The Default Attack Gem

I envision this as a white or clear gem, unimbued with the essences of other skill gems. It drops like regular gems do and can be sold, traded or destroyed like regular skill gems. But it would have no level and no quality and no level or attribute requirements.

It can be inserted into any color socket, which turns the socket gray as long as the gem is in it. When equipped, it represents your default attack skill. You don't have to equip it in order to use your default attack skill, it just enables you to apply support gem effects to your default attack.

You can even have more than one default attack gem equipped and each one linked to it's own set of support gems, like you can with regular skill gems. Your default attack will consume mana when it's linked to support gems- something simple like a flat 3 mana per linked support gem.

default attacks have no manacost, which means mana multipliers on support gems won't work. if we add a manacost to this gem what would it be and what would it be based on?

You're right, it should cost some mana. But all applicable support gems have only one minor effect so, it shouldn't cost very much.

I dislike the idea of having a gem for this taking up space. Having a new class of support gems might be better, ones that are designed to affect you default attack. They have a minor mana cost for having them equipped or maybe turn them into double edged sword, give them all a nice buff, but also a debuff. For example a life steal that also lowers max life. As you level them the life steal increases and the lowered life decreases. The exact values and effects could be tweaked for balance naturally.

"

squirrel_killer wrote:

I dislike the idea of having a gem for this taking up space.

One square, really?

"

squirrel_killer wrote:

Having a new class of support gems might be better, ones that are designed to affect you default attack. They have a minor mana cost for having them equipped or maybe turn them into double edged sword, give them all a nice buff, but also a debuff. For example a life steal that also lowers max life. As you level them the life steal increases and the lowered life decreases. The exact values and effects could be tweaked for balance naturally.

That would take up even more space.

"

TheNightFly wrote:

One square, really?

Yes but you would be stuck with that one square taking up space forever, and also if you make it untradeable you would also need to ban it from being put in stash.

"

TheNightFly wrote:

That would take up even more space.

Yes it would take more space, however these would be tradable, destructible, and sellable. They would take up no more space than a normal skill or support gem, and would provide you with a way to use up otherwise unused unlinked sockets. They could be coloured as other gems are and would still allow you to affect your default attack.

Your idea is great but it's a whole new class of support gems dedicated to modding the default attack and they don't work the same way which means they can't be used with regular skill gems. My idea uses the existing support gems and the default attack gem follows the existing socket mechanics which should be way easier to develop.

You've convinced me though that it's better to be able to sell, trade or destroy my default attack gems and I've changed my OP to show that. I also remember that we can use more than one regular skill gem of the same kind at a time and link each one to a different set of support gems. Some of the bonuses will stack while other bonuses the highest one is used. The default attack gem should work the same way.

Update bump

You'd have to give it a base mana cost to be multiplied by supports. For a wand/bow user, even a completely plain attack can be made very powerful by cramming it with supports, so it needs an appropriate mana cost to be balanced.

It used to be that you could use lvl 1 Elemental Hit like this: very low base mana cost (4), so you could use a lot of supports while still having a skill that is cheap to use. Now EH costs 12+ mana, this isn't viable any more, so wand users especially could benefit from a new cheap attack. (Melee/bow characters already have reasonably cheap options, such as Reave or Burning Arrow.)

I think Default Attack is a little bit too boring for a skill gem, though. How about a gem that somehow gets an enhanced benefit from its supports? Mana cost would increase rapidly with level, but the enhancement would also increase.

I considered giving the default Attack gem a base mana cost of 5 but then, if you have it equipped and not linked to any support gems, it'll cause you to burn mana for nothing.