I can’t believe it. Elective mode let’s me put skills anywhere I want?
Oh my god. All this time wasted.
I was seriously under the impression it was a trade off kind of thing.
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When I first learned about elective mode I was impressed.
But I had just bought the game and didn’t know much about skill system and such.
Long time ago.
2 Likes
Well… it also took me sometimes… But I had a hunch about it while looking other people’s build… 
Welcome to the club man! 
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It took me a while, too. I finally figured it out in the attempt to get both Call of the Ancients and Wrath of the Berserker for IK Barb.
I honestly don’t get why this isn’t the standard setting or why the “normal” setting exists in the first place 
5 Likes
You’d be surprised just how often this comes up even eight years after the game came first launched.
It’s supposed to be the standard (default) setting. If it isn’t then that’s something the devs need to look into. Honestly, you’re right in that there shouldn’t even be a non-elective mode. D3 is about as simplistic as it gets with regard to UI setup, so elective mode should really be the only mode in the game at this point. Period.
It’s probably too late for it to be dealt with for 2.6.9 as feature sets are set in stone fairly early in a patch development cycle, but perhaps 2.7.0 might see elective mode once again made default or *gasp* made the only mode.
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It is kind of silly that such a mode has to be selected instead of being the default. I learned many moons ago, even before D3, to look through a new games options and setting functions to see what was there.
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The Necromancer patch made Elective Mode on by default. That was 2017. It should have been that way to start with, but better late than never.
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It would seem that the game isn’t defaulting to that for some people. Not sure why, but if it were setting elective mode as default we wouldn’t be seeing these kinds of threads. Frankly, it shouldn’t even exist. Elective mode should be the only mode. That’s the change that should have happened in the Necromancer patch.
The game does not really explain you can use the arrows in elective mode to change skill panels. That takes people some time to figure out even when it is on by default. The Game Guide does explain Elective Mode, if I recall.
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With elective mode being the only mode, the only thing that would really need explaining is that you can shift the buttons around via the UI bar, but only if the skill change window is onscreen at the time. Otherwise it locks your UI in place. The rest is pretty self explanatory as it gives you all the UI tools to make your choices in the skill selection window. The only truly annoying thing D3 does is auto drop a new skill onto your UI bar, always being the same one per new slot even in elective mode. It really needs to just alert the player a new slot is ready to put a skill in instead of (seemingly) forcing one into the slot by default.
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Gotta love how the Forum doesn’t even count @OPs post as legitimate. Still says number of posts: 0 
@OP, enjoy your freedom 
You guys really should’ve read the tip pop-ups in game, or whatever it’s called 
. I learned it quite early when I was getting into this game.
Then again, I was super inefficient back then so, starting the game as non-season because I thought ‘season’ meant something serious, leveling in campaign mode (granted, to unlock adventure mode in non-season, you have to clear campaign mode first. but I didn’t know that), playing in Normal difficulty, checking every corner of the map, etc. That playing slowly might’ve made me read all the tips that are popping up here and there as you level.
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It is rather amusing (?) the amount of info that is contained in those pop ups that players don’t bother reading and then ask questions about:
Infernal Machines - yup, there’s a tool tip that tells you where to use them.
Cube powers - yup, one that tells you that NO you don’t get double benefits from wearing an item and cubing the same power.
Numerous others…
Most likely because the core code was written that way.
Then after a patch or two the Devs realized the “elective mode” was a big deal and added it.
Blizzard policy is most likely this:
"Patch the game, never rewrite the core code."