Returning to game, confused about skills and skill tree.

[Szalvias]

I am just recently returning to the game after a hiatus to take care of irl things. I login to my assassin, and there is a whole new skill tree that seems to make it difficult to find things.

What i mean is this: I'm having to relearn how to play this since I've been away a long time. I notice that when I use certain abilities like decoy, for example, and I counter an attack with it successfully, my skills change on the 1-4 bar. I don't have time to read tooltips in combat, so I look at this new and confusing skill tree to see what skills those are, but there is no way to sort it and no meaningful organization that lets me tell what abilities I'm going to have available after switching to a certain stance.

Does anyone know how to figure this out? I mean certainly there is a simpler way than reading all the tooltips of every form of every ability until I find something that seems like what those skills may be that have replaced other skills.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Unya]

When I was new to the game, a big thing that helped me learn the situational button presses was going thru the skill menu. There at the bottom right I believe is an option called "View Icon." If you click this, you can mouse over and see a list of every possible skill that can appear on each button based on what skills you currently have.  It's a good way to see those options that only pop up for a split second.

 

As for how to spec your skills since the update...I found this really confusing at first too. Before you had to go down trees. Now, you select an element (for Sin I believe it is shadow or lightning there on the top left). From there you can further alter "trainable skills." Where you see a skill icon, out to the right side of it, you will see descriptions of the different options. There is usually a short description giving you a brief idea of how it will modify the skill (i.e. Increase damage, AoE), but yes, you will need to mouse over them to read more details. Simply click whichever one suits your style best and Apply the changes. Hongmoon points are no longer needed, and as always, you can reset these skills at any time out of combat. If there is a red book icon, that simply means you have a Hongmoon Skillbook you can use to unlock further modifiers for that move, but the basic version of that skill can still be used.

 

It really shouldn't take much time to look at each skill and see what sounds good to you. Try it out and change it if necessary. Once you find what works, you'll probably stick with it for a long time and won't need to keep rereading skill descriptions.

[Szalvias]

Thanks! This helped a lot. The "view icon" button is very useful for me; it isn't very descriptive so I didn't expect that useful little window to pop up. I still liked the old one better, but with your advice I think I can get used to it.

[Shuchin]

Also have a look at the Hongmoon training room. The skill tutorials there are really basic, so ideal for a new player or one who took a break so long that they feel they forgot everything. :)

[Ccallista]

That's good to know... thank you! Been trying to find answers. So .. once you set your skills, you can reset them? How do you reset the skills?

[Unya]

Press K to bring up your Skillbook (Martial Tome). The left side allows you to select an element and the boxes out to the right side of each skill icon in the middle allow you to customize the specific attributes of each skill. Left click to select what you like, then press Apply at the bottom. Skills can be set any time you want, as often as you want, as long as you are out of combat.

 

* You will need to have learned about the Skillbook from Old Man Cho by following the storyline (around level 17 probably).

* You will gain access to more skills as you level up.