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Skills in Action RPG (ARPG) work similarly to Melee Abilities but use different logic for targeting and costs. Every Skill and Weapon secondary attack except for the fireball uses similar Blueprint logic to the Melee Ability, but the actual targeting takes place in Blueprint. TargetTypes are non-instanced const Blueprints (or native classes) that enable execution of collision trace logic. Specifically, they use Blueprint subclasses of TargetType_SphereTrace which does a series of traces using a sphere collision shape. Each skill that needs different ranges or radii creates a subclass of TargetType_SphereTrace and then use its subclass in their EffectContainerMap . TargetTypes are an ARPG specific class and are an example of how to perform targeting in a non-predicted game. Most games would have more complicated targeting and may want to implement it entirely in native code for performance reasons.

Skills also have Cooldowns and Costs in addition to damage effects. For instance, the GA_PlayerSkillFireWave ability points to the GE_PlayerSkillFireWave damage effect, the GE_PlayerSkillManaCost effect to handle mana use, and the GE_PlayerSkillCooldown effect to manage cooldowns. Cost effects are simple instant modifiers that decrease mana, but it will not let you execute an ability if the cost cannot be afforded. Cooldowns are duration gameplay effects that apply a GameplayTag while active. As long as this GameplayTag is active on the ability system component, it will not allow activating any abilities that use that as a cooldown tag. This allows sharing cooldowns across multiple abilities and querying for cooldowns from UI systems.

The GA_PlayerSkillFireball ability is a more complicated ability and is an example of how to implement a projectile using the ability system. Here is the ability Blueprint logic from GA_SpawnProjectileBase :

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Most of the logic is the same as GA_MeleeBase , but when an event is received instead of applying an effect immediately, it creates an EffectContainerSpec and then passes it into a spawned BP_AbilityProjectileBase Blueprint. That projectile then moves and looks for overlapped Actors. When it overlaps with an Actor, it then modifies the EffectContainerSpec it was passed with the new targeting information and applies it. This is why the ApplyEffectContainer function from before was split in half. Doing it this way means that the projectile itself doesn't need to have its own ability system component or attributes and can use the attributes of whatever ran the original ability.