Most builds out there are doing everything in their power through aspects, gear, and paragon to remove the necessity to cast a basic skill.
If a group of abilities are that maligned that most of your player base tries to avoid them like the plague then you have a core design problem.
Buffing their dmg by a few percentage points won’t cut it. In high tier nm nobody enjoys throwing out a basic and having it do 1/10th the damage of your core skill.
There is a real disconnect here. You clearly want us to use basic skills, but you also made most of them underpowered and unfun.
And yes, i know there are aspects and gear that improve your basic skill dmg but by going this route you are severely weakening your character.
Why would I want to improve something that has base 20 percent dmg when i could improve something with base 120 percent dmg?
It’s a way to pace and create “meaningful” combat. Thats the idea behind it.
In reality it just makes the combat more boring.
I would much rather them remove basic skills, and find another clever way to use resources.
Letting you use core skills without resource management would necessitate a nerf to core skills but id rather have that anyway.
General point to them is to help you regain resource. But there are indeed viable builds built around some of them.
A lot of the player base are morons. Just read any thread. People didn’t know about seasons before the game released (or so they pretend). There are people that think they should base gearing decisions solely on required level or item power. I could go on.
Basic skills often provide some sort of utility. For example, rogue basics often provide vulnerability (and also obvious value if you run combo points), while on the barbarian side you’ve got Lunging Strike which can close gaps, heal, and either bleed or berserk, Frenzy which can produce some good damage reduction, and so on. They could probably stand to do a little more damage and/or build resource faster, but they aren’t just means to an end – they have value (at least some of them do). If you’re looking to always just use the skill with the biggest number on it, then you’ll never like basic skills, but if you’re willing to look at them as a force multiplier that can open up the rest of your build by solving some problem (maybe just not damage) and providing some utility, then I think their role is pretty clear.
D3 had charge and release skills but the charge skills were useful and the release skills were cheaper. They’re doing what they did before without thinking about it.
The way to fix these is to add global synergy to them and I don’t mean do this and other skill gets that. I mean universal purpose. Barb Frenzy for example shout deal 40-50% and hit in a cone.
If Frenzy hits an enemy it’s attack speed is increased by 20%, up to 60%.
Change to: If Frenzy hits an enemy your attack speed is increased by 5%, up to 25%.
Second Node "While Frenzy is at 60% Attack speed it grants additional 2 Fury. - Scrap it.
Replace: Frenzy also grants it’s attack speed bonus as movement speed bonus.
“You gain 8% DR for each stack of Frenzy you have” - This is okay but doesn’t fit the theme.
Replace with: Each enemy you hit with Frenzy reduces their DR by 5% up to 25%.
Replace other node with: Frenzy now stacks up to a maximum of 8 stacks.
Frenzy stacks last 6 seconds instead of 3 seconds per and now you have a universally good skill for any setup that would enjoy attack speed/move speed or DR reduction.
It’s not even that different from what they already have. Just some key changes that open synergy. You might be wondering why wouldn’t everyone take the DR reduction node? Well I’d also add back in some D2 stuff like Berserk Core Skill which ignores %DR and you suffer increased damage.
I would then tweak Barb to use any of -DR, Overpower or Vulnerability. Perhaps fitting two.
I like to think basic skills are akin to: “While I recharge my real attack, I can throw my pocket lint in the enemies direction. surely it will confuse them.”
There is none. 4/5 classes are direct copy/paste from D2. the new game director inherited the old game director’s stupid mess and then rushed to meet the release deadline.