Dynamic skill changes in the battle is not respec or anything like that. It shouldn’t matter as long as you possess those skills and invested on it. In Diablo 3 we don’t do that because most of our skills determined by our gear already, back in D3 classic and D2 times we used to do that all the time.
Kripparian did the first hardcore Diablo kill in D3 classic by the help of his friend changing his skill at the second part of the fight. Skill swaps should be allowed by no questions asked.
A few months ago they talked about D4 Barbarian’s arsenal ability and now we heard about Sorceress’ synergy ability for slotting active skills. What really keeps you from swapping out a synergized ability to be an active one?
Free respec where you can reallocate entire point pool is debateable if there would be skill levels ofcourse but changing skills on the fly with a small punishment always welcome. You’re just changing skill setup limited to six actions when you possess the skill level currently to adapt. Only restriction to this perhaps not being allowed to swap them out when they’re on cooldown.
Organizing your skillbar should always be possible in RPGs and also is in most because they have a proper skill point system and you can’t just have everything
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Swapping skills and changing skill points is the same in a game without skill points. Should never be allowed on the fly.
If a game has skill points, then I guess you can be allowed to switch out skills IF the skill point cap is low enough that you cant get multiple builds within the skill point cap.
If you can max 30-40% of the skill tree in Diablo 4, as Blizzard claimed they were aiming for, then you might have 9-13 skills maxed (with upgrades), assuming around 30 skills per class.
With a 6 skill slot bar, those 9-12 skills would represent a lot of different builds. It should definitely not be possible to switch those out on the fly. That is called a respec.
Now, if you only have enough skill points to max 5 skills (like 100 skill points with 20 skill lvl cap), and we have 6 skill slots, then allowing people to switch out skills on the fly could be more balanced. Since then we are talking switching to non-maxed skills - making the build a hybrid build vs. someone who focused on only 6 skills. Which comes with build-in balancing at least (albeit with potential balance issues of one-point wonders dominating).
However, even in such a case the question remains, if you can max 13 skills due to the amount of available skill points, why not just give the player 13 skill slots? The skill slots and skill points should fit together. In all cases it is completely unnecessary to allow people to switch skills on the fly.
That is just having a bad UI then.
Edit: The amount of skill slots is not that important here (although, it is important, and 6 skill slots is too low!). A game can be balanced around having 3, 6, 15 or 40 maxed skills or whatever. Working well in all scenarios.
You can’t have a good game balanced around 6 maxed skills, but then allow 15 maxed skills. Pick the amount that fits the gameplay, based on stuff like;
do enemies have resistances, so you need multiple dmg types? do you need to use multiple different defensive buffs to protect against different enemy attacks? do you need to have single target, AoE, low cost, high cost etc. attacks to handle different situations. And so on.
Diablo 4 could surely be designed to work well with max 6 skills. Or 20. But the number and the gameplay has to fit together.
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yeah so; if that’s the case then you’re still using it to do something
Diablo 2 had 99 skill points so you could max out 4 skills and the rest of the skill points left scattered to unlock some of the others.
4 out of i dont know how many active skill each class had but i bet is around 30%.
Leveling up was a big part of Diablo 2 it felt good and mean something, unlocking skills or finaly have enough strenght to wear that armor.
Full respec is is a bit too much, i like the ideea that you can experiment and have fun until the end game and then fine tune your build at a cost.
There is not a real choice if there is no consequences, In Diablo 3 you cannot i repeat you cannot break your character class because all classes are on autopilot leveling up system.
Let people fail, thats how they learn, the game, the mechanics, all of it.
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On Diablo 2 Sorceress I count 30 skills.
Requiring 600 skill points to max everything.
You get 110 skill points (98 from lvls, 12 from quests)
So you can max 18.3% of the skill tree (and effectively less, due to points spend on pre-reqs in Diablo 2).
Which is much more reasonable than being able to max 30-40% of the tree.
(that does not mean the D2 skill tree is good; it is tiny and lacks interesting skill upgrades/modifications)
Limiting how much of the skill tree a single character can get allows for more different builds to be made. More interesting gameplay. More replayability.
Hopefully Blizzard realizes that.
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I hope they move away from Diablo 3 philosophy, auto stats, auto skills, auto everything, full respec at will.
There not much depth when everything is on autopilot.
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This picture illustrates pretty good why we need to be able to turn off other players customizations:
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Yes - good thoughts… I think weapon damage should only be used where it makes sense and is otherwise not used at all. Some skills and most spells don’t fall into this category. “my meteor is super strong because I have this sword but is totally useless without” doesn’t work. The spell can still be buffed by ‘% dam’, ‘+ dam’ and ‘+skills’ modifiers on staves, wands, off-hands and other items and by skill points, synergies and passives on the skill tree/s
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Agreed. This one is actually easy. You should be able to use all the skills you have learned (by putting points in the skill tree/web/screen/…) anytime. It’s just a UI issue (probably a harder one on controller - again, please create specialized/uncompromized UIs for controller and keyboard/mouse). By writing this I’m not so sure if getting 30-40% of the tree is still too much.
I think the tree has potential, but I would like to have more choices. More meaningfull choices please, +1 bolt to charged bolt is mendatory there is no real choice you always want to have both or your charged bolt is less powerfull. Just for example, it does xx times more damage, but adds xx seconds cooldown. Or a signature-spell does xx more damage, but now it costs mana … So it changes the way the skill is used in combat.
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Each upgrade doesnt have to have a positive and negative aspect. While having drawbacks is good, and definitely should be used, it limits the design options a bit if all upgrades need to have drawbacks. We just need a system where we cant get all the upgrades for a skill. Then spending the skill points is the drawback.
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Yep, and look like intended for mobile phones 
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Don’t you guys have pads?
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Add the Necromancer as a playable character on release.
For the Necromancer it would be cool if you could equip your Skeletons with a 1h weapon and a shield. And what if your Skeletons could use formations, for example a turtle formation with the Necromancer at the center, much like in the movie 300.
Not in the midst of battle, but I see no reason why we shouldn’t be able to swap characters in town. The campaign should be account bond, not character bound.
This is exactly the type of skill tree I’d like to see. Lots of options allowing the player to build out hydra as they like. Some skills might get complex trees [like you did with hydra] - leading to powerful combinations, while other’s don’t need so much - making better support skills. giving multiple skill points per level can give players more options on where to invest
Thanks for putting the effort into this.
I think it should be restricted to increase re-playability of the game
For people planning to dump many many hours into the game I think this makes sense; it doesn’t for people who only want to put in a few hours
I think it’s a tough thing because it comes down to the average player base