Skills: power, Mastery, Refinement and Proficiency

Skills do most of the damage in a Slayer Legends fight, and several systems make them stronger. Some raise a skill’s power directly, some multiply its damage, some make it cast more often. This guide goes through each in turn and shows how they stack. In the analyzer they all live in the Skill tab, split into Core, Familiars, Skill Proficiency, Skill Mastery, Immortals and Seasonal.

Skill power and level

Every skill has a base value and a per-level upgrade value. Its power at a given level is:

power = base + upgrade × (level − 1)

So Ice Stone, with base 110 and upgrade 11, has 495% power at level 36. Growth is linear: each level adds the same amount, so the percentage gain per level shrinks as the skill climbs.

The game’s skill screen shows that power with your Skill Mastery multiplier already on it, and so does the analyzer’s skill window. Flame Slash at level 115 shows 25,110%: that’s (1,350 + 135 × 114)% × 1.5 from the Mastery node that also makes it hit twice. A value Mastery has changed shows in aqua, along with the hit count and any change to its MP or cooldown.

Maximum levels differ a lot between skills. Most damage skills go to level 250 (Fire Slash reaches 10,360%, Demon Hunt 25,900%). Most buff and passive skills stop at 20: Wrath of Gods reaches 975%, Warrior Burn 383% and Lightning Body 364%. Rage at level 18 gives +3.7% ATK for every 1% of HP missing. Meditation and Phantom cap at 10, and Mantra and Rave at 5.

Ticking Max skills counts every skill at its max level. Your typed levels come back when you untick it.

Skills are either attack, buff or passive. Most go on a cooldown (Hot Blast every 12 seconds, for example) or after a number of basic attacks (Fire Slash every 12 strikes). That difference decides which Refinement options and Skill Stones help them, as covered below. Some passives are always on, some stack up over time or strikes, and some count uses of other skills.

Mantra is a special case: it multiplies your ATK, HP and HP Recovery in the character stats whether or not it’s in your active preset, so fights don’t play it as a skill.

Presets

You can keep five skill presets of ten slots each. Press Edit, then click skills to fill the next empty slot; click a slot to empty it. Each preset also remembers which of its skills are on auto and which you cast by hand.

Only the active preset’s skills fight, and some effects depend on its make-up. Heart of Fire needs at least four Fire attack skills in the preset. It adds its power to every Fire attack skill’s damage, once more for each Fire attack skill beyond four.

Skill Mastery

Skill Mastery is a ten-page tree. Page 1 is open from the start, and each later page opens once every node on the page before it is filled. It has two kinds of node:

• Level nodes add character stats per level: ATK, HP, HP REGEN, monster gold and EXP, plus the separate HP AMP and HP REGEN AMP amplifiers from page 6 on. With every node maxed, Mastery adds +21,000% ATK and +6,340% HP.
• Check nodes are one-time unlocks. Some give rewards such as Mythic gear, diamonds, emeralds, feathers or summon tickets. The important ones multiply a line of skills: triple damage, or 1.5× damage with twice the hits. The skill nodes on pages 1 to 5 need a Mythic weapon or accessory of a set grade before you can take them.

Mastery ATK and HP add into a group shared with several other sources (see how stats are calculated), so the skill multipliers on check nodes are often the stronger part of the tree.

From page 6, each skill node pairs its triple damage with a second effect. The fight plays these: Water Slash gets a faster animation, Hot Blast and Fire Blast play out in stopped time, Fulgurous costs 5 less mana, the Fire Slash line needs one strike fewer, Pillar of Fire’s cooldown drops by two seconds, and the Stone Strike line gets +20% boss damage. Range, stun, monster damage, Fire enemy and damage resistance effects don’t change a single boss fight, so they’re left out.

Skill Refinement

Twenty-five attack skills can be refined. Three lines are open from the start, the fourth opens at skill level 40 and the fifth at level 100. Each line rolls an option and a value, and the value’s range gives its colour tier. The tiers, weakest to strongest, are White, Green, Orange, Purple, Red and Aqua. The options are:

Each skill can roll six of the seven. Cooldown skills can’t roll Reduction in Required Strikes, and strike-triggered skills can’t roll Cooldown Reduction. The attribute option targets the element the skill is strong against: Water beats Fire, Fire beats Earth, Earth beats Wind, and Wind beats Water.

Only Aqua lines count. In a fight, Aqua DMG Increase multiplies the skill’s damage, Aqua Cooldown Reduction or Reduction in Required Strikes shortens its cycle, and Aqua Mana Consumption Reduction lowers its MP cost. The attribute, DMG Resist and Accuracy options aren’t used in the fight.

