Players building a first kit ยท levels 1-12
How Weapons Decide Your Skills
Skills belong to weapons rather than classes. Here is what each of the ten weapon families gives you, when it unlocks, and which combinations are illegal.
The weapon owns the skill list, not the class
The most common source of build confusion is the assumption that a class has a skill bar. It does not. Skills live on weapons, and your class only decides which weapons you are allowed to hold. A Seer with a Catalyst and a Seer with a Mace are drawing from two entirely separate lists that share nothing, and a Mercenary who swaps from Sword and Shield to the Hammer has changed which skills are available mid-fight.
That structure explains a rule the developers have stated directly: increased damage from weapon-specific skills and talents only takes effect while you are wielding the corresponding weapon. Put talent points into a Greatsword branch and then run a raid holding a polearm, and those points are inert. Nothing warns you in the moment, which is why so many players report a build that "does nothing" when the real problem is that the build is attached to a weapon sitting in the warehouse.
Ten weapon families exist, carrying 79 unique equippable skills between them. The distribution is not even, and knowing where the depth sits should influence which class you pick as much as any combat preference does.
Ten families, wildly uneven depth
The Staff is the deepest weapon in the game by a distance, with 22 equippable skills. The Catalyst follows at 13 and the Mace at 9. Then comes a middle band: the Bow at 7, Polearm and Shield at 6, and the Hammer, Dagger, Dual Blades and Greatsword at 5 each. Sword and Shield is the shallowest at 4.
Those counts add up to 81, but the true number of unique skills is 79, because Poison Crow Mark and Crow Storm are each counted twice; they appear on both the Dagger and Dual Blades. That overlap is the only one in the game, and it is why a Shadowstrix can move between its two weapons without relearning everything; two of its five options travel with it.
Depth is not the same as strength. Sword and Shield's four skills sit alongside an innate Block, and a shorter list means fewer options competing for space. What depth buys is reconfigurability: a Staff player can rebuild their kit for a different kind of fight without changing weapons, while a Sword and Shield player has far fewer levers to pull. Compare the lists side by side in the weapon and skill browser before committing levels to a class, because this is a difference you feel at level 10, not level 1.
The seventeen techniques that never take a slot
Alongside equippable skills, seventeen named weapon techniques are part of the weapon itself and never occupy a skill slot. They include Impalement, Power Hammer, Punishing Hammer, Flurry Strike, Bloody Blade Dance, Fang Rush, Psionic Orb, Opportunistic Thrust, Sprinting Slash, Pursuit, Sneak, Elemental Affinity, Stardust Energy, Rune Summon, Stacked Slash and Shooting. These are moves your weapon can already perform, and they cost you nothing to carry.
This matters when you are budgeting a kit. The Mercenary's Impalement is the payoff for building Blade Edge over five hits. That entire damage mechanic never competes for space. The Sorcerer's Elemental Affinity and Stardust Energy are what separate its two magic styles, and neither is a skill you equip. Reading a class as "only five skills" underrates it badly if you have not looked at what its techniques already cover.
Several weapons also carry a named innate action: Block on Sword and Shield, Assault Hammer on the Hammer, Shadow Wheel Slash on the Dagger, Pursuit Strike on Dual Blades, Rune: Heavy Strike on the Mace, Light Strike and Heavy Strike on the Greatsword, and Basic Attack with Charged Dash on Polearm and Shield. Those are the defaults the rest of your kit hangs off, so learn what your weapon already does before picking anything to add to it.
What unlocks when, class by class
Skills arrive on a fixed ladder tied to character level, and every class front-loads a usable set at level 1. The Mercenary starts with Hammer Dash, Hammer Spin, Shield Dash and Whirling Cut, then gains Skullcrusher and Stonebreaker Slash at 4, Earthshaker and Shield Slam at 7, and Warhammer Sling at 10. The Shadowstrix opens with Poison Crow Mark, Crow Storm, Flash Stride and Inspiring Impale, adds Spinning Slash and Shadow Strike at 4, Phantom Shift at 7 and Smoke Bomb at 10.
The Withered Knight begins with Radiant Retribution, Breakthrough Charge, Spear Barrage and Javelin Thrust, then picks up Breaker Shield Bash at 3, Parry and Rainbow Piercer at 4, Withering Mark and Sacred Bulwark at 7, and Thorn Guide and Intervene at 10. The Blackarrow has the sparsest ladder: Scattershot and Rapid Arrows at 1, Frostblight Bomb at 2, Sky Piercer at 5, Predator's Senses at 7, Impact Grenade at 9 and Shadow Step at 10. It also equips up to three arrow types, with Archer Arrows built for damage and Hunter Arrows for utility, and new special arrows unlock at levels 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 10 on top of that list.
