[D4] Skills, Skillbar and customization - remove elective mode spells and spell "category"

General Discussion
1

The current skillbar does not offer much option between spells - it restricts the player choice to a total of 6 “category” spells.

Let there be either:

    1. a bigger skillbar of at least 10 spells (12 in total including left and right click)
    1. a similar skillbar like in D1 & D2 where you could set your spells to a total of 12-16 hotkeys.

Modern ARPGs use at least over 8-10 skill lots on your UI, and these can be changed in any given situation during combat.

Elective Mode on the other hand lets you select from all your spells to a total of only 6 spells that cannot be swapped during combat, lowering your decision-making and forcing monotone and repetitive playing - thats not fun at all.

For new players there should be a display on skills saying “buff” or “active skill”.

Similar to Last Epoch’s plan of skills, expand the skilltree affecting passively your chosen spell and unlocking more possibilities while leveling up your chosen spell.

Let there be a tier of the Spell, like:

Tier 1: adds basic passives
Tier 2: adds stronger passives
Tier 3: adds one of strongest passive for the spell

Tier 1 example: hits ignite enemies for X damage for X seconds
Tier 2 example: increase the effect of ignite by X%
Tier 3 example: AoE of fireball is increased and AoE hits and ignites near enemies as well

At the same time, let there be a hard to get socket items to enhace your skills to a unique way, however you can only equip max one of those in a certain skill.

These should work separately for melee and projectile spells.

THIS IS JUST AN EXAMPLE OF HOW SKILLS COULD BE REWORKED

Magical (Projectile)
Arrows (Projectile Physical)
Melee (Physical)

  • Multiple shot: Shoots 5 multiple Projectiles instead of 1
  • Direct shot: Shot auto directs to nearest enemy
  • Charged shot: Channels spell for X seconds and increasing spell/skill damage and AOE by X%
  • Sniper shot: Increase projectile damage by X% the more distance it travels but deals X% less damage the more near you are to the enemy.
  • Cost Reduction: reduce Projectile/Physical Skills mana cost by X%
  • Area of Effect: Increase Area of effect by X%
  • Element Mastery: transform element/physical damage into fire, cold or lightning damage
  • Fire affinity: reduce monsters resistance to fire by -X%
  • Cold affinity: reduce monsters resistance to cold by -X%
  • Lightning affinity: reduce monsters resistance to lightning by -X%
  • Venom affinity: transform element/physical damage into poison damage increasing DoT duration
  • Chaos affinity: transform element/physical damage into X% Chaos damage, damage cant be prevented
  • Holy affinity: transform element/physical into holy damage, dealing extra damage to undead
  • Angelical affinity: Gain X increased cast rate/attack speed for X seconds when casting/shooting projectile or physical hit
  • Demonic affinity: additionally adds X DoT poison damage or %chaos damage by X seconds
  • Ancestral affinity: Proc % of a random damage lvl X skill of your skilltree on hit
  • Curse 1 on hit: Enemy takes X% extra physical damage for X seconds
  • Curse 2 on hit: Enemy takes X% extra magic damage for X seconds
  • Curse 3 on hit: Enemy deals X% lesser physical damage for X seconds
  • Curse 4 on hit: Enemy deals X% lesser magical damage for X seconds

Just an example of how skills could work.

THIS OF COURSE REQUIRES BALANCING AND REWORK

You can argue if a socketed skill from item should be better in the passive skill tree and vice versa, but it would be pretty interesting to customize your spells as you see fit.
Let there also be more buff spells for all characters, for yourself and for your party and every class have a specific role by cutting away “category skills”.
Let pet classes have more multiple minions with different purposes (tanking, buffing, debuffing).

At the same time it would broaden your choices and style of combat.

2 Likes
2

heh, chaos damage ripped right from PoE :v

yea they should change the skillbar and also the active skill “tree” and remove those lame categories

also i would love toggle skills (buffs) like auras
as long as you activate them, they leech your resource or better, preserve a portion of your resource and are active, until you untoggle them

3

Chaos damage is used in various games, warcraft, Grim Dawn and yeah also PoE.

Agreed, the game needs more auras. D3 had so far i remember 3 on the crusader while the paladin in D2 had about 20… with about 15 of them affected allies and 3 were DoT.
At the same time i guess there should be a max of stacked auras in a party for balance reasons, or auras should as you said consume ressource or reserve a % of your total ressources.

4

I’m all for more customization and more skill slots, but I disagree that it’s not fun. I find D3 very fun!

1 Like
5

I guess its a subjective matter,
however i have noticed that the longer a fight takes in D3 and the lesser spell options ressources you have, the more monotone and repetitive it gets…
Unless you get CDR and increase max ressources then its another story, but yes… 6 spells is just too little.

2 Likes
6

Yet you use it as an argument, this is usually done when you have nothing else. Even among the people who dislike D3 they still prefer its combat system over the previous diablo games or competitors like PoE.
Sorry but the number of buttons on your action bar is not directly proportional to fun.

7

Sorry what? So you think restrictions are fun? :roll_eyes:
Many people dislike playing games with lesser thinking, lesser buffs and lesser APM overall lesser options on what to decide to do… what having a only 6 slot on spells and what the current D3 without reaching endgame is… a kiting game.
CDR at least provides more options, but without it… its a game with few spells, long cooldowns… i dont know how people can call it as fun.

Source?
I heard positive regards towards Grim Dawn on D3 forum, sorry to say.

