Draft Mode

Draft Mode is a game mode unique to Project Ascension. Starting at level 10 and every 2 levels after, you will draft 3 new spells and choose between them. These spells can come from any class's spells available for your level or below. This presents you with the challenge of creating the most powerful build you can from what you can draft, essentially creating a deck of abilities.

As you grow in levels and obtain more and more powerful abilities, you gain the ability to assign talent points into any talent tree you want. Draft Fireball and Sprint? You can invest in Improved Sprint and Improved Fireball. Talents have no investment requirement, so you can empower the abilities you draft with no restrictions.

The journey does not end at max level. You will earn Marks of Ascension through Daily quests which will require you to complete challenging end-game content. You can use these Marks of Ascension to obtain Hand of Fates which allow you to redraft your abilities. Overcoming these obstacles will allow you to redraft spells and refine your Hero, creating your ultimate class fantasy.

## **Drafting Spells**

**Draft Selection:**

Every Draft will give you the choice of 3 abilities to pick from. Click each card to reveal the spell you drafted!

Click the Learn Button at the bottom of the card to add that spell to your spellbook. Drafting lower level spells at higher levels will still require you to train those abilities. You can visit any class trainer in a capital city or use a Book of Ascension.

When players find new abilities in Draft Mode, they will be able to know immediately when they've found something really special or especially rare. When a Player drafts a spell, they will notice a Card rarity, a glowing border around the card. The rarity of a Card can range from Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic or even Legendary.

Common spells are abilities such as Frostbolt, Sinister Strike, and Incinerate. Spells and abilities placed in common are there as foundational skills and allow for any player to find them most easily to start building for that specific build you want.

Uncommon spells are buffs and beneficial abilities such as Thorns, Mark of the Wild and Blessing of Wisdom. Spells and abilities placed in Uncommon are there as modifiers and play an important roll in optimizing any player's damage, healing or ability to take damage.

Rare spells are often passive powers such as Truestrike Aura and Water Shield. These will give your character the edge over someone that lacks these Rare spells.

Epic spells contain powerful abilities that allow you to significantly avoid incoming damage, interrupt your opponent with powerful crowd control, or close the distance with your enemy. These are abilities such as Shadowfury, Evasion, Charge, Psychic Scream, and Berserker Rage.

Legendary spells are the most powerful abilities, containing utility spells and abilities that drastically change how your build is played by giving powerful options and buffs. Examples of Legendary skills include Blink, Divine Shield, and Tree of Life.

As a way to prevent players from having too many Epic or Legendary abilities, a gem rarity system has been put in place that limits the amount of skills in each rarity that you can have. Even those of you who are unlucky should still be able to find plenty of Epic and Legendary abilities. The more gems of a specific rarity you have, the less likely you are to find a skill of that rarity. Meaning if you have multiple Legendary skills, it will be harder to find another, but if you have no Legendaries, it will be easier to find one. However, the more skills of a certain rarity you have, the more likely you are to find Bonus Card Swaps that allow you to exchange one skill of a particular rarity with another of the same rarity. Unlearning a spell of a certain rarity increases the chances that you will find a spell of that rarity.

## Spell Rarity and Gems

### Rarity

Each spell has a rarity between Common and Legendary, as follows:

* Common - No Colored Border
* Uncommon- Green Border
* Rare - Blue Border
* Epic - Purple Border
* Legendary - Golden Border

* **Individual Spells only have one rarity**
	+ Spells do not have multiple qualities. A spell will never have a Rare and an Epic version of the same spell. For example;
		- Fireball is common.
		- There is no Uncommon, Rare, Epic or Legendary Fireball.
		- You cannot upgrade a cards rarity. Spell quality is static and tied to that specific spell.

* **Accumulating more of a specific rarity will reduce your chance to draft that rarity in future selections.**
	+ The less gems of a rarity you have the higher your chances are to roll that rarity.
		- For example, unlearning an Epic spell will increase your chance to see Epic spells in future Draft Selections.
		- With 2 Rare gems you have a higher chance of seeing Rare spells than if you had 5 Rare gems.
		- This applies to each rarity separately. Acquiring many Rare gems does not reduce your chance to roll Epic or Legendary spells. One rarity has no impact on another when calculating your chances to draft cards.

You can determine what rarity a spell is by opening your Character Advancement window by selecting the book icon on your minimap or by hitting the 'N' key. Here, you can also look at all abilities of a certain rarity by typing that rarity in the search bar.

