Crossbow Reload and Ammunition Skill Suggestions

Ammunition skills feel very clunky because of the current reload mechanic. Pretty much all other skills feel way better because they either have a cooldown that counts down uninterrupted or there's just a delay between attacks/spells. Bows don't even need to nock arrows, they just shoot shoot shoot.

Being able to cast a spell, attack with a weapon, throw a grenade, and so on before a dodge AND after a dodge feel very fluid... unless you have to reload. The current way reloading works completely breaks the flow.


Reloading is treated almost like some kind of channeled spell, you slow down to walking speed while reloading and will fail to reload if the entire animation doesn't complete. If it gets interrupted prematurely then sometimes it breaks for a bit, as if it becomes jammed. Is all of this really necessary? Why can't we continue to reload while dodging? If anything, make a 'Multitasker' passive so we can.

Another suggestion would be to allow us to bind a key that can reload the crossbow, regardless of which type of Ammunition is currently loaded. Basically, I want to bind 'R' to reload my ammo instead of having to select the specific Ammunition that is currently loaded. Currently, if I had different Ammunition on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and they all needed to be reloaded I would have to hit each of those buttons twice; 11, 22, 33, 44, 55. It's very awkward.

Switching between different Ammunition is slightly awkward as well. It would be nice if it was possible to bind keys to cycle through the currently equipped Ammunition. I'd love to be able to unbind the mouse scroll zooming in/out and have it cycle through Ammunition instead.

Edit: Speaking of ammo swapping, it has a decent delay. Currently I don't think there's a way to speed this up. I think it would be quite useful if the Weapon Swap passives and affix's would count toward Ammunition Swapping as well.

Thoughts?

You make good points here, and for ammo specifically I want to propose a potential idea.

Right now, you bind a button to shoot, and then you bind buttons to choose which ammo to load. Pressing those ammo buttons again will reload them, if they are currently loaded and any are missing.

What if, instead, we swapped how reload and shoot function? Which is to say, instead of a dedicated shoot button, we get a dedicated reload button. And, when you press the ammo skill, if it's already loaded, then it shoots. Essentially, instead of "shoot" and "load/reload", it becomes "reload" and "load/shoot".

With this, if we are using two ammo types, we now need to press two buttons to alternate between and use them, instead of three. If you want to manually reload your loaded ammo for a full magazine, you still can.

This doesn't quite address the multiple different ammos needing to be reloaded, but I think this approach could maybe feel more fluid than how it currently is.