Skill usefulness

Which skills will actually be useful in DDO, and which are just "roleplaying flavor"? Here are brief comments on how often you can actually use each skill, and how important it is to succeed. Some of these tips are based on only a short playtest of the class, so improvements are needed.

In general, Rogues need skills in this order of importance: Disable Device, Search, Open Lock, Hide, Move Silently, Spot, Listen (UMD omitted from that list, although it can be good). Bards need Perform and UMD, spellcasters need Concentration, light-warriors need Jump, Warforged need Repair, and nobody needs Swim.

=Passive skills=


 * Balance (Dex): Being knocked down is a common threat for melee fighters. Hobgoblin warriors like to trip, a giant's stomp is a damaging AoE knockdown, and all dogs and wolves have good trip skills (augmented by grease-shooters, on Iron Defenders).  In theory, Balance would be a useful counter to these threats.  But in-game testing has shown little benefit so far, either towards avoiding the knockdown, or recovering faster.


 * Concentration (Con): Naturally pretty important for primary spellcasters, who will often need to cast with a monster in their face. Rangers and Paladins, however, have few good spells compared to their fighting skills, and will mainly use magic for pre-fight buffs or post-combat recovery.  During battle, they have other things to do.


 * Haggle (Cha): Allows you to negotiate better prices with vendors. This seems to give a benefit of less than 10%- sometimes that's enough to make it worthwhile to assign the best Haggler to pick up consumables for everyone, but usually not. A spellcaster who is going to make a big purchase can use Eagle's Splendor for a temporary 2 point Haggle boost.  Note that there is a class-based enhancement called "Price Warfare" which temporarily boosts the Haggle of an ally.  It does not seem popular, compared to the other important enhancements.

Hypothetically, stealth would be important for scouting ahead, but scouting is relatively unimportant in DDO, as detailed under the Spot skill. Recent software updates have caused stealth mode to be lost whenever an assortment of common actions are performed (almost anything except walking and melee attacks). In some ways this was more realistic, because opening a big mechanical gate should be noisy, but overall it is just an annoyance for rogues, as they must repeatedly re-activate stealth mode. (For Invisibility magic, it is more damaging, because the spell cannot be re-cast for free). Note that common monsters such as spiders and undead are immune to stealth. Some enemy casters have Detect Invisibilty or Glitterdust magic. DDO (like most games) makes Hide more powerful than PnP, because you can do it with virtually no cover of any kind. Instead there is a quite forgiving "brightness meter" drawn next to your character, displaying more eyeballs if he is easier to see.
 * Hide (Dex): A rogue skill of medium importance. It only works well when combined with Move Silently, so you probably want to advance them together and consider it as a "Stealth Skill" which costs double points.  Stealth allows you to avoid the attention of some monsters.  It is useful for surviving fights (so long as your party doesn't mind a minimal contribution from you... which they might not, if your damage contribution isn't worth the healing you might need).  It can be useful in the occasional "SoulStone" run, when a Major Party Wipe has left dead players guarded by vicious monsters- a risky way for a rogue to preserve the XP of his fellows, by retrieving them to a shrine.

When it comes time for a weak, clumsy spellcaster to make an important jump over bubbling lava, consider Bull's Strength and Jump magic to help, and remove any armor or shield (particularly important for clerics). Also remember to continue pushing the move foward key ("W"), as even if you don't make the jump with your feet, you may catch the wall with your hands. (First, of course, consider if you even need to jump, as it might turn out to be a dead-end that one or two strong characters can explore on their own)
 * Jump (Str): As expected from a video game, Jump is more helpful than in PnP. Simple tools to help a clumsy character move through a dungeon are not present in DDO.  You cannot bring ropes, you can't cast Spider Climb or Levitate, and you can't even stand on the dwarf's shoulders.  There is also no climbing of walls higher than your outstretched fingertips, so Jump is your primary way to move upward.  There are Jump boosting temporary spells, but they seem to have minor effect.  Melee characters may also enjoy a high Jump.  Since (unlike many other fantasy MMORPGs) a player cannot walk through a monster, Jump can be an important escape for someone who gets surrounded.  A light-armored barbarian or rogue with high jump can leap right over monsters, getting behind them for a +4 rear-facing bonus.


 * Listen (Wis): A very low priority skill, for the reasons mentioned in Spot. It seems even less useful than spot.  You occasionally get a narrated warning that monsters lurk behind some doorway, which is hardly a surprise given the game style.


 * Move Silently (Dex): Medium-low priority, as described under Hide.


 * Spot (Wis): A low-priority skill, given the game design which has no random threat placement. Spot is slightly useful for detecting Sneaking or Invisible enemies more quickly, but the primary usage of detecting traps, ambushes, and secret doors is not needed.  First, all such threats are always in exactly the same position each time you run a quest, regardless of difficulty settings.  Generally, at least one member of the party will have either played that mission before (or downloaded a map from the web).  He will be pointing out traps before the rogue ever gets to spot them.  It seems likely that future DDO changes will partially randomize trap placement, to make Spot more valuable.  Also, DDO maps show the positions of secret rooms before you discover them, further obviating Spot.


 * Swim (Str): Probably the single most-useless skill in the game, considering that as early as level 3 you may find a magic item enabling infinite water-breathing. Only if those items are nerfed (in availability or power) would Swim become at all needed.  Poor swimmers who lack the item may prep for tough swims by removing armor and shield and boosting strength.  Also, sending a good swimmer through first to find the exact pathway will help too.  Warforged recieve double time spent underwater before taking drowning damage, which cancels out the non-removability of their armor (but does not make them feel like an actual magical Construct).


