How exactly does weapon swapping work?

PC General Discussion
1

For this build: maxroll endgame ww barb (cant seem to place a link in text) catered to weapon swap damage. However they also have skill points to whirlwind for as long as possible in order to get more damage output. To me its unclear how these work together.
Yes i know about expertise, but if your your channeling ww, then ur not swapping weapons, so how does it work in combat?

I find it pretty confusing.

2

You are not the only one. I’ve done one class each season so far going Necro (beta) Rogue (S0) Sorcerer (S1) and now Barb (S2) and the swapping weapons thing is by far the least explained thing in the game.

3
  1. i mean i get that you can asign weapons to each different skill, however if your dual wielding with say a sword and mace, does that trigger weapon swap? Its unclear.
  2. does it get triggered through the expertise tab?
  3. do you have to actively switch 2-3 skills that use different weapons like all the time? Thats seems pretty cumbersome.

In this build the focus is clearly on wwding, so maybe i am daft but i dont understand what weapon swap is doing here?

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4

Hey, I hope you get answers.
-I have not played barb yet and one of the top reasons is, when I look into this so far, I just get confused. The wording of the procs seem so specific and yet not specific at all to me.

5

I’m playing spin 2 win Barb this season and I just destroy everything that has to do with swapping weapons. I could be completely wrong… I’m level 88 or 89 now and can do NM dungeons in the 50’s… so it seems alright.

I agree though, Barb has to be one of the hardest classes to understand what gear you want to keep or not. Was much more strait forward with other classes for me so far.

6

When you hit “s” and bring up your skills you can assign which weapon you want to use for which skill, I think it is the middle mouse button to do it. So if you are trying to capitalize on weapon swap then you should figure out your pattern for skills in a fight then assign weapons so they will swap automatically when you hit the next skill.

Some skills require specific weapons and it will tell you. Some skills don’t allow you to assign a weapon also.

The default is auto-select if you don’t assign anything.
It is actually done pretty slick, it was confusing till I played Barb, by level 10-15 it becomes pretty obvious.

Here I will link this, this guy is the top info guy for barb, but the visual is probably more helpful, there are other videos on this too.

You can just run a youtube search for Diablo 4 Barb Weapon swap if you prefer someone else. :slight_smile:

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7

Thanks! Increased my understanding.

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8

You are a sorc player like me right? Hope I am not confusing you with someone else.
I loved barb all the way to 100. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

9

From what I understand the OP is a barb? And afaik no other class swaps weapons other than Rogue (from dual wield for melee to 2H for ranged) so:

As a barb, you can set which weapons you want to use for which skills. And when you use those skills, it automatically swaps to that weapon you don’t need to worry about it, it just does it.

10

yeah i get all that, but if i am mainly using ww how does weapon swp gets triggered? This is unclear.

The video someone linked here, is only saying how to assign weapons to a skill. Which as i stated in my post i am aware off…

11

There is no way I know of to swap weapons during one skill.

If the affix says something like +damage on weapon swap it means the previous skill you used before it should be tied to another weapon if you want to see that bonus applied.

The way to post a link is paste it and highlight it and then hit </> at the top of the reply box.
It will not be an active link but it will allow others to highlight right click and go to link.

12

To swap weapons, you use a different skill… I don’t understand the confusion. If all you do is WW, you will never trigger weapon swap. You’ll need to use another skill that is tied to another weapon and alternate between that and WW.

13

yes exactly, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M0Zz3aemws&t=1s
so back to my question again. I saw this build on maxroll which uses ww in combo with weapon swap. Doesnt make sense to me, thats why i ask the question here in case i am missing something…

14

I’ve not done a WW barb, but as far as I know the skill takes a “snapshot” of your character status to determine how much damage the WW will do the moment you hit the button and keeps that all the way through the skill use.

So you would trigger walking arsenal with two other skills with different weapons before hitting whirlwind.

Anyway, forget whirlwind. This season build a frenzy barb, blood powers make it incredibly strong and nearly indestructible.

15

Lunging Strike is on the 2H slicing weapon. WW is on the dual wield. Autoing and then WW’ing is a weapon swap.

https://imgur.com/a/o4WxJGX

16

yes, but seems counterproductive since u need to interrupt ww channeling, fury is np. Constantly having to interrupt the ww channel doesnt make for nice gameplay either.

But yeah doesnt look like maxrool is keeping stuff up to date either.

17

Can’t help that. If you want to weapon swap, you need to use a skill other than WW. If you want to use WW only, then don’t run any gear or skills or glyphs that require weapon swap.

I just went over the full build, I don’t see anything that says weapon swap on it so why are you so hung up on not swapping weapons…

18

not using this build, was just a question. Hota just greatly overpowers any other barb build, thats you would just punish yourself for no good reason by not playing HOTA. I 1shot everything in the game and i am still missing grandfather.