Skills to change Weaponsets

Today I thought to myself why the hell do we even have a second weaponset if it is clunky as hell to switch to it and unrewarding as well? Yes there is a shortcut for switching, but there is no incentive to use it. The rather stale meta rewards you only for one-shotting and offscreen-clearing content, but what if these issues would be things of the past and there would be a benefit of using multiple main skills? Let us assume with 3.0 content finally gets challenging again and even white mobs take a few shots to be killed again. Here are a few ideas to spice up fights and make it rewarding to switch weaponsets in fights!

1. Weaponset Detection Movement Skills - Currently there are a few skills that let you move fast in order to evade incoming attacks like Lightning Warp, Flame Dash, Leap Slam, Cyclone, Shield Charge, Whirling Blades and Blink Arrow. For a few of these it could be rewarding to change Weaponsets. Imagine using some Bow Attack to finish off some melee mobs to then charge into the ranged enemies with Shield Charge, no switching weaponsets needed as Shield charge automatically detects you are wearing a shield on your second weaponset. Afterwards you use Blink Arrow to climb a cliff automatically switching back to bow. Though this would be cool there should be an option to turn off autoswitching for weaponsets. Unlike the following ideas this one doesnt give any buffs, but a bit of QoL and i like it.

2. Weaponset Switching Movement Skills - For this scenario we assume that autoswitching weaponsets with an option to tick on/off is tedious and unpracticable. Instead there could be skills which are defined to switch weaponsets. Let us assume we have a character with weaponsets bow/quiver and dagger/sword. The gem "Shadowstep" could say something along the lines of: "If you have equipped a dagger in your second weaponset you change to this weaponset making a shadowstep behind your enemy gaining Phasing/Onslaught" or something similar. This way you would gain some cool buff which would act as incentive to use a second weaponset which on the other hand would diversify gameplay.

3. Weaponset Switching Trigger Skills - Personally I feel this is an unlikely option you could go with, but imagine you use a build with a clunky evasive Movement skill like Leap Slam. You are fighting Vaal Oversoul or something else with a hard hitting ability and your Leap Slam again is failing to get you to safety in time. On receiving a big amount of damage your Trigger Gem "Endure" activates and switches your weaponset if a few conditions are met. First you would need a Shield equipped in your second weaponset and it can only activate after receiving around 70% damage of your entire life in one strike and it is only available every 30s (Better leaving balancing to Balance team though). It would then give you an Immortal Call effect and/or some endurance charges to make sure you can survive a couple of seconds after taking the hit. Also this would open up the possibility to instantly changing from a two-handed weaponset to a one-handed/shield weaponset. In this scenario you also gain some alternative to Immortal Call which I like a lot.

What do you guys think about these Ideas? Would you like them and play around if these came to be? Any feedback or additional ideas to make weaponswitch more attractive or did I plainly overlook something?

No need to make the game even faster and needing even less player input, there is waaaay too much automation already imho.

problem is the issue of stat changes created by doing it, and the potential that gear wouldn't work how it should, so you would have to keep two sets of player stats active.

What I mean is I could have shield charge jsut fine when I have my shield but it would show as inactive cause I lose too much str when i don't have my 1 hand and shield setup.

I know you want to determine that before hand, but it would be very confusing for players to see a grayed out shield charge, but know it works cause it's really not greyed out when they are on other weapon set.

The other problem is potential to kill self,

Lets say your shield gives 100 health, but you are low life build, when you toggle back you will lose that and potentially die.

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Fruz wrote:

No need to make the game even faster and needing even less player input, there is waaaay too much automation already imho.

Actually my suggestion is to make the game more challenging and slow it down with more dangerous content and the incentive to use an offensive and a defensive weaponset. You may gain an automatical weapenswap but on the same time you cant mindlessly rush content as enemies could even more specialise on different situations. I think this wouldnt take less mindless player input, but even more thought through player input as you have to handle two weaponsets and need to be aware on which you currently are.

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keeperofstars wrote:

problem is the issue of stat changes created by doing it, and the potential that gear wouldn't work how it should, so you would have to keep two sets of player stats active.

What I mean is I could have shield charge jsut fine when I have my shield but it would show as inactive cause I lose too much str when i don't have my 1 hand and shield setup.

I know you want to determine that before hand, but it would be very confusing for players to see a grayed out shield charge, but know it works cause it's really not greyed out when they are on other weapon set.

The other problem is potential to kill self,

Lets say your shield gives 100 health, but you are low life build, when you toggle back you will lose that and potentially die.

The thing about stat changes (and in a similar sense for low life etc) is, it isn't actually an issue as you already have to satisfy stat requirements anyways. This always was left to be handled by the player himself and when he changes gear he just has to make sure it works for both weaponsets. Also if you indicate a skill with some colour you can easily show the player a note that this skill is going to switch his weaponset.

You are undersestimating the players, doing that would make them rush even more, because it would be more easily.

What mobs can do do not matter as long as they vanish instantly in one click, as long as this does not change, your suggestion would only be pushing the clear speed meta farther.

Plus you would be giving almost free fortify even more easily to everybody, making choices less important since you can just let your character use another weapon to move automatically.

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The rather stale meta rewards you only for one-shotting and offscreen-clearing content, but what if these issues would be things of the past and there would be a benefit of using multiple main skills? Let us assume with 3.0 content finally gets challenging again and even white mobs take a few shots to be killed again.

See I addressed this already. I dont want to introduce new ways for even more powercreep rather I want it being fixed. This is still just a dream though and I dont think its going to get less anytime soon if at all...

I do hear you on that part then.

Still, I would not like to see more automation, I think that we have enough of it already.
That's just my opinion of course.

Yes, I respect your opinion and thank you for your feedback. :)

I only wish the second weaponset would have some more appeal to it. The buffs were only one of the suggestions I came up with and I can clearly see how this could enable more ranged builds to abuse Fortify and the like, but I dont see a simple weaponset switch as too much automation. I may be wrong on this part though.