The Secret World Weapon Synergy and Build Guide

The Secret World Weapon Synergy and Build Guide by Seki

Go to the table for the primary weapon you are interested in. The column at the far left of the table will list the States, Triggers, and Subtypes associated with the primary weapon that can be in common with the States, Triggers, and Subtypes associated with the given secondary weapons listed to the right of the primary weapon. The columns in each table are arranged approximately in order of decreasing synergy with the selected primary weapon.

In the Hammers Table, it shows Hammers have a lot of overlapping synergies with Shotguns (Weaken, Blast, and Strike), where as Hammers have one overlapping synergy with Blood Magic (Impair).

There are some synergies not shown (for example between healing types, for summons etc…)

The more synergies and kinds of synergies, the more ranges, and the more trinity types, the greater the combinations potential diversity.

The basis for the chart is Blog: Lead Designer: Martin Bruusgaard Explains Character Development

Below is a Master Table. I think it is less convenient to use than the tables above, but it may be more natural for others.

More Community Created Tools for Building Characters:

Falconloft’s table of Weapons and their States, Triggers, and Subtypes in GoogleDocs

Amica’s Synergy Builder Amica can be reached for feedback by email at amica.strazzeri@gmail.com or on Twitter @AmicaStrazzeri

The9thCircle’s Skill Wheel Based Deck Builder

Notes:

States (Statuses that persist and that can be taken advantage of by anyone, good for party based synergies):
– Hindered = Inhibits movment = Roots and Snares
– Impaired = Inhibits action = Stuns, Knockbacks, Knockdowns, Silences
– Weakened = Any debuff
– Afflicted = DoT’s (Crits for DoT’s look like they are applied to all ticks)

Triggers (Events that have a probability of being triggered during the execution of an ability):
– Hit = A non-Glancing Hit
– Critical Hit = Damage x Crit multiplier
– Penetrating Hit = Possibly ignores some Damage Mitigation
– Defense = Glancing Hits, Reduces damage possibly by a factor
– Block = Reduces damage possibly by a factor
– Evade= A simple attack avoid

Subtypes (The type of ability, e.g. a heal, a single target attack, basically characteristics that are always tied to the ability).
– Chain attacks (1 attack, jumps between enemies, hits a total of 3)
– Burst (3, or more, rapid hits in one)
– Blast (Cone)
– Strike (Single target)
– Focus (Channels, you can move during Channels in TSW)
– Frenzy (AoE both ground targeted and PBAoE)
– Heal
– HoT
– Leech: % of DPS is converted into healing for the duration of the Leech effect
– Barrier: A shield absorbs a fixed amount of damage
– Summons: Turrets and Pets

Triggers and the UI:
– Glancing = grey (assumed, not known), Secondary effects cannot trigger off Glancing hits
– Evade = red
– Block = (Blocked)
– Crit = Large Font
– Penetrated = (Penetrated)
– Non-Glancing/Hit = white and standard font size, note that Crits can be Non-Glancing, so any Non-Glancing Crit should also qualify as a Hit.

Mixtures of Triggers seen:
– Crit + Penetrated = (Penetrated), this also qualifies as Hit/Non-Glancing
– Crit + Blocked = (Blocked), this also qualifies as Hit/Non-Glancing
– Glancing + Blocked = (Blocked)
– Glancing + Penetrated = (Penetrated)

Mixtures of Triggers not seen:
– Combinations of font Colors
– Combinations of Parentheticals (e.g. Blocked + Penetrated)
– Glancing + Crit (Glancing Crits may not be possible if a Crit is a secondary effect)

So the UI representation of the full list of hypothetical Trigger combinations would be:
– Evade
– Glancing, (Blocked), (Penetrated)
– Crit, (Penetrated), (Blocked)
– Hit, (Penetrated), (Blocked)

With the above, the competition between offensive and defensive triggers seems to go as follows:
– Accuracy and Evade interfere
—– If Evade triggers, Hit, Crit, Pen, Block, and Glance cannot trigger (and vice versa)
– Hit chance and Glance chance interfere
—–If Glance triggers, Hit and Crit cannot trigger (and vice versa), and Evade and Glance are mutually exclusive.
– Block chance and Penetrate chance interfere
—–If Block triggers, Penetrated cannot trigger (and vice versa), and Block and Evade are mutually exclusive.

Magic vs Ranged and Melee:
The system appears to treat magic and melee in the same manner, except there is a different mitigation stat for Physical and Magic attacks.

Equip requirements:
Some Active abilities require a specific weapon type (ex. a Blade) to be equipped to function. Some active abilities do not require any equipment to function. Passives do not require any type of gear to be equipped to have their effect.

Anima Points (AP):
– Anima Points are used to by Abilities.
– A full build is 7 Active and 7 Passive Abilities
– Abilities are organized into Cells of 7 Abilities each that alternate between Active and Passive Abilities
– Each ability in a Cell must be unlocked sequentially
– You must unlock the inner circle Cells for a weapon before you can unlock the weapon’s outer circle Cells
– You begin with 3 abilities from the 2 inner circle Cells specific to your Weapon and 2 Skill
Misc Cells
– There are 3 Misc Cells that contain utility abilities that are non-weapon specific
Points (SP)
– A Cell on the inner circle cost 19 AP to fully unlock (1+1+1+2+3+4+7)
– A Cell on the outer circle cost 169 AP to fully unlock (9+12+16+21+27+34+50)
– Unlocking the average non-elite outer circle skill will cost 55 AP
– The last ability in each cell is an Elite Ability, you may have only 1 Active and 1 Passive Elite at a time
– Based on a dev quote, you gain an AP every ~5-10 minutes at the start of the game and an AP every ~3 minutes or so at the end.

Skill Points (SP):
– Skill Points are used to purchase weapon Skill Levels, you get 1 SP every 3 AP
– Training a skill from level X-1 to level X costs X SP.
– Getting a skill to level 10 costs (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10) = 55 SP
– A max build should be Skill level 10 with 2 Weapons and the 3 Talisman(Chakra) types (Minor, Major, Astral)
– A max build costs 5 x 55 SP = 275 SP = 825 AP.
– Transylvania seems to start with max difficulty rating mobs, so it seems a player should have a max build at this point in the game ~ 100 hours in
– Given the estimated rate of AP gain, a player could have around 400 SP at ~ 100 hours in.
– On average, unlocking 7 outer ring Actives and Passives + 1 Elite Active and Passive for a weapon pair costs (19×4 + 119×2 + 54.8×12) = 972 AP
– It looks like a player could have ~ 2300 AP by the conclusion of the Transylvania story thread ~ 150 hours in.
– It looks like it will take a player ~ 600 hours to unlock all Abilities

Observations
– Every weapon has a single target and a multi-target subtype.
– Every weapon has access to a type of CC as a state, in general melee gets stun-like CC (shuts down your ability to take action), ranged gets roots/snares, the exception is Blood Magic which gets stun-like CC.
– A weapons 2nd state is either Debuffs or DoT’s.
– Every weapon has a trigger that increases damage.