I hate switching between action bars to use different abilities

Glorious_Platypus · June 27

Title, really, as simple as that. It is cumbersome and annoying. It makes casting anything on my 2nd action bar take, like... way longer. It is not convenient, or even fluid for that matter. Most of the time in combat when I hit my switch action bars button, it doesn't do anything. I have to hit it multiple times. If it was smooth as just Switch Action Bar > Cast Ability > Switch back, then I wouldn't be complaining, lol.

ESO's combat is "fine", but it's RIGHT on the edge of unacceptably clanky. That's really the best way to describe it.

Elvenheart · June 27

Back in 2014 I felt the same way and I remapped my switch action bar button to the middle mouse button that is also the scroll wheel. It’s become so much of a habit just tapping to switch between the bars that way that I couldn’t do it any other way.

LadyGP · June 27

Glorious_Platypus wrote: »

Title, really, as simple as that. It is cumbersome and annoying. It makes casting anything on my 2nd action bar take, like... way longer. It is not convenient, or even fluid for that matter. Most of the time in combat when I hit my switch action bars button, it doesn't do anything. I have to hit it multiple times. If it was smooth as just Switch Action Bar > Cast Ability > Switch back, then I wouldn't be complaining, lol.

ESO's combat is "fine", but it's RIGHT on the edge of unacceptably clanky. That's really the best way to describe it.

For context - where/when are you having this issue. Is it PvE, PvP, Trials, everywhere, etc.

As @Elvenheart said though, swapping a keybind might be a good place to start to remove some of the friction with swapping.

lillybit · June 27

If there wasn't bar swapping there could only be the one bar because of console/gamepad. You wouldn't just get twice the skills without having to switch

Glorious_Platypus · June 27

Yeah I use one of my mouse buttons but it's not the scroll, I change my zoom in/out way too much to change that lol

Elvenheart · June 27

I still use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out, but I just tap it to swap bars. I agree, I zoom in and out a lot too. 🙂

Edited to add: I use a different mouse button on the side to engage auto run and that helps me too, and recently when they added that you could just tap the sprint key to engage sprint instead of holding it down I found that works together.

Malprave · June 27

I find bar swapping to be no more clunky than holding a button down to access a second set of skills which is standard in many games.

Glorious_Platypus · June 27

lillybit wrote: »

If there wasn't bar swapping there could only be the one bar because of console/gamepad. You wouldn't just get twice the skills without having to switch

A controller/gamepad can be configured to use button combinations. It already uses combos, but you don't need 2 actions bars. Just use more combos.

@LadyGP , any time I have to swap action bars, which is any time I fight something. All content. Except for housing heh

tomofhyrule · June 27

There are several one-bar builds that can be used for anyone who prefer not to barswap. Everyone focuses on Oakensoul, but with many skills getting the "while slotted on either bar" treatment, pretty well anything can be set up as a one-bar while just leaving a 'dead' backbar of buffs.

Militan1404 · June 27

Glorious_Platypus wrote: »

lillybit wrote: »

If there wasn't bar swapping there could only be the one bar because of console/gamepad. You wouldn't just get twice the skills without having to switch

A controller/gamepad can be configured to use button combinations. It already uses combos, but you don't need 2 actions bars. Just use more combos.

@LadyGP , any time I have to swap action bars, which is any time I fight something. All content. Except for housing heh

You could but thats clunky as heck, you allready have to do that to cast ultimate on console and many times it would cast a skill from one of those buttons you have to press together instead of the ultimate. The same thing if your gonna bash on console that makes you press block plus light attack button, that stops your stamina recovery and also drains your stamina if attacked. So if crossplay is really gonna be a thing, this is things that needs to be fixed to close the gap between console players and pc players, and adding more button combos would only make that gap bigger.

Sylosi · June 27

I don't like bar swapping in ESO either, however I don't have this dislike of bar swapping in other games like GW2, New World, etc.

Which leads me to conclude it is the spammy, tedious nature of certain aspects of the ESO combat system I don't like rather than weapon swapping itself. Specifically the amount of buffs, HoTs, etc that you need to keep up to perform optimally (this is mostly as someone who played PvP when I still played this game) feels very much as "housekeeping". So swapping bar basically just to refresh a HoT, refresh Major Resolve and trigger my back bar set bonus, to then immediately swap back, is mind-numbingly tedious and makes me dislike the bar swapping.

reazea · June 27

lillybit wrote: »

If there wasn't bar swapping there could only be the one bar because of console/gamepad. You wouldn't just get twice the skills without having to switch

ESO was designed to be played on PC. We've suffered enough to cater to game boxes as it is.

