Front bar? Back bar?

Davor · May 2019

I still don't get this. I know it's you put certain skills on one bar and then different skills on another bar. Thing is, I don't get it and understand. I keep seeing people say, put this skill/weapon on the back bar and or have this skill/weapon on your front bar.

So what is suppose to be the front bar? What is suppose to be the back bar? I still don't get it.

Davor

siddique · May 2019

If you go to your skills you'll see one labelled as your primary and one as your backup bar.

Generally speaking, you put damage over time/support skills on the back bar while you slot spammables/direct damage attacks on front bar.

You can put them on any bar, as long as you use them properly. I had my front bar skills on backup bar for the longest time, I just stayed on it more.

therift · May 2019

Took me a long time to figure out that the secret is there is no secret.

If you change 'Front Bar' to 'Attack' or 'Primary' or 'Main' bar, you'll see what is meant... your main skills and weapon(s) are 'Front' and secondary skills/buffs are 'Back'.

It's that simple

daemonios · May 2019

Depends on your build. Weapon skills obviously go on whichever bar has the corresponding weapon. Your main spammable is usually on your front bar. Long buffs and dots often go on your back bar and you'll switch bars to reapply them when they run out. Some skills benefit or synergize better with certain weapons and/or enchantments (e.g. tanks' crusher enchantment on a back-barred infused destro staff). Experiment, read the tooltips, see where it makes sense to slot your skills.

Goregrinder · May 2019

People talk about "front bar" and "back bar" because they are labeled "1" and "2". Really what they mean is "Damage bar, support bar" or "healing bar, tank bar" or "Dot bar, buff bar" etc.

Whether you put spells on the front or back, or bar 1 or 2 doesn't matter. All that matters is that you have two separate bars, and your spells should be sorted on each bar based on what they do for your build. So an offensive bar, and defensive bar, or healing bar, damage bar, etc.

Davor · May 2019

Thank you so much for that. I just put my skills on any bar. I was just curious why people say have this or that on a certain bar.

I am curious though, maybe it will help me, where do healing spells go? I have them on both bars. Am I hurting myself for doing so?

therift · May 2019

Davor wrote: »

Thank you so much for that. I just put my skills on any bar. I was just curious why people say have this or that on a certain bar.

I am curious though, maybe it will help me, where do healing spells go? I have them on both bars. Am I hurting myself for doing so?

The reason for specifying skills on certain bars is synergies between skills, sets, and passives. It' a touch more complicated than that, but in essence you want to put things together that enhance each other.

SirAndy · May 2019

- After level 15, you can carry two sets of weapons. You can swap between them with the weapon swap button.
- For each set, there is a dedicated skill bar.
- When you swap weapons, your skill bars swap as well so you always have the same skills for the same weapon.
- Many people have a primary weapon set that they use to attack and a secondary weapon set that they use to buff themselves or lay down some long lasting damage over time effects.

Generally speaking, you want to buff yourself with your back bar weapon and skills before entering combat and lay down some long lasting damage over time effects, then swap to your front weapon and use that and its associated skills to deal more direct damage.

Goregrinder · May 2019

Davor wrote: »

Thank you so much for that. I just put my skills on any bar. I was just curious why people say have this or that on a certain bar.

I am curious though, maybe it will help me, where do healing spells go? I have them on both bars. Am I hurting myself for doing so?

So there are a lot of abilities that do certain things by simply being slotted on a bar. One of the Dawnbreaker morphs, for instance, increases damage to all abilities on the bar it's slotted on by 5%, so having it slotted as a "filler" ability (even though it's an ultimate), makes sense if you have no other ultimate that will work for your build, or you have a lot of DPS spells on that bar (like a bow bar for instance).

There are ability passives that increase other things like healing or stam recoveries for certain skill lines, that buff any ability slotted within that skill line. So if you decided Bar 2 is your "healing" bar, then you would want to slow any ability you use in your build that increases healing potential, on the same bar. An example would be the Nightblade "Soul Siphoner" passive, in the Siphoning tree. This passive increases the effectiveness of your healing done by 3%, for each Siphoning ability slotted. So this would be ain incentive to slot maybe 2 or so Siphoning abilities on that bar, as that would give you 6% more healing when you are on that bar.

If you ran those same abilities on your other bar, you would lose the 6% healing bonus, so it matters sometimes which bar your spells or abilities actually reside on. That's why you may see similar builds us the same abilities, but put some of them on different bars...because they may be for different classes or race, or may be due to wielding different weapons so they don't need the passive bonus on bar 2, but the other version of the build does need it so it slots it on bar 1.

I hope that makes sense.

oddbasket · May 2019

You can call those bars whatever you want and use them however.
But generally the front bar has more patrons, while the back bar has better beer.

Thogard · May 2019

Dmg bar = front bar
Buff bar = back bar

Heals can be on either depending on build

Davor · May 2019

Thank you so much everyone. Greatly appreciate it.

Yes @Goregrinder that makes sense. Greatly appreciate and learned something new.