Skills

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Overview

Skills are an essential part of Ragnarok Online. They are the abilities that adventurers use to help their allies, harm monsters, and other actions. All skills can be broken into two categories: active and passive.

Active abilities are ones that the adventurer has to manually use, such as an attack or a spell. There are different kinds of active skills, as well: offensive skills, which focus on dealing damage; support skills, which aid both the adventurer and their friends; plainly active skills are ones that don't quite fit into the other two categories and typically affect either the adventurer or a certain area for a period of time.

Passive skills are ones that, once learned, they always provide benefit to the adventurer. Typically these are skills that provide boosts, such as increased SP regen or increased move speed, and similar functions.

Skill Stages

Every active skill goes through a specific set of stages upon activation:

  • Initiation - The skill name appears over the adventurer's head.
  • Cast Time - If a skill has a cast time, a gauge will appear and fill up as the casting time progresses. If the skill is instantaneous, the gauge will not appear as it fills up instantaneously.
  • Execution - As the skill's effect is triggered, its name appears over the adventurer's head again.
  • Cast Delay - All skills on the action bars are grayed out temporarily once the skill is executed, preventing the adventurer from using it or other skills. Most skills have this stage and with varying lengths of time before skills can become usable once again.
  • Cooldown - This effect happens at the same time as cast delay. If a skill has a cooldown, only it will be grayed out on the action bar and be unusable for the duration of the cooldown. Any other skill is available to use once the cast delay is completed (unless that skill is also in cooldown).

Initiation

This phase occurs when the character uses the skill. SP Cost and other requirements are checked, but do not take effect. If the character cannot fulfill the SP Cost or the other requirements, the skill will not activate.

Cast Time

During this stage, the character cannot move, attack, or use other skills. If the character takes damage during cast time, the skill is canceled. There are exceptions to this, such as wearing an item that prevents skills from being disrupted, like a Phen Card or a Bloody Butterfly Card, being Sacrificed by a Crusader/Paladin/Royal Guard, or while casting certain skills. If a skill has no base cast time or modifiers reduce the effective cast time to 0 or less, no cast gauge appears and this phase is skipped entirely.

Cast time is indicated by a "progress gauge" above the character's head, sometimes called "cast bar". The gauge starts out black and is filled with green as cast time proceeds. Cast time ends when the bar becomes completely green. Some skills do not have such a bar even if they have a casting time, such as Bowling Bash and Brandish Spear.

Cast time is composed of "Variable Cast Time" (VCT) and "Fixed Cast Time" (FCT). As the names may imply, VCT depends on the stats and gear of the caster, while FCT is constant for a given skill. A small number of effects can reduce FCT. Effects which reduce FCT by a percentage do not stack; effects which reduce FCT by a set amount do stack and are applied before percentage modifiers. For most skills, FCT is 20% of the total cast time and the remainder is VCT.

VCT is reduced by DEX and INT at half the amount.

Calculation

Cast Time (seconds) = VCT + FCT
VCT (seconds) = BaseVCT × (1 − SQRT[{DEX × 2 + INT} ÷ 530]) × (1 − Sum_VCTReduc ÷ 100)
FCT (seconds) = (BaseFCT - Sum_FCT) × (1 − Max_FCTReduc ÷ 100)
  • BaseVCT = Base Variable Cast Time of a skill.
  • BaseFCT = Base Fixed Cast Time of a skill.
  • Sum_VCTReduc = Sum of reductions for Variable Cast Time, like Suffragium, Magic Strings, an Isilla Card or a Kathrene Keyon Card.
  • Sum_FCT = Sum of all effects that directly subtract from Fixed Cast Time (or add to it, like Howling of Mandragora).
  • Max_FCTReduc = Highest reduction modifier of Fixed Cast Time (for example: if both Sacrament (50%) and Radius (20%) are active, only Sacrament will work)

To reduce all VCT with stats, a character need a combination of DEX and INT so DEX ×2 and INT equal at least 530 ((DEX × 2 + INT) = 530).