8

Having more abilities available to you doesn’t mean that the gameplay won’t be monotone and repetitive.

Look at D2, how many builds there revolved around spamming one skill?

On the other hand look at Marvel Heroes. If I’m not mistaken you could have 3 bars of 8 abilities (UI was crap though). And how did many builds work like? It was basically spam one skill and the rest were a rotation of cooldowns.

9

hehe, wait for it.

That is also a PoE thing.
Not Sniping, Only joking.

But yes I think for passives and auras it works well to have the resource, reserve a portion of your resource.

This is the same for many games, PoE has UTubers that make many builds that work in that Lazy fashion.
And at times I like the one skill fits all option, for say speed farming but not as a Main build when you should be in an area where you are thinking about what is happening around you.

10

It does.
D2 had items that granted extra skills as either charges or free to use (mana cost)

You have to choice to focus on one spell (maximize spells and all synergies) OR enable utility spells instead.

A sorceress for example will most likely always skill frozen armor, mana shield, teleport, thunderstorm, static field and enchant for convenience (heck even telekinesis).

Now if you went say Fireball/Meteor build you already are using 8 spells without counting spells granted by items, say for example transform into werebear and summon grizzly (beast) or CTA (Call to arms) Battle orders, Battle command.
Alone with this you already have 12 spells.

Never played Marvel Heroes, but Torchlight and Grim Dawn and those have obviously more than 8 spell slots to allocate in your skillbar and switch whenever you wanted.

11

Yea i know :slight_smile: and i like the system a lot
Preserving is much more comfortable than constantly eating

1 Like
12

It also limits the total so it’s one more thing to think of as you cannot just take every aura or passive, you need to have something left to use the skills

1 Like
13

Yea, its convenient and at the same time, more strategic :slight_smile:

1 Like
14

If you have a total of 12 skills then there is a good chance that you will be able to choose everything that you want for your build without having to make some tough choices. That is why D3 went from 7 active skills to 6 IIRC.

15

if allowed to use all skills, everyone will use all skills. And in this case, there is no build diversity. The fewer skills you can use at the same time, the more diversity you have.

16

This doesn’t make the game less monotone. You will still be spamming one skill for damage.

Frozen Armor: Defensive skill with a base 2 minute duration (can go up to 6 min). Fire and forget.
Mana Shield (I imagine you meant Energy Shield): Defensive skill with a base 2 min and 15 sec duration (can go up to 20 min). Fire and forget.
Teleport: Movement skill.
Thunder Storm: Buff that has a base duration of 30s (but can go up to 3 min) . Another Fire and Forget.
Static Field: Finally an actual attack skill. The skill you spam when the monster you fight is immune to the element of the skill you spam or to open boss fights.
Enchant: Buff with a base duration of 2 min (can go up to 10 min). Fire and Forget.
Telekinesis: :roll_eyes:

So I mention how many builds in Diablo 2 are all about spamming one skill and your response to that is a list of Fire and Forget buffs (that might as well be toggles), a movement skill, a skill to spam to deal with immunities and to spam on bosses and a comedy skill.

Lets look at the popular Chantodo build:
Arcane Torrent: The skill you spam for damage.
Teleport: Movement skill
Black Hole: 12 sec cooldown skill for buffing damage.
Storm Armor: Buff that lasts 10 min. Fire and Forget.
Magic Weapon: Buff that lasts 10 min. Fire and Forget.
Archon: Buff that lasts for 20 seconds with a 2 min cooldown.

Even ignoring how the gameplay of this build changes during Archon form, with less available abilities than the D2 sorceress, it has a far more dynamic playstyle than the actual monotone gameplay of the Fireball/Meteor build from D2. The only thing more dynamic in the D2 build is that you have more piano buttons to press when renewing your buffs.

17

I accept that there are 10 or more skills that can be used at the same time as long as buffs, debuffs, transformations, auras, and other skills that have a duration are limited to 3 or 4. Because there would be no diversity. All players would use all buffs, auras, and duration skills. Thus making all builds the same.

18

YOU say that?
master of the class? haha xD

19

depends on the size of the final skilltree

20

And yet that simply wasn’t the case at all in Diablo 2. I mean it was for the brainless people who just spammed one spell and called it a day, but for the people who actually played the hell out of it and learned how to master the game, it offered a ton of freedom.

You stopped maxing skills because you found that you didn’t need too and that you could use more by spending points more efficiently, which lead to much more interesting builds. Sure most would take the utility skills, because that’s what they are for, but then you had options for different damage types depending on the situation all which could be cast on the fly. Most of my characters had an average of 12-14 skills being utilized, especially when they introduced the cross class rune words.

Diablo 3 is extremely dumbed down in that damage type is almost irrelevant, and that you are locked into 6 for the duration of the event so that just becomes your very limiting build. It also makes for lazy skill choices.

Locked into 6 hurts the WD (and to some extent the necro) the most. How come you never see a build with Mass Confusion or almost never see BBV or Hex (unless it’s chicken), or Grasp the Dead? Even sacrifice has no place on the bar. These are fantastic skills but they never get used because the choices are so limiting you are pretty much forced into only the core skills like Soul harvest, Spirit walk, Piranhado, maybe a pet or two and big spender.

Almost every class has 4 practically required skills for any real progression and then one or two to define the build in terms of damage output.

It’s a crappy way to do things. In the Beta it was hinted that we got stuck with 6 skills because it was easier to deal with on console controllers.

Saying less choices = more diversity is kind of insane TBH.

1 Like