What are active skills in Diablo 4?

Diablo 4 offers two basic types of skills that players will come across in the game: active and passive. While the abilities in both categories function differently, they need to be unlocked from within the skill tree. The potency of these skills is further enhanced when players get to access their Paragon Boards during the later stages of this game.

While pieces of gear with good ratings do carry some weight in this title, without using abilities, it's practically impossible to explore a class' potential to the fullest. Having said that, here's a quick rundown of what active skills are and how to use them.

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How to use active skills in Diablo 4

Unlike key passives in Diablo 4, active abilities are those that need to be manually activated in the game. You aren't required to meet certain conditions to use them. However, these skills will cost you Energy in certain cases.

At any given time, you will only have four active skills on your hot bar, including your characters' primary and secondary attacks. If you want to bring another skill, you will have to replace one skill with the one you intend to use.

To activate these skills, you will have to press a specific button. Moreover, these abilities come with cooldown periods as well. This means after the effects have subsided, you will have to wait for a brief time before you can use the skills again.

You can visually distinguish an active ability from a passive one by its icon. When you open your skill tree, you will notice two types of boxes: square and diamond. The former represents active skills, while the latter denotes passive skills in Diablo 4.

When used in the right order, active skills can often help you clear out swathes of enemies in a matter of a few seconds. Moreover, with proper build synergy, you can have a high uptime on these active skills in Diablo 4.

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How to unlock active skills?

Whenever you level up in the game, you receive a Skill Point. You can use these rewards to unlock whatever ability you want from the available set of options on the board. But remember, you will keep earning skill points until level 50 only. After that, you will receive four Paragon Points per level.

These points can be used to unlock abilities on the Paragon Boards that are purely passive but can provide a boost to the active and key passive skills that you've already unlocked on your character in Diablo 4.