One of the most limiting functionality factors in build diversity when playing on console - or with a controller - is the auto aim system. The overall usability of a vast number of skills and builds is greatly crippled by the inability to temporarily disable AA. Other games in this genre have overcome this limitation by assigning a button to root your character in place when held in order to fire / cast in a specific direction. On PC this is default assigned to the [Shift] key I believe.
Many builds on console become heavily crippled without this function, as the auto-aim targeting can vastly reduce the effectiveness of various skills + aspects + effects.
If you play exclusively on console, it’s almost necessary to create and spec into builds that aren’t hindered by the Auto-aim system, which leaves very few truly Viable builds. About 30% of all copies of D4 were bought between PS5/Xbox, which is 1/3rd of the player base. This means that 33% of the player base has to make do with far less build diversity and viability than pc (kb/m) players.
You can even see this limitation creeping into other aspects of gameplay, specifically most skills that deal with mobility. Mobility skills are essential for moving around the battlefield effectively, often the difference between life and death in harder difficulty material. On PC you can directly click wherever you would like your mobility skills to take you, as far away as the edges of your screen, and frequently to areas without other monsters in the case of escaping. On console, and controller, all of your mobility skills auto-target monsters which can lead to far more deaths than otherwise and greatly reduce some skill synergies - e.g. trample + landslide Aspect - PC players can trample past the group, whereas console trample ends at the first monster struck, cancelling the remainder of the landslides before they ever hit any of the targets beyond the first. Also, the effective range of all mobility skills is vastly reduced, as without a specific monster target they auto-target a space roughly 10-20’ in front of your character, roughly 2-3x shorter distance than that possible on kb/m / PC.
Does anyone know if Blizzard has addressed this? Are they looking into it? What are your thoughts on the topic?
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Here, it’s the same. I have to try my best to avoid using such skills in bd, and because of that, I’ve lost at least half of the fun.
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Trample isn´t even useful to get out of AoEs for melee chars, cause all it does is make you stomp on your targets foot, moving about an inch forward.
There should be an option (ideally per skill) to make movement skills untargeted, basically behaving like a Rogue´s “Dash”, which works fine on console. This would make those skills at least useable - not as good as on PC, but some limitations are inevitable with a controller. Even better would be a “move until button released” funtionality (with a max range, obviously).
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A year later and still valid. I look at build lists and I think, “That looks cool, but I can’t play it on console.”
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Playing as a rapid fire rogue this season… and yeah, this is still valid.
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I have zero issues and can’t even understand what you are trying to say. I can play any build from any class with no issues.
It’s most prevalent on builds where you need to aim and cannot spam. It doesn’t bother me with puncture rogue though I do still see it. It can be devastating on blood wave necro. I have the stick hard right, but some flies zoom behind me and the wave shoots out my butt straight left into a wall.
My point is that is if I have the stick all the way to direction A the attack should never go direction A+180.
This is a slightly different topic than target selection e.g. twenty mobs in a cluster directly in front of me and the meteor goes to some loner I can’t even see on the edge of the screen behind a wall.
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Auto-Aim doesn’t even work!
As a Blood Surge/ hemorrhage necro, i only hit critters 20% of the time at best! I miss bosses… With AOE and hemorrhage all the Fn time.
I just stand there casting until Im out of essence - eventually im like WTF?? AND MOVE so I can hit something.
Necros are so used to this they don’t even complain. They just move constantly.
I agree with this, or something like it.
Mobility skills suffer greatly from this.
Yeah this has been an issue basically since release. For a stent some people begged for KBM support for console. They were told “no” flat out. Then during the release of gauntlet this issue saw some light again. Some adjustments were made to “max distance” which was more of a half measure of the problem.
Most console players just have decided to avoid using those skills in general because of it at this point. Now with spiritborn being such a mobile class from how it looks. I am guessing this issue will be on the forefront again very soon.
You have to remember most of the testing is done on and for PC’s. This makes sense since it’s not like devs are using consoles to code with; however, PC players do have the “option” of using a controller. This fact is making consolers plight even more disparaging.
I don’t use ranged builds on any class because of the auto aim issues. Playing a ranged class but having to use a melee build because that is the only effective way to really do damage on console without shooting random stuff somewhere else.
Honestly Keyboard and Mouse support is needed. Their “reasons” for not are mainly just a I don’t want to. So many games have figured out seamless switching between controller and keyboard and mouse support so the Devs could figure it out if they wanted.
Been asking for it in every survey they have sent me about Diablo 4. The auto aim is bad and their general controller support is bad. Giving controller the ability to aim would help and so would support for Keyboard and Mouse. There is nothing wrong with giving your community options for how they want to play the game.
Picking up specific loot is a nightmare too - flicking the right stick should change the loot target like “other games” do.
The 2 girl in the video a year ago broke the right joystick of blizz controler so now they can’t implement anything related to it cause they can’t test it.