Diablo 4 Active Skills

General Discussion
21

You are absolutely right, it should be 1 skill only. We name builds after the one skill er use anyway, and since it’s just about spamming that skill, why bother having any other active skills?

*Sarcam off

Now do think about it? How many skills do you actually use? D2 often only use 2, a few builds 4. D3 mostly uses 3 skills.

The rest really is passives.

If a skill isn’t activate to gain a direct benefit from doing something on the battlefield, it’s just a passive. Warcry, Battle Rage, Storm Armor, Ice Armor and Energy Armor are examples og passive skills that’s made it to the active list for no reason.

It’s a matter of creating Active skills that actually do something and is worth the time to activate, rather than getting short or long buffs that just increase your character.

Look at your skill bars again and consider what skills you actually use to hit monsters or time in order to create some sort of combo. These are the real active skills. The rest is just passives acting as actives to folk up empty space.

And that is what D4 needs to improve, create true active skills worthwhile to utilize, and combine, and interesting enough to evolve while making meaningful choices.

And by that, 6 skills is plentyful.

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22

Imo we should be encouraged to use at least 3-4 attacks (different dmg types against monster resistances, singletarget/aoe, crowd control etc). Then allow room for at least 1 movement skill, 1 defensive skill, 2 buffs/debuffs.
7, or even 8 skill slots would work here, while still require choices to be made.

All buffs/debuffs should feel active though. Not passive auras, armors etc. D3 does that reasonably well by having a passive component and an active component to many of the buffs.
Though the long cooldowns + easily available CDR ruins that balance, making the buffs spammable, and feel like passives.

23

On the number of skills we agree.

I made the same assumption about the consoles being the reason for this restriction.
When I asked about it I was informed that the consoles today can handle a larger amount of spells.

Would be very nice to have an increased pool of abilities.

24

So what you are asking for is a macro intensive game. Have like 60 buttons like WoW :roll_eyes:

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25

Now do think about it? How many skills do you actually use? D2 often only use 2, a few builds 4. D3 mostly uses 3 skills.

Nah dude, asdfev are usually battle “actives” for me in d2, g is my town portal, bnhz are my passives typically. w is weapon switch.

That’s about 6 “active” skills (not including tp) and 4 "passives by my count. If I were a necromancer or a paladin I may have many more. Some builds don’t use as many skills and some builds use more.

For instance, my Assassin will use: dragon talon, dragon flight, lit sentry, death sentry, cloak of shadow, mind blast, shadow master (active) ----- and burst of speed, venom (passive) - 7 actives and 2 passives, pretty typical. Then you may add something like a call to arms or an enigma and there you are at 7 or 8 skills. If you limit the amount of skills a player can use you take away from tactics, fun, and itemization.

My amazon is: charged strike, lit fury, jab, freezing arrow, decoy, inner sight, slow missles (7 skills again). No passives

My sorc: meteor, fireball, orb, static, telek, tele (6 active), frozen armor (1 passive)

I mean if you make a hammerdin, even then you probably have : hammer, conc, smite, holy shield and possibly (salvation, redemption, vigor, conviction, mediation) that’s 4-9 active skills for one of the simplest to build heros in the game (hammers and conc).

So what you are asking for is a macro intensive game. Have like 60 buttons like WoW :roll_eyes:

Good game design is that most characters may use 4-8 “active” skills (some more or even less), not hard capping the skills at 6.

26

Certain static buffs doesn’t increase the skill cap at all though as, if you want, you just bind it to a timed macro that rolls. That is what I do (or for twisting when I played Warhammer:Online) because certain aspects just become less about ‘skill’ and more about stupid chores in gaming type of an issue.

Some ‘one-hit’ wonders like the Necromancers curses in D2 I do fully agree with you were more skill intense (not sure if intense is the right word) as they’d be needed in specific circumstances you’d need to identify. Sure, Amp + Decrepify on EVERYTHING but then stuff like Attract, Darkness(?), etc. were used A LOT less often but useful when doing harder content or HC (Darkness saved me many times).

I do think at 8-10 is where you’d kind of hit the sweet spot assuming a game was designed as open-ended as D2 was with skills (or Grim Dawn). Honestly, with how many input options controllers have now (4 main button, 4 shoulder, 2 joystick, +4 directional joystick not used for movement + D-pad) you have A LOT of input options so it shouldn’t act as a ‘6-button’ limit… this isn’t a Sega Genesis =p

1 Like
27

First of Shadow Master is not an active. Sure it’s a “summon skill”, but beyond that it does nothing. A passive that summoned an ally by your side would accomplish the exact same thing.

