That would make ESO significantly more like most other mmos and change the combat drastically.

In theory you could slot the same weapon twice. You just need another copy of it.

Correct me if I am wrong, but barswap is not part of the GCD. It is already an instantaneous action that can cancel the animations of skills. The reason it seems like it is on the GCD is because you still can't cast skills and light attacks faster than 1 Hz. Hopefully that explanations makes sense.

As for not being able to swap while CC...well lets be honest...why would you be able to? Imagine yourself as your player in the game. If you got turned to stone, thrown by a javelin impaling you, (insert more class stuns), do you think you would be able to instantaneously focus on changing your ability set on the spot? I wouldn't be able to...I would probably be screaming about some random dude IMPALING me with a javelin for a solid five minutes. Remember, this game is first and foremost an RPG.

Vaerion wrote: »

ShadowKyuubi wrote: »

Correct me if I am wrong, but barswap is not part of the GCD. It is already an instantaneous action that can cancel the animations of skills. The reason it seems like it is on the GCD is because you still can't cast skills and light attacks faster than 1 Hz. Hopefully that explanations makes sense.

Swapping hotbars is not instant. There's a substantial delay between pressing the button and being able to cast an ability from that hotbar. Or to switch back to the other hotbar. For example, if I tap the swap button twice in succession, it only changes once.

This delay makes sense when swapping weapons. I'm suggesting it would be nice to have the option of giving up the second weapon in exchange for instant (actually instantaneous) hotbar swapping. This would allow someone to basically have a build that's "1 weapon with 10 abilities" instead of "2 weapons with 5 abilities each".

ShadowKyuubi wrote: »

As for not being able to swap while CC...well lets be honest...why would you be able to? Imagine yourself as your player in the game. If you got turned to stone, thrown by a javelin impaling you, (insert more class stuns), do you think you would be able to instantaneously focus on changing your ability set on the spot? I wouldn't be able to...I would probably be screaming about some random dude IMPALING me with a javelin for a solid five minutes. Remember, this game is first and foremost an RPG.

Using your logic here, why would my character in an RPG "forget" or "not be able to remember" 5 abilities while CCed, but not the 5 abilities on their current hotbar? Not even sure how you'd make sense of a hotbar from an RPG standpoint. It makes sense that I wouldn't be able to swap weapons. But if I have the same weapon on each hotbar (so I'm not physically doing anything when changing hotbars), why would my character be able to "instantly recall" 5 abilities but not the other 5?

Yes, there is a delay with how fast you swap bars...that is true. Mainly because you have to override the animation. There is an animation tier list. I'll give a brief overview of how it works and then put part of the list that applies. Essentially, any time you perform an action your character MUST perform the corresponding animation. If you cast an ability, you will go through the animation for that ability. You're probably saying "Well, we animation cancel light attacks and skills all the time," and you would be correct. If an animation is of higher priority than an animation previously performed, then the highest priority animation will cancel and override the other. An example of this can be seen when you Brace/Block...if you stand perfectly still, you will continue to do the block animation, however, if you barswap while blocking, your character will be seen doing the barswap animation. If the animation you are trying to perform is lower or the same in priority than the previous animation, then you must wait for the previous animation to finish before the new animation begins. You can observe this with Dodge Rolling and trying to barswap. You will not perform the barswap animation until after the dodge roll is complete.

Here is the animation list that applies to this discussion, higher on the list corresponds to higher priority:
Dodge Rolling
Barswap
Block
Skill Animations
Light Attack Animations

This is a very long way of saying that you cannot instantaneously barswap twice in a row, because you are not overriding the original animation in a timely manner.