WoW as example, we had some interesting ones like:
- Slow fall (Mage): Not a combat skill but can save your life if someone push you or you want to fall from some high place.
- Create food & drink (Mage): Not a combat skill. Usefull but not essential.
- Teleport & Portals (Mage): Not a combat skill. Mage can teleport to the important cities. Those will not be in AoC since there is no fast travel.
- Jump back (Hunter), Double Jump & Glide (Demon Hunter), Jump and kick to the selected point (Warrior's Heroic Leap): Could be used to reach some elevated terrains.
- Faster base movement on ground and water using transformations (Druid): Not a combat skill.
- Water Walking (Death Knight, Shaman) and Breathe Underwater (Warlock, Shaman): Not a combat skills but really usefull.
And many others. Personally I would like to see Water Walking for the Mages otherwise I will be pissed like in WoW where I felt pathetic as a Mage, always having to swim. xD If they can freeze an opponent then definitely by lore can freeze the water under their feet.
Maybe it's just a thought, and Intrepid will do it great but: - Is there any information that I have missed about those kind of skills? What do we know about it? And if not, any opinions?
Thanks for reading and sorry if my english is not the best ^^
4
Comments
My favorite utility skill in WoW is the rogue skill Distract. All it does is turn mobs and enemy players toward your spell, but can be incredibly useful in super niche scenarios. I often use it to distract a mob while I mine some ore
Not sure if you know this, but Steven did answer this question in the recent AMA. He said that rogues will be able to find hidden doors in dungeons, and that rangers will be able to track and stuff. So yea, they're not combat skills, they're actual utility skills.
Catfall - Increase jump height significantly and ignore ordinary fall damage
Leap - (My most beloved leap) use 1/3rd of your stamina to leap through the air, this could be easily turned into a utility ability for bards or rogues
Charged Jump - Was available for a very short time, but has potential to be a fighter ability
Warp Space - Switch place with hit target (could be awesome if it could also be used on allies xD)
Totally agree! I like to feel that classes have their identity beyond the combats.
Why you wouldn't be surprised if not? I think it's kinda significant.
Oh didn't know about that. Will Double Jump be able for any class in particular?
Yeah thanks I know, I put as an example the Mage's detection, but I was trying to discern between this dungeon oriented skills and the skills usable anywhere. Maybe calling them "survival skills" is more accurate.
I saw those in the wiki but I wasn't sure if would be in the mmo. Is it confirmed?
They talked about some classes havin them.
(Cleric has the switcharoo in one of their examples)
I was wondering too if would be an issue that players who are strongly attached to their classes in other games will feel uncomfortable if their traditional class in Ashes feels different or doesn't have these skills.
Probably if a Wow mage player plays mage in Aoc and the class can't offer what he expect, it could be an issue.
I've recently been playing on a private server that has actively dismantled fast travel/warp points from the game. As a result, I've found myself wanting to be in 2 places at the same time - usually because I wanted to talk to strangers in another area to organize a group/etc. or just to have a set of eyes in the area.
Applying this to Ashes' high fantasy setting, I think Scrying would be a really useful utility skill suitable for mages or rangers. And as a counter-play, the mage's detect trap could alert if you are being scryed on. I think this would have significant use in PvP.
I feel like there's a lot of opportunity to express class identity in utility skills.
Are there any other utility skills that you'd like/have enjoyed?
Many MMO's aren't even announced to the public at this point in the development process, let alone provide people with partial class skill lists.
You need only look at the fact that every class will have a specific non-combat ability to know that it is in Intrepids radar.
@FuryBladeborne @raylegh Double jump has not been confirmed for the MMORPG and from what we've seen so far, it will not be available in the MMORPG.
Please refrain from making such statements without backing it up with sources.
It has been confirmed by Steven. He was asked if all players would have the jumping movement that we were testing out in Apocalypse (which was double jump) and he responded by saying that some of the high mobility classes will able to speck into it.
Link to the ability that was being tested:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Apocalypse:Super_jump
As I know I'm going to go for Herbalism, for example. I would like to see a skill where next to gathering, you could use plants to get a slight healing regneration effect, as you know which plants can heal wounds.
I'd love to see that quote. The link is just the Apocalypse ability with no relation to the MMORPG.
I'll see if I can find the video tomorrow when I have more time. It will take a while to figure out the date range and then find and search through the Q&A sections of the livestreams for that specific question.