Weapon swap ok for rogues but not healers?

#0 - Aug. 3, 2009, 7:15 p.m.

Q u o t e:
We agree it’s clunky to swap weapons and that’s because we don’t want it to be a major feature of the game. We could see making it a major feature, something much more like the weapon swapping of Diablo II. Currently you swap weapons more for macro-ing a shield for Spell Reflect. A rogue swapping poisons feels a little more interesting than that, but it’s pretty much the only example we could think of. Until we can make weapon swapping feel less clunky for more classes we aren’t going to push it as an important feature.

Feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken, but this sounds to me like Blizzard is ok with Rogues swapping weapons to add poisons. If so, then what is the difference between that and the old Spellsurge weapon swaps, Libram, Totem, and Relic swaps of BC? Why were those swaps deemed "not as intended" but rogue poison swapping are?

Ghostcrawler

#8 - Aug. 4, 2009, 1:08 a.m.

Yeah, we're honestly torn on this. On the one hand, we have always allowed weapon swapping in combat. On the other hand, swapping just to cast a heal with your big healing item equipped and then swapping back wasn't really an interesting decision -- it was just something you always did (and probably macro'd). We can see an interesting model where rogues swap poisons, but I'm not sure it's there yet. A warrior swapping to a shield is probably somewhere in the middle. It's sort of making a decision to play more defensively for a bit, but it's also often just macro'd for Spell Reflect (and then has the added bonus, that the warrior doing so telegraphs her notions, allowing you to rethink what you're about to cast).

This is just one of those features that needs to be developed into an actual feature or just killed.