How do I respec my character in Diablo 3?

In Diablo 2 there is a way to respec your character skills and attributes.

I have not see anything yet as the game is being released tomorrow, but how/is it possible to respec your characters if you don't like the build that you've selected?

The skill calculator shows what you can pick and what runes you can select, but I have not been able to find any news on the ability to change/respec these features of your character.

Do you simply get all the abilities and just swap them in/out like you did with Spec/Glyphs in World of Warcraft?


You can change skills whenever you want, but there are currently two penalties:

There's a small cool-down in which you won't be able to use the new skill, which makes swapping skills frequently in combat disadvantageous...

...And swapping skills will cause you to lose the "Nephalem Valor" buff that characters over level 60 get from killing elite monsters, which increases your magic find, causes boss monsters to drop additional items, and, since paragon levels were added in patch 1.0.4, also gives bonus experience.

See also the question on Nephalem Valor


You can change any skill, rune, or passive at any time through the character interface, as many times as you like.

Doing so does initiate a short cooldown on any skills changed, however, effectively preventing you from swapping in combat.