Some examples how all VCT could be reduced:

Cast time is only calculated once and ignores changes to the modifiers during casting. This means it is possible to start casting and equip an accessory compounded with a Phen Card afterwards to get the anti-interruption effect for most of the casting without the VCT increase.

Notes

  • Free Cast skill allows movement and attacking while casting.
  • Phen Cards and Bloody Butterfly Cards both allow taking damage without being interrupted, except during War of Emperium.
  • Sacrifice skill allows the target to take damage without being interrupted.
  • Certain skills cannot be interrupted. Generally those skills are intended to be used by classes on the front lines.

Modifiers

Item/Skill Max Modifier Additional Notes
Bloody Butterfly Card +30% Accessory. Prevents interruption.
Magic Strings Var See skill description.
Phen Card +25% Accessory. Prevents interruption.
Suffragium −45% (SkillLv × 15)%
Tower Keeper Card −5% Headgear.
Kathryne Keyron Card Var Headgear. −UpgradeLv%
Orleans's Gown +15% Prevents interruption.
Foresight −50% For the next five skills.
  • Although the Bloody Butterfly Card adds 30% to VCT, the Card Set reduces it by 15%, meaning that it would only be an end result of +15% vs. the Phen Card's +25%.
  • Magic Strings and Foresight are treated as separate factors in the calculation; they are not added to the other modifiers.

Execution

SP Cost and other requirements are checked again. If the character can fulfill all requirements, they are applied and the skill is triggered. Otherwise nothing happens. If the character is inside a Chat Room, the costs are applied as usual, but the skill is not triggered.

Cast Delay

During cast delay (or global skill delay or after-cast delay), the character can move and attack freely, but cannot use skills. There is no visible indication of cast delay except the grayed out skill icons of all skills in the hotkey bar.

Calculation

Cast Delay (seconds) = BaseDelay × (1 − Sum_DelReduc ÷ 100)
  • BaseDelay = Base Cast Delay of a skill.
  • Sum_DelReduc = Sum of reductions for Cast Delay.

Modifiers

Item/Skill Max Modifier Additional Notes
Magic Strings Var See skill description.
Kiel-D-01 Card −30% Headgear.
Expert Ring −5%
Tae Goo Lyeon −20% If refined to +9.
Thorn Staff of Darkness Var Every 2 upgrades -3%.

Cooldown

During cooldown (or skill reuse delay), the character can move and attack freely, but cannot use the same skill again. There is no visible indication of cooldown except the grayed out skill icon of the just used skill in the Hotkey bar. There is no known way to reduce cooldown.

Almost all 1st and 2nd Class skills have no cooldown.

Skill Reset

A character's skills can be reset in a few ways:

  • Rebirthing to prepare for transcendent classes (can only done once, and does not apply to classes that cannot transcend).
  • The Hypnotist NPC in Prontera (146, 232) will currently reset a character's skills for free, provided they are base level 99 or below.
  • A Neuralizer (Kafra Shop item) will reset a character's skills.
  • An event NPC called Mesmerizer will reset both stats and skills (only put in the game in certain situations). Sometimes other NPCs are put in that offer the same reset methods.

Notes

  • Even after doing a skill reset, a character cannot put 1st class skill points into 2nd class skills, or 2nd class skill points into 3rd class skills. The game will force the character to put all of their 1st class skill points into 1st class skills before the character is able to acquire 2nd class skill points and so on.
  • If a character promoted below the maximum Job Level, they will never be able to recover the lost points. Thus, it is always recommended to reach the max Job Level before promoting (although some players may choose to promote early before transcending as all stats and skills are reset anyway). For example:
    • If an Acolyte promoted to Priest at Job Level 45 instead of Job Level 50, they will still only get 44 skill points (instead of 49) out of the Acolyte skill points after doing a skill reset.
    • If a High Priest promotes to Arch Bishop at Job Level 67 instead of Job Level 70, they will still only get 66 skill points (instead of 69) out of the High Priest skill points after doing a skill reset.