Bad design new combat UI...

I think irrespective of whatever plans they have for the utility bar being available in combat, its worth exploring multiple utility bars regardless. The reason is that dragging emotes to some kind of hotbar would be really useful, and you don't really want players to have their emotes compete for space with their utility spells, potions, scrolls, and so on. Some people have suggested a special "emotes bar", but so many bars and the UI gets cluttered and redundant.

I don't know if the method I suggested above (in my previous reply here) is the best... its just an idea. To make it really really simple, the maximum number of bars could be set to 3. If that's done, the UI could function sort of like a roulette wheel, where by either swiping left or swiping right you could access any utility bar you were looking for.

So, illustrated,
... <-- 3 <-> 1 <-> 2 <-> 3 <-> 1 -> ....

You could always access 1 and 2 from 3, 2 and 3 from 1, 1 and 3 from 2. Swiping left, or swiping right.

 

It's for sure better than before...
That said, I find combat evolution/development has gone so slow that incremental changes like this are going to be even harder to add in without a larger scale and rapid iteration of systems..

Anyways, a simple improvement (without too much thought about 'down the road' changes) would be to make the non-combat regular size, then move it smaller when combat's engaged... or something similar to that. It for sure looks funny with the shrunk bar when not in combat.

Constructively, the whole thing just sends the message that it was made in 5 minutes.

Positive thinking, it could lead into something which could perhaps incorporate enemy's cards, visually. Change glyph reaction properties or something as well.

I think some Underworld style elements would be welcome, too. We've suggested designs for years now.

 

Replace the shovel icon in the non-combat/utility bar with an up/down arrow that lets you cycle through multiple rows.

 

I am ok with this first iteration of it. Yes it does look like it was just tacked on at the last minute and of course I'm sure there was more to it than that. .

I had never liked buffs and consumables in the hot bar and didn't use them until recently anyway. But now that we need them and buffs more, which is indeed a great thing, and finally as it should be to challenge us to have to work things out.

I also appreciate the utility bar for other reasons. I had to go in and out of battle for the light Spell for example and I use focus potions when in my healing spec. So other than aesthetics and ideas that can be picked up from this thread, we are making progress.

 

If people stopped trying to fight with every glyph imaginable including the kitchen sink, we wouldn't have this nightmare of a UI. We'd probably have a more interesting and balanced game too...

This better get gutted out in the next release...

 

I'm kinda surprised Dev+ commenters haven't already critically appraised this but, in my opinion:
1. It is unattractive. I thought a guiding philosophy of the dev team was a low impact UI (I even remember hearing discussions of avoiding hotbar combat altogether). We seem to be feature creeping into 'UI bloat'.

2. It seems mostly unnecessary. As other folks have said, deck selection becomes less of a skill factor if more glyphs are available for use. You can easily add a potion or two to a combat bar. Do we really want to be able to have access to 6 or 7 potions during combat?

3. Some find the random slot hotbar combat system clunky to begin with, taking our focus away from combat animations and environment. Adding more glyphs to hunt for (and shift-click, ick) exacerbates this.

Instead of the extra bar during combat, would it be possible to make it that you go into your inventory, right click a consumable, and have the option to 'assign hotkey' (and have the hotkey displayed when you hover over the item). Then you don't need to place it. For myself, I'd have a heal pot key, a focus pot key, and a poison pot key and then simply tie the appropriate stack of pots to those keys before I went adventuring. You could limit the number of concurrent hotkey assignments to preserve balance with the current implementation of limited glyph placements in decks.

 

I'm all for more slots, combat or not. One of my biggest gripes with the game was not being able to have access to every spell in my spellbook. This gets me a few steps closer.

 

The extra bar sounds weird, though I haven't yet seen it
I think they should allow the - and = keys to be used as 'item slots'.. no need for a second bar to show up imo. But, maybe it will grow into something good.

 

As a healer, the bar pays for itself by letting me take res out of a combat slot.

As a tamer, the bar pays for itself by letting me summon without exiting combat.

If I were you, I would get rid of one of the earth punch slots, and draw both inner strength and strength of the earth from it. Then you'd have 2 slots for pots

 

How? Summoning is grayed out on my utility bar when in combat.

 

i guess i wasn't paying close attention.. i thought i saw it in the release notes. in the OP screenshot at least magic summons are available... so i would guess it's an oversight since no one cares about taming