Funcom has completely done away with the traditional MMO system of player classes and levels in The Secret World. The team believes that a traditional leveling system and player classes tend to restrict the way players are able to enjoy MMO's. Players are forced to choose a set of abilities without ever actually playing the game and learning which abilities they would like to use. In place of the normal systems, Funcom has designed a brand new way for players to build the perfect character for them, using Decks.
In the Secret World, Decks work very simply although it may seem complex at first glance. There are over 500 hundred total abilities in Ability Wheel and players can actually learn any of these abilities that they want. The system is designed to offer immense depth and flexibility when creating your character, ideally allowing you to craft the perfect class for your style.
To do this, players create a Deck; each Deck contains passive abilities and active abilities, which together make a build for your character. To provide a little guidance, however, Funcom is putting together Deck templates which provide a sample set of passive and active skills that will suit a particularly play style. Players get to make the choice if they want to play with that build, if they want to tweak it to fit their needs or if they want to completely start from scratch.
To get an idea of the Deck system, here is a look at the Deck template for the Illuminati Witch Hunter:
Focusing on big damage spikes through critical hits, the Witch Hunter is a single target killing machine, shooting his enemies with pistols from range and smashing them in the face with a big hammer when up close.
Sample abilities:
Actives
- (Pistols) Shoot to Kill – A short channel Focus pistol attack that deals damage every 0.25s for 1s. Generates 1 Pistol Focus.
- (Pistols) Gun Ho – A three second channelled pistol attack that deals damage every 0.3s. The first three ticks deal normal damage, the next three do double damage, the next three do double damage in an AoE, and the last tick does big damage to the initial target.
- (Pistols) Call Your Shots – A team-wide critical hit aura.
- (Hammers) No Quarter – A Blast-category hammer attack that consumes all Hammer Momentum for big damage. If this ability is used after killing an opponent, it is guaranteed to score a critically hit.
Passives
- (Pistols) Give and Take – Whenever you critically hit an enemy you gain a HoT.
- (Elementalism) Critical Spark – All your critical hits add to a counter. When the counter reaches 4, your next ability fires an additional hit for high damage.
- (Pistols) Twofer – Every time you critically hit your target, you deal an extra hit.
- (Pistols) Stack ‘em High – Critical hits stack a critical hit buff.
- (Pistols) Focused Assault – All your Focus-category attacks have a 5% increased critical hit chance.
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