Focused Aerial Roll
Kliff skill added in Patch 1.03.00 that performs a focused aerial dodge roll during flight.
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Focused Aerial Roll is a Kliff ability added in Patch 1.03.00 on April 9, 2026. The skill gives Kliff a fast evasive roll while airborne, filling a mobility gap that previously made flight combat feel sluggish compared to ground combat.
Field | Value |
|---|---|
Character | |
Activation | Use Focus during flight, then press the dodge key. |
Effect | Performs a focused aerial roll to reposition quickly in the air. |
The roll preserves flight momentum, so it can be chained into follow-up aerial attacks for extended combos.
Focused Aerial Roll costs Focus. Keep an eye on the Focus meter during longer aerial encounters.
Pair with Skystep for fast vertical repositioning during boss fights that force constant movement.
During open-world traversal, the roll is one of the fastest ways to cross flat or downhill terrain. It is the linchpin of the Skyblazer Armor Set pickup route through Dewhaven, where multiple chests sit far enough apart that the roll meaningfully shortens the loop.
Beyond combat, the roll is one of Kliff's strongest open-world traversal tools. The horizontal burst it produces (live 1.0401 behavior, after the hotfix restored per-roll speed) chains naturally off the top of cliffs, towers, and other elevated launch points. Veteran players use it to skip stretches of open ground that would otherwise force a long glide or a horse ride.
A worked example is the Skyblazer Armor Set pickup route through Dewhaven in Delesyia. The route hops between Fort Wind Ridge, a hidden rock crevice on the opposite cliff, the central tower at the Sanctum of Devotion, and a waterfall cave roughly 930 m southeast of the sanctum. Each leg involves a launch from a high point followed by a long horizontal glide, which is exactly the situation Focused Aerial Roll was tuned for.
Cliff-to-cliff hops in Dewhaven, especially the gap between the western wall of Fort Wind Ridge and the cliffs holding the Skyblazer Cloth Helm crevice.
Saving travel time when crossing lakes that block a straight ground route. Gain height first, then roll over the lake instead of skirting it.
Reaching the upper floors of large structures (sanctum towers, fortress spires) without needing to climb the full exterior. Pair with aerial Force Palm to chain extra height during the ascent.
Skipping the wind-up of a horse summon for short hops. A single rolled glide can be faster than calling the horse, mounting, and riding for distances under about 500 m.
These uses make Focused Aerial Roll attractive even on saves where the player rarely opens the skill tree. Once unlocked, the roll has very little learning curve: hold the directional input, fire on launch, and let the glide pace finish the job.
Patch 1.04 significantly nerfed Focused Aerial Roll. The skill now covers a much shorter travel distance with noticeably slower movement speed during the glide, while the Spirit and Stamina costs remain identical to pre-patch values. The result is a sharp drop in cost-efficiency: the same resource expenditure now yields a fraction of the previous horizontal displacement, and the quick burst of speed that made the skill popular for chase sequences and gap-closing is largely gone.
The table below summarizes the change.
Aspect | Pre-Patch 1.04 | Post-Patch 1.04 |
|---|---|---|
Travel Distance | Long, covered meaningful gaps in a single glide | Drastically reduced, barely extends past a normal roll |
Glide Speed | High, useful as a burst-travel tool in the air | Markedly slower, closer to a slow drift than a dash |
Spirit Cost | Same as post-patch | Unchanged from pre-patch |
Stamina Cost | Same as post-patch | Unchanged from pre-patch |
Cost-Efficiency | Strong; one of the better mobility returns for its resource cost | Weak; the same cost now buys far less distance and speed |
The nerf applies across all difficulty settings, not only Hard. Players on Easy, Normal, and Hard see the same reduced travel distance and slower glide, so this is a global balance change rather than a difficulty-specific tuning pass. See Difficulty Settings and Difficulty Explained for the broader set of 1.04 difficulty-mode adjustments.
Player community reaction has been largely negative. The skill was widely regarded as one of the more fun mobility upgrades introduced in Patch 1.03.00, and many players hope the nerf is reverted or at least partially rolled back, given that the resource cost stayed the same while the payoff was cut significantly.
Focused Aerial Roll still has a narrow set of uses after the 1.04 nerf, but it has shifted from a burst-travel tool to a minor positioning adjustment. The main remaining value is vertical: the skill keeps Kliff horizontally elevated for slightly longer than a plain Aerial Roll, which can help stay in the air a bit more when chaining mobility options or crossing a short obstacle where losing altitude would force a reset.