* Spells, including those in the Talent Tree, will have a Blue, Purple or Golden border surrounding their spell icon to indicate their rarity.
* If you are looking to acquire a specific spell, you can consider unlearning spells of that similar rarity to increase your chance to Draft that specific rarity or acquire more spells of that rarity to gain a higher chance of a bonus card swap (this is especially effective if you have used guaranteed Skill Cards on abilities of that rarity, as bonus card swaps cannot offer a swap on abilities you know that you've Skill Carded).

### **Uncommon Spell Cards:**

* Uncommon spells will generally make up your core damaging kit, situational power and non-combat utility.
	+ Designed to be plentiful to allow you to build your core class fantasy and playstyle.
	+ Offers situational power like Shackle Undead or Levitate.
	+ Offers Non-Combat Utility like Conjure Water or Mind Soothe.

### **Rare Spell Cards:**

* Rare Spells are typically spells that provide active buffs, passive power and generally strong utility effects for majority of the builds.
	+ Active Buffs include spells like Battle Shout, Frost Ward and Inner Fire.
	+ Passive Power includes spells like Aspect of the Beast and Demon Skin.
	+ There are exceptions like Blizzard, Divine Storm and Wyvern Sting.

### **Epic Spell Cards:**

* Epic Spells are typically spells that grant your build powerful utility through Hard Crowd Control, Powerful Offensive/Defensive Cooldowns and Mobility Spells.
	+ These spells allow you to specialize your unique build's strengths around your preferred playstyle.
	+ Hard Crowd Control are spells like Hammer of Justice or Shadowfury.
	+ Offensive/Defensive Cooldowns are spells like Barkskin and Arcane Power.
	+ Mobility Spells include spells like Charge.

### **Legendary Spells:**

* Legendary Spells are those capable of changing the entire outcome of a fight when used that offer immense power to virtually any build.
	+ Spells like Divine Shield, Ice Block, Blink and Deterrence fall under the Legendary category.

### Ability Gems

Most non-common spells, in addition to their rarity, have a gem cost associated with them. This gem cost denotes how many abilities of that rarity you can have, as well as the likelihood of seeing future spells of that rarity. For example, Fear, being a CC with no cooldown, has a gem cost of 3 and a rarity of Epic, denoting it's powerful utility. Frost Nova, having a cooldown and only rooting players, has a gem cost of 1 and a rarity of Epic.

In Draft, there's a certain limit to the amount of gems of each rarity that a player can acquire, meaning that you can't pick up every CC in the game or obtain every immunity. The limits for draft are as follows:

* Uncommon: 10 gems
* Rare: 12 gems
* Epic: 11 gems
* Legendary: 6 gems

These are hard-limits, meaning that no amount of luck can make you go beyond them. Bonus card swaps also cannot make you go beyond them. If a bonus card swap offers you Divine Shield while you have Blink, Travel Form, and Unending Resolve, which cost 3, 2, and 1 Legendary gems respectively, then the only option you could be presented with would be to swap out Blink, since swapping any other ability would put you over the legendary gem cap.

## Skill Cards

Skill Cards are special cards usable at level 1 that guarantee you will roll that specific ability while leveling. Bought for Marks of Ascension along with Hands of Fate, Skill Cards are realm-wide and non-consumable, meaning you never have to earn a Skill Card again after you find one.

Skill cards come in 4 variants: Skill Cards, Golden Skill Cards, Lucky Cards, and Golden Lucky Cards. Skill cards and Golden Skill Cards guarantee the ability at the level that they can be learned, while Lucky Cards and Golden Lucky Cards only increase the chances of you finding that ability.

* Using 2 or more Skill Cards for the same level spell will roll your second Skill Card at your next available Draft.
* For example, using Cat Form, Poisons and Claw Skill Cards (all level 20) means you would roll Cat Form at level 20, Poisons at level 22 and Claw at level 24.
* You can have a total of 4 Skill Cards active on a character; 2 Normal Skill Cards and 2 Golden Skill Cards.
* You can have a total of 6 Lucky Cards active on a character; 3 Normal Lucky Cards and 3 Golden Lucky Cards
* Skill Cards are ONLY usable at levels 1-9.
	+ If you Prestige with a max level character, you can use new Skill Cards or replace existing Skill Cards with new ones.
* Skill Cards work in all specializations.
	+ If you use Skill Cards in Spec 1, you will still be able to use those skill cards in the rest of your specializations.
* Skill Cards and Prestige
	+ Prestige sets your character back to level 1.
	+ ONLY the spec you Prestige in will be reset. All other specs are kept as they are and they are locked until you become max level again.
	+ This allows you to replace active Skill Cards with new ones.
	+ Using new Skill Cards after prestiging will not impact your locked specs.

