This is a crosspost from r/diablo2, copy/pasted the Original Post for ez. And i think its an important discussion and feedback to post on this forum as well while the patch is still new and the discussion regarding it is still active.
Quick Cast and Force Move are wonderful additions to the game that are sorely needed in order to bring D2 to a modern audience…
While there isnt anything wrong with the additions themselves, the problem comes with how they tie into D2’s other functionality.
- Quick Cast - its great that we can quicky cast whatever spells we want now. However, we still cant freely chose what to cast on our left click. A min/maxed poison necro still only has the choice between Poison Dagger and lvl 1 Teeth on their left click. I would MUCH rather have a useful skill, like the main dmg attack poison nova on left click.
Since we can quickly cast whatever spells we want with the quick cast option anyway there is literally no reason why we shouldn’t be allowed to chose what spells we want on left click, Bone Necros and most other builds can bind their main damage attacks to left click. Give poison necros some QoL and at least let us bind poison nova to left click.
Also, what about left handed people? They would surely appreciate such customization options.
- Force move - ties into my previous point. Right now its a completely separate keybind in the options menu, we didn’t get a dedicated force move icon to chose on our left click… Sure, we got the throw button back which effectively functions the same. But we should be able to chose to bind it to left or right click, in the form of its own button (like throw). This would also be beneficial if you want to switch between force move and spells on left click.
Also, if you DO have a throwable equipped for some reason then you actually lose your ability to left click force move since the throwing button is a workaround, not a dedicated force move button.
So all in all, i love the quick cast system… But please at least let us bind whatever spells we want to left click.
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EDIT: based on the response in this thread and elsewhere, and trying it out for myself a bit more it seems most of us agree that quick cast is a good idea, but as of now its implementation is very poor.
Rather than reworking how the UI functions in relation to skill usage, they kind of made a quick casting macro, a rather lazy shortcut. Which is kind of shit since they obviously KNOW how to do it better, they did rework the entire UI and its quick casting for the console ports.
Right now quick casting is still completely “bound” to right click. And since quick casting isn’t its own UI system the whole thing is clunky, especially for certain skills and builds with high cast rate.
I’ve noticed using the Barbarians Leap ability from the quick cast more often than not causes the character to become stuck. Other people have mentioned how poorly it works for Paladin auras, if casting an aura while running it stops the character in place. And many sorcs noticed how laggy it is when rapidly switching between spells and their quick cast rate.
They simply must make it its own thing if it’s ever to be fully appreciated and not seen as a bad addition to the game.
I still think it works wonders for things like summons and buffs, but trying to use it in active combat can cause problems.
If they do decide to work on it further, which they definitely will, i hope they go down the road of reworking the entire UI system by removing the whole thing with how skills are “bound” to right click, rather than going further down the line of this poorly implemented “workaround macro” kind of thing.
This would also leave them free to implement the other features suggested in this post. Such as having left and right click be its own buttons, freeing them up for your “main” two spells. And having the quick casting buttons being their own thing for additional spells, without tieing the two together in the back end.
Reworking this part of the UI would surely also make it possible to implement the above mentioned suggestion of leaving which spells to have on left and right click up to the player.
And implementing force move as its own button to be placed freely on left or right click, or the quick cast buttons according to player preferences instead of having to use the Throw skill as a workaround. And of course keeping it as a separate keybinding, as it is currently, for those who prefer it that way.
I thank everyone for their input so far, and don’t forget to REPORT these bugs (the clunky system) to Blizzard so they can improve upon it!