Active Skills

Active skills are the casts the hero fires for you. They sit in the side columns of your class’s three skill trees; the nodes and their exact values at rank 1 and rank 20 live on the class pages:

• Berserker Skills
• Duelist Skills
• Sentinel Skills
• Monk Skills

Cost, cast time, and no cooldowns

Actives cost 20 of your class’s resource — Rage for the Berserker and Duelist, Valor for the Sentinel, Enlightenment for the Monk (Class Resources); the capstone buffs cost 40. Gear and a few passives cut the Monk’s costs. Casting pauses your attack timer: buffs take 1 second, debuffs 0.5 s, and damage skills and heals cast near-instantly in ~0.33 s.

Every debuff also lands a hit at 50% weapon damage (Taunt swings the shield) — the debuff is the point, the hit just keeps the cast from being dead time. Some actives have a condition of their own: Decapitate only fires on an enemy below 30% life, and the stun of Shield Charge and Staggering Blow can land at most once every 5 seconds.

There are no cooldowns — your resource, cast time and the trigger rule are the entire pacing.

The Cast Order

Every active switches on the moment you learn it, with a default rule that fits it:

Kind	Default rule
Buffs	Not on you — only when this skill’s buff isn’t already on you
Debuffs	Not on the enemy — only when this skill’s debuff isn’t on the enemy
Damage skills	Always — whenever the resource allows
Releasing Palm	Enemy DoT stacks at least 2
Decapitate	Enemy life below 30%
Renewal	Your life below 75%
Mercy	Your life below 50%

The Cast Order tab in the Skills panel (under the three tree tabs; on smaller screens the bar above them) lists one line per active, top to bottom; the ⚙ on an active in its tree opens its line. Pick a line to switch it off or to choose when it casts:

• Always — fire as soon as the resource allows.
• Not on you / Not on the enemy — only while its buff or debuff is not up.
• Enemy life below %, Your life below % — threshold rules.
• Rage / Valor / Enlightenment at least — wait until the bar holds that much (up to your maximum).
• Enemy DoT stacks at least — only while the enemy carries at least the set number of stacks (1–50). Every burn, poison and bleed application is its own stack and they all count together: 2 poisons + 1 bleed = 3.

Drag a line by its ⋮⋮ to move it (on a desktop also ▲ / ▼).

The list is strict: each tick the top line whose rule is met gets the resource — if it can’t pay yet, the lines below wait while it builds up. A line whose rule is not met (e.g. Not on you while its buff is up) lets the next one fire. Exactly one cast resolves per tick: casts are serialised, so the next skill only starts once the current one has finished. The resource is deducted the moment a cast begins, and a stunned hero starts no casts at all. Buffs and heals also cast while you wait for the next spawn, so leftover resource goes into them instead of fading; debuffs, damage actives and rules that read the enemy are skipped in that gap (without blocking a buff below them), and a buff mid-cast when the enemy dies still finishes. A newly learned active joins the list above your first Always line unless its own rule is Always (then it goes to the bottom), so a damage skill learned earlier can’t keep a buff, debuff or heal learned later from ever casting.

Full Cast Order

Settings → Character → Full Cast Order (this hero only, off until you turn it on) opens the list up:

• Up to 3 lines per active. Another line is an “or”: the same skill at a second place with other conditions — e.g. Bloodbath high up below 25% enemy life, and lower down while Bloodrush is on you. + Add line puts a new line at the bottom; Copy line, Delete line and Clear all are there too. An active without a line never casts; its ⚙ in the tree adds one.
• Up to 3 conditions per line, all of which must fit:
  • Your life below or above X%, or below Auto: the potion’s Auto line (the enemy’s worst hit + 2%, rounded up to the next 5%) plus one 5% step, so the heal comes first and the potion stays the backup.
  • Rage / Valor / Enlightenment at least.
  • A buff on you (or not on you) — any of your buffs, e.g. Bloodrush on you on a Bloodbath line.
  • DoT on you — a burn, poison or bleed.
  • Enemy life below or above X%.
  • Enemy is Common, Rare, Special or Boss (any mix; a dungeon boss counts as Boss).
  • A debuff on the enemy (or not on it) — e.g. Expose on the enemy on a Lacerate line.
  • Enemy DoT stacks at least.
  • Enemy hits for X%+ of your life — the worst hit the enemy panel shows.
• Save up per line: on (as always) the lines below wait while it saves up; off lets them cast in the meantime.

A removed condition or a deleted line leaves an Undo in its place until your next change. Turned off, the Full Cast Order’s extra lines and conditions pause (kept, not used): each active runs its top line with its first condition.

Rows, prerequisites, the rank cap and the hand requirements work exactly as for every node — see Skill Trees: rows unlock at hero level 1 / 5 / 10 / 20 / 30, rank 1 in the node above, per-node cap rank 20, maximum rank = hero level − node level + 1, and “+To Skills” gear pushes the effective rank past 20.

Rank scaling

Rank 1 is the skill’s base value; every rank after it adds the per-step amount, and later ranks add more. Magnitudes therefore ride the rank’s accumulated effect steps S(rank) rather than the raw rank — S(1) = 0, S(16) = 19, S(20) = 27. See Skill Trees for the full bracket table.

magnitude = base + S(rank) × perStep

Durations don’t scale with rank. Every buff lasts a flat 30 s at any rank, and so does Taunt — its Debuff missing rule casts it again whenever it runs out. Every other debuff holds until the enemy dies (the card says permanent): no timer, so a Debuff missing rule casts it once per enemy. Rank only raises the effect.

Worked example — Freezing Veins. It lands a 70% physical hit plus a share of your weapon’s damage as cold: 25% at rank 1, 55% at rank 20 (of the weapon’s card damage, times your Strength bonus) — plus a 10% chance to freeze that does not scale with rank. Your class page shows the same two endpoints for every active it owns.