### **Exchanging Skill Cards**

You can turn the skills cards you don't want into **Professor Thaddeus Paelo** via the Sealed card options to get brand new sealed cards. You can find him next to **Silas Darkmoon** in any of the major cities (Stormwind, Orgrimmar or Shattrath).

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Below you can see **Professor Thaddeus Paleo** next to Silas Darkmoon.

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The system works like this;

* 5 recycled Commons grant you 1 Sealed Skill Card
* 5 recycled Uncommons grant you 1 Sealed Skill Card
* Recycled Rares grant you 1 Sealed Skill Card
* Recycled Epics grant you 5 Sealed Skill Cards
* Recycled Legendaries grant you 25 Sealed Skill Cards

In addition to these, each Sealed Skill Card you open will grant you **Darkmoon Tickets** depending on the rarity of the card opened.

### **Darkmoon Tickets**

You can talk to **Silas Darkmoon** about the Darkmoon Ticket Prizes.

He will provide you with 3 options;

* Skill Cards
* Golden Skill Cards
* Cosmetics

You can spend your Darkmoon Tickets to get various prizes from specific Skill Cards to cosmetics which enhance the flavor of your journey.

### **Limitations and random logic**

You can only roll abilities that you are qualified to receive level-wise. For example, you cannot roll a level 40 ability when you are level 10. As such, at level 1 you can only roll abilities that are available at level 1. Skill Cards act as learned spells when determining your chance to roll higher rarity spells. If you skip your Skill Carded ability at that level, it will no longer affect your chances.

When you are given a spell to draft, there is some logic in place to help avoid getting a spell you cannot use at all. For example, you cannot get Maul without first having Bear Form, or a Judgement spell without a Seal. But if you were to take Bear Form, you would have a greater chance to receive skills that can be used in Bear Form.

## **Character Development**

While you may not have full control over how your character develops, there is plenty you can do to ensure you achieve your full potential. You may not be the one selecting your spells and abilities, but you can determine your talents, equipment, and Mystic Enchants. You will even be able to re-roll some abilities if you find that it truly lacks any place in your build by using a Hand of Fate.

### **Learning New Abilities**

For the first 9 levels you will not gain any Ability Essence. From level 10 onwards you will gain one Ability Essence and one Talent Essence every time you level up. Whenever you have 2 ability essence, you will be presented with 3 abilities to draft, This means you will get a selection of 3 new skills every 2 levels.

If you accidentally press the X button in the top right of your selection, don't worry. Your choices are not gone! They are simply minimized, open these selection screen again by pressing the book icon button:

You can check how many Talent Essence you have by going to your Character Advancement menu, or by navigating to your character currency tab.

### **Talent Abilities**

Talent abilities do not require Talent Essence to learn, and act as a normal ability in all respects. You can only learn these through random rolls. Trying to learn these through your Talent Tree will not work. You can also not unlearn these unless rerolled with a Hand of Fate card.

### **Hands of Fate**

Silas Darkmoon can be found in all capital cities and speaking to him will give you the option to buy Hands of Fate and skill cards from him for Marks of Ascension. This cost starts at 500 and goes up by 50 Marks each purchase, up to a maximum of 2500. Marks of Ascension are earned primarily through Callboard quests, but can also be earned through helping new players, completing quests, and prestiging.

You can buy 3 Hand of Fates for each day the season is out. New characters will have immediate access to the current limit of Hands of Fate to ensure all players have the same total available Hand of Fates and new or returning players are not at a disadvantage.

Here is how a Hand of Fate works:

1. Right click the item in your inventory.
2. You will now receive the usual pop up card of three abilities to choose from.
3. Upon choosing one to learn, you will receive another selection screen of three abilities, this time abilities you already have. Selecting one of these skills will unlearn them and replace them with the ability you selected in step 2.
4. If you don't wish to unlearn any of the abilities in the step 3 selection screen, simply press the X button in the top right. This will allow you to nullify this Hand of Fate. ***The Hand of Fate will still be consumed*** by doing so, but you won't learn or unlearn any abilities.
5. You may receive a Bonus Card Swap upon learning or canceling the Hand of Fate. This presents you with three new abilities to learn of the same rarity. If you choose to learn one, you will be presented with just one ability to replace it with. The ability that it offers to replace cannot be an ability you have skill carded. The more gems of a certain rarity you have, the greater the chance of you obtaining a Bonus Card Swap of that rarity.
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***Note that abilities found in talent trees do not require Talent Essence to learn as of Season 8.***