Primary Abilities

Primary Abilities are the primary (heh) means of casting abilities in The Metronomicon. Every hero has six different Primary Abilities that can be unlocked through leveling up the character. Primary Abilities are the basic means of controlling the player's selected heroes, most akin to selecting an attack or spell off a turn-based RPG combat menu.

How to Cast
Every Primary Ability is cast through hitting a consecutive number of beats of music in a row. The number of notes in that range of beats (and the accuracy with which they are hit) is not relevant, and affects (with rare equipment-based exceptions) only score.

Upon selecting a player's musical track, there will be a blue period of notes. This represents the casting requirement for the currently equipped first-tier spell. Following that, the red region indicates the second-tier requirement, and the yellow period represents the third. Upon streaking enough notes to meet a tier's requirement, the player can simply change lanes (or, without penalty, miss a note) to cast the currently queued tier.

In this way, hitting a long streak of notes will queue up first the tier-one, then the tier-two, and finally the tier-three spell. Reaching the end of the third spell requirement will cause that spell to automatically cast. In effect, streaking notes is like channeling the spell. Changing lanes casts it.

After casting, each spell has its own refractory period after which the hero will not receive notes for a brief period of time. Tiers do not affect this period's length. For most spells, the base cooldown is 16 beats, but there are some exceptions which are specified on the respective Abilities' dedicated pages.

Tiers
Every Primary Ability can be equipped into any of the three free ability slots freely. Equipping a spell to a higher tier, while it will cost more beats to cast, will also cause that spell to have a greater effect.
 * Offensive abilities will do more damage.
 * Curative abilities will cure for more.
 * Buffs will last for longer.
 * Assorted other affects for other unique spells often apply.

In an ability's description, any blue text indicates a property that will directly grow with tier change.

Strengths
Ability potencies (both offensive and curative) are based on an ordered rating system. Each term is more potent than the last. Changing the tier on which an ability is equipped will change it's damage rating (though each spell has a tier-one-equipped base rating). Equipping an ability on Tier 2 will raise its rating by one. Tier 3 will raise its rating by two.

Base Potency Values:
 * Tiny = 10
 * Minor = 20
 * Light = 30
 * Medium = 40
 * Strong = 55
 * Major = 70
 * Huge = 85
 * Crazy = 100

Overcast
Potency of a spell does not just change from tier to tier of equipment, but actually fluidly, as the player plays more notes. This means that if a player casts his Tier 1 spell immediately upon queuing it, it is actually weaker than if they had played almost to the Tier 2 requirement, but fell short.

The idea of purposely casting as far as possible within the desired spell tier is called Overcast.