Utility

Utility is a term used to describe skills, builds, and/or character roles that offer a team something other than control, pressure, damage, and support. Utility skills include snares, buffs, shutdowns, and other types of party support.

The goal of a utility character is to make it easier for tanks to tank, healers to heal, and damage-dealers to deal damage. For example, snaring casters to prevent them from escaping your frontline, blinding enemy warriors to prevent them hitting your backline, or interrupting nukers before they can nuke.

Skills brought specifically to damage or heal are usually used opportunistically, e.g. to finish off a foe with near zero health or healing an ally who might otherwise die. Similarly, you distribute attributes in a utility build to cause the biggest effect, rather than for damage or healing. For example, you increase Water Magic to make Freezing Gust last longer (any added damage is secondary).

Utility is sometimes used synonymously with toolbox, even though the later refers to a character that brings useful or required skills for which the rest of the team has no room, e.g. Light of Deldrimor to uncover Hidden Treasures or Swap to help in defeating Duncan the Black.

Utility examples

• Certain conditions (primarily Blind, Cracked Armor, Daze, Deep Wound, and Weakness)
• Interrupts
• Snares
• Enchantment removal
• Disabling
• Knockdowns
• Hex removal
• Condition removal

Non-utility examples

• Self heals
• Many attack skills that trigger off of a certain condition on the enemy

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