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.

In general, Rogues need skills in this order of importance: Search, Disable Device, Open Lock, UMD, and Spot. Bards need Perform and Use Magic Device, spellcasters need Concentration unless they plan on using Quicken Spell at all times, melee characters need Jump, tanks need Intimidate, everyone benefits from Balance, and nobody needs Swim, Heal and Repair.

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).  While high Balance scores does not prevent those threats from happening, a high Balance score will allow a character to recover quickly and to not lie flat on the floor for too long.


 * Concentration (Con): Naturally pretty important for primary spellcasters, who will often need to cast with a monster in their face unless they plan on using Quicken Spell, in which case it may be overkill. 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 usually have other things to do. However, for a monk, Concentration is the most important skill, as it determines not only the stable ki level, but also how quickly it decays.


 * Haggle (Cha): Allows you to negotiate better prices with vendors. Each point in Haggle will increase the price of the items you sell by 0.25%. It's not a high priority skill but it's a nice choice if you happen to have leftover points. Some players build a character, called a hagglebot, whose sole purpose is to buy and sell items for the players therefore maximizing his profits (human bards are well-equipped for this). Some of these players even offer this service to other, like Khyber's Qwijymart.


 * Hide (Dex): Hypothetically, stealth would be important for scouting ahead but scouting is relatively unimportant in DDO since it slows down questing and is boring to those who cannot sneak. Hide (along with Move Silently (see below)) may be useful in a dedicated group willing to let the rogue sneak (especially if he's built as an assassin) or in dedicated groups or guilds specialized in stealth. However, it's a powerful tool if used properly in a group that allows you to use it, or when soloing.


 * 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.  Therefore, having a good Jump skill is fairly important, although the Jump spell may help solving problematically low Jump scores at higher levels. Since (unlike many other fantasy MMORPGs) a player cannot walk through a monster, Jump can be an important escape for someone who gets surrounded. It's also particularly useful for spellcasters who want to cast while moving. While the character is slowed down if casting a spell while moving, casting in mid-air does not impose said speed penalty.


 * Listen (Wis): A very low priority skill. It can used to sometimes spot enemies but that rarely comes to use.


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


 * Spot (Wis): Spot might be useful for detecting Sneaking or Invisible enemies more quickly, but its primary usage is to detect traps and secret doors. The game design has little random threat placement. In most quests traps and secret passages are always in the same position each time you run a dungeon, regardless of difficulty settings, but it's obviously a daunting task to remember the exact location of everything. If some experienced players are part of the party and played the mission before, they may point out traps before a dedicated rogue ever gets to spot them. Yet, if you play in a dedicated group of new players, in a no spoiler group or guild, if you're unsure to remember the location of every traps and secret door, or if you run a Quest with random trap placement, Spot becomes a far more important skill.


 * 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 (see Underwater Action) which would otherwise be the highest advantage of a high Swim score. A high Swim score also increases Swim speed but that rarely comes into action.


 * Tumble (Dex): While visually fun, this skill offers very little to most players. The first advantage is to reduce falling damage but that is often taken care of by Featherfalling items. The second advantage is to allow greater mobility while shield blocking, and is the only real use for the skill. Many tanks try to toss a point or two in it in order to be able to tumble while shield blocking.


 * Use Magic Device (Cha): An incredibly useful skill if the player can reach high scores, it allows the character to use Heal (for fleshies) or Reconstruct scrolls (for warforged) to self-heal himself or herself. Other useful items to use via UMD are Raise Dead scrolls, Resurrection scrolls, Fire Shield scrolls, Restoration scrolls and Stoneskin wands. It can also be used to circumvent alignment restrictions and race restrictions.

Active skills

 * Bluff (Cha): Unless a character also has Improved Feint, Bluff is essentially a useless skill because it requires the player to stand still and not attack for a short period of time. The DPS loss suffered during that time is too big for it to be recovered any amount of sneak attack damage. Improved Feint may change that, for some characters, but the rogue characters that benefit from Bluff are the exceptions rather than the rule. Bluff can also be used to draw a single monster away from a group before the party has engaged the group, thereby allowing ambushes by players rather than of players. This aspect makes it far more useful for soloing players than those who play in groups.


 * Diplomacy (Cha): Diplomacy is used to shed aggro to a nearby ally. While potentially useful, it's a tool to be used carefully as it can be worse, sometimes, to send the aggro to an ally than to keep it on yourself. Diplomacy is particularly useful to squishy characters.


 * Disable Device (Int): This is a skill often highly valued by rogues. While rogues bring more to the party than simply their ability to disarm traps, it's an ability that often get them into groups and thus one they want to do well. To disarm a trap you need good levels of both Search and Disable. It is debatable as to which is the most important, since without Search you can't find the box in the first place, but should you fail your Disable by more than 5 the trap box explodes, injuring you and making that trap permanently un-disarmable.


 * Heal (Wis): A rather unimportant skill. Carrying around a healing kit on the off chance of stabilizing an incapacitated ally is rarely worth the inventory slot as it's a rare occurrence and that a single Cure Light Wounds spell (from a cleric, paladin, ranger, bard, or rogue with wand - or even an Aid clicky) is better than the Heal skill. Heal also increases the amount of hit points regained by resting but the difference is only of a potion or two, which are quite cheap. You will rarely need to rest for hit points, if ever, unless the mission has already gone badly wrong. Clerics and Favored Souls will simply heal everyone before resting to refill spell points, and melee characters may find themselves resting only to refill "daily" usages of some powers. Soloing characters may find Heal useful, but even there, putting the skill points in something else and getting an Owl's Wisdom clicky, combined with a Sustenance item, would be better.


 * Intimidate (Cha): The art of holding aggro with Intimidate is often known as intimitanking and can be quite useful if used to mitigate the damage taken by the party. High AC characters (especially those wearing a shield) will make of this skill a priority, but other characters will often not bother.


 * 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 Dexterity 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): This skill opens up to the Bard new songs (which depend on the number of ranks in the skill, NOT the total mod), and is a must for all bards. Without having a sufficient amount of ranks in Perform, a bard cannot use some of his songs. This skill sets the DC for resisting the Bard's songs like Fascinate.


 * Repair (Int): Identical to Heal, but applying only to warforged. It's a weak skill and very few will bother with it. The only exception are the wizards who have more skill points than they can usually find use for, and therefore may toss a few points in Repair.


 * Search (Int): This is a skill often highly valued by rogues as it is required to find and disable traps. While rogues bring more to the party than simply their ability to disarm traps, it's an ability that often get them into groups and thus one they want to do well. To disarm a trap you need good levels of both Search and Disable. It can also be used to find secret doors but the spell Detect Secret Doors usually covers that more effectively as it does not require an high Spot score and does not require anyone to stop moving and actively Search.