Tactics

Tactics is the single most important damage skill for any fighter. It does not decide whether you hit — that is your weapon skill — but it scales the damage of every weapon blow, melee and ranged alike. No warrior template skips it.

What the skill does

Every hit's damage is multiplied by a bonus (or penalty) from your Tactics:

The curve is linear: every point of Tactics is worth +0.6% damage. Below 50 you are actively losing damage — a fresh character swings at a hefty penalty until Tactics catches up.

The skill can be raised to 120 with Skill Scrolls, and two kinds of bonuses push the curve further still:

• Accuracy weapons — magic weapons with an accuracy modifier grant bonus Tactics while wielded: Accurate +5, Surpassingly +10, Eminently +15, Exceedingly +20, Supremely Accurate +25. The weapon bonus is counted on top of the skill's own ceiling, so it always adds its full value no matter how high your Tactics is.
• The Fencing mastery's Fury proc grants +20 Tactics for 30 seconds. Unlike the weapon bonus, Fury counts against the skill ceiling of 125, so at Tactics 120 it only adds the last +5.

How Tactics stacks with Strength, Anatomy and quality bonuses is laid out on the Weapons page.

The Tactics mastery

Tactics has its own Skill Mastery — the one-handed weapon specialization (One-Handed Mastery, Combat Reflexes, Combat Insight, and the Lightning Strike ultimate). Its counterpart, the Arms Lore mastery, covers two-handed weapons and bows. Pick the one matching your weapon; both are taught by weaponsmiths and blacksmiths once the skill is at 90.

Skill cap

Tactics caps at 100.0 normally and can be raised to 120.0 with Skill Scrolls — one point per scroll, once you are already Grandmaster.

The scrolled points only count outside PvP. While you are flagged for PvP combat anything above 100 is ignored, so a Tactics 120 warrior hits exactly as hard as a Tactics 100 warrior with the same gear until the flag expires. The temporary bonuses above (Accuracy weapons, Fury) are not affected and keep working while flagged, exactly as they always did.

What the 20 points are worth

Each point is +0.6% damage, so 100 → 120 moves the bonus from +30% to +42% — twelve points on top of a modifier total that already includes Strength, Anatomy and quality. For a typical Grandmaster warrior (100 Str/Anatomy, exceptional weapon) that is ×1.80 damage becoming ×1.92, or roughly +6.7% real damage per swing.

Your weapon's accuracy modifier is counted on top of the skill's 125 ceiling, so the scrolls deliver their full +12 points no matter what you are holding — the two bonuses never compete:

Only the Fencing mastery's Fury proc (+20 Tactics for 30 seconds) counts against the skill ceiling itself — at Tactics 120 it adds just the last +5, for a theoretical maximum of +60% with a Supremely Accurate weapon while the frenzy runs.

Training 0 → 120

Tactics needs no active use and no special routine — it gains passively on every blow you land with any weapon (or fists):

1. Buy the first ~30 points from an NPC weaponsmith to skip the worst of the damage penalty.
2. Then simply fight. While you train your weapon skill, Tactics rises alongside it — most characters reach 100 Tactics slightly before their weapon skill.
3. Past 100 nothing changes: keep swinging. Gains slow down the closer you get to your current cap, so the last few points before 120 are the longest stretch.
4. The usual region modifiers apply: dungeons +20%, guarded towns and houses slower, newbie island Adena doubled but capped at 70.0 — see Skills Overview.

Related

• Weapons — the full damage calculation
• Anatomy — the other passive damage skill
• Tactics Mastery — Tactics (one-handed) and Arms Lore (two-handed/bow)
• Skill Masteries — how the mastery system works masteries
• PvP