Why do we not default back to auto-attack?

Hi.

I am one of those folks who does not have the autoattack bound to anything at all. L/M/R mouse are all bound to mana spenders.

But I noticed that if I run out of mana it does not default to auto-attack.

Why not?

Funny, it does for me.

Does work for me with attacks bound to LMB, not sure what happens when using spells, gotta test that.
Although I'd say auto attack is not desirable as a fall back for spells, e.g. you could run around with a scepter, try to cast a Fireball from distance, and the auto attack would get you into melee range.

Sorry for noobish question but what's auto-attack? Is it a skill gem or what?

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WhisperByte wrote:

Sorry for noobish question but what's auto-attack? Is it a skill gem or what?

The attack you do if you don't use any skill gems. ;)

Edit: OP, what mana spender do you use? Because I haven't experienced your situation so far.

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Asphael wrote:

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WhisperByte wrote:

Sorry for noobish question but what's auto-attack? Is it a skill gem or what?

The attack you do if you don't use any skill gems. ;)

Oh you mean default attack? :) Thanks for reply

If you are wielding a weapon and run out of mana, you default to the default attack.
If you are using spells, you do not.

The reasoning for this is simple)

1) there are radial area spells (like ice nova) that have no 'target' so it would be really dumb if they defaulted to the default attack
2) spell-casters often have next to no accuracy and often times an awful weapon (perhaps even a melee weapon, like a staff or a dagger); they don't want to swing their weapon stupidly when they might prefer to run away and regenerate mana

It defaults for attackers because they do have a weapon and chances are they would like to be able to swing it in case of an emergency where there is no mana.

It seems like if you had a wand and a skill tied to LMB, shooting the wand effect might be the rigth default, although also rather pointless as it does no DPS to speak of for most people so equipped. I was just curious how we got where we got.

GGG tries to make everything an intuitive reference.

Attacking with a weapon without mana available to use the bound skill would still be attacking.
Casting a spell without mana available is doing nothing.

It just happens that that's also the safest mechanical interpretation for the game to work with.

I'd *like* to see some weapons (read wands) tagged as caster weapons and defaulted to if you try to cast a spell you have no mana for. But honestly its unnecessary.