Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 270 - 279: Forgetting All Skills and Talents?

Chapter 270: Chapter 279: Forgetting All Skills and Talents?

Everyone jumped at those words. What do you mean you can learn Priest Skills now?

You’re a frickin’ Mage, aren’t you!

Many people had been planning to log off and rest, but they hurriedly followed the map’s markers to find Tooth Decay and gathered around to watch.

At that moment, Tooth Decay was talking to the Healer Profession Trainer.

The skill training panel in Shadow World is different from other MMORPGs.

In other games, the training panel is just a simple list with different skill levels, you select a skill, click train, and as long as you have the right level and enough money, you can learn it.

But in Shadow World, the skill training panel is unified. The left side of the page lists all the skills of the current profession, while the right side lists all the talents of that profession.

The tabs on the top of the page correspond to different series, such as the Frost Series, Flame Series, and Arcane Series, and so on.

In the game, whether learning or forgetting a skill or investing in or forgetting a talent, everything must be done on this page.

Of course, this feature isn’t very user-friendly and has been complained about by many players.

Learning skills is one thing, but why forget them? Why should I forget a skill I learned with my own effort?

Of course, there seems to be a reason for this design because at the bottom right corner of the game’s training panel, there’s a special display area. It shows different colored dots: orange, purple, blue, and green.

Each skill corresponds to different points, for instance, the Priest’s "Torment Suppression" is a powerful Damage Reduction Skill and it takes up an orange dot.

In total, a player has 5 orange dots, 8 purple dots, 12 blue dots, and 16 green dots. And these skills occupy slots with different colors and numbers of points.

At first glance, it seems like a decent design but the problem is, there’s no real freedom in the game!

Each profession only has a few orange skills, about three or four, so the orange dots never really fill up; and the only ones that do overflow are the green skills.

But these green skills are generally insignificant, stuff like floating, water walking, or underwater breathing.

Even if you let players learn all of them directly, what’s the big deal?

So many players jokingly say that this design is like taking off pants to fart, pointless and inexplicable.

Both the point restrictions for different skills and the function to forget skills seem quite redundant.

Originally, when players found trainers of other professions, this special skill panel would not pop up. The trainer would tell them, "You’re not a Priest, I can’t train you."

But at this time, Tooth Decay found that he could actually see the Priest’s skill panel!

He tried moving his mouse over to the "Greater Heal" skill on the left side of the panel and clicked on it with the left button, selecting "Train."

Afterward, his character immediately performed a bowing gesture!

The Trainer then made a "training" gesture in response.

A flash of golden light burst forth, and Tooth Decay really succeeded in learning a Priest Skill!

"Holy crap, it actually worked! As an Arcane Mage, I can actually heal people now!" he exclaimed.

He tried clicking on the talents page on the right, but this time it was unsuccessful because the interface indicated "You do not have extra Talent Points."

Tooth Decay tried clicking on other Priest Skills, but this time it failed. The screen simply displayed the message: "You cannot learn this skill."

Tooth Decay scratched his head, puzzled about what the problem could be, why could he learn earlier, but not now?

The game didn’t provide any clear hints.

By this time, the team members had already crowded over: "How is it, Tooth Decay, any new discoveries?"

Tooth Decay was casting a spell and said, "Check this out, it’s pretty badass!"

Having said that, he raised his hand and unleashed a Greater Heal on his teammate’s head.

Then a "1200" figure floated up.

There was silence for a moment, then everyone spoke in unison, "That is pretty badass, but... that’s it?"

Clearly, this wasn’t something particularly spectacular.

In the current version, the tanks’ health in a team generally hovers above five thousand, and, of course, as everyone progresses through the raid and their gear improves, it could potentially reach over six thousand or even seven thousand after they’re fully equipped.

What about the healers in the team? Taking the Priests as an example, a top-tier Greater Heal with a longer cast time can restore about 2000 health, and if it crits, the figure can be even higher.

So why can Tooth Decay’s top-tier Greater Heal only restore 1200 health?

The reason is obvious, he is a Mage, and he hasn’t invested in any Priest talents that increase healing effectiveness, so his heals don’t get any extra bonuses.

