Only 4 skills + LeftClick / RightClick in 2023

After giving D4 a shot, I feel like I am still playing D3, with upscaled graphics.

I do enjoy the general direction of the game. But I feel like in 2023, we still playing 4 skills on the bar + mouse clicks? Is that the best we can do? Our monkey brains cant handle more or whats the issue?
Are Lost Arc players just that far more intelligent with higher IQ that they can have sooo many more skills to play with at the same time?

I do wonder why we are expanding from the cookie cutters of ARGPs with limited skills choices. I was hopping that Lost Arc would pave the path in its combat/gameplay mechanics for future games. But doesnt seem so.
I feel like its lost opportunity.

Not to mention the the lack luster talent trees. When compared to Lost Epoch, even tho they have 4 playable classes? Each class have essentially 3 paths, so thats like addition 3 classes per each class. The decision you take there are very impactful, and are quite fun.

I wonder what went wrong there, or is it… the consoles that ruining PC gaming experience?

36 Likes

The fact that Move/Attack/Interact is bound into 1 button is a bad design. Yes, you can rebind these actions into one button each but still bad as you needed to move your mouse pointer into an item, npc monster then press the whatever the button you binded it for.

Also, I wish that there is an option that you can perform a force attack/skill that dont need to hold shift key.

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Agree! That is frustrating that PC games are being limited by the consoles controllers.
Rebinding on a PC does gives flexibility, but its not by default. Its a side thought.

The game is by no means bad, but I expected more.

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They can map more buttons on controller as well, with the left modifiers.

Probably been overlooked imo, let’s hope they change something about it.

It feels very underwhelming to give us “more” skills than D3 but still the same amount of slots!

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ONLY 4 skills…? Man, not every player wants to play piano in games. I prefer (and I’m sure not only me) to play “passive” playstyle. 1 button builds, lazy Minions builds, etc… So better they make a lot of different builds, 8 buttons, 1 button… and give the player to choose what they like.

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I honestly would like a bigger UI with 2 bars like in wow where you could set up a bunch of skills. What is the point of having the ability from items to have +1 to all skills if you can’t use them all and skills that you are putting points on yourself, or make it like in Diablo 2 where you could keybind skills? It makes no sense to have 15 skills and be able to utilize six at best, or seven if you play Wizard.

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I think that those 6 skills are more than enough, I am already overloaded with abilities to use in WoW, I don’t really need another 40 keybinds just to play an ARPG.

Also Lost Ark is more along the lines of WoW than Diablo, so there it probably makes sense to have more, completely different games with different focus.

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Yup, we don’t want them turning the UI into a hot mess like wow lol. We should not have to bang on buttons like a stenographer lol!

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Agreed, remember my WoW days with 5000 keybinds lol.

Although, I think 6-8 skill keybinds would be acceptable.

Yup, actually wow got much worse lol. It’s a literal raging dumpster fire. Many of my friends are leaving Dragonfail to play D4 lol. I actually have a keyboard mouse that makes playing much easier.

I think you are in the minority there thinking that Dragonflight is a fail. I think it’s properly the best received expansion since Legion/WotLK.

But back to the point, yeah we don’t need a full keyboard of binds to play an ARPG, but I must admit, the only thing I wish for is a separate Ultimate Button, that would be dope, so we could still use our normal rotational buttons + the Ult.

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Actually that is a good point to have an ultimate button.

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the build i want to try is 5 abilities for my build. for the 6th i guess a wolf companion. it seems plenty but fine.

has anyone thought about their build and what they want it to use? Or just 6 buttons not enough the entire thought?

All things considered; 7 skill slots are probably the best balance for build diversity and the fun factor.

(Please don’t bring up the balancing argument, because these skills can be accessed in combat with the S menu tab)

Those that say it encourages hard choices to be made; Why then not have 5 skill slots on the bar? If you think 6 is the happy medium, then consider that almost ALL builds will have 2 auto attacks (builder and spender LMB/RMB). IF you decide to run ult - which is usually the flashy AOE nuke - then you have 3 slots for your build synergies that you would want utility, mobility and spammable nuke on.

What happens now is that if you want 1 extra mobility/utility skill to mix up your play style and stave off boredom, you can’t. You need to sacrifice the Ult, or a nuke.
This is a sad state to be in, and after trying MANY builds it felt like they always start to gravitate toward the core rotation loop within minutes of fighting, you lose interest even if it is a strong build.
This is going to be a particularly problematic flaw when the game starts and we dont have all classes and tiles yet

EDIT: Or experiment with giving ULT a dedicated 7th slot

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i think most builds will try to use one builder.

here is the build i am going to try

claw
shred
rabies
blood howl
lacerate
wolf

i’ve seen people say they should have more then 6 but why? what would you do with it?

Then have ult on a dedicated 7th slot and choose long CD skills that are buffs/debuffs- then you press them once a minute or something. It would be nice if Blizzard didnt kowtow to the lowest common denominator in their design philosophies too much.

The rest of us havent had the chance to test the Druid yet. All I know is what we played this weekend and the Rogue and especially Barb felt 1 slot was missing.
And yeah, Im assuming 1 builder.
The arguments from balancing aren’t convincing. You can swop out skills going from mob to mob.
There is a threshold of a diminishing return where if you add too many slots, you lost build identity and it does become a problem depending on skill point distribution, but you need to balance that against the fun factor. Lacking mobility on a quick-tap short cut without having to do a silly macro, feels bad

1 Like

you might be right but i just haven’t seen a case for it. i think 6 might be perfect. I’m just saying instead of saying it needs more it would be far more beneficial to explain why.

i haven’t played druid. i just looked at the skills and decided to try a werewolf themed character. for that it seems like 6 would be literally the perfect number. for that the 6th skill doesnt seem mandatory but a bonus that does add to it.

I have done so in short here and in detail elsewhere. You sacrifice more with that 1 less slot than the payoff in “hard choices” gives in build diversity or replayability. At this point Blizzard might never touch it because of the balancing issue 2 months out, but this shouldve been addressed in 2019.
It still isnt a comprehensive argument considering how we can reassign skills on the fly now.
-Which they might change like Lost Ark, but then again Lost Ark gives you 9 slots. Eventhough many of its skills are highly redundant and there are no good affixes from regular loot (uses engravings and tripods), Lost Ark managed to add an intuitive layer of simple complexity that Blizzard could copy- the “counter” modifier. Some crappy skills are put into build and reserve just to knock back a charging boss that flashes blue and can be parried.

i think most builds will use 5 or 6. 5 is enough to equip a skill of every type. at 7 you might run into skill point issues. i don’t think it’s bad to have 7 and let people do what they want. i think they might have given this thought and settled on 6 as the right number.