Staying airborne slightly longer than an untargeted Aerial Roll would allow, useful when crossing a narrow gap where holding height for one extra beat avoids a forced landing.
Marginal horizontal speed boost. It still nudges forward motion a small amount, which can chain into other aerial options instead of using the skill as a standalone dash.
Chaining with a plain Aerial Roll sequence. The extra elevation window lets the next roll start from a slightly higher position, which can be the difference between clearing a ledge and falling short.
Long-distance traversal. The post-patch distance is short enough that a plain Aerial Roll plus normal flight covers most gaps at no Spirit cost.
Resource-sensitive encounters. Because the Spirit and Stamina costs remained at pre-patch values, spending them on a short drift rarely pays off during fights where those resources matter for attacks or evasion.
Burst chase sequences. For catching a fleeing target in the air or closing a combat gap quickly, other mobility tools now outperform Focused Aerial Roll by a wide margin.
Focused Aerial Roll sits in the Focus branch of Kliff's skill tree, alongside other abilities that consume Spirit to upgrade a base action. The table below links out to the most relevant neighbors.
Skill | Relation |
|---|---|
Base version. Focused Aerial Roll is the Focus-branch upgrade, but post-1.04 the plain roll is often the better pick. | |
Another Focused-class skill that pairs a Focus input with a base ability to unlock puzzle and combat utility. | |
The 1.04 patch introduced difficulty modes alongside the Focused Aerial Roll nerf. The nerf itself applies globally, but other combat changes vary by mode. | |
Deeper breakdown of what each difficulty tier changes, for context on the broader 1.04 balance pass. |
The 1.04 patch unintentionally reduced Focused Aerial Roll's flight speed, which is what produced the sharp drop in travel distance and glide pace described in the Patch 1.04 Nerf section above. The follow-up 1.0401 hotfix reverted the regression and restored the skill to its intended faster speed. Players who tested the maneuver immediately after 1.04 landed may have experienced a noticeable slowdown that has since been corrected, so any testing notes taken in the short window between the two patches should be re-verified before drawing conclusions about cost-efficiency.
In practical terms, the hotfix means the skill's glide pace is close to its pre-1.04 behavior again, with the earlier burst-travel feel returning. The Aerial Roll comparison that made Focused Aerial Roll worthwhile for quick horizontal gap-closing is back in play, since the horizontal component is once more responsive to the Focus input rather than drifting at a reduced pace. If the article's Patch 1.04 Nerf section made the skill sound unusable, read that section alongside this hotfix note: the framing there captured the 1.04 week only, not the current live behavior.
Flight speed - Restored to the intended faster value after 1.0401. The 1.04 slowdown was flagged as a bug rather than a balance pass, so the restore is not a fresh buff so much as a rollback.
Travel distance - Recovers accordingly. With the underlying speed back up, the same timing window now covers a similar gap to the pre-1.04 version.
Spirit and Stamina cost - Unchanged across 1.04 and 1.0401. Only the flight-speed output was affected by the hotfix.
Testing note - If your own measurements were taken between the 1.04 release and the 1.0401 hotfix, retest before applying them. The short-window numbers reflect the bug, not the intended tuning.
After the recent patch, Focused Aerial Roll now responds to direction inputs. Pressing left, right, back, or forward on the movement stick at the moment of activation causes Kliff to roll in that direction rather than defaulting to a fixed forward glide. This promotes the skill from a single-axis dash into a true four-direction aerial repositioning tool, which is the kind of control most aerial-combat games expose on their dodge equivalents.
The directional input layer sits on top of the same movement-controls mapping used elsewhere, so no new bindings need to be learned. The game reads the stick position at the instant the dodge input fires, then commits to that direction for the duration of the roll. Light stick inputs still register, but holding a firm direction produces the cleanest result.
Combined with the focus-charge buff described below, the multidirectional input lets the player chain a longer airborne traversal in a chosen direction rather than being locked to a forward-only line. Typical use cases the new input unlocks:
Sideways dodge in the air - Step out of a telegraphed aerial attack by rolling left or right, keeping the target in front of Kliff for immediate follow-up, rather than committing to a forward roll that pulls the camera off the enemy.
Back dash to create spacing - Pull away from an enemy that has closed to melee range in the air, opening room for ranged or charged attacks without forcing a full descent-and-reengage cycle.