Everyone was somewhat disappointed, "So this is still a toy! Haven’t you just become even weaker?"

While learning Greater Heal meant that Tooth Decay, as a Mage, could take on a healing role in specific situations and relieve some of the healing pressure, the problem is that as a Mage he already had duties to perform and had no spare time.

The number of members in a raid is fixed, and everyone has to fulfill their roles. If Tooth Decay used his magic and time to heal, he would inevitably lose out on damage output.

The team would essentially be trading a DPS for a half-assed healer who couldn’t hold their own, which is utterly useless!

Instructor Ding, however, was more open-minded and didn’t particularly demoralize Tooth Decay. He casually said, "Learning this skill isn’t of much use to you. Why don’t you see if you can learn ’Torment Suppression’?

"If you really can learn that skill, then it would be meaningful, after all, our team would gain a significant Damage Reduction Skill out of thin air."

The effect of Torment Suppression is to provide the target with a high amount of damage reduction, which, if used properly in critical moments, could potentially prevent a tank’s death or a total party wipe.

But this skill is exclusive to Priests.

Of course, other Healer Professions also have various means of turning the tide, such as ’Swiftness,’ which makes casting spells instant, ’Rebirth,’ or ’Emergency Resurrection,’ which allow fallen characters to revive immediately—these skills are also very important.

Considering the team composition, Instructor Ding can’t just replace all the team’s Healers with Priests, so the number of ’Torment Suppression’ skills within the entire team is quite limited—they must be used sparingly.

Which phase gets ’Torment Suppression’ and who is to use it needs to be well planned during progression as a single mistake could lead to a wipe.

So, if we could mysteriously gain an additional ’Torment Suppression,’ it would significantly increase the entire team’s margin for error.

"Alright, I’ll give it a try."

Tooth Decay didn’t have any confidence himself because he’d just tried learning the ’Fortitude Blessing’ Skill of the Priest and failed. This was a green-quality group buff skill, while ’Torment Suppression’ is orange-quality.

If he couldn’t learn the green, could he learn the orange? Tooth Decay didn’t know.

However, when he tried to learn it, he actually succeeded!

"Eh? Holy shit! Awesome, I really learned it!"

Tooth Decay was over the moon. He immediately dragged the skill out of his spellbook and placed it on his action bar. Then he cast ’Torment Suppression’ on Instructor Ding, with the noticeable light blue shimmering effect.

Now Instructor Ding was energized, "Holy shit! That’s amazing!

"If this bug can indeed be replicated, doesn’t that mean all our Mages can learn ’Torment Suppression’? When that time comes, the team will suddenly have six, no, eight Torment Suppressions!

"With so many Damage Reduction Skills rotating, we could potentially soak up all of the boss’s dangerous abilities!

"See if you can learn any other skills, like ’Fear Ward,’ which is also a functional skill."

Tooth Decay tried and failed again, with the same message: "You cannot learn this skill."

After that, he tried learning virtually all of the Priest skills, but none of them worked.

"Strange, what’s the deal with this bug? Can I only learn one Torment Suppression? Why can I learn the ultimate move, but not ordinary skills?"

Tooth Decay was also utterly perplexed.

The others were somewhat disappointed, too, but it wasn’t a big deal to them because if every Mage could learn ’Torment Suppression’ in this way, the team would suddenly be equipped with several more powerful Damage Reduction Skills, which was a significant boost.

Although they weren’t sure if taking so many Arcane Mages would be enough to defeat Nephalor, it was already a vast improvement compared to the hopeless situation they faced before.

But Tooth Decay clearly wasn’t ready to give up; he wanted to figure out why he wasn’t able to learn other skills. He wondered where the limitation on skill learning really lay.

Suddenly, he glanced at the bottom right corner of his screen and had an epiphany.

"Before, I didn’t fill up on the orange points, and I lacked green points. ’Torment Suppression’ is an orange-quality skill, and after learning it, my orange points are now full!

"That means, learning Priest skills, too, is restricted by the skill cap indicated at the bottom right corner.

"So, what would happen if I forget all Mage skills and talents?"