Skill desing & decriptions are frustrating and confusing

Hello,

i started the league motivated to fully embrace GGG vision on how combat should work. Less one-button builds, using different combos, using two weapons with the weapon swap and a bit slower playstyle.

I skipped the 0.3 league but knew that GGG had deleted the weapon swap delay and so i wanted to make builds that really use weapon swap not for the purpose of switching between singletarget/multitarget or different elements for the SAME weapon type, but using two different weapons for different skills to create one thematic build with good flow.

But every time i went through the skill gems and thought of good combos, GGG had placed abitrary walls around the weapon type. No branching out allowed. You want to play with a crossbow? Use only CROSSBOW SKILLS.

Examples?

The first Idea i had was a combination of voltaic grenade and using thunderous leap to explode them. Thunderous leap has the "detonator" tag. Its reads "Detonator Skills can cause flammable gas, Oil, EXPLOSIVES, and similar effects to explode on contact".

it should be able to explode grenades just as explosive shot does. But no, it only explodes spear skills which there are two that are explodeable. One which is a detonator itself and then the lightning skill which i guess is the intended use. A whole skill with a mechanic that is intented for a SINGLE SKILL. Btw. explosive shot can detonate any spear skills so the other way arround seems ok.

Well maybe that is an oversight and GGG will fix that. Are there any other examples? Lets see:

- Tempest Bell combos can only be build up by quaterstaff strike abilities even so the description says "other strike skills". Why?

- ice tipped arrows can only empower spear and arrow projectiles. Why not Crossbow as well? Why prevent me from using it for permafrost bolts.

- Orb of storms cannot be supported by spell echo despite having none of the tags that would prevent it.

- Staggring palm is again Quaterstaff only. Why? We got a bunch of wind skills on the spear. Where is the problem with allowing staggering palm to be procced by other strike attacks? I am not advocating for staggering palm to be useable with any weapon. Just that when i procced it using a quaterstaff, why not let me use the buff for other weapons too?

- Same goes for charged staff.


Right now there are a very limited cases of builds that actively use two different weapons because:

1. Most of the time the weapon provides the optimal combo within its own skills. Of course you could force a different combo with another weapon but why would you? That is the reason why for example the new druid skills, while good and fun, dont work well with other skills. Every Wolf build looks the same, everyone is using the same skills because why would you use for example wave of frost to freeze as a wolf when lunar assault already exists.

2. Too many guardrails preventing from branching out. Why are Infusions only used for elemental spells? Many things dont work at all even though they should. Some things are only used for 1 weapon even though there are other mechanics that work pretty much the same but are called a different name for some reason. Example? Heat and Fuel.

3. Too many ressources that are specific and hard to come by with other skills. Glory, heat, fuel, ice fragments, combo, charges, Infusions, rage and probably some more that i forgot.



Please GGG, give us a little breathing room for creativity. If a skill is a detonator it should work just like any other detonators. Its just frustrating having to figure out what works and what not because the descriptions are unclear.

absolutely right. Instead of giving us generic gears of mechanics, they made pre-designed combos. The freedom is very limited and most of non-conventional builds exists only to fact there are some extremely broken interaction via specific uniques.

Plants+overgrow with thunder.
ED+Contagion.
Whole wolf combo.
Infusions (i didnt play ele-sorc in first leaques, and after they added infusion i would never ever touch it, it just even sounds silly).
...many more.

While there are some good interactions like wall-skills can be interacted with most skills, gas clouds interact with any igites, not specific skills etc.
There is archetype-echo-chamber with warcries+fissures+slams but it at least pretty big room to play in.

And minions live in their own buble of no-interaction with anything, but only pre-designed command skills with generic scaling of same nodes on tree and same +minion gearing. And muster support is braindead.

"

There is archetype-echo-chamber with warcries+fissures+slams but it at least pretty big room to play in.

i would argue that this is a case where they did it right. Is it the best it can be? No, but it allows for build diversity and branching enough to not feel so limited.

-There are multiple ways to create fissures(Mace skill, bear skill, crater support)

- There are multiple ways to "proc" those fissures: Mace slams, bear slam, Rolling Magma, Wolf slam, Vaulting Impact.

Its a pretty good example on how things should work. Clear simple mechanic and Many skills interacting with it. Not just 1 or 2