Ultima Online Focus - the warrior's meditation, and Mysticism's damage skill

The two rates, exactly as published

uo.com publishes both:

• “For every 10 points of Focus a player has, their 10 second Stamina gain is increased by 1.”
• “For every 20 points of Focus a player has, their 10 second Mana gain is increased by 1.”

Applied, that is the whole skill in one table. These rows are the published rates worked through, not separately published figures:

Focus	Stamina per 10 seconds	Mana per 10 seconds
50	+5	+2.5
80	+8	+4
100	+10	+5
120	+12	+6

[!] uo.com’s Focus page writes both rules as “Battle Focus” rather than plain “Focus”, and uo.com does not explain what, if anything, the different wording on uo.com means.

[!] Whether these rates stack additively with item Mana Regeneration and Stamina Regeneration properties, and whether there is any cap on the combined total, is not published by uo.com.

Why the stamina half matters more than it looks

Stamina is not just a running meter. It is a term in the swing-speed formula, which is unpublished [!]:

Swing Delay = Floor( ( Weapon Speed − Floor( Stamina ÷ 30 ) ) × ( 100.0 ÷ ( 100 + Swing Speed Increase ) ) ) ÷ 4, with a floor of 1.25 seconds [!]

uo.com states the same relationship in plain words: every 30 points of stamina lost slows your swing speed by .25 seconds. So stamina loss is damage loss, continuously, on every weapon skill. Focus is what puts it back.

That is the real argument for carrying it on a fighter. An opponent draining your stamina — the Fencing mastery Pierce, or a Mace Fighting weapon’s stamina damage — is attacking your attack rate. Focus is the counter that runs whether you are paying attention or not.

Focus against Meditation

They do overlapping jobs and the choice is usually decided by one line on uo.com’s Mysticism page: Focus’s mana regeneration is slower than Meditation’s, but “focus is unaffected by your choice of armor”.

That is the whole trade. Meditation is armour-restricted; Focus is not. A dexxer in plate, or a mystic who wants a real suit rather than a robe, regenerates with Focus and could not with Meditation. Focus also returns stamina, which Meditation does not address at all.

[!] “Slower than meditation” is as precise as it gets. uo.com does not publish Meditation’s rate alongside Focus’s, so there is no published way to say how much slower. Nothing is invented here to close that gap.

Focus as Mysticism's damage skill

uo.com’s Focus page states the role directly: Focus is “the support skill for Mysticism, enhancing the mystic’s spells in the same way as Evaluate Intelligence skill supports Magery skill”.

The selection rule between Focus and Imbuing is published on the Mysticism page: “when damage spells are cast, if both skills are present, the effectiveness will be determined by whichever of these two skills is the higher”. Throughout the spell descriptions, effectiveness is settled by comparing the caster’s Focus or Imbuing and Mysticism against the target’s resistances. uo.com’s summary is “the higher your Focus, the more damage you do”.

Practically, a mystic needs one of the two at a high level and gains nothing from the second. A mystic who already has Imbuing at 120 for crafting reasons has a Mysticism damage skill for free; one who does not usually takes Focus, and gets the regeneration as a bonus rather than as a cost.

[!] There is no published formula for how Focus scales Mysticism damage. uo.com gives only the comparison rule and the sentence quoted above — no equation, no coefficient, no table.

In PvP

• It keeps your swing speed at its floor. Stamina drain is a standard PvP tactic precisely because of Floor( Stamina ÷ 30 ); Focus refills the meter the other player is trying to empty.
• It funds special moves. Special move mana runs 15 to 35, with a −5 or −10 discount for a combined weapon-skill total of 200–299 or 300+, and a doubled cost for firing again within 3 seconds. For a dexxer with no spellbook, mana regeneration is the offensive resource.
• It works in a real suit. Unlike Meditation, no armour penalty — which is the difference between regenerating and not, on every armoured template.
• It keeps you running. uo.com frames Focus as recovering both stamina and mana, and stamina is what lets you disengage.
• For a mystic it is the damage skill, by the higher-of-two rule above.

Against monsters

• The same regeneration, but the value compounds over a long fight: a warrior near his stamina cap holds his swing delay at the floor for the whole of it instead of sliding a quarter-second at a time.
• Mana regeneration lets a warrior chain special moves through a dungeon without stopping between packs.
• For a mystic, Focus scales spell damage against monsters exactly as it does against players.

No mastery, one appearance in someone else's

Focus has no Skill Mastery. It is absent from uo.com’s mastery list; like Anatomy and Healing, it has none. It does appear once as a scaling input elsewhere: Mysticism’s mastery ability Nether Blast deals chaos damage based on Mysticism and Focus or Imbuing skill.

Caps, stats and training

Focus is on the Power Scroll list: base cap 100, raised to 105, 110, 115 or 120 by a Wondrous, Exalted, Mythical or Legendary Scroll of Power. It counts against the 720 total skill cap. Primary stat Dexterity, secondary Intelligence.

Training is the least demanding in the game because it happens to you. uo.com: Focus “will raise passively as you regain Stamina and Mana”. The method follows from that — spend mana, spend stamina, and let it come back. Cast until you are empty, run until you are empty, or do both at once. The Necromancy spell Pain Spike is a particularly efficient way to burn mana for the purpose. Train Focus last: by the time everything else is done it tends to have reached about 100 [!] on its own.

There is also a reward item, the Clasp of Concentration, a blessed piece from Sarsmea Smythe’s New Player Quest at the New Haven bank. [!] The size of its bonus is not published — only its name and where it comes from are published. [!] No Focus gain rate or difficulty curve is published either.

Where these come from

uo.com Focus · uo.com Melee Fighting · uo.com Mysticism · uo.com Skill Masteries · uo.com Special Moves · uo.com Skills, Stats & Attributes. Everything here is from uo.com or the game itself; anything uo.com does not publish is marked [!] as unpublished where it appears.