Next, if you use both Dragon Flight and Dragon Attack, paired with Lightning Sentry and Death Sentry I fully get why you don’t understand Diablo. Those 4 skills really don’t mix. Really you’d use Lightning Sentry (and maybe Death Sentry for some CE) with Mind Blast and that’s it. Again we are at 3 active skills. Rest is passives.

Again mixing a Javazon and Bowazon is not really a solid choice. However it is doable, but what happens here is that you have to change weapons, so while you do that your skill template could simply change with it for those weapons.

Slow Missiles and Inner Sight are again passive skills, they have no functions as actives. So you are down to 3 active skills on your bar again

This is correct, and a good show of how 6 actives are plenty even for a dual element. Telekinese however is a bit of a stud.

Hammer yes, Conc/vigor are passives again, same goes for Holy Shield. As Hammerdin you only really use Blessed Hammer and Teleport as skills. So 6 skills are plenty fine again.

So yes you are only using 6 actives skills anyways, and often do away with 2-4 as I stated previously.

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28

Don’t forget Diablo IV is the first Diablo game made for consoles from beginning, so 6 skills + 4 players party is just the beginning. There are many more things that’s gonna be dumped down.

2 Likes
29

First of Shadow Master is not an active. Sure it’s a “summon skill”, but beyond that it does nothing. A passive that summoned an ally by your side would accomplish the exact same thing.

Next, if you use both Dragon Flight and Dragon Attack, paired with Lightning Sentry and Death Sentry I fully get why you don’t understand Diablo. Those 4 skills really don’t mix. Really you’d use Lightning Sentry (and maybe Death Sentry for some CE) with Mind Blast and that’s it. Again we are at 3 active skills. Rest is passives.

Maybe YOU have played a trapper (and if you did you probably used fireblast too) but I prefer getting in there and kicking their face with my sins. Oh, you forgot cloak of shadow too. Ok, that’s 5 actives, 6 if you count shadow master, plus inactives, plus town portal. OK

Blockquote

Debatable, at first I put it on passive (shadow master) but then moved it to active since it is active. There are times that you will re position your summon by recasting him; thus active.

Actually, the dragon talon/death sentry build is one of the most common assassin builds in the game. It is very cookie cutter. This DOES have synergy, dtalon get the pick and bosses and death sentry explodes, lit sentry does a bit of damage.

Again mixing a Javazon and Bowazon is not really a solid choice. However it is doable, but what happens here is that you have to change weapons, so while you do that your skill template could simply change with it for those weapons.

Slow Missiles and Inner Sight are again passive skills, they have no functions as actives. So you are down to 3 active skills on your bar again

Blockquote

Slow missiles and inner sight ARE active skills. You cast them to debuff monsters and slow enemy missiles.

My javazon is actually one of the more effective solo amazon builds in the game if you don’t own infinity. It’s called a “fishyzon” you can Google it if you like. My 81 hardcore zon is doing well with this build this season.

Hammer yes, Conc/vigor are passives again, same goes for Holy Shield. As Hammerdin you only really use Blessed Hammer and Teleport as skills. So 6 skills are plenty fine again.

OK, this hammerdin maybe does leave conc on their left click and uses primarily teleport and hammer. That’s ok, it’s always been the case that hammerdins get to use one skill and it hurts most monsters (unlike most skills in the game). Plenty don’t have teleport and will want to swap to vigor. Plenty will want a point in smite to kill ubers.

You have displayed that you don’t have extensive D2 knowledge. If you don’t know a basic assassin kicker build then I’m not sure you “understand Diablo” or are the person to be talking about active skills in D2. Sounds like you don’t know. It’s ok to be naive, now you’ve learned about fishyzons and kickers.

See, all these builds have between 4-15 skills used and that’s fine. Most use 4-7 actives and that’s great. Why simplify from here? It’s already simple and it’s taking away strategy and choice.

30

Nah I only used Lightning Sentry. Not even Death Sentry as I had no reason to. Also Cloak of Shadow is another passive. That skill does nothing but improve your defense and lower the defense of monsters near you, I thought you were able to figure out by yourself what is an active skill and what is a passive skill without me telling you.

