Specialization skills explination with examples.

Discussion in 'Skills and Combat' started by Barugon, Feb 25, 2018.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

    Messages:
    15,679
    Likes Received:
    24,293
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    Specialization skills are a bit complicated, so I thought that I would make a post attempting to explain how to work with them in order to make it easier for people coming into SotA. First, the facts:
    • Specializations have these three states: Training, Maintaining and Unlearning. You cannot set a specialization to Not Training.
    • You can only train one specialization at a time. In other words, you can only set one specialization to Training.
    • You can only have two specializations active at any time. What this means is that you can have one set to Training and another set to Maintaining or both set to Maintaining. All others will be Unlearning.
    • You only get benefits from specializations that are active (Learning or Maintaining). You get no benefits from specializations that are Unlearning, even if you currently have points in them.
    • For combat trees, specialization has no effect on your base attack (auto attack or free attack).
    • The specialization skill itself costs 20x the experience that a normal skill costs, or about 24 million experience to get to 100.
    • You become 100% effective in a specialization at level 80 (~3.6 million experience), so it's not necessary to take it to 100 unless you really want some extra power.
    • Specializations have no effect on innates, only skills that you can add to your combat hotbar.
    • At specialization level 80 you get an extra glyph for every skill in that tree.
    • Having a specialization active will reduce a tree's contribution to decay by 75%. Example: if my Ranged tree contributes 10,000 to my maximum decay and I have Ranged Specialization active, it will then only contribute 2,500 to my maximum decay. NOTE: Even though decay is no longer applied on death, it still applies to obtaining dread artifact reagents.
    • For any magic tree, each point in specialization will contribute 0.2 attunement and subtract 0.2 attunement 0.1 resist from the opposing school. Example: if I have 80 Life Specialization then I will get 16 extra Life magic attunement and loose 16 8 Death magic attunement resist.
    • Most skills get extra bonuses for specialization. The extra bonuses for individual skills are listed in the tooltips for those skills.
    • Right clicking a skill tree and selecting Train All, Unlearn All or Not Train All will not affect your specialization skill setting.
    [edit] Setting the specialization skills to Training and Maintaining seems to have been made less fiddly in build 742, so the following information may no longer apply.

    When you set a specialization to Training, it will set all other specializations to Unlearning that are currently set to Maintaining. If you already have another specialization set to Training, it will be set to Maintaining. So, in order to have two specializations active, you will need to do a bit of juggling. When clicking on the arrow, the order goes Maintaining to Unlearning to Training then back to Maintaining. Here's an example using Ranged and Life:

    Currently, my Life Specialization and Ranged Specialization are set to Maintaining

    [​IMG] [​IMG]


    Let's say I want to train Ranged Specialization. I must first set Life Specialization to Training, which will set my Ranged Specialization to Unlearning (this is very unintuitive but is [currently] necessary)

    [​IMG] [​IMG]


    Now, if I set Ranged Specialization to Training (one click from Unlearning to Training) then Life Specialization will be set to Maintaining. Be careful not to go past Training or you will have redo the previous step

    [​IMG] [​IMG]
    And I'm good to train Ranged Specialization

    If I want to switch over to train Life Specialization then I only need to set Life Specialization to Training (two clicks, Unlearning then Training) and Ranged Specialization (which is currently set to Training) will be automatically set to Maintaining

    [​IMG] [​IMG]
    [​IMG] [​IMG]
    Now I'm good to train Life Specialization

    If I want to set them both back to Maintaining at this point then I only need to click once on the Life Specialization arrow in order to set it to Maintaining

    [​IMG] [​IMG]


    I really hope that this helps make things a bit clearer. :)

    [edit] Please let me know if I missed anything.
     
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2019
  2. nonaware

    nonaware Avatar

    Messages:
    762
    Likes Received:
    1,544
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Barugon likes this.
  3. StrangerDiamond

    StrangerDiamond Avatar

    Messages:
    4,355
    Likes Received:
    4,999
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Barugon likes this.
  4. Dominor666

    Dominor666 Avatar

    Messages:
    55
    Likes Received:
    62
    Trophy Points:
    8
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Melbourne, Australia
    Thank-you, Thank-You, Thank-you.... all that needs to be said
     
    Barugon likes this.
  5. Berek

    Berek Portalarian Emeritus Dev Emeritus

    Messages:
    3,957
    Likes Received:
    12,761
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Austin, TX
    Done!
     
  6. Numa

    Numa Avatar

    Messages:
    2,891
    Likes Received:
    5,620
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Breaker's Landing
    This is a great tutorial - thanks @Barugon !
     
    Barugon likes this.
  7. Cora Cuz'avich

    Cora Cuz'avich Avatar

    Messages:
    4,648
    Likes Received:
    7,614
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Location:
    Veritas Sanctuary
    Does specialisation affect your "base" in any way? Like, if I chose ranged, and didn't use any glyphs, but just sat there using auto-attack, would I do more damage than if I didn't have the specialisation? I suspect not, but I'm wondering if anybody has noticed a difference.
     
