@jetah
In a sense, but again, you level them by completing different tasks, so you might end up "leveling" abilities without meaning to during regular gameplay. Also, the second and third tier apparently won't make a very big difference, since:
Similarly to what we said about talents, you don’t have to worry about ability leveling creating a too wide power gap between new players and veterans. Sure, leveling up an ability increases its power – be it a stronger effect, increased duration, reduced cooldown, and more. However, they’re always minor differences, mostly interesting on a competitive level. Level 1-2 abilities are more than enough to create effective builds for casual PvE and PvP.
So it sounds like making a build that combines your main abilities, which would likely be level 2-3 since those are the ones you'd focus on, and a few level 1-2 abilities that you gained randomly, would be possible, if not optimal since it lets you be more creative and make builds that are targeted towards specific situations, party make-ups, regions, and so on.
The philosophy of Fractured is that, in a contest between a generic warrior-type with level 3 abilities, and someone with level 1 abilities who tweaked his build to be optimal for the situation, the latter should win, assuming equal player skill. As it should be in a truly classless system.