Devotion and default attack: design choice of tech limitation?

Hello!
I know you like pretty titles.

So I was wondering, since plenty of melee builds don’t have directly a synergy with auto-attack replacers (chaos, aether, vitality and acid builds aren’t really interested in Beronath’s Fury or don’t have access to Cadence), why can’t we assign Devotion effects to auto-attacks?

Is it a design choice? [Sexy Dungeon Keeper voice-over] « You want to play a chaos melee build? Feel free, just lock your relic slot or your weapon component and get a Mistborn Talisman or a Shard of Beronath ».

Or is it simply a tech limitation, as the default attack isn’t really a skill and you need to attach Devotion effects to skills? In that case, and if it’s not too much work, I really think it would be welcome to add this possibility.

I agree with this totally. I would love to assign some devotion procs to my normal left mouse button attack.

Not gonna argue about your question but why would you ever not have a LMB skill when you mainly use basic attacks?
Almost every skill gives you more DPS, especially rage and fury.

Design choice :rolleyes: Should be an easy mod fix.

No. “Mods will fix everything!” is a cheap way to nullify constructive criticism and discussion.

If nearly every single devotion proc didn’t heavily favor spammable skills we could talk, but as it is there isn’t much to discuss.

As was mentioned, you’re not doing yourself any favors by not using an actual default attack replacement skill, and allowing devotion procs to work with default attack won’t change that. It would just help out new characters and should have zero effect at higher levels.

For things that are a bit subjective, it seems a perfectly reasonable response to me.

I haven’t seen much of an argument here yet besides “it would be nice”.

This reasoning is annoying because it basically means “shut up and use a Shard of Beronath regardless of your build”.

Also, it is not true that not using an auto attack replacement has “zero effect at higher levels”. The amount of extra damage you gain (mainly thanks to %weapon damage on these skills) is only ~30%. Resistance reduction components can compete with that number.

Regardless of these two points, helping new characters would be neat. This way you don’t need to wait level 60 to use a Devotion spell with your auto-attack…

The main argument is, if this is a design choice, not allowing auto-attacks to trigger Devotion spells feels really arbitrary and is hurting component choice diversity.

if you’re using a default attack replacement skill, there’s a good chance you’ve also got WPS, which means >>30%. :wink:

So basically you want to gimp yourself and you want the game to allow you to do it? Seems legit.

Default attack + devotion proc > default attack w/o devotion proc. How is that gimping?

Not really. 30% extra weapon damage is 30% extra weapon damage; it’s equally multiplicative with both basic attacks and WPS. Flat damage probably bumps it over 30% but that increase isn’t globally quantifiable because the AA dps increase it gives is highly linked to your build.

I’m not inherently opposed to this change. Could make a notable difference early for certain masteries that already struggle with clear speed early (anything AA based pretty much).

My personal opinion is that they should create items/components that give additional AA replacers. We’re lacking in Cold, Vitality, Chaos, Acid and Aether which is mildly frustrating. Yes, Shard is the “general” magic damage AA replacer; that’s fine, and I’m fine with it being the default strongest. I just feel some situationally stronger choices would be nice.

wait you mean i cant use those special devotion (from constellations) skills on Auto attack skills like Flame Strike or Savagery.

That just ruined my whole build.

No, only on the default attack.

I thought fire strike and savagery take over as a default attack?

Of course you can.
The are only very few combinations that don’t work (like spawning stuff on pseudo pets) or devotion procs on debuffs like OFF.

All of that hassle could be avoided if Nightblades had a default attack re-placer.

I agree this should be possible but there are tons of arbitrary restrictions that limit cool possibilities and I really don’t care anymore because they very likely aren’t going to change. I’d rather just enjoy the game in ways I can. Appealing to change the game design, however simply, harmless, and ultimately positive, is not only a great way to catch flak on the forums, but it’s almost always a fruitless endeavor unless it gets a lot of support from the community. Most people just don’t care.

I made a thread a long time ago about loosening the restrictions on abilities, from components or otherwise, in order to promote build diversity. Such as allowing for Primal strike to be used with one-handers(and balanced appropriately), and allowing the ability granted by Devil-Touched Ammo to be used by more than ranged/caster items(because it’s a cool ability, of course). If you ask me, things like this can only serve to benefit the game because it gives players more and more ways to make the builds they want and play the way they want. Makes sense when build diversity is already a huge part of the game, right? Good lord… did I catch a lot of flak for suggesting this. It was literally amazing.

Just not on default weapon attack. Default weapon skills are skills that augment/modify your default weapon attack and they are currently necessary in order to assign a devotion skill to your weapon attacks. The argument here is to allow devotions to be assigned to the default attack without requiring a default weapon skill.

Amarasta’s blade burst?