Previously, quick cast on a melee skill wouldn’t do anything if you activate the hot key while the mouse isn’t over a target. Now, it acts more like the original left/right click would and move your character to the mouse location.
While that’s cool, on balance, I prefer the old quick cast behavior and would like a way to toggle off the melee skill performing a move when the mouse isn’t targeting anything. Here’s why:
- For a fast moving target, the mouse is chasing the target and not always over the target. With the old behavior, I can hold down the quick cast key and I’ll eventually get the mouse over the target and the skill will lock on. Now, however, you move if you miss target. The combination of your movement + the critter’s movement makes it much harder to target quickly moving mobs (or if your character has a lot of Faster R/W).
- As an assassin using weapon block, I lose my blocking ability when moving. As a result, I need to be much more careful about when I move and when I don’t. Now, after my target dies, I often end up flying all over the place chasing the mouse pointer as the automatic movement can cause the mouse to no longer be over anything (eg, if the auto pathing decides I need to loop around some obstacle) and all this without the protection of weapon block.
For now, I have to hold down the shift key to prevent movement. This prevents my character from moving after a kill, however, the next target may not be in range (assassin claws have short range) and it can take me a while to realize that I need to reposition. Previously, I could just hold down the quick cast key and wipe out entire mobs of critters effortlessly with only slight mouse moves necessary to switch targets.
I realize my issue is pretty niche. After all, who plays a dual claw, non-kicker melee assassin these days. 
Maybe a better solution would be to have the melee skills when used via quick cast be a little more forgiving targeting wise. Similar to how dragon flight auto targets (you just need to click near the target and the skill will hit it).
TLDR: When I want to move, I use Force Move. When I want to attack, I use the quick cast hot key for that attack. When I want the legacy attack/move behavior, I left (or right) click.
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I agree. I really dislike the new patch’s mechanics. I’m a wolf barb and it feels my mouse is sporadic in comparison to before…i feel I can no longer “lock” to a target. Then when “horking”, oh man, it looks so buggy and feels horrible now.
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Totally agree! The old melee quick cast is so helpful catching fast moving monsters. Especially when using my frenzy barb. With the new melee quick cast, my barb runs 2-3 screens away right after a mob dies. Pretty annoying when you are moving at that high speed.
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pretty sure the whole point of quick cast for mouse and keyboard is that it is meant to work like clicking with the mouse but giving more options as to what keys you can use to do that.
it’s meant to be more of the QoL accessibility thing not a huge advantage.
Yes, I think that’s why Blizzard changed the way the quick cast works.
However, it still doesn’t behave exactly like clicking with the mouse.
In legacy mode, for example, if I left click and hold the mouse down on a target, I will have name lock and I can cycle through my left click attacks via hot key until the target is dead. Once dead, the game won’t take action again until I release the mouse and click again.
With the new quick cast, when the target dies while you have the hot key held down, the game will immediately try to execute the skill again or move you if the mouse isn’t over something attackable.
So in this sense, the new quick cast is completely different from the the way left click works. Basically, you’re going to want to hold down the quick cast key (or hold the mouse button down) until the target is dead. The issue is what happens immediately after that.
Note: right clicking behaves differently than left clicking for melee skills. Right clicking is closer to how the new quick cast works. This was nice as you could slot your melee attack skills into either left or right click depending on which behavior best suits your play style.
Maybe the quick cast should do the same. If the skill is slotted in the left, do the old behavior and if slotted in the right, do the new behavior.
For me the real QoL improvement is to cleanly separate the attack/move functions. The old quick cast does that, but the new quick cast doesn’t.
I actually prefer the current behaviour which is the same as RMB in legacy D2. You just press down the button on the ground and hold - your character will move and attack nearby monsters automatically. So much easier to switch targets especially in the areas with a lot of Flayers around (i.e. WSK2/3) .
its super annoying while using Item find because you clipp and stutter all over the place
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Yup, the jank is real. I’ve LOVED it before the patch.