Weapon set switching is nearly pointless...

Bear with me here as the title is click baity...

Short version: when you switch weapons, your skills aren't changed at all. This renders switching weapons completely useless unless you're switching to an identical weapon type; and even then it's broken (see point #3).

1) Creating a character with two weapon sets increases diversity, and flexibility. Especially if you can quickly change from range to melee and back (e.g., a Crossbow/Dual-Wield build). However, the weapon skills are _not_ bound to the weapon set, so switching to an alternate weapon set doesn't change the skills you have selected.

2) If you're switching to a melee weapon from ranged (or vice versa) the skills are (most likely) very different, so having "Rapid Fire" or other Crossbow skill in my "Melee Weapon Set" skills is a 'dead key' (can't be used in that set). Which severely limits the number of skills you can have available for any given weapon set, and with any committed to the alternate set being 'dead keys'.

3) Even if you equip like-weapon (e.g., two crossbows: one ice, one fire), switching weapon sets is still an ungainly proposal: the "Fire weapon" skill is tied to a single button (e.g., Mouse Button 1). Thus, switching to Weapon Set 2, then triggering "Fire weapon" with MB1 - you will then _switch back to Weapon Set 1 and fire_ because the "Fire weapon" skill is bound to _that_ crossbow. Requiring Weapon Set 2 to have a _different primary trigger button than weapon set 1_.

I am sure that these decisions weren't made in a vacuum, and the implementation of "one button -> one skill -> one weapon" is (likely) far simpler than hot-swapping the skills. However, it essentially breaks nearly everything about having a second weapon set.

And if you got this far, thank you for your patience.

I hear ya ..
key bindings should be weapon slot bound .

Not to weapon but the slot its in ...
so you can take it out and not lose binds

I've been looking to see if I've been missing something but it appears not your right not being able to use the second weapon skill just makes using a second weapons set useless.

You realize the primary benefit to equipping two weapon sets at once, is the ability to use skills from different weapons without having to manually switch between weapons.

I absolutely do not want to have my skills hotbar for set 1, then my skills hotbar for set 2. That would defeat the purpose.

On my character use uses crossbow and dual wield melee, like you mentioned:

Left click is fire crossbow. I want to be able to left click and have the character start shooting, even if I was holding my mace at the time.

Key 1 is my mace traversal skill. I want to be able to press it and leap, regardless of whether I was holding mace or crossbow at the time.

Key 2 is Boneshatter. I want to press it and use Boneshatter trigger heavy stun regardless of whether I was was holding mace or crossbow.

If I decide to equip a shield instead of dual wielding maces, I will want right click to pull up the shield at all times.

On another Merc, I may be using 2 crossbows.
One Bombard for grenade skills, the other Dyad for bolt shooting.
I want to automatically pull out the Bombard when activating a grenade skill on the same hotbar as my bolt skills, and automatically use the Dyad when activating bolt skills or fire crossbow on the same hotbar as my grenade skills.

My Monk and Shadow will want to be able to slam down a bell in the middle of a dagger combo without needing to manually switch to quarterstaff, then resume using daggers without needing to manually switch back.

My Ranger and Huntress will want to be able to freely use bow and spear skills together without ever needing to manually swap weapons.

You get 13 hotbar slots to split between all the weapons you use. That is more skills than you can equip anyway.
If you dislike using a modifier key (default ctrl) to use the last 5 slots then you can think of yourself as having 8 hotbar slots. So only 1 less than you have skill slots, and since you'll be using persistent skills, still more hotbar slots than you need.

You get the same skill slots and hotbar slots, whether you want to use one weapon, or four weapons, and that's perfectly fine.
It's fine because the point of weapon sets is not to swap between two separated sets of weapons.
The point is to use different weapons and their skills at the same time, without needing to swap.

yeah i think now the playstyle is that you dont actually swap weapons in the way we used to right?


what happens is that you have a crossbow in weapon 1, a melee weapon in 2 and then you just put crossbow and melee skills on your bar. when you use the skills your character will automatically switch between weapons based on what weapon set you have assigned to each skill in the skills panel.


so you dont press weapon switch any more that just happens automatically when you use different skills that have been set to different weapons and your weapon specific passives will also switch on the fly.

"

The_Song#4903 wrote:

You realize the primary benefit to equipping two weapon sets at once, is the ability to use skills from different weapons without having to manually switch between weapons.

I absolutely do not want to have my skills hotbar for set 1, then my skills hotbar for set 2. That would defeat the purpose.

You can have both.

Yes - the skills switching weapons automatically is great (awesome, actually), and we can also have different key bindings ready to go at the press of a button.

Different maps or even mobs can demand different setups, so having those ready to go would be a great thing.

It's not useless at all, it's EXTREMELY powerful.

First you can set any skill to only use one weapon and auto switch to it when you use that skill.

Say you are using a q-staff and attack most of the time using ice strike. You can set ice strike to only use weapon 1 (which happens to be a q-staff obviously) and when you hit that hotkey, you will auto switch the the q-staff and use it. There seems to be absolutely no delay btw, so not sure why there are mods to weapon swap speed).

But after wailing on said boss 3-4 times, you freeze them. Now you are right in front of mr. boss and you want to use ice salvo from your bow in the other weapon slot. You just hit the hotkey and auto swap to it and use it. It does a freakton of damage and the boss can't dodge it.

On top of that you get quite a few natural weapon slot specific skill points for your tree, which means you can spec your first weapon slot for q-staves and your second for bows.

Or the first for AoE attacks and the second for single enemy dps etc.

Even if you have 2 of the same weapon type (two bows), you could have 1 set up for all your ice attacks and it's base attack set up for stun buildup, then have the other weapon slot set up for lightning attacks and armor break with the basic attack.

It gives you tons of versatility, even if you don't use different kinds of weapons.

When you factor in the ability to use a bow and xbow, or a q-staff and a bow etc, the possibilities are huge.

Xbow for instance has a VERY hard hitting attack that you can buff with emergency reload....but in genrally vs single bosses at least, bow does more damage after that. You can prepare the pulse shot with your xbow, boosting everything to make that attack as high as possible as well in the tree), and then after starting the boss battle and shocking it with the initially attack, start hitting it with bow attacks to stun/freeze etc and finish it off.

The two weapon slots are VERY useful, and witch hunter can actually get an additional 24 points to use, allow for VERY diverse tree setups for each weapon slot.

Not many people use them yet, or understand how powerful it can be, but it really does offer you a ton of diversity, even with only 1 weapon type.