Im guessing it has something to do with consoles
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Because that is the vision. They want you to make difficult choices… make a load out and go try it out… perhaps try something well rounded… or something highly specialized, everything has a pro & con. It’s all about problem solving.
That’s it. 
According to Jay Wilson:
Having only 6 skills limits the player to really make a decision on what skills to have and what not have. At 7 skill slots, one pretty much gets all that are wanted. At 6 though, you really have a tough choice.
According to him and Blizzard, this is “fun”.
So the reason is: Fun
Have to realize Diablo is for the casual gamer. Everything is made with the intention that a casual gamer can come along and not have to over think about their choices. More skills means more choices which means more thinking in general. If you limit the amount of choices a player has, they can potentially get into the game faster and start playing.
It’s the reason they added the paragon board and made it as big as it is, so it would give you just enough complexity without overwhelming the majority of the player base. If you want a game with more options/skills there’s plenty out there to choose from, but Diablo will never be those games, it won’t even come close.
D4 is a console port. The controllers only have enough buttons for 6 abilities.
Ye and then you have games like Hogwards Legacy (16 spells!!!)…
I don’t know it’s crazy. PoE allows 14 I think? Diablo 2 is 12? More things to blame Jay Wilson’s legacy on that carries over from D3. Also bad design decision #1281 from the Diablo 4 team.
It originally was suppose to be 7. Jay Wilson cut it down to 6 and gave some bullpoo corporate speak about how less is more. He did that a lot as he destroyed the franchise.
Because Diablo 4 is just the skin of Diablo 2 Flayed off and stretched over the body of Diablo 3.
They wanted it to look like it was a sequel to Diablo 2, but that was just a costume, a mask.
Underneath that mask is Diablo 3.2, aka Diablo 4.
They can’t do anything like it was in D2 because they use the limited failure flop D3 engine, with updated physics and shaders (whipdeedoo).
Just look at their flagship Call of Duty and you will see the future of Blizzard games. DIABLO 5/6/7/8/9/10 will all be the same game.
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It’s as many as you want up to 30 class active + off-class buff spells.
Note: Paladin being the only class with 30 active spells(Assassin being 29 due to Weapon Block passive) - not that anyone would ever use all 30, but one theoretically could if they wanted to.
We could also RE-BIND whatever we wanted! Like [Enter/Return] if we so chose!!
Not in D3/D4 nooo…
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It’s got nothing to do with console. It’s a question of either simple or lazy development or a combination of both.
I was playing through WoLong Dynasty leading up to D4 launch. On that game you have 2 melee attacks, 1 range attack, 4 spells, 2 martial arts, a counter attack and two variations of a summon attack. That’s 12 possible skills to attack. You also have deflect, dodge, jump, guard, 2 weapon swaps, item swaps, item use, lock on and control over your allies. For another 10 inputs that are possible on controller.
22 total controller inputs in a game that plays at 2-3x the pace of D4 with controlled well timed inputs.
And here we are stuck with 6 skills, a dodge and a potion button 
That’s the difference between games made in the eastern and western world. They aren’t afraid to challenge players with difficult control schemes.
Sure, 12 on console though.
Fixed your title.
There’s actually closer to 30 skills +/-
nope
xbox has A, X, Y, B, L1 LT, R1, RT so even if that’s the reason, we’re still missing 2.
then, we could have L1 + A, X, Y, B
LT + A, X, Y, B and so on… similar to how keyboard can be set up to alt/ctrl/shift + 1,2,3, f1, f2
stop blaming console. that’s just an pathetic excuse
e: an btw, blizz really did a terrible job with how a lot of abilities on console supposed to work. Dash, Shadow Step, Teleport… and a whole lot more are bad, you can’t aim them. it’s RNG for the most part where you’ll end up after using them… you could try aim directly in front of you but you’ll still be taken to the lonely non threat mob on the opposite side of the screen. they are trash on console
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also played around so you can switch skills with no CD penalty as long as they are both non CD skills or have a charge and you do it before the CD.
Seems like a odd issue, just keep the for example ultimate on its CD and let us hotkey or bar swap in another skill, seems ridiculous not.
It’s like halfway even more there, and it feels unfinished.
Preserving balance over fun rn is a waste of time imo. Make the game fun and working then balance, people are blasting the game anyway right?
Theres 6 skills so that 4-5 of them can be 25 second cooldowns. DUH!
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Just buy skins, dont ask questions
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Controllers, that is all. The game that once defined PC gaming, is a console game first.
There’s only 1 real answer: controllers. They also had consoles in mind when they made D3. With KBM, I could easily fit a 7th skill onto my 5 key. There also isn’t a free controller button for a pet attack command, like the one in Last Epoch, so that’ll never get implemented.
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Not console.
Other ported arpg’s POE, Grimdawn, heck even previous Diablo titles included a ‘shift’ key to effectively ‘hold to remap’.
Also not casual.
My partner, whose gaming experience is… casual. Has noticed being at least one skill short (of a satisfying rotation of skills).
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