This week we're planning to reveal our release date for 3.0.0 (The Fall of Oriath). We're also working on some new skills, one of which we revealed last week. Although it's still a work in progress and may change before it's released, we're excited to reveal a preview of another new skill.

Charged Dash is a new channeled lightning attack that can be used as a movement skill. When you start channeling, a mirage appears in front of you. Continuing to channel will move the mirage forward in the direction you're facing. As soon as you stop channeling, you teleport to the mirage (or as close as you can get if it is over an abyss) and deal area of effect damage multiple times along the way. The area of effect grows based on the distance you travel.

The skill scales in a few interesting ways; The speed the target mirage moves at is based on your player movement speed but slightly increased. This lets you use the skill as a movement skill to cross gaps and boost travel time. The number of damage areas is based on attack speed; The faster you can attack, the more damage areas you'll create as you travel. The further you travel, the larger the area, up to the skill's maximum distance, so boosting movement speed also increases how quickly you'll reach maximum area size. This results in these areas of damage overlapping quite substantially, making it great for dealing high damage to further targets that the mirage is aimed directly at.

The skill comes with inherent risks - you can't adjust your target location once you've started channeling, so you might find yourself dashing into a tough situation that requires an equally swift escape.

The skill interacts well with Cast While Channeling, as you're able to set up enemies for the burst of the damage from Charged Dash. Alternatively, you could channel to trigger damaging spells, then release to move further through the map. This would give you swift progress through an area without remaining in one location for long. The skill converts a portion of damage to lightning, allowing a full elemental lightning build with the Physical to Lightning Support. Because it applies areas of damage in quick succession, it can shock an enemy with one damage area then benefit from the shock damage boost with subsequent hits.

Here is a video of the skill in action: