The design choice with autoattacks

Hello,

autoattack seems to be the strongest weapon most of the time, which is a design choice that I can understand to an extend. I suppose the design philosophy here is to make every other skill conditional or a setup for combos or something along those lines, where the autoattack will always have the most dps standalone.

Like for example you could autoattack a single target or you could use siege cascade and damage all mobs on the screen at once, which will do more damage in a hypothetical situation where there are lots of mobs on the screen, but won't do more damage if there aren't. This kind of design philosophy is fine in my view and it works, but it has one flaw.

Why not just use autoattack all the time? The only downside here is time investment. Very often you can clear the screen using autoattack only, only benefit to using other skills would be the time investment. Using other skills makes you progress quicker and that seems to be an important variable in a game like this that also makes people want to optimize builds, etc.

But if this is the only incentive not to use autoattacks, it feels like there maybe is some kind of design flaw, because essentially you don't need anything else than autoattack most of the time. You don't need other skills to survive the mob waves, for example, if you play a warrior with herald of ash and just explode everything with your autoattack. Granted, herald of ash is another skill, so maybe the example doesn't make sense. But I guess you could clear the screen with your autoattack and without herald, if you had gear that was good enough to make you survive, since your autoattack also has a splash and hits multiple targets.

When it feels like you don't need other skills to survive the onslaught, maybe there is something wrong with the game. It just feels to me subjectively that there should be more incentives than just time investment to use your skills properly, like: "Use frost nova to push back incoming mob waves in order for them not to get into melee range so you survive as a squishy sorceress." This for me is essential design philosophy in a game like this and it feels lacking at the moment.



What are your thoughts on this?

GGG: "We've heard auto-attack is overperforming compared to combos, particularly during the campaign, so we've now removed the ability to auto-attack. We feel this change will improve our combo based gameplay for everyone."

I’m having a hard time visualizing your argument. Can you post some vids of your screen clears with auto attack plz?

"

Lord Pinkleton#8277 wrote:

GGG: "We've heard auto-attack is overperforming compared to combos, particularly during the campaign, so we've now removed the ability to auto-attack. We feel this change will improve our combo based gameplay for everyone."

LOL

"

N3vangel#0037 wrote:

I’m having a hard time visualizing your argument. Can you post some vids of your screen clears with auto attack plz?

Oh sorry I don't have the time to do that. But I'm sure other people can visualize it.

you have the time to post a feedback, where is the proof?
just link it.

Technically Alkaizer's warrior build does this with herald of ice. His mapping is just auto-attacks that blow everything around him up in pretty much 1 swing. There's almost no reason for him to use any skill for mapping as it's slower with windup times, etc.

https://youtu.be/86CY4h0iuhI?si=OtSYfNfNbY17AB9V

Autoattack was made for some new players who don't want to dive into "support" mechanics AT ALL but still want to finish at least campaign. They mentioned it long time ago in some old interview.

"

Lord Pinkleton#8277 wrote:

Technically Alkaizer's warrior build does this with herald of ice. His mapping is just auto-attacks that blow everything around him up in pretty much 1 swing. There's almost no reason for him to use any skill for mapping as it's slower with windup times, etc.

https://youtu.be/86CY4h0iuhI?si=OtSYfNfNbY17AB9V

HOLY - autoattack is meta. Genius.