Using more than 3 powers is a complete pain in this game and I wish, like in the previous ME games, that I could map more abilities to a hotkey bar. I read in a eurogamer article that they went this route because they felt that the power wheel broke up combat too much; doesn't this current system break it up even more? It's been a long time since I played the original trilogy on console, but couldn't you map 3 abilities to buttons and then pull up the power wheel for the unmapped abilities? On PC this was pretty much a non-issue. I rarely, if ever, brought up the power wheel for the purpose of using abilities since the hotkey bar was usually adequate in size.
Now this has been replaced by the favorites system. I'm currently playing a pure adept build (only profile unlocked) and have six abilities unlocked. If I want to switch to a power that isn't currently one of the three, I have two options, either pull up the skills menu and assign the power I want so I can immediately use it, or switch to another favorites set and sit through my powers being on cool down. Both of these options either require you going into the menus or bringing up a wheel to select another set of favorites. How does this break up combat less?
And if you change powers by switching to another favorite set they are on cool down. What? Why are my powers on cool down? I can understand the cool down if you switch to a new profile since stats are changing, but I haven't changed my profile, only switched out abilities. I haven't used this power in like 30 minutes why is it all of a sudden on cool down? I can go to the skills menu and switch skills without suffering an automatic cool down so why can't switching favorites be the same if you aren't switching profiles? Or better yet, give me a 12 slot hotkey bar so I never have to bother with opening anything during combat.
I don't want to bash on consoles but I feel this system was put into place with controllers in mind, it doesn't make any sense for keyboard and mouse. In Dragon Age Inquisition there were two different UI depending on if you were using a controller or keyboard and mouse, so why can't we do the same thing here?
So the change I would love to see is an addition of a hotkey bar for PC and only applying the automatic cool down if the profile is switched. This change would also add another layer of complexity to combat. Do you switch out profiles to make a certain set of abilities more powerful but suffer a cool down, or do you forgo switching so you can use the power immediately even though it won't be as powerful?