Still doesn’t change the fact that even with the fighting skills you have 5 active skills total. So you can set up your traps, and jump in with a mix of Dragon Talon and Dragon Flight and take those ranged ones out with Mind Blast too. Not breaking the 6 active skills limit.

No, these are again passives. They do nothing but lower defense and slow projectiles around you. There’s not even a strategy to use these skills, you should just do them as often as you can.

I prefer the straight up Lightning Frenzy with Charged Strike, it does CS runs just fine.

No you have shown that you lack comprehensive thinking all together. You need to get this idea out of your head that skills are active if you have to click to cast them, because they are NOT. Those skills are timed buff with a ressource cost, and as such does not act nor need to be an active skill at all. It’s the same with Battle Order and Shout, these are just false active skills that does nothing to warrant their “active slot”. The only strategy there is to these skills are “don’t run out of time on them” and that is not engaging, it’s NOT fun, and it IS unnecessary.

Your active skills are the skills you use to move, deal damage and control that battlefield. and THAT is IT. Diablo 2 is 21 years old and in no way perfect or without its flaws, and it didn’t have passives and actives divided as clearly as they are today. And that is why we can make do with fewer skills, and set different limitations to skill choices.

Also, I’m afraid I do know D2 more thoroughly than you lad. So come again if you wish, but cutting low blows because you can’t justify your reasonings is just lame.

2 Likes
31

FFXIV has more abilities than you ever needed in D2 and has 24-man raids.

Stop blaming consoles for stuff you don’t like in D3/4.

32

Your post is untrue dribble. Spin it how you like sir.

Cloak of shadows blinds the targets, it lasts for quite a while and it’s a strong crowd control skill.
Slow missiles again acts in an area of effect, as a result you only cast it when it would be useful (archers, LE monsters, etc).
These two skills are active, you don’t cast every 5 minutes and forget about them. You cast for crowd control when prudent.
Diablo 3 has crowd control skills with timers on them, are those passive too? Since I use them actively in battle I think that you are having trouble with comprehension.
Not using death sentry is not maximizing you sin, but if your lit sentry damage is high it may be optimal for a pure trapper. Ok, do you.
CS/LF is good at the Throne IF you have infinity or IF you have a 2nd element. Otherwise it will be a pain to deal with lit immunes (yes you can run by some, but not all of them).

I don’t think you can understand what an active skill is. It’s probably too complex for you since you struggle with other D2 concepts.

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33

But it was already few times confirmed that consoles are the reason behind those decisions. This time they confirmed they gonna make UI same for both for PC and console it means it will be dumped down. Same with Attack and Defence system.

They already confirmed 1slot - 1item (ring takes same space as full plate armor) is because of console controller limitation. You know back in the days in (a)rpg games there was even weight of items that we could carry to make it more realistic. But now to make it SIMPLE (read console friendly), Barbarian can carry 20 amulets or 20 full plate armor, seems logic.

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34

/citation needed.

/citation needed
And if you ever played D3 on console, you’d know how wrong that statement is.

It’s always funny how you guys pretend that PC players are more intelligent than console players, and then proceed to post stupid stuff.

35

Where was that confirmed?

36

Due to the nature of a keyboard and a controller, more complex systems can be easily managed on a regular pc with keyboard/mouse. So yes, console games are usually not as complex as pc games of the same genre in my experience. And if the game is made to be port ready, then D4 may not be utilizing the resources at its disposal.

Does that mean PC players are smarter? I would suspect that those attracted to pc games probably are a bit smarter than console gamers on average.

4 Likes
37

Finally someone understand those basic things.

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38

Oh really? How many PC games out there really use more keys than the number of abilities available for easy use in a game like FFXIV?

It sure as hell doesn’t seem that way looking at the arguments being posted on PC game boards.

So where are those citations?

39

I’ve never played FF XIV but sounds pretty cool! On average though, most games are a bit more robust if they are made for pc. Some genres port horribly to console such as RTS. Some games, like Fifa, Mariokart and Skyrim are fantastic on console and a pc version wouldn’t be as satisfying (though you can just buy a controller for your pc).

40

I played Command and Conquer on the PS1. The controls aren’t as smooth as using a mouse, but they are certainly viable on console.