Diablo III: Elective Mode

So I just learned about one of the features in Diablo III that I wished I had known about 20 levels ago. It's called Elective