Refinement also has an owned effect that applies to your character whether or not the skill is equipped. It starts once a skill has three Aqua lines among its open lines and grows at four and five. Fire Slash with three Aqua lines gives +2% character HP; Demon Hunt with five gives +30% character ATK; Pillar of Fire gives up to +600% crit damage. Accuracy and Dodge owned effects are flat: Power Strike gives Dodge +20, +40 and +60.

Skill Proficiency

Skill Proficiency runs from level 0 to 328 and adds All Attribute damage, which counts for every element. Its value at a level is level × 5, times 1.07 for every 5 full levels, rounded to a whole number and read as a percent: level 6 is 6 × 5 × 1.07 = 32.1, so +32%. It accelerates hard: +5% at level 1, +57% at 10, +1,935% at 100, +14,974% at 200 and +133,287% at 328. Because element damage feeds skills directly, Proficiency becomes one of the largest skill damage sources in the late game. It also raises your familiars’ damage by 0.7% a level.

Skill Stones

Each stone preset holds three stones: a Cooldown Stone (shorter cooldowns), a Time Stone (longer buff durations) and a Heat Stone (fewer required attacks). Every stone has an element and only affects skills of that element. Type A stones give 4% and Type B stones 7%.

For example, a Water buff with a 20-second cooldown and 10-second duration, with a Type B Water Cooldown Stone and a Type A Water Time Stone, becomes an 18.6-second cooldown with 10.4 seconds of duration. A Fire skill in the same preset is unaffected. Heat Stones round strike counts and never reduce them below one.

Familiars

Twelve familiars come in three groups of four: Weapon (Na, Rion, Ru, Mus), Attribute (Hi, A, Je, Ti, one per element) and Battle (Ku, Pe, Sha, Po). You equip one from each group, saved per familiar preset. Familiars have 0 to 11 stars, and their rarity rises with stars: Common at 0–1, up to Mythic at 10 and Immortal at 11. Each familiar’s window also shows its special effect, which unlocks at 11 stars.

Familiar proficiency is a separate track per group. Every level of any group adds +1% ATK and +10% HP. On top of that, Attribute levels add All Attribute damage, Weapon levels add Slayer damage and Battle levels add familiar damage.

The Mana Altar counts the stars of your six highest-starred familiars. It has 37 levels, from 30 total stars to 66, and adds skill damage (+4,769% at the top) and Soul Marble.

In a fight, your three equipped familiars combine into one attack, for example Hi + Ku + Na. The weapon familiar gives its range and damage, the attribute familiar multiplies that damage and sets the element, and the battle familiar sets how many times it hits. With Pe as the battle familiar, the attack repeats that many times, one a second. It goes once per battle, and you can put it on auto or use it by hand like a skill. A familiar at 11 stars adds its special:

• Ku adds 10% damage and allows two uses, 20 seconds apart.
• Pe makes its repeats 10% faster.
• Na adds 10% damage while the enemy is at 60% HP or less.
• Rion (+200% ATK SPD for 10s), Ru (+150% ATK for 5s), A (charges 15% of skill cooldowns) and Je (+25% MSPD for 10s) trigger with each use.
• Po adds 15 extra attacks 2 seconds before the battle ends.

Below 11 stars a familiar has no special. Other specials at 11 stars are listed as not modelled.

How skills play in a fight

Attacks and buffs start the fight ready, so their first use comes before their first cooldown or strike count. Meditation is the exception: it counts down 2 seconds before its first use. Skills on auto cast as soon as they’re ready and there’s mana; skills you set to manual wait for you to press them. A few skills have rules of their own:

• Meditation charges the cooldowns and strike counts of your other skills, stacking buffs such as Burning Sword, Curved Blade, Earth’s Will and Speed Sword included until they’re complete. The Wind Force spirit skill charges the same skills.
• Rave stores the damage dealt over 5 seconds, including Breath of Fire, while the fight runs normally. Pressing it again releases a pillar over 2 seconds, during which everything else stops. Its cooldown starts on release.
• Wrath of Gods first goes off 20 seconds into battle, then every 30 seconds. Strong Current works the same way: 2 seconds in, then every 50.
• Rage stops HP recovery and drains 0.5% of max HP a second while it lasts, ending early rather than taking HP to zero.

The promotion fights guide covers the rest of the special rules and the skills the fight leaves out.

Putting it together

A skill’s hit multiplies its power (with Mastery) by your ATK and buffs, by crit and death strike, and by its element damage and amplifiers. On top, three skill damage multipliers each apply on their own: the Mana Altar with Statue of Demon’s skill damage, Luna’s Wisdom of War (see companions and beasts), and Aqua DMG Increase lines. Its cooldown, strike count and mana cost decide how often that happens.

You can build presets in the Skill tab of the analyzer and watch them play out in the Analysis tab.