Passives should apply even while in secondary bar

JFGoldFish96_ESO

So I've been thinking about this quite a bit, and I feel as though our passive abilities should still affect us even while on an ability bar that isn't being used, so you don't have to swap weapons for them to apply. Normally I would probably be against something like this, but really the main reason I feel this way is because of how very small the amount of ability slots we get already is.
I mean, only 5 abilities, in an MMO, and you're talking about cutting yourself down to four just to get another stat bonus. So now you're down to four fully active abilities? Yes, I know that Passives have active casts, but a lot of them are negligible to me or not worth taking up the full slot.
Idk I have been in the MMO Genre for a while now, so I am still trying to get used to the only 5 abilities thing, and taking myself down to FOUR just frustrates me a bit more.
Anyone share my sentiments? Or care to provide some complications or reasons why this wouldn't work or would be bad? Like I said I'm fairly new to ESO so I'm open to teaching.

Thanks for your contributions

Aett_Thorn

Are you talking about Passives or Toggles? Your thread title says passives, but you seem to be talking about toggles.

If you are talking about toggles, while there is a certain part of me that wishes that were true, it would basically mean that people would just put their toggles on a buff bar, and then it would be stupid NOT to have toggles on that bar, and so you'd create a situation where people who use toggles are more powerful than those who don't, and the imbalance still exists, just in the other direction.

Personally, I would prefer that everyone just got a toggle power slot. It would allow for people to slot a single toggle that would stay on both bars without taking up a slot on your active bars, but I think that this still might create an imbalance between the classes, since some classes don't have a toggle ability that would be needed there.

THEDKEXPERIENCE

I was screwing with my build yesterday, and making toggles work universally would break the game. I put together 1 bar that had 4 toggles on it and my crits both ended up north of 40. Since I'm a VR3 I could only imagine what this would do for a VR14. If you don't have the give and take of removing spells then it would be 10 times the one shot fest that it is now.

Also, some passives do work universally. The top one in Templar spear line, for example provides weapon damage for your whole build regardless of if you have an ability slotted or not.

Kuroinu

Can you imagine if you could slot all abilities like most other MMOs? The combat would be a mess and feel awful.

Some players don't realise that by restricting the ability slots to a low number that this actually makes for a far more creative experience. I find it very enjoyable to play around with different combos of abilities than just have them all dumped on me and feeling like I should be using them all at some point or another.

There is one simple thing that I believe has already been brought up in the posts above. The adding of a slot especially for toggles. However, I think it'd be best if instead of adding a slot specifically for toggle skills they just add a 6th slot for any skill. Having 6 skill slots would be the absolute maximum in my opinion and they shouldn't increase it any further.

Saying this, I'm actually fine with how the current ability system works and I don't want them to ruin it by thinking that they should add more slots, but I wouldn't mind a 6th slot.

AlnilamE

I believe that was tried during beta.

You'd have:
Sorc bar 2: Bound Armor, Clannfear, Twilight, Magelight.
NB: Siphoning Strikes, Concealed Weapon, Magelight

Not sure what the DK toggles are, but I don't think Templars have any.

Yes, having a 5+1 bar forces you to think about what you really want. I think that's a good thing, even if I sometimes wish I had room for one more skill...

tmacdec

While OP may be talking about toggles, which no I personally think you should have to reapply them, this got me thinking about stacked passive, like gain "x" _____ for every _____ ability slotted and I do think this should apply to bit bars or stuff like major savagery when having evil hunter slotted I think it should stay when switching weapons. Basically count both bars as one bar when it comes to buffs and passives

JFGoldFish96_ESO

Aett_Thorn wrote:

Are you talking about Passives or Toggles? Your thread title says passives, but you seem to be talking about toggles.

I guess I was speaking about toggles. Didn't realize there was a different name, forgot about the Passives you can put skill points into at the bottom of each tree.
Thank you for clearing that up.

Aett_Thorn wrote:

If you are talking about toggles, while there is a certain part of me that wishes that were true, it would basically mean that people would just put their toggles on a buff bar, and then it would be stupid NOT to have toggles on that bar, and so you'd create a situation where people who use toggles are more powerful than those who don't, and the imbalance still exists, just in the other direction.

You're definitely right, and I can see how that would be a bit problematic. People would just be slotting all their toggles in their secondary bar just to have a bar of every buff possible, which would 1.) negate the purpose of having the different buffs in the first place, and 2.) would sometimes eliminate secondary weapons from the game because no one would even swap anymore, they'd just have a bar of buffs.

Aett_Thorn wrote:

Personally, I would prefer that everyone just got a toggle power slot. It would allow for people to slot a single toggle that would stay on both bars without taking up a slot on your active bars, but I think that this still might create an imbalance between the classes, since some classes don't have a toggle ability that would be needed there.

This is actually a really good idea. I hadn't thought of that.

Riko_Futatabi wrote:

Some players don't realise that by restricting the ability slots to a low number that this actually makes for a far more creative experience. I find it very enjoyable to play around with different combos of abilities than just have them all dumped on me and feeling like I should be using them all at some point or another.

I definitely see what you're saying and the thought has crossed my mind that the restriction of abilities on your bar does allow for a lot more creativity and unique-ness. In other games I've played like WoW, everyone has every ability, but in ESO everyone has to put serious thought into what 5 abilities they want and are most important to them, and in that way everyone's ability bar is their own, and not necessarily identical, like other games.
Good point.

tmacdec wrote:

While OP may be talking about toggles, which no I personally think you should have to reapply them, this got me thinking about stacked passive, like gain "x" _____ for every _____ ability slotted and I do think this should apply to bit bars or stuff like major savagery when having evil hunter slotted I think it should stay when switching weapons. Basically count both bars as one bar when it comes to buffs and passives

Hmmmm. I think that would be sort of the same and wouldn't make sense if you don't have those abilities slotted in the bar you have active. I don't think you would see one of these ideas without the other. If toggles stayed while back-barred (I think I just made that up.....), then the Passives would with abilities that are back-barred, and vice versa.