More bound skill slots?
" As stated earlier, buffs and auras are part of you skill selection. The current system of buffs/auras remaining when you swap out the hot key for another ability should be considered a bug. I think the limitation on skill selection is a good thing and requisite for build diversity. There are far too many sockets available on gear to have that be the limiting factor in skill selection. | |
"But the passive tree, together with the increasing difficulty of monsters and the fact that using skills takes time and mana, still present a limitation on which ones are any good. I mean, allow even unlimited skill slots and you're still not going to see spell witches casting Ground Slam just because they can. You already don't even see them using off-element spells very often, because it unless you're dealing with something really heavily resistant, casting weak spells while monsters close in is as likely to get you killed as anything else. So I think you have it the wrong way around: it isn't the limited skill selection that allows for build diversity; the skill tree itself allows for build diversity, and that build diversity in turn provides a natural, "soft" limit to skill selection that would remain meaningful even with a higher number of skills available. The only things that might present a problem are long-duration effects like auras and curses. Less so curses, since they by nature need to be cast in combat and many are already only good if you've specialised in a particular field (crits, elemental damage etc). In any case, a couple of things to address that come to mind: first, attribute requirements could (I think should) present a limitation on which skills remain efficient to use as you level up. A ranger who wanted to keep strength-based auras hotkeyed to swap in when needed would have to invest in strength (or tradeoff other power for +strength mods on their gear). That's fair enough, gain versatility by trading something else. Second, perhaps if more support gems worked with auras (I'm actually not sure which ones do now, but I get the sense it's a fairly limited selection) it would make the required fiddling around in your inventory too much of a hassle for most to bother with. |
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People seem to be overlooking the fact that we're still limited by the amount of skill sockets we have and are underestimating the oppertunity cost of the support gems we have to sacrifice to get those extra skills.
I beleive the cost of the support gems is more then ample balance to even out the advantage of having more skills. As it stands you can fully support 2 skills (Two six link possible items) and 3 well-supported skills. This equals five skills, honestly, thats all you REALISTICALLY need. We then have 3 more just becuase we can. Fact is, having 9 skills gimps those 9 skills a certain amount that I personally find acceptable, however, the reason that I don't want to use 9 skills shouldn't be becuase you can't map them, but it should be becuase its more effective to use 5 or 8 | |
" That is a known bug iirc, and is being fixed afaik. | |
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I'd rather have weapon swap than extra skill slots. It adds more micro to the game and more itemization.
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" Why can't we have both? | |
" At least with the way I envision weapon swap, it would allow you to rebind your mouse skill slots, meaning you could have up to three additional slots. If you had more slots on top of that I think they number of skills would become too large for a few reasons. 1) It reduces choices in the skills you have. I like games that force me to make choices due to limited resources. In this case the resource is space (slots). If we can slot more and more skills it seems like you'd limit diversity of builds to items and passives. Having a limited amount of skill increases the amount of builds because people are forced to get the ones they really like. 2) If you put too many skill slots in you reduce the need to weapon swap in order to use additional skills. If I already have 10 slots on one weapon set why would I need to change over? 3) This is related to point 2. I want weapon swaps to be something people do every 5-10 seconds. The more you have on one set the less often you have to change sets. I want swapping to be something people do in the middle of fights very quickly. I do not want swapping to be something that people use to take out bosses or rares. It should be used constantly. In conclusion, I like chocolate milk. | |
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So basically, you want to add pointless busywork to combat. I think you're being contradictory, really. You don't want more skills available because it reduces build diversity (it doesn't, but anyway), but you want more skills available on weapon swap that everyone uses constantly. I understand the functionality and I'd like a weapon swap too, but if you want people to use it all the time, in what way is it meaningfully different to just having more skills available?
I mean if pressing a particular button every five seconds is a good idea, why not just make that a mechanic on its own? Here we go, "Combat is hard work and makes you hungry. Make sure to press your new Eat key every ten seconds or you'll lose health". No? Why not? Perhaps because it's a terrible idea that adds nothing to the game except RSI? |
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" iNitpick cuz iCool. It does reduce build diversity. I want my summoner with 5 auras, with 3 different summons, 2 curses, poison arrow for damage and lightning warp and frost wall for survivability to be viable! | |
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Not at all sure what your argument is.
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