Talents

Talents are various augmentations available in Windward.

Summary
Talents, also known as abilities, are either passive or active (the latter being marked with a star). Talents usually provide passive benefits for a ship, and can be obtained by spending talent points. Talents are obtained through experience points. You get one talent per level of experience. All talents, including any specializations chosen can be reset for a fairly nominal amount of gold, depending on your level and current faction standing with the town you are currently docked at. They may only be reset while docked.
 * Specialization talents are enabled only by groups, and only one set can be enabled at the same time. Designed for more dynamic group play, each specialization aims to assist both the player and his/her team with area of effect buffs, and other special skills. Check each heading for further details.


 * Specialization talents are unavailable until your level is 25+. Once you reach level 26, you will be able to choose to allocate points in the selected specialty (defense, offense, or support)


 * Specializations have to be explicitly chosen in order to work by clicking on the box around the specialization talents. This can only be done while docked. There is one hidden skill (Sabotage) which INSTANTLY kills anything around you."You and your crew have got enough combat experience to sabotage enemy vessels..." one-shot only. Note that this skill will also destroy any enemy guard towers or lighthouses near you, allowing for them to be immediately captured, assuming no other enemy ships are within the vicinity.

Defense Specialization Talents
Defensive specialization is for "tanking", making the ship much more resistant to incoming damage. A fully Defensive-specialized player will be able to take damage from multiple sources and remain in the fight while dealing a greatly improved amount of damage while anchored.

Defensive specialization's abilities scale with the Hull stat, meaning the higher the ship's Hull, the more effective its Defensive specialization talents will be. As such, the ideal ship for a Defensive-specialized player is a Ship of the Line.

Offense Specialization Talents
For those that prefer to deal a lot of damage quickly, specializing in Offense is the obvious way to go.

Offensive specialization's talents scale with the ship's Damage stat. The higher the ship's damage, the more effective the Offensive abilities are going to be. As such, the best ship for an Offensive specialized player is a Corvette.

Support Specialization Talents
Support is a perfect specialization for players that prefer to hang back from combat as one of the key features of going Support involves a decreased "aggro" range where enemy ships need to get much closer before they start firing on the player. Support specialization talents scale with the ship's Diplomacy stat, making them more suitable for players sailing the Royal Brigantine (250% multiplier), Galleon (350%). In addition, Diplomacy also affects the damage of Area-of-Effect abilities such as Grogolov, so even those players that stack Diplomacy over Damage will not be left defenseless. Indeed, a highly Diplomacy specialized ship that also stacks Offensive timer-reducing Captain, Crew and Specialist can deal an obscene amount of damage with Grogolov that will also happen to have a mere 14 second cooldown timer.

In common fantasy RPG terms, a high Support-specialized ship can be both a priest as well as a mage.