The player character of Wo Long 2: Wings of Ember carries the power of a phoenix, the divine beast that gives Wings of Ember its name. It is both the story's central conceit and the base that several of the sequel's new mechanics are built on.
The Design Rule
Team Ninja has described one governing principle for the ability set. Because the champion is borrowing the strength of a divine beast rather than using his own, every phoenix move has to be something an ordinary person could not do. The examples the producer gave are stamping a demon down into the ground and hurling one bodily away, feats of raw power well past human scale. That rule is what separates phoenix actions from the ordinary martial arts of the combat system.
What It Powers
The phoenix power sits underneath the sequel's new focus mechanics, including the focus deflect used against certain attacks and the focus jump that lifts the champion off the ground to evade. Only part of that set appeared in the build shown to press, and the team has said the system will be expanded for the finished game. It also anchors the new divine beast manifestation system, which layers the strength of other divine beasts on top of the phoenix for amplified or altered effects. Divine beasts themselves are still earned by building bonds with generals, as in the first game.
Both techniques draw on Spirit rather than a separate resource, and both are cued by the enemy rather than chosen freely: a circling red glow calls for the focus deflect, a straight-line red glow for the focus jump. Their effects are the design rule in practice, launching a soldier hard enough to scatter the rank behind him or stamping a flying enemy out of the air. The divine beast manifestation system was not part of the build shown to press.
Still Unconfirmed
Whether the phoenix abilities sit on a dedicated skill tree, and how many of them exist, has not been answered. Asked directly about a skill tree, the producer said only that the focus system would be expanded and that more information would follow. The English names for the phoenix moves have not been published, and no resource cost, cooldown or unlock structure has been described. How the power reaches the champion in the story has not been explained either, and is covered as far as it is known under Setting and Story.