Idea for one-weapon combat bar

NyxWrench

OK, a little idea on the whole double-bar thing that occurred to me:

Allow the option to not slot a second weapon, but still access the second bar. Treat it as one continuous bar of 10 slots, even though you have to swap between them to actually hit the buttons (due to the limitations of making them workable with a game controller).

The downside would be losing access to a second weapon. For example, no bow backbar with dual wield or 2H frontbar, or lightning staff backbar with flame staff front bar, etc. No Maelstrom backbar weapon for that set bonus while also getting another set bonus when swapped to the front bar. Etc.

The upside is that you eliminate the "double-barring" needed for some skills. No losing a summoned pet when swapping bars. Passive buffs are always in effect, without having to slot them twice. Etc.

You might have to drop the ultimate from the backbar, or require that it's the same as the frontbar. Not sure where that'd fall in the balance of things.

And the interface wouldn't need any extra complexity. Just take off your second weapon if you want to treat all the front and back skill slots as one continuous bar.

There are reasonable reasons to want to take advantage of multiple weapons (eg: healer wanting to apply debuffs from a destruction staff), but there are also reasonable approaches that don't need an extra weapon, but would benefit greatly from simplifying the slotting situation.


I'm not sure how this would impact the overall balance of the game. There are far too many combinations to think that I could casually judge what impact this would have. But, while this would definitely give some advantages in some areas (but not in others, where it is reasonable to want to stay with the two-weapon build), my initial reaction is thinking that they would be balanced by the losses, and that it would mostly allow more creative diversity in build design.

Anyway, it's a thought. Maybe someone can explain why it's utterly broken. Maybe the devs will give it a shake to see how it works out.

Tasear

You can simply just not slot a weapon in 2nd bar. You might be interested in Werewolf though.

idk

Tasear wrote: »

You can simply just not slot a weapon in 2nd bar. You might be interested in Werewolf though.

I think they still want access to the skills, but not have a second weapon. They state they understand they still have to swap to get to the other 5 skills.

If this is correct just slot the same weapons on both bars, Make sure the set bonus is the same so nothing is lost.

NyxWrench

Sure, I can mimic the "one weapon" aspect of it now. That was sort of the point about it being trivial to implement in UI. However the point of the advantage of the tradeoff was that all 10 skill slots would be treated as 'active' regardless of which bar you're on, rather than only 5 at a time, which is not something that can be mimicked, as it would have to be built into the game.

MashmalloMan

This seems like a balancing nightmare, there are a lot of skills that benefit from being slotted. Fighters guild, Mages guild, Wardens, Sorcs, Nightblades, etc. Having all those passives on 1 bar would be overkill. Magicka DD's already only use destruction staves so it's not like you would lose any skills, you would only lose the chance to use a separate set.

Look at a bow/bow warden for example. They would be able to have +15% damage done at all times while having access to all the bow abilities they need. (This would possibly bring them in line with other DD's because they are underpar right now - only exception)

IMO there's other things the combat team can be focused on, it sounds like a simple change but it would have a huge ripple effect potentially changing the balance of some our skills and passives.

Red_Feather

I love in Guild Wars how any empty slot in mainhand/offhand takes weapon from the same slot of other weapon set.

So if you slot Dagger1/Dagger2 and then Empty/Shield, your weapon swaps will be dagger1/dagger2 and dagger1/shield.

Syrpynt

NyxWrench wrote: »

OK, a little idea on the whole double-bar thing that occurred to me:

Allow the option to not slot a second weapon, but still access the second bar. Treat it as one continuous bar of 10 slots, even though you have to swap between them to actually hit the buttons (due to the limitations of making them workable with a game controller).

The downside would be losing access to a second weapon. For example, no bow backbar with dual wield or 2H frontbar, or lightning staff backbar with flame staff front bar, etc. No Maelstrom backbar weapon for that set bonus while also getting another set bonus when swapped to the front bar. Etc.

The upside is that you eliminate the "double-barring" needed for some skills. No losing a summoned pet when swapping bars. Passive buffs are always in effect, without having to slot them twice. Etc.

You might have to drop the ultimate from the backbar, or require that it's the same as the frontbar. Not sure where that'd fall in the balance of things.

And the interface wouldn't need any extra complexity. Just take off your second weapon if you want to treat all the front and back skill slots as one continuous bar.

There are reasonable reasons to want to take advantage of multiple weapons (eg: healer wanting to apply debuffs from a destruction staff), but there are also reasonable approaches that don't need an extra weapon, but would benefit greatly from simplifying the slotting situation.

I'll tell you exactly why the "elite" playerbase will argue "No!!" for this change, with their dying breath:
• It will limit passives from multiple weapons at specific times/scenarios. Like DW spin-to-win with daggers for large groups of enemies, then wrecking blow for finisher on single targets. Other quote I've remembered players say about PvP, "ESO's combat is so fast, unlike any other MMO!"

Now I'll tell you why I support this idea:
• I'm tired of being able to swap weapons in combat as if your inventory pack is a magicians hat. I'm tired of weapon swapping for animation cancelling as being a "technique" when it was never intentional in the game design, just "accepted" as being the optimal for high dps. I also think that it makes combat about who has the least lag, or the lowest ping--not skill. The player that gets desynced will likely lose the dual or 1vX situation, especially if the opposing player(s) have an ult ready for smashtime.

• My biggest reason for supporting this though--I think that without an animation swapping weapons, servers will be less strained during 'high load' hours. And ESO has always had struggles with supporting high populations during events (which are far more common now in the last 3 years, obviously because DLC's and stuff).

ZOS_Icy

Greetings,

We have closed this topic as it was originally created in October 2018 and the information may no longer be relevant. In many cases, it's better to create a new thread on a topic that you want to discuss as opposed to bumping one that is rather old.

Thank you for your understanding.