Skills

Skills in Ragnarok Online are special actions a player can perform depending on his/her Job Class. There are two types of skills: Active and Passive. Active skills can be manually activated by the player, where some of them remain active for a set period of time, others can be manually deactivated, and some are one-time-use skills that require manual activation each time the player desires to use them. Passive skills are always in effect, they do not need input from the player to provide its benefit as long as the player has learned those skills.

Active skills can be broken down into 3 sub-categories: "Offensive", "Supportive" and "Active". Offensive skills are those that inflict damage to their selected targets or in a wide area. Supportive skills are those that provide helpful effects to other players, like boosting their offensive and defensive capabilities. Plainly Active skills are those that do not fit in the two forementioned categories and only affect the player or a certain area, usually for a set period of time.

Skill Phases

The skill usage is performed through the following phases:

Initiation

Skill name appears above the character's head.

Cast Time

A gauge appears above the character's head. If there is no Cast Time it is then executed instantaneously.

Execution

Skill name appears above the character's head again and its effect is triggered.

Cast Delay

All skills are temporarily grayed out after execution, blocking their use. Most skills have this value.

Cooldown

Only the skill used is temporarily grayed out after its execution, blocking their use. Not all skills have this value.

Cast Delay and Cooldown start at the same time. No skill can be used if there is still Cast Delay, and any other skill can be used if only Cooldown remains.

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 Cast Time, the character cannot move, attack, or use other skills. If the character takes damage during Cast Time, the skill is canceled (exceptions: wearing a Phen Card or Bloody Butterfly Card, being Sacrificed by a Crusader/Paladin, 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. When the cast bar is completely green, Cast Time ends. Some skills do not have a cast bar, even though 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, with the remainder being VCT.

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

Calculation

Cast Time (seconds) = VCT + FCT

VCT (seconds) = BaseVCT × (1 − SQRT[{DEX × 2 + INT} ÷ 530]) × (1 − Sum_GearVCTReduc ÷ 100) × (1 − Sum_SkillVCTReduc ÷ 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_SkillVCTReduc = Sum of reductions for Variable Cast Time, like Suffragium, Magic Strings, Isilla Card effect or Kathrene Keyon Card.
• Sum_GearVCTReduc = Sum of reductions for Variable Cast Time from Gear/Cards, like Phen Card.
• Sum_FCT = Sum of all effects that directly subtract from Fixed Cast Time.
• Max_FCTReduc = Highest reduction modifier of Fixed Cast Time (for example: if you have gears that has 20% FCT reduction and 15% FCT reduction, only the 20% will be applied)

Modifiers for Variable Cast Time

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:

• INT 530
• DEX 265
• INT 170 and DEX 180
• INT 190 and DEX 170

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

Item/Skill	Max Modifier	Additional Notes
Magic Strings	Var	See skill description.
Suffragium	−20%	(SkillLv × 15)%
Bloody Butterfly Card	+30%	Accessory. Prevents interruption.
Phen Card	+25%	Accessory. Prevents interruption.
Tower Keeper Card	−5%	Headgear.
Dark Illusion Card	−10%	Headgear.
Kathryne Keyron Card	Var	Headgear. −UpgradeLv%
High Wizard Card	+100%	Headgear.

Notes

• Free Cast skill allows movement and attacking while casting.
• Phen Card and Bloody Butterfly Card 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.
• Although Bloody Butterfly Card adds 30% to VCT, the Mage Card Set substracts it by 15%, meaning that it would only be an end result of +15% vs. the Phen'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

Cooldown

During Cooldown (or Skill Re-use 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.

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

Skill Reset

See Stats & Skill Reset System

Notes

• Even after doing a skill reset, a character cannot put 1st class skill points into 2nd 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.

See Also

• Guild Skills
• Monster Exclusive Skills
• Template:Skill Info