The Sorcerer is the outlier. Eight skills arrive at level 1 alone: Meteor Charm, Star Shock, Rockblast, Fire Bolt, Deep Freeze, Thunderstorm Sigil, Windcraft and Phantom Step. Flameblade and Forbidden Gate follow at 2, Crystal Icebolt at 3, Meteor Impact, Thunderstrike and Shadow Veil at 4, and something new arrives at nearly every level up to Cryptic Ward at 12. The Seer runs two ladders in parallel: the Catalyst from Punishment Rune, Burst Rune, Wind Surge, Healing Art and Psionic Shield at 1 through to Stealth Rune at 10, and the Mace from Shapeshift, Thorn Sigil, Rune: Drain and Rune: Corruption at 1 through to Rune: Stun at 8.
Levels 4, 7 and 10 are where most classes visibly change shape, and those are not the levels that grant talent points. Plan around both ladders rather than one.
The only skills you cannot equip together
Exactly two mutually exclusive skill pairs exist in the whole game, and both belong to a Seer holding a Catalyst. Healing Rune cannot be equipped alongside Shelter Rune, and Healing Art cannot be equipped alongside Psionic Shield. Every other skill in every other list is free to combine with anything else on its weapon.
Read those pairs as design intent rather than an arbitrary restriction. Each one forces a choice between restoring health and preventing damage, which is the fundamental question a support player answers. It is also worth remembering that Reverent shields do not stack, so a Seer who takes the protective half of each pair still cannot solve a fight by layering the same shield twice.
The exclusion that catches far more players is not in the skill list at all; it sits in the talent trees, where Greatsword Specialization, Endless Flow and Polearm and Shield Specialization form a three-way exclusive choice for the Withered Knight. That is the concrete answer to "can I run both my weapons in one raid", and the talents and weapon branches guide covers what it costs you.
Charged skills and what they cost you
Nine skills are charged rather than instant: Crystal Icebolt, Windcraft, Eye of Insight, Shadow Step, Predator's Senses, Healing Rune, Healing Art, Psionic Shield and Death Ward. Six of those nine belong to the Sorcerer or the Seer, which is a fair summary of who pays the interruption tax in this game.
A charged skill is a commitment. You are stationary and visible while it resolves, and against another player that window is precisely what they are waiting for. The counterplay is not to avoid charged skills, since Healing Art and Psionic Shield are core Seer tools; it is to earn the window before you spend it, by breaking line of sight, by charging behind a teammate, or by using the space a stagger has just bought.
The Sorcerer gets one structural exemption worth knowing about: its skills can fast-cast without channelling when Energy is empty, and still recover Energy while doing it. That is an intentional option for the moment your resource bar runs dry, not a punishment. Deciding when a cast is worth committing to is really a question about stagger and interruption, and thinking about it that way is the fastest route to losing fewer casts.
Building a kit that agrees with itself
Once you accept that the weapon owns the skills, the build order writes itself: pick the class, pick the weapon you intend to hold in the raid, fill the skill list from that weapon, and only then spend talent points. Doing it in the other order is how people end up with eight talent points supporting a weapon they are not carrying.
Swapping weapons inside a fight is still fine, and Mercenary players do it constantly, closing distance with Sword and Shield before switching to the Hammer. What swapping does not do is make two sets of weapon-specific bonuses apply at once. If you plan to carry two weapons, expect one to be your build and the other to be a tool: a gap closer, a finisher or a way to keep pressure while a cooldown runs. Do not expect a second fully supported kit. The talent planner shows where a branch commits to one weapon, and that is usually where the real decision gets made.
The Seer's fork is the clearest example of the principle. A developer has stated that Mace and Catalyst sit in separate talent branches and cannot both be used within a single run, so a Seer picks one playstyle for the raid and takes the whole package with it. Treat that as the model for every class with two weapons, and verify the exceptions rather than assuming them.
Where to take this next
Open the weapon and skill browser, filter to the weapon you intend to carry, and write down which skills you will hold at levels 4, 7 and 10. That one list answers most of the questions people ask in chat, because it makes the actual competition for space visible instead of theoretical.
If you have not settled on a class yet, which class you should play first walks through all six with their weapons and unlock ladders. Once you have, take your eight talent points to the talent planner. Skills first, talents second, gear last: in that order the pieces agree with each other instead of quietly cancelling out.