Ok, so wow...

If you haven't seen the February update on the skill system:

The one thing that has remained the same is that you unlock skills gradually as you level up, in a predetermined order at predetermined levels.

Before the update, you could slot any skill you wanted on any keyboard hotkey or either mouse button. Thus you could have any combination of skills you wanted. In addition, runes were drops that altered or basically completely changed any skill. They came in different colors which affected each ability in a particular way, and they came in ranks where the higher ranks increased the power of the runed ability by increasing numbers in the ability (i.e. how much damage is done, how long status effects lasted, etc.)


NOW... skills are LINKED to a particular mouse button or keyboard hotkey. So that means you have a set selection of 3 to 5 skills that you can assign to the left mouse button, a selection of 3 to 5 DIFFERENT skills you can assign to the right mouse button, a DIFFERENT selection for keyboard key "1," and a DIFFERENT selection EACH for keys 3-4.

So you can only ever have ONE ability active from the left mouse button skill selection, ONE from the "1" hotkey selection, etc.

That really cuts down on the number of builds possible. For instance, all the monk's mantras are now on hotkey "4." They are party-wide auras that have two effects: a very long term one that lasted as long as the mantra was active and a very short-term one that activates upon the mantra's casting. Though only one mantra could be active at a time, you could've done "mantra-twisting," i.e. constantly switching between mantras to keep the short-term buffs up.

Since you can now only have one mantra hotkeyed at a time, this clearly is no longer viable.


Also, runes are now not drops any more, but instead are "unlocked" as you level up. There are no ranks any more either. You just select one rune per ability if you're a high enough level that the rune is unlocked. Thus, they are more like talents now, except you can select 1 out of 5 for each ability you have equipped.


I'm not sure how I feel about this simplification of the system. Granted, it does make class balance much easier. But it also seems so limiting.