"How do I respec?" "Should I re-roll?"

"How do I respec? Should I re-roll?"

Hi all -- these are two common questions coming up in the General Chat, and thought I'd take a minute to explain.

So for those who are just getting used to the ability wheel, many are asking if they can "respec" and choose different abilities on the wheel. Or if they should "re-roll a new toon." The answer is "no" to both questions, but read on for the reasons why:

In general, the reason no respec or re-roll is ever needed is that it's easy to look in the wrong place to do the "re-speccing." The ability wheel is simply the pool of abilities (575 of them!) that every character can draw on. All characters, as they progress, will eventually unlock the entire wheel (pool) of abilities -- nothing you buy on the ability wheel is ever wasted. Re-rolling simply puts you back at ground zero, and there's generally no need to ever do this unless you want to try a different faction. (This is also the reason there's only 3 slots for alts.) AP earnings come fast in the game (you can even re-run missions if you want to go back and farm a few more AP), so it's easy to pick up new abilities on the wheel for your pool.

But here's the real key: if you really want to "re-spec" or "fix your build" the place to look is not to the wheel, but in your equipped (7 Active and 7 Passive) abilities: the Deck.

If you've determined that you need to equip abilities that work better together, or are not being effective in combat, take a look at your equipped Actives and Passives. The key to an effective deck is finding Actives that work well with your Passives. All Active abilities can generate conditions (e.g. "Impaired"). These conditions can be exploited by your passives to create a powerful 1-2 punch, a combo. When you are reviewing your deck, realize too that while your equipped Active abilities must match your equipped weapons, Passive abilities can be equipped from ANY weapon. This gives you a much larger pool of Passives to draw on for your deck, and also can result in some of the best builds in the game. As frosting on the cake, there's also a handy Search panel to the right of the wheel where you can look up conditions you'd like to exploit.

In summary, if you are having a problem with a build, most likely it's the abilities you've EQUIPPED that are causing the problem, not the pool of abilities you have available to draw upon.

With all that in mind, the way to respec is to "course correct" your deck. You can look at the starter decks in the panel to the left of the wheel and find one that's close to where you are and work towards it. Or you can use the deck recommendations in the forums and do the same. Finally, you can look through and research the abilities to find Passives that work with some of your better Actives and work towards getting those abilities; making your own build is the most fun, and is potentially the most powerful (you can also create sucky decks too, but that's the tradeoff of freedom). Remember that AP come fast and that no ability purchased on the wheel is wasted.

Eventually you will have multiple decks that serve different purposes (tank, dps, ranged, heal, aoe, single target, whatever). You'll start out with a single deck, but it will become necessary later in the game to be able to switch to different decks depending on the mob or situation. So start focused, then branch out. Think of the style/philosophy of play you want to work towards for a particular deck, then choose weapons and abilities that help you accomplish that goal.

For an excellent primer on the ability wheel, decks, weapons and combat, below are some recommended resources:
http://yokaiblog.wikidot.com/guides:build-mechanics
http://wordpress.tswguides.com/tsw-build-page/

Also, check out the Builds and Decks forum:
http://forums.thesecretworld.com/forumdisplay.php?f=12

Finally, you can also test out weapons and abilities in your faction's training facility. Any AP spent in the facility is not permanently used.

Feel free to ask more questions as they come up, and hope this helps!

An excellent post and I agree wholeheartedly.

If you've ever played Magic, think of your known abilities as your library, and your equipped abilities as your deck. You have to build different decks with different tricks and synergies to beat certain challengers.

So just mess around with your abilities and try crazy things.

Some foes pretty much require ranged DPS, some require lots of area-of-effect, attacks, some require you to have some self-heals, others need you to outlast their big attacks.

Keep exploring your options and you'll find something that works.

Cicileus

Sticky

Devs,

Please sticky this.
+1

Awesome post, thanks for helping us noobs.

At first I did panic about spending AP on the wheel, I wish the in-game tutorial would say at the start something along the lines "It is completely possible to unlock every single ability", I don't know why but I felt that the number of total obtainable APs was lower than required to open every single deck and ability, but after reading your post I'm even more excited about this game, gotta love the freedom to go from tank to dps to tank again when needed.

The problem with thinking about respec'ing is that you won't be sure to spec correctly the next time anyways. You're a new player so how can you know? Just play the game and learn

From when i asked, the following info i found very useful.. thanks to those guys again.

And finally..

Edit: Just in case this helps, where i've come so far has been based on fun and utility of the rotation. I haven't thought about configuring what i'm doing for group content yet.. the key point is, at one point, you know that adapting your deck for group content will likely be required, and have the knowledge to do this.

I was using blades/AR to initially start off with.. this i found very nice, as once you have the basic abilities in each of the 2 sections for each, you end up having a ranged AOE to pull, melle AOE to take them when they get close. Think zombies. Theres a single target consumer to help with the single mobs also. Critically with blades you have a shield/hot ability which ends up being used every/second pull.

I really enjoyed blades (and probably so the other melle weapons) as there is no cast time. Coming from mmo's, I found casting initially very clunky and it really coloured badly my view of the combat system. Once you get a feel for the systems through melle weapons in my opinion casting is so much better accepted. (ps. you can move while casting!)

After i had filled the inner rings for blades/AR. so happened that a QL3 blood thing dropped for me, so i choose to start down the blood weapons (as i also wanted to heal in group content). I was a bit stumped at first, but after looking and trying and looking again i now have a blood/blades deck that feels op and is very satisfying to play.

Also for new players, everyone gets a blue starter weapon at the store, so as soon as you end up in kingsmouth go purchase them all. Also, one of the vendors just north of the police station sells QL3 badge gear, these help make the game feel "easier" in a significant way.

I think people already understand the concept of learning all the skills and changing decks. The issue that people have is spending their pts in the beginning on a skill and not liking it and wanting to get another.

I know I can grind out more points but how do you get back to the training area to select a different weapon set?

The training area just lets you test out points on a different weapon without actually spending the AP. It's basically a "try before you buy" for new abilities.

There really should be a respec because having to grind out repeat missions is stupid and boring.

You may progress without redoing any mission. Just start to allocate feats to different place when you gain them.

However, when you are done all possible quests you are still hanging somewhere 50% of wheel completed so if you want to get that last 50% then there is only way to re-do the missions.