Specialisation & Perks
The perks introduced in Shadowlands will be a great addition
to both character progression and combat in Anarchy Online.
They are basically stat modifications and special abilities
that will materialise both as "buffs" and special
attacks, and some of those special attacks should be executed
in strings between the different professions for maximum impact,
enhancing the tactical aspects of team combat.
The perks will come in several different lines. Some lines
will be profession specific, some will be specific to groups
of professions, and some will be general and for all to use.
Each character will gain the possibility to learn a new perk
every ten levels up to level 200. After that, in the Shadowlevels,
you'll be able to learn a new perk every level until the cap
of 220, making the grand total of 40 perks for a top level
character. All perks can be unlearned as well, so there is
ample room to experiment.
Examples:
One general perk line is the "Enhance Health" line.
This is a simple perk line that will give you more... that's
right, health!
The first "Enhance Health" perk will give you 40
more hit-points, the second will give you 80 more hit-points,
the third will give you 100 more hit-points etc. The values
that the perk buffs accumulate. Meaning that after training
all the perks in this line you will have 1500 extra hit points.
Permanent! No need to refresh any nanos, no need to get any
equipment to keep them there; they will be there until you
actively remove them.
"Shadowstalker" which is an adventurer only perk
line, is a bit more complex. This perk line has 6 perks in
it, and at level 20 you can train the first perk in the line.
You choose to train that perk, and you get an immediate upgrade:
+7 buff in concealment, +1 buff in duck, dodge, evade, agility
and a +2 increase to damage. If you train all the perks in
this line you will have the following buffs running all the
time as long as you don't decide to unlearn the perk line:
+90 buff in concealment, +10 buff in dodge, duck, evade, +25
buff in agility and +25 increase to damage.
But that's not by far the coolest stuff. When the entire
perk line is trained you have also acquired 3 new special
attacks. They are called, Shadow Stab (which was enabled by
training the second perk in the Shadowstalker line), Blade
of Night (which was enabled by training the fourth perk in
the Shadowstalker line) and Shadow Killer (which was enabled
by training the sixth and final perk in the Shadowstalker
line).
Shadow stab is a backstabbing-like attack. When executed
successfully you will do quite a lot of damage, but there
are requirements to using it. You need to face the back of
your opponent to get the max out of this special. The second
special is a sneak attack buff for the adventurer. The third
one, Shadow killer, is the most powerful. It will do a massive
amount of damage BUT... Yes, there is a ‘but’. Like
explained earlier, one of the goals of the perks is to provide
more varied gameplay and group tactics. In order to successfully
execute the Shadow Killer special attack, the following requirements
need to be met.
-
The adventurer executing the special needs to be behind
the target
-
The adventurer executing the special needs to have Blade
of Night running on himself
-
The target needs to have the DoT called ‘Chemical Blindness’
running. This is another special that the Doctor, Engineer
and the Trader get via the Alchemist perk line. Chemical
Blindness is a special ability that lowers the attack
rating of the afflicted target.
When all these requirements are present the Adventurer can
attack the target with the Shadow Killer. If successful...
well, the target will have a really bad day...
Other perks will have even more dependencies in order to
work effectively.
In short, there will be a huge variety of perks and effects
of perks, and options will be close to limitless.
Marius Enge
Designer
AO
Stratics Skills & Perks Database
The information on this page was provided
by Funcom on the official Anarchy
Online site.
| 
Stratics Central
