One thing it took me a while to realize had been cut from DA2, and this took me so long to realize because I couldn't believe they would have cut it, was the ability wheel.
You know, you pause the game with the tactical options menu, and there's a icon that you select which lets you use any of the abilities you've unlocked, irrespective of whether or not you've put them onto the attack hotkeys?
The only real reason I can think of for removing that feature, the ability to access all of your class skills from multiple skill trees without restriction, is that they were trying to encourage more careful play, more considered choice of upgrading and build-planning.
But, I really have to say, that's not a good enough reason to hamper us so severely.
For one thing, it pretty much cripples mages that spec to any appreciable depth in more than one skill tree. I'm trying to build Solas as a varied mage who has a wide range of abilities from all the skill trees, so he can help out with anything the party comes up against, but because I can only access the eight skills I put into the hotkeys, I've effectively been wasting precious upgrade points on skills I can't make him use when he needs to use them. That was part of what made mages so effective in the last game: if you were willing to play the long game in regards to upgrading skills, you could build mage who could handle, or at least help out, with every enemy type in the game. You could spec however much you needed into each elemental skill tree and have all the options available at any given time, while keeping your favorites immediately on-hand with the hotkeys. Now, you can only use eight skills. No more. The problem is that there are FAR more useful skills available than just eight. Even to non-mages. Which is a perfect lead-in to my next point.
Specializations now effectively kill normal builds. I'm slowly speccing into Reaver, but I've got a good thing going as a two-hander with Bull Rush, Whirlwind, Chain Grab, War Cry, Block, and Mark of the Rift. Yet, if I want to get any millage out of Reaver, I need to pull some of those skills out. Which, I again get at some level; getting Guard is kind of counterproductive for a Reaver, but leaving me totally unable to use any Guard-building abilities, period, if I don't map them to one of the hotkeys is akin to breaking my fingers and telling me it's for my own good. It's hampering and more than a little nonsensical.
To say nothing of the Focus abilities, which are incredibly useful but must take up a hotkey slot if you want to use them. They're the most powerful situational tools of their skill trees; don't NOT let us use them when we need to. I won't be able to use Mark of the Rift, Grappling Chain, and Rampage all at once because I'm going to need certain main powers from Two Handed and Reaver and will need to cut at least one of those to get in the base skills I need to have to be effective. And again, I can understand the rationale; that's a lot of power if we can use all of those skills at once, but that's also kind of the point. It's about giving us the option of being able to use what we think we ought to use, whenever we think we ought to use it. There are times when I'll need Mark of the Rift, and there are other times when I'll need Rampage, and Grappling Chain is SO useful for both skill trees it's not even funny. I don't even HAVE Earthshaking Strike, and it's looking like I may be better off not getting it at all if I want to get any use out of my Reaver Specialization. That's me actively choosing to not use a skill that sounds awesome and useful because the game can't support the number of skills I want to use in conjunction with each other. I'm tempted to call that a failure of design. I get that we're supposed to agonize and make hard choices over our build, but there's a line where that sort of attitude is detrimental to the enjoyment of the combat and skills we can choose from, and I'd say with the current limitations, we might very well have crossed that line.
I'd say at this point, cutting out the ability wheel isn't forcing optimization of our builds, because we can't use everything we have available to us, and we can't use abilities in conjunction with each other as we need to. We can't build something that can be effective against everything; we can only build something that may be decent against the enemies in this particular fight, and too bad for us if it isn't. To put it another way, we can't use everything we actually can and ought to be able to use.
I'd liked to be able to have access to my Guard-generating abilities and other Focus Attacks while keeping my main Two-Handed and Reaver skills on my hotkeys, but I can't. Which, I'll say again, strikes me as a not-inconsiderable design flaw (I feel I ought to mention at this point that I'm majoring in Video Game Design). Only being able to use eight skills at any given time, especially when we can't change them in the middle of a fight (which, again, makes sense for what I'm assuming Bioware wanted. The no-swapping-equipment rule too, also makes sense when you think about it (you can't focus pull another elemental staff or special shield or weapon from the Hammer Space or completely swap the armor covering 90% of your body when a demon is about to tear your head off. Props to acknowledging the logic of that situation, Bioware. Seriously.)), is too restrictive for the wealth of skills literally every class has to offer.
Heck, just let us swap skills on the hotkeys during battle. That would literally be a enormous step up (and it doesn't have the logical rationale that no-equipment-swapping does. A body can do what a body can do, and if said body can throw a grappling chain, smash and swing a giant sword around, use defensive techniques that improve it's armored defenses, and draw on masochistic angry dragon-power, it should be able to do all those things without restriction. To say nothing of a mage who is versed in several schools of magic not being able to use whatever spells he or she already knows and needs to use.)
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