 * Tumble (Dex): Tumbling is fun, and all high-dexerity characters will probably put a few points in for testing, but it often seems of little importance. Strangly, a high-dexterity barbarian in light armor is more likely to avoid a thrown boulder by shield-blocking or strafe-running out of the way, rather than going into a tumble.  In PnP, tumble checks would allow you to pass over an enemy's head, which in DDO is accomplished just by the Jump skill.  It is also unknown whether Tumble ranks increase the AC bonus of Defensive Fighting stance, as they do in PnP.

Note that DDO does not allow the "class dipping" technique to gain usage of wands. Some PnP versions allowed a 9th level fighter to multiclass into cleric for one level, and then be able to fully operate all Cure Serious wands he found on his adventures. DDO does not allow a spellcaster to trigger a wand unless he is of high enough level to cast the spell (at the level it was stored in the wand). Thus UMD is more valuable in that regard.
 * Use Magic Device (Cha): For a time, this was the most valuable skill in DDO, as it acted as a minimum threshold to use an item, rather than a per-activation skill roll. In combination with the hilariously high availability of wands (among other magic items), it was nearly a must-have skill.  But more recent updates have added a failure chance to UMD, weakening it.

=Active skills= The designers are tweaking around the difficulty settings of traps. For a while, it seemed like only a rogue who had placed max points in Disable could beat a trap in a dungeon matching his level, but they may have easied up a bit now. Nonetheless, Disable skill is important, as it is the best way for a rogue to help the party. If you are concerned that a Disable check might fail, consider buffs. Fox's Cleverness, Song of Competence, Prayer, and Rogue-Action-Boost:Skills can all help prevent that critical critical failure.
 * Bluff (Cha): Bluffable peaceful NPCs are very rare, and the ability to open an enemy up to a sneak attack is little needed, considering that the rogue's sneak attacks bonus is already very easy use. Unlike PnP, there is no requirement that the enemy be flat-footed, unaware of the attacker, or even not looking directly at the attacker.  As long as the enemy is not targetting you personally to attack, you get a sneak bonus on every swing.
 * Diplomacy (Cha): For a while it was popular for an almost mythic ability to increase the value of items inside an unopened chest, in addition to raising the worth of quest rewards given by an NPC. Those capabilities were always uncertain, and seem to have been nerfed.  In-battle diplomacy to "de-aggro" yourself seems minorly useful, and not only because some categories of monsters are completely immune to charisma skills.
 * Disable Device (Int): This is the single most valued skill on a rogue. Disarming traps is the #1 reason rogues are invited to parties.  To disarm a trap you need good levels of both Search and Disable, and Disable is more important because although you can repeat Search rolls as long as needed, a bad Disable roll will injure you with a firey explosion, and make that trap permanently un-disarmable.  Such a failure might even force the whole team to give up on a mission- or to jump through an active trap to their bloody deaths.

However, if things have gone badly and you need to rest for hitpoints, then try to gather the whole party around you first, or at least clerics and anyone else with high wisdom, as nearby Heal skills add to your recovery. It is traditional for a person who has been raised at a shrine to also rest there, before clerics or potions restore the rest of his hitpoints.
 * Heal (Wis): A rather unimportant skill. More valuable to fighters who wish to solo missions and yet conserve money on healing potions.  Carrying around a healing kit on the off chance of reviving someone is rarely worth the inventory slot.  A single cure-light wounds spell (from a cleric, paladin, ranger, bard, or rogue with wand) is better than Heal.  Heal also increases the amount of hitpoints regained by resting.  After passing level 3, you rarely need to rest for hitpoints unless the mission has already gone badly wrong.  Clerics will simply heal everyone before resting to refill spellpoints, and fighters may find themselves resting only to refill "daily" usages of some powers.


 * Intimidate (Cha): Intimidate has not been particularly useful so far, but recent changes have buffed it into an AoE taunt, so that might change.  Also note that barbarians can get an enhancement so successful intimidate debuffs enemies with a Shaken effect.  Generally, it seems good players can manage aggro well enough by making attacks, without needing to use taunting.


 * Open Lock (Dex): A medium-importance rogue skill. Only rarely is lockpicking needed to complete a mission.  More often, it opens up more monsters, an inexpensive bonus treasure, or (best of all) an extra rest shrine.  Sometimes it provides a great treasure, however (as in the Duality mission).  Lockpicking is easier than disabling traps, because there is no explosion risk, and most rogues have higher dexerity than intelligence.  It is plausible for a person with only 1 or 2 levels of rogue to focus on Open Lock and defeat most locks you'll find, because unlike Disable Device, it doesn't require a Search check first to even start.


 * Perform (Cha): A high-importance bard skill. However, depending on your access to magic items, UMD is also tempting for a bard.


 * Repair (Int): Identical to Heal, but applying only to Warforged.  But, Warforged have less healing available from clerics, so it is more important for them to recover hitpoints at rest shrines.  A Warforged going to rest should ask high-Repair or high-intelligence characters to stand next to him, for a moderate hp boost.


 * Search (Int): A medium importance rogue skill. It is only rarely that a secret door is mandatory for mission success.  More often, they conceal a dangerous monster, a treasure, or a rest shrine.  Search is a prerequisite for Disabling a trap, as first you must locate the control box linked to the trap.  It is reasonable for a character with only 1-2 levels of rogue to specialize in Search and be able to find secret doors, but you won't also be able to get substantial Disable Device.  A few dungeons have large numbers of secret doors hiding treasure, allowing a party with a good searcher to essentially farm Elite loot.  (No, I won't tell you which ones)