TSW Pro-tips: Never Re-role Your Characters!

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Kadomi was contemplating re-roling her character in The Secret World a day or two ago, because she wasn't sure she liked the weapons she'd chosen. Feliz and I admonished her not to do that.

In my mind there are only three reasons to re-role:

1. You don't like your name.
2. You don't like your looks.
3. You don't like your faction.

And as Ardua pointed out on Twitter, "One of [those] reasons can be dumped soon enough with the cosmetic options coming in soon." Jabberant also chimed in, "I read somewhere where a Funcom person said it was actually slower to get new abilities by re-rolling." Anywhere you currently are is a faster XP gain than starting over.

Now, you may decide to go back to Kingsmouth to run some easy quests again and make some quick AP/SP. This is OK, but if you're not doing too badly in your current area, stick with it, because you're getting more XP per kill and per quest in the more advanced areas.

Never sacrifice your AP/SP! Keep your current abilities while you gain new ones. If you're putting SP into your talisman skills (which you should be!) you won't lose them by switching to a new weapon. But you will if you re-role. Remember, you can spend points on weapons before actually wielding them. No need to gimp your current deck while building the next. No need to equip new weapons until you can use them effectively.

Gear Manager Is Your Friend . . .

. . . but I think it's a slight misnomer. I've tried to explain this before, but I don't think it was effective. You don't need multiple sets of gear for Gear Manager to be effective. Yes, you can carry around enough gear to effectively fill any role in a group, but chances are—at least early in the game—you'll want to simply upgrade gear you've got rather than accumulate different sets. On the other hand, you're quickly obtaining so many abilities that you'll soon have far more abilities than you have currently equipped. Some abilities are clearly useful for fighting single opponents, while others are far more suited to mowing down groups of mobs. Gear Manager comes in very handy for quickly flipping between sets of abilities even if you only have one real set of effective talismans. If you like macros, you can also set buttons to "/gearmanager use name" where "name" is the name of the saved gear/ability settings.

If you're making macros to assign to buttons, it helps to name your sets the same between alts (I've switched to the simple "AoE" from "Mass Mobs," for instance.)

I've gone over skills and abilities in the past. I don't plan to write any guide showing any überl33t Flavor of the Month Deck that I think you should follow. I can only say that I am having little trouble so far with my chosen decks, and I only want to point you in the right direction. I linked this Deck Builder the other day, as well. It's awesome for seeing at a glance which active and passive abilities produce/exploit which states (Afflict, Weaken, Hinder, Impair) and what weapons may create synergies when used together. And it's accessible from inside the game, through the web interface (though this may not be ideal). You can also use whatever passive abilities you may have learned, regardless of whether you're currently using the weapon associated with them. So that Blade HoT passive can be used even if you're currently using Blood and Fists.

To the Ability Wheel!

Have you ever used the Ability Search on the right side of the Ability Wheel interface? If not, doooo eeet! If you have, have you used the check box filters (at the the top) to narrow down the search to only abilities you have already purchased?

How about looking only at abilities one weapon or the other:

Or only actives or passives:

I do this often to help me decide which abilities to equip for my Single Target deck, and which to use for my AoE deck. On one character, I also have a deck emphasizing healing. I can't tell you which abilities you should use because I haven't played with all the abilities. Study the abilities you have, sorting them in different ways might help. This is exploratory learning. I can tell you some are more situationally useful than others. I'd venture to say that every ability is effective in some combat situation in the game. Deciding which ones to equip and use is up to you.

Tactics vs. Strategy

Many have been less than impressed with the combat in The Secret World, but I think TSW is more about strategy and less about tactics. While choosing a deck seems more complex initially (and it is), you have time to look at what's available and prepare from the safety of the Sheriff's Office or The Horned God bar. You don't have to worry in the heat of battle where that obscure stun is among your 48 buttons. The downside is that it may not be available and you'll die. You'd probably die anyway, because you're hunting through all those buttons for that one ability you never use. The upside is that when you do load out properly, you will "crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!"