    Barugon likes this.
  8. Baene Thorrstad

    Baene Thorrstad Avatar

    Messages:
    308
    Likes Received:
    499
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Providence, RI
    No, it only effects the active skills
     
    Barugon likes this.
  9. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

    Messages:
    15,679
    Likes Received:
    24,293
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    Updated the OP.
     
  10. Nikko

    Nikko Avatar

    Messages:
    1,167
    Likes Received:
    2,048
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Iolo's hut
    Hugely helpful to those who need to learn about how this works!
     
  11. Cora Cuz'avich

    Cora Cuz'avich Avatar

    Messages:
    4,648
    Likes Received:
    7,614
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Location:
    Veritas Sanctuary
    @Barugon Are you finding Ranged to be useful? I'm stuck between that and Light Armor as my second. (I took Death first; if I do eventually drop that, I'll take Light Armor and Ranged.)
     
  12. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

    Messages:
    15,679
    Likes Received:
    24,293
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    Ranged has been nerfed into oblivion but I always seem to end up playing some form of archer/healer in most RPGs I play, so ranged/life it is. Anyway, I have the most experience pumped into those two trees, so it makes sense to get the decay reduction at least.
     
    Snowdog and Cora Cuz'avich like this.
  13. Daxxe Diggler

    Daxxe Diggler Avatar

    Messages:
    2,692
    Likes Received:
    5,711
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Virtue Oasis - Hidden Vale
    Great summary of the Spec. system. It does seem a little quirky to have to juggle them around to get what you want active. I think with a bit of practice/use though it shouldn't be too hard to get your settings right.

    I don't know how hard or time consuming it would be... but I'd like to see a buff channel added under our names to show which spec(s) are "active". I also think this should be visible to other players too (either by the buff tooltip or some kind of vfx on our avatar.
     
    Barugon likes this.
  14. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

    Messages:
    15,679
    Likes Received:
    24,293
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    Maybe a solution would be to make the user do it manually. So, in order to set a specialization to other than Unlearning, and you already have two that are other than Unlearning, you would just get a pop-up saying that you need to set one of the other specializations to Unlearning first.
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2018
    Daxxe Diggler likes this.
  15. Andartianna

    Andartianna Avatar

    Messages:
    1,006
    Likes Received:
    2,135
    Trophy Points:
    113
    This is not actually true for the focus specialization it doesn't hit 100% effectiveness until 98 ish at level 100 it's at 100.3% effectiveness according to the tooltip at least ;) .
     
    Barugon likes this.
  16. Cora Cuz'avich

    Cora Cuz'avich Avatar

    Messages:
    4,648
    Likes Received:
    7,614
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Location:
    Veritas Sanctuary
    That's sort of where I am. I know there are better options, but melee/heavy armor is so foreign, I think I would rather kneecap myself and continue as an archer, than try something else.
     
    Numa and Barugon like this.
  17. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

    Messages:
    15,679
    Likes Received:
    24,293
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    Could it be a bug?
    @Chris
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2018
  18. Dominor666

    Dominor666 Avatar

    Messages:
    55
    Likes Received:
    62
    Trophy Points:
    8
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Melbourne, Australia
    Prior to this big shakeup I used to be a death mage for soloing, I live in an area where no-one plays at my time so I tend to have to solo a lot ( then they squashed chaotic feedback ), I still used it to solo but experience was a lot slower but I could have lived with that.


    My main love is being a cleric and healing, normally this will only happen on weekends when I can play prime time USA (this is only on Sundays as that corresponds to Saturday USA time). Maybe one day this game with have a valid LFG option and I can actually find a group to play with, until then im stuffed.


    My other main is pole arms, I normally use this for when I’m killing Undead Mobs or healing isn't required in the group, so I have got my Pole arm specialisation to 80 and left it there. (Every skill in Pole arms is at 80)


    My quandary is if I specialise in Life I affect death, so im left with a lot of questions I hoped could be answered


    1. Is the hit to death by specialising in Life going to be noticeable to the point where it makes death unmanageable

    2. Is there another soloing option in the magic tree I can use and be able to leave Life ( or the other magic tree skill ) for specialising

    3. Is there another option I should look at considering, remembering 90% of my online time there is no-one else around open to any idea/option/suggestion’s.
     
  19. By Tor

    By Tor Avatar

    Messages:
    2,362
    Likes Received:
    4,717
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Gender:
    Male
    I just wanted to add that it takes an Advanced Trainer to teach you the specialization skill of your choice. Normal Adventure Trainers won't be able to help you. So, for example, if you want to train in Fire Specialization, seek out the Advanced Fire Trainer.
     
    gtesser likes this.
  20. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

    Messages:
    15,679
    Likes Received:
    24,293
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    This was supposed to be implemented a few releases back but never made it. I really hope they're working on it for release.
    At 80 Life specialization, you lose 16 Death attunement. That's the only negative.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.