Glorious_Platypus · June 27

@tomofhyrule , Ok, I'll look into one bar builds. I'm still a new player and I kinda keep myself pretty guarded/cagey around looking up spoilers for the game. Anything that expands my knowledge that I might be able to get by just playing the game, I don't want to look up.

Fwiw, this morning I did a lot of rearranging of my bars/abilities and I did come up with something to where my 2nd action bar does just that- buffing abilities that I cast before combat

lillybit · June 27

reazea wrote: »

lillybit wrote: »

If there wasn't bar swapping there could only be the one bar because of console/gamepad. You wouldn't just get twice the skills without having to switch

ESO was designed to be played on PC. We've suffered enough to cater to game boxes as it is.

If it was designed to only be played on PC there wouldn't be bar swap at all. It was always intended to be on console too, you were just beta testing it for us. They didn't do all the work to get it on console in just a year. Regardless of that, gampad is still PC so my point stands.

As far as suffering goes, console players have suffered a lot more from this elitist attitude and bizarre victim mentality

SilverBride · June 27

I use Oakensoul on 6 of my characters so no bar swapping. One character uses 2 handed and another uses dual wield, and they both have bow on the back bar for when they need a ranged attack. But I don't swap them back and forth during combat. I just use bow when I need to and keep it there until I no longer need ranged.

Soarora · June 27

My main uses the backbar almost entirely for getting around (I’m a sorc, so streak and dark convergence) and frontbar for damage.

Another one-bar option is werewolf.

zaria · June 27

lillybit wrote: »

If there wasn't bar swapping there could only be the one bar because of console/gamepad. You wouldn't just get twice the skills without having to switch

And you would loose the option to use two weapons, like bow and melee.
You can always use Oakensoul but you loose lots of skill slots, who don't matter if they are only for buffs.
But if you also want to heal you need two bars.

zaria · June 27

Elvenheart wrote: »

Back in 2014 I felt the same way and I remapped my switch action bar button to the middle mouse button that is also the scroll wheel. It’s become so much of a habit just tapping to switch between the bars that way that I couldn’t do it any other way.

You can also use the tilt of center wheel to swap on many mice, I use tilt left for front and right for back, benefit is that you can not double swap, this require setting up the mice to bind keys to this, on my naga mouse I have the 6 actions to 6 side buttons to 1-5+R and tilt to some button I don't remember so I only use keyboard to move not to cast.
It has 12 side buttons but the lower ones are hard to reach so I don't use them.

Arunei · June 27

I use my middle button's click to weapon swap, but...I rarely play on a build that uses weapon swapping.

I get overwhelmed VERY easily when there's a lot of stuff going on. I try to pay attention to ALL THE THINGS and it often gets so bad I'm thrown off my rotation entirely, and 90% of the time I'm too flustered and overstimulated to pick it back up again until I get got and die. And this happens even with simple rotations with two bars too, and hell, can even happen on my 1bar builds.

But it's been so long since I've used it that I've been debating looking up some simple 2bar builds to see if maybe, maybe I won't immediately implode and explode simultaneously if I use one lol. Not expecting a lot but hey, won't know if I don't try.

Orbital78 · June 27

Heavy attack builds are a bit more viable now. Werewolves are definitely decent for many situations. Even some velothi builds I only use the back bar for one or two buffs and the arena weapon.

If you're able to use it, check out the Flydigi vader pro lines. Not cheap but solid mmo gamepads with customized software. The new model was 20% off for Prime day. It has two more buttons than my older 3 pro. So I think that is four more buttons than the standard Xbox Elite with all the features and more... maybe.

Tallon_IV · June 27

My only issue with bar swapping is it just flat out doesn't work a lot of the time.

LuC1ll3atTh3Wh33L · June 27

bar swapping for me is cumbersome. i'd drop oaken if i had more "slotted on either bar" to use. as it is i can only do a couple IF i subclass.

Danikat · June 27

I know the trend for a lot of high-end builds is to have a 'back bar' with all your buffs and keep swapping to it to apply them then swapping back to your 'front bar' to attack but one solution might be to not approach it like that. Sort things in a way that makes sense to you and minimises how often you need to swap.

I've always used it primarily as a weapon swap. All my characters use two different weapons and then I have a bar for each one, with a mix of buffs and attacks relevant to that weapon. For example I'll have an AoE heal on a melee weapon because I'm going to be staying in a relatively small space and likely to have allies nearby and a direct self-heal on a ranged weapon because if I need to stay at range it's likely I also need to move a lot.

