[Suggestion] ArenaNet, we need to talk about weapon skill hotkeys and positioning on the hotbar

[Hyper Legend.3421]

Hey everyone. Long time Guild Wars fan, first time poster. I purchased this game back when it was released in 2012 (still rocking my celebration hat!), but have always had issues with Guild Wars 2's keybindings. While I will say that it was odd that you are forced to use specific skills in correlation with the weapon you are using, I got over it and saw that this was actually a good idea by channeling specific playstyles and keeping balance under control.

 

I learned that if you use weapon sets, you can double your number of weapon skills. From that, a cognizant player can readily hop back and forth between sets or stances to make the most of their character's toolkit. Once mastered, it's definitely a nice system. So with that, I moved on from my initial complaint, but here's where things get, well, awkward.

 

So I'm a big MMO player. I've put thousands of hours into games like DAoC, Lineage 2, Ragnarok Online, World of Warcraft, Warhammer, Tera - oh I could go on and on, but you get the drift. In all of those games, the user is allowed very free control of the UI in terms of keybinds and skill placement. Just about everything can be set to a particular key and a slot on the hotbar.

 

Where Guild Wars 1 had it right, Guild Wars 2 falls short. For some reason, Arenanet has never implemented being able to set custom hotkeys for your weapon sets. You only get one row of keybinds to set, and the only way to change them when you use different weapons is to do it manually in the options by overwriting your old keys. This has always been a MAJOR put-off for me. I'll admit as well, I will reinstall the game after not playing for a year, look to see if I can adjust hotkeys for a weapon set, find out I still can't, then uninstall. Something this simple is keeping me from enjoying the game.

 

Let me clarify, as I've voiced my concerns in-game and have had to re-iterate to get the point across:

 

This is my hotkey layout: F, C, V, E, R; G (Class special ability like Death Shroud, Arcing Slice, etc.); Q (Heal); 1, 2, 3 (Utility); Shift+G (Elite)

 

If I'm using a greatsword on a Warrior, but need to swap over to a 1h mace + shield, all of my skills change, but my keys don't. If I had my charge bound to R, it has now become a move that I don't want to be on my R key. This now becomes a headache, making me have to pay attention to my hotkeys, and having to use weird buttons for moves that I would normally have bound to something else.

 

In MMOs, my debuffs/curses/bleeds/cripples/etc. are typically bound to C and V. On this game, I may be playing a Necro or a Mesmer and have those keys bound to conditional effects, but as soon as I swap weapon sets, those keys may change to important attack abilities. This becomes incredibly irritating to me that I don't have the freedom to set a hotkey loadout for weapon set 1 and a hotkey loadout for weapon set 2.

 

In games like Overwatch and DOTA 2, every character can have custom keybinds. I don't see how it could be difficult to copy the hotkeys for the primary hotbar and allow them to be re-listed for a second weapon set.

 

If this seems difficult to implement, why not allow people to drag and drop their weapon skills into a different slot? When you have the build menu open in the character menu, the game almost seems to be begging you to move skills around in their respective bars, but you can't move anything. Why is this? If we're being forced to use certain skills with weapons, why are we also being forced to deal with where they are placed on the hotbar? There is a very limited amount of freedom in this aspect, and it's something I just don't understand why we can't be given the option to change.

 

A change like this would certainly get my vote, and when I get my point across in-game, people always agree that we should be able to rebind both weapon sets, despite also saying they just deal with it. While I *can* put up with it, I don't see why we should be forced to. In today's age, this is a standard practice in the industry - to be able to let people customize their UI in such a regard. GW2 offers a wealth of options in the UI. It would be nice to also see this feature added.

 

Thanks for reading!

[Vavume.8065]

I've also asked for this change several times over the years, I've given up hope of it ever happening though.

[Tommo Chocolate.5870]

> @"Hyper Legend.3421" said:

> If this seems difficult to implement, why not allow people to drag and drop their weapon skills into a different slot?

 

This would actually be my preferred solution (although I see no reason not to have both). If I had different keys assigned to skills in the same slot, I'd just end up pressing the wrong key half the time. With the current system, you effectively have to put up with someone else's skill slot choices, and they're frequently inconsistent. For example, with Engineer, Hammer and Sword both have leap skills on 3, but Photon Forge has its leap on 2; Mesmer weapon phantasms can be on any of slots 3, 4, 5; etc.

 

I do actively like the way that skills are tied to weapons though. I find it very satisfying that my choice of weapons makes such a tangible difference to my character.

[Airdive.2613]

> @"Tommo Chocolate.5870" said:

> With the current system, you effectively have to put up with someone else's skill slot choices, and they're frequently inconsistent. For example, with Engineer, Hammer and Sword both have leap skills on 3, but Photon Forge has its leap on 2; Mesmer weapon phantasms can be on any of slots 3, 4, 5; etc.

 

As far as I know, most weapon skills are sorted by ascending recharge time (separately for off-hand skills). They are mostly consistent in this regard.

[Pifil.5193]

> @"Airdive.2613" said:

> > @"Tommo Chocolate.5870" said:

> > With the current system, you effectively have to put up with someone else's skill slot choices, and they're frequently inconsistent. For example, with Engineer, Hammer and Sword both have leap skills on 3, but Photon Forge has its leap on 2; Mesmer weapon phantasms can be on any of slots 3, 4, 5; etc.

>

> As far as I know, most weapon skills are sorted by ascending recharge time (separately for off-hand skills). They are mostly consistent in this regard.

 

Yep, this is how weapon skills are ordered, in some cases it has become inconsistent because of buffs and nerfs to cool downs but skills are generally only ordered from fastest to slowest cool down.

 

I remember back towards the start when they changed the cool downs of guardian greatsword skills and reordered the skills to keep them in order from lowest cool down to highest, a lot of people were quite annoyed about that as it completely messed up their muscle memory.

 

Thankfully they haven't done that again.

[Hyper Legend.3421]

Thanks for your input, guys. I hope Anet sees this and considers making a change to the existing system!

 

I did not realize skills were ordered by cooldown. Now that you say it, I do notice that's how it seems to be. Even some sorting options (alphabetical, skill type, single target/aoe) would be better than nothing, too!