Welcome to the Warhammer Online Grab Bag, where your friendly neighborhood community manager will answer the most popular, and most interesting, questions in a new regular feature. Many things aren't yet certain, so try to be patient with us. Trust me - we're as eager as you are to see the features finalized, so that we can hear what you've got to say.

A: We've absolutely discussed and looked at non-combat abilities, but combat-based abilities are a notably higher priority. We'd certainly like to flesh out ability lists with non-combat / utility / "flavor" items, but in a world at war, keeping the player alive and taking down some other poor sod have to be our primary focuses for now.

A: Players will NOT be purchasing the same ability over and over and only getting rank 1, 2 and 3 versions of it. Each career will end up with around ~20 guaranteed unique actions between core and base abilities. After that, they can purchase additional supplemental abilities which will increase the player's total number of abilities by about 10-25%, depending on how you choose to spend your mastery points. Overall we expect most players to have somewhere in the mid to high 20's of action activates (this does not include Morale).

A: Don't take "cost" too literally - spending coin, investing time, and performing tasks are all "costs" of one type or another. As was mentioned previously, we have yet to determine the cost of re-specialization. For now, it's free in the beta so that we can get the basics of specialization smoothed out first.

A: When you increase your mastery, you'll “generally” see values increase, not time factors. In other words, the amount of hit points returned by a heal-over-time would increase, but the duration would likely remain the same. For effects like CC, it's not likely that you'll see direct increases to the time, but other aspects may increase (for example, a melee attack which stuns would keep the same stun duration, but the damage from the melee hit would keep on increasing). This is not to say we won't consider increasing duration values, but we are starting with other aspects of the abilities first.

A: Well, here's the thing: we're fully aware that someone, somewhere, will sit down and write up a multi-page dissertation with graphs and numbers to "prove" that one specific mastery layout is "the best", and word-of-mouth will result in lots of people using that layout (for a few weeks, anyway, until the process repeats again). It's simply human nature, and that's fine. The Careers and Combat team's goal, however, is to ensure that every mastery layout is viable and functional, and suited to someone's play style. Trying to fight against the players who are going to actively go looking for "cookie cutter" layouts is fruitless (and as vocal as they may be on forums, they're honestly the minority). Instead, we're simply making sure that every decision is usable, even if it's not optimal. We'll constantly be adjusting each of the lines from Beta until the game shuts down in 3011. Also, depending on the type of situation and the current stage of balance, different builds will be considered “cookie cutter” for min/max players. There is very little we can do about that; it's the inherit flaw in having specialization systems in general, and the primary reason we allow for respec.

A: You'll be getting base tactics and base morale abilities at specific ranks, along with your base actions. Those tactics and morale abilities will be given to everyone of each career, and your decision will be more based on which to use. Then, above and beyond those, there will also be supplemental tactics and morale abilities available from masteries, and you'll have to invest in the given mastery before they can be picked up. Also keep in mind the RvR tactics and Tome tactics are optional, so you get further choice with those as well.

A: Base abilities will be roughly the same for each career - around 20. We will add additional actions to the base if we feel it's necessary to make the class play well, but that is our starting number. Beyond those, every career will have the exact same amount of mastery and supplemental options available. After a career gets redesigned for specialization you should see 90% of the careers having a similar number of total abilities.

A: The supplemental abilities are exactly that, they supplement the core and base ability set, and are not meant as replacements for those abilities. If they were simply replacements, then they'd essentially be "Smash Rank 2", and that's no fun. =) The supplemental abilities from any given mastery will generally be things that help focus the career more towards the theme of that mastery, provide new tools relating to that mastery, or open up more options for the player. One thing to note is that you might get, say, a heal or a nuke that is a lot better then your base one. However, it may have a longer cool down timer, or require the target to be below 50% health, etc., so it doesn't just replace your defaults.

A: For now, you'll only gain them via increasing your rank. More than likely, you'll never get additional mastery points outside of leveling. RvR and Tome rewards have their own ways of increasing player power beyond masteries.

A: The system has been designed to allow for flat bonuses to mastery level or bonuses to individual ability levels via items and item set bonuses. How far we take this has yet to be determined.

A: No. If we hypothetically grant that you'd be able to increase your mastery level without investing points, you wouldn't gain access to supplemental abilities which would otherwise still be locked.

A: The masteries all focus around the question of, "how do you want to play this character?", and are meaningful and impactful decisions. The difference between using a sword, axe, or hammer is fairly cosmetic. An example in terms of masteries might be closer to "defensive abilities with a one-handed axe and a shield, versus offensive abilities with a great sword, versus positional attacks and debuffs with hammers".

A: The latter. You only need a single point to unlock an ability, and then it scales along with your rank and mastery.

A: The base abilities in a mastery are granted to you as your rank increases. The supplemental abilities that are available to you are based on your mastery level.

A: We're currently looking at not having any prerequisites other than the appropriate mastery level, but a cascading tree is always a possibility for the future. We want to see how players respond to these changes before developing any further adjustments to the system.

A: Every career has the exact same amount of mastery points (and similar amounts of abilities).

A: The supplemental abilities are currently a mix of actions, tactics, and morale. Remember tactics really are the major passive boosts in the game; you have the flexibility to adjust them on the fly instead of having to go respec your character to change them.

A: No; neither masteries nor supplemental abilities will fundamentally change your character's equipment options.

-Combat & Careers Team