That means I only swap bars when I need to swap weapons, which is a lot less frequent than every time I need to apply a buff.

I realise the builds you can do that way may not be as good, but I know from experience they're good enough for everything up to at least normal DLC dungeons and battlegrounds, and even if you need to change to something else for the high-end stuff at least you're not pushed to play that way all the time.

lillybit wrote: »

reazea wrote: »

lillybit wrote: »

If there wasn't bar swapping there could only be the one bar because of console/gamepad. You wouldn't just get twice the skills without having to switch

ESO was designed to be played on PC. We've suffered enough to cater to game boxes as it is.

If it was designed to only be played on PC there wouldn't be bar swap at all. It was always intended to be on console too, you were just beta testing it for us. They didn't do all the work to get it on console in just a year. Regardless of that, gampad is still PC so my point stands.

As far as suffering goes, console players have suffered a lot more from this elitist attitude and bizarre victim mentality

Having multiple ability bars is not just a console mechanic. It's adapted from old PC RPGs like Baldur's Gate, Lands of Lore and Darksun where you had several different quickslot bars for different types of abilities (like one for basic attacks and movement, one for spells, one for usable items etc.). Originally I think having to swap between them was due to screen space - if you had all your abilities on screen at once you wouldn't be able to see anything else. It's also used in a lot of PC-only modern RPGs for pretty much the same reason because even though there's a lot more screen space the priority is seeing the game world, not a bunch of menus.

Oddly enough one of the exceptions to that format is the Elder Scrolls series, which uses things like directional attacks instead of ability buttons, but when ESO was in development they were aiming to attract an MMO audience so they modelled it on games like WoW and Dark Age of Camelot which do use ability bars.

spartaxoxo · June 27

reazea wrote: »

lillybit wrote: »

If there wasn't bar swapping there could only be the one bar because of console/gamepad. You wouldn't just get twice the skills without having to switch

ESO was designed to be played on PC. We've suffered enough to cater to game boxes as it is.

You're playing a video game not suffering. Elder Scrolls was always a multiplatform franchise. So, complaining that the multiplatform game was designed with multiplatform in mind and this somehow makes you "suffer," from the consequences of your own decision to play a game known for that is certainly a choice. But, it's not one I would make it. I play Overwatch and you don't see me claiming that I'm suffering because console is not the primary thing they balance the game around. Blizzard has always primarily been a PC game studio with sometimes porting games to console.

Elder Scrolls was a multiplatform game, not a PC game for a long time before this game came out. Morrowind was on console. Oblivion was on console. Skyrim was on console. What made you think they'd never release for console just because the release was delayed a bit? Btw ES6 will also be on console, well Xbox in particular.

Glorious_Platypus · June 28

lillybit wrote: »

reazea wrote: »

As far as suffering goes, console players have suffered a lot more from this elitist attitude and bizarre victim mentality

I mean this as respectfully as possible. Just get a computer... ?

Glorious_Platypus · June 28

Oops, looks like I accidentally put my reply inside the quote. Can't edit it now lol

AzuraFan · June 28

SilverBride wrote: »

I use Oakensoul on 6 of my characters so no bar swapping.

Same. I use oakensoul so I don't have to bar swap.

There's enough room to have all 10 skills + 2 ultimates on one bar, so I've always thought bar swapping was a dumb mechanic.

Thormar · June 28

Glorious_Platypus wrote: »

Oops, looks like I accidentally put my reply inside the quote. Can't edit it now lol

If you're on mobile, the cog icon is on top right. See image below (am assuming your browser does show it, else tap the general area and you might get the edit bar at bottom)

On PC, even though invisible, the cog is just to the left of the comment count (#xx), just hover and take it from there.

Glorious_Platypus · June 28

Ohhh!! It's invisible on PC! I just thought it wasn't an option on the forums

SilverBride · June 28

Glorious_Platypus wrote: »

Ohhh!! It's invisible on PC! I just thought it wasn't an option on the forums

The thing is that it's not supposed to be invisible. It's one of 2 bugs that have been going on for quite awhile now that Vanilla hasn't fixed yet.

Thormar · June 28

Glorious_Platypus wrote: »

Ohhh!! It's invisible on PC! I just thought it wasn't an option on the forums

Yeah, it is an option. Just get your mouse in the vicinity of that comment number, just to its left.
In your case, since the comment you wanted to edit is #25, rest the mouse a bit to the left and an 'Options' tooltip will come up. Click and take it from there.