In Dragon Saga, there are generally 3 types of skills: Passive, Active, and Toggle.
- Passive skills are "activated" at all times, although they may require the user be attacked or otherwise influenced by other environmental effects in order to go off.
- Active skills must be manually activated by the player — some have a set time period in which they stop by themselves, and some are one-time-use skills that require manual activation each time the player desires to use them.
- Sub-categorized Active skills are Offensive and Supportive skills. Active skills do not inflict actual damage, differentiating them from Offensive skills, whereas Supportive skills are active skills that enhance the user in some way, rather than inflict damage on enemies.
- All Offensive skills are also Active skills, but not vise-versa. Finally, Offensive skills are simply Active skills that also do damage to other players and/or monsters.
- Toggle skills are activated by the user, and its effects will remain active until the user turns off the skill, or if the user no longer meets the requirements to keep it active (such as running out of MP).
Skills can be further broken down into other sub-categories such as Melee, Ranged, Magic, etc. Skills in these categories also fall under one of the three "main" categories listed in the previous paragraph. Some skills fall under multiple sub-categories as well. Ranged skills do not require the player to be standing adjacent to the target, whereas Melee skills generally do. Magic skills are almost always Ranged.
Skill Use Phases
Skill use is a six-step process.
- Skill used
- Cast time
- Cast bar is visible below character's sprite.
- Skill activation
- Cast delay
- Also known as Cast Animation. The animation of the character casting the skill prevents the user from casting any other skills.
- Skill use complete
- The specific skill can not be reused for a fixed time. (not all skills have cooldowns)
Phases in Detail
This is when the character uses the skill. MP cost and other casting conditions are checked, but do not take effect. If the character cannot pay any of the costs, an error will appear on the character's screen stating the reason the skill has failed and the skill will not activate.
During the cast time, the character cannot attack and cannot use other skills. If the character takes damage during cast time, the skill may be canceled. If a skill has no base cast time or modifiers reducing the effective cast time to 0 or less, no cast bar appears and the cast time phase is skipped entirely. Some skills do not have a cast bar, even though they have a casting time, such as Hammer Crush and Gust Slash, and therefore are vulnerable to being canceled. These types of skills are usually marked by having their cast delay before skill activation (see Cast Delay).
Cast time is indicated by a "progress bar" below the character's sprite, sometimes called cast bar. The bar starts out black and is filled with blue as cast time proceeds. When the cast bar is completely blue, cast time ends.
- Moving while casting cancels the cast. (This only applies to skills that have a visible cast bar.)
- Skills that are Super Armored are immune to being canceled via conventional attack. (see Super Armor)
MP cost and other casting conditions are checked again. If the character can pay the costs, they are paid and the skill takes effect. If not, an error will appear on the character's screen stating the reason the skill has failed.
During cast delay/animation, the user must wait for the character to complete the skill animation before being able to freely move or cast another skill. Sometimes, this animation can be bypassed by pressing the Jump key (default 'C').
Certain skills may require the character to perform the skill's animation/delay before the skill activated. The character is vulnerable to cancellation if attacked during the skill animation, unless the skill is immune to cancellation (see Super Armor).
For a fixed time after the player has used the skill, the player will be unable to use that same skill again. They may however use any other skills they wish.
Skills with Special Properties
For a complete list of Super Armored skills, see Super Armored Skills
Skills marked as being Super Armored indicate that the character is invulnerable to launch, flinch, knock down, or any other conventional methods of cancellation, whether being attacked during the casting of the skill, or in animation of the skill.
While one can safely assume super armored status generally means "no interruption," there are varying degrees of super armor:
- Light level super armor will prevent the caster from flinching, but will allow the caster to be interrupted by other conventional methods of cancellation.
- Regular super armor will prevent the caster from being interrupted by any regular means except for shock and stun.
- Complete super armor will prevent the caster from being interrupted no matter the effect induced to the caster while the animation is present. In previous patches, only Elite grade monsters had this sort of invulnerability, but with the boss system now implemented in New Origins, most bosses will react to shock even outside of groggy state.
If, during skill use, the user has been made unable to cast skills in some way (such as being inflicted with Sleep or Freeze), the skill may still take effect regardless if the user has been debuffed negatively.
Monsters can also be marked as Super Armored. This generally means they cannot be launched, flinched, or knocked down. A monster that has Super Armor property has (Elite) above their sprite, next to their name. Boss monsters are almost always Super Armored.