Forward chain for traversal - The classic use, now explicitly selected by a forward stick input. Useful when other directional options could otherwise register accidentally during fast camera work.
Angled approaches on flying enemies - Line up an attack from a specific flank on a circling target by selecting the roll direction, rather than chasing the target with repeated forward rolls that keep overshooting.
Patch 1.04 also buffed the focus charge itself. The charge meter now fills roughly twice as fast as it did before the patch: a full bar now completes in the same window that previously filled only half a bar. Focus charge is the resource Focused Aerial Roll draws from, so the faster recharge directly shortens the downtime between consecutive rolls and changes the math on how far the skill can carry Kliff in a single chain.
Because each focused aerial roll consumes focus, the doubled recharge speed effectively doubles the maximum airborne distance per chain. Where a pre-patch chain might have burned through the focus pool after one or two rolls and forced a descent to recover, a post-patch chain can fit more rolls into the same uptime window, with the bar refilling fast enough to keep feeding new rolls while the player is still airborne. The net effect is an extended aerial traversal budget rather than a one-off boost to any single roll's distance.
The buff stacks naturally with the 1.0401 hotfix and the new multidirectional input. The hotfix restored the per-roll glide speed, the directional input lets each roll go where it is needed, and the focus-charge buff feeds more rolls into the same stretch of flight. Together the three changes convert Focused Aerial Roll from a situational positioning tool back into a full-fledged aerial traversal option.
Recharge rate - Approximately twice the pre-patch speed. A bar that previously took a set window to fill halfway now fills fully in that same window.
Effective chain distance - Roughly doubled compared to the pre-patch baseline. More rolls fit into the same aerial uptime because the focus pool replenishes faster between inputs.
Pairs with - The 1.0401 hotfix above (restored per-roll speed), the new directional input (chosen direction per roll), and the base Aerial Roll chain for when focus is temporarily drained.
Resource budget - Spirit and Stamina costs for Focused Aerial Roll remain unchanged. The buff targets only the upstream focus-charge fill rate, not the per-roll expense.
Patch | Flight Speed | Directional Input | Effective Chain Distance | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Patch 1.03.00 (pre-patch baseline) | Intended faster value. Strong horizontal burst during the glide. | Forward-only in practice; no explicit directional routing. | Baseline fill rate. | Baseline. Limited rolls per chain before focus runs out. |
Patch 1.04 (bug window) | Unintentionally slower. Shorter travel distance and a slow drift rather than a dash. | Forward-only, unchanged from 1.03.00. | Doubled. A full bar now fills in the time that previously filled half a bar. | Mixed. Recharge helped, but the slower glide offset the gain on a per-roll basis. |
Patch 1.0401 (hotfix, live) | Restored to the intended faster value. Pre-1.04 burst-travel feel is back. | Four directions (forward, back, left, right) selected by the stick at activation. | Still doubled. The 1.04 charge buff carries through to the hotfix. | Roughly double the 1.03.00 baseline. Faster recharge feeds more rolls into the same aerial window. |
Open the chain with a standard Aerial Roll to cover the first gap at no focus cost, then spend the first focus bar on a Focused Aerial Roll with an explicit directional input. The combination saves focus for the mid-chain while still covering meaningful distance up front.
Treat each Focused Aerial Roll as a commit. The faster focus refill means the next roll becomes available sooner, but the per-roll Spirit and Stamina budget is unchanged, so spamming them in a tight window still burns other resources. Space rolls by a short beat to let Stamina tick.
For movement-speed sensitive sequences such as dodging out of a wide aerial AOE, lead with a sideways directional roll rather than a forward one. The sideways input is what the patch added to the toolkit; forward rolls were already possible.
During boss fights that force constant aerial movement, the focused-insight buff from the adjacent Focus-branch skill can lengthen the window during which each focus charge is available, stretching the chain further before a forced descent.
Save at least one focus bar in reserve for emergency reposition. The doubled fill rate means the reserve will be topped up quickly after the next landing, so the tradeoff for holding back one roll is small compared to the cost of being caught out of focus during a threat window.
On the live 1.0401 version the skill is in a materially better place than the Patch 1.04 Nerf section describes. The per-roll speed is back, the input is multidirectional, and the upstream focus charge fills roughly twice as fast. Players who shelved the skill during the 1.04 window should re-slot it and retest their favorite chase and traversal patterns before writing it off. The 1.04 nerf framing above is preserved for historical context so that older guides and discussion threads remain readable, but the live behavior is described in the three sections above.