Builds: what you wear is what you fight with

This is a plan, not a feature yet: nothing below is in the game today. It is how we intend builds to work, written down before we build it so you can tell us what you think.

You are what you wear

There are no classes. The weapon in your hand gives you three abilities (on Q, W and E), your chest piece one more, your helmet one and your boots one, and the boots' one is always a way out: a dash, a roll, a blink, a vanish. Swap the sword for a bow and you are an archer; swap it for a fire staff and you are a mage.

Armour from cloth to plate

Armour comes in six classes: cloth, padded cloth, leather, hardened leather, chainmail and plate. The lighter it is, the harder you hit; the heavier, the more you take. Cloth adds raw damage, padded cloth makes you crit, leather makes you quick, hardened leather heals you from the damage you deal, chainmail cuts every kind of damage, plate cuts blows and arrows hardest. Three or six pieces of a class unlock its set bonuses, and heavy armour slows your escapes.

Any class fits any weapon. A swordsman in cloth hits like nobody else and dies to one mistake; a fire mage in plate stands in the middle of the melee and casts.

Clothing and jewellery that always work

Every piece of clothing listens to one thing. A Skirt of Flame sets fire to everything your Q and W hit, every time. A Tunic of Speed makes every cooldown a fifth shorter. Trousers can leave fire behind you when you escape; a shirt can chill whoever strikes you. Rings act on your blows (every fourth one calls lightning, every third throws blades at the rest of the pack), earrings on your abilities, bracelets on kills, and the amulet is a keystone: a big change with a price, like much more damage for taking half again as much.

No dice

We don't want a fight decided by a roll. Damage stays within a tenth of a weapon's average. Crits and blocks are counted, not rolled: a quarter crit chance means exactly every fourth blow, and you can see the count, so a good fighter saves the big ability for the blow that will crit.

Tiers make gods

Everything exists from the start in plain iron and linen. The tier, from iron to valorite, only changes how strong things are, never how often or how fast they happen. But it raises every part of a build at once, and the parts multiply. Top-tier materials are rare and come from the most dangerous places, while plain iron costs next to nothing, so we measure against that: a complete top-tier build, with its runes, amulet and potions, should beat ten complete iron builds at once. Stuns and escapes don't grow with the tier, so a crowd can still pin a god down and a beginner can still run. And everything you wear can be lost when you die, as in Ultima Online.

Builds that need each other

A mage whose skirt soaks everything lets a partner's lightning jump through the whole wet pack; frost chills, a hammer shatters. Cloaks give an aura to the people around you, and surcoats teach formations: three shield-bearers side by side become real cover for the archers behind them.

What's next

The work is planned in eleven steps on the roadmap, starting with the engine that runs abilities from data. We would like to hear what you think, especially about how big the gap between a beginner and a top-tier build should be. Tell us in the comments.