There is no doubt a hotbar for most commonly used spells is handy.
Exactly ...
Honestly since patch 1, i keep repeating in UI discusion that i would like to allow three upgrades to curent Spellcasting system:
1) Allow us to drag on hotbar specific spell (meaning Rank1 only, instead popup window button ... funny enough, you can do that with all higher ranks, but not with lowest one ... that will allways transform into popup window)
2) Open person-spellbook in combat (you know, the small version that takes 1/4 of screen and you can see there only curent character spells) AND (and that is important) allow us to cast from there! (Since right now, you can open your spellbook ... but the only thing you can do there is drag spells on your hotbar, or de-/re-memorize them ... wich is not allowed in combat)
3) Allow us to Drag on our hotbar some button that will open special UI containging all spells sorted by levels, another one containg all scrolls, all arrows, etc. (imho spellbook is quite suficient for spellcasting, but many people didnt like the suggestion, so w/e) ...
This way i believe everyone should be happy ...
Sadly there is lot of people around here who just keep demanding compelte erasing whole hotbar from existence, wich i on the other hand concider to be complete bullshit. :-/
In BG3 what level the skills are, and what action they use is vital - and it requires players to either memorize each spell, spent unnecessary time looking through spell descriptions, or manually organize UI to include those information at the glance. UI needs to highlight those be default, that would be simply good UI design.
Well ...
I would agree that spell icons could be easily done better, wich is also the thing i bring out since Patch 1 ...
For example ...
I woult totally appreciate, if icons contain minimum spell level number even for level 1 ... personaly i hate it that "lowest spell" dont show its spell slot requirement, no matter wich one it is. :-/
I mean ... i see on my hotbar Mage armor (Lowest level 1) spell, and Misty Step (Lowest level 2) spell ... and neither of them have spell slot shown ... then i use my last Level 2 Spell Slot, thinking that i will be able to misty step away with level 1 ... but surprise surprise, misty step is no longer avaible since i dont have level 2 spell slots anymore.
Another example ...
I believe we all agree on the statement that Concentration is source of many frustration in this game ...
For one i would like Larian to implement another message for situation where you spell run out ... to write message "Concentration ended" instead of "Concentration broken".
For two, i would LOVE from larian to once again add some clear notification on icons for those spells that require concentration ... either that, or Gray out (note that im talking here about collor only, not making them unusable) other concentration spells, if you allready hold some concentration.
Another example ...
Someone here on forum aproximately 4-5 moths ago suggested that spells should have round or triangle shaped icon ...
So you can see on first sight wich one use Action, and wich one is castable by Bonus Action ...
Another example ...
I believe also half year ago, we were talking about re-casting spells (Hex, Hunter's Mark, Speak with dead, Witchbolt, etc.) ...
We find it quite frustrating that theese spells are used only once per long rest ... and rest of the time you have another icon that is disappearing and reappearing ...
Someone (sorry, not remembering the name) had very nice suggestion that re-casting icons could either replace original spells ... or simply being added to their pop-up window.
But as you can see, all that have nothing to do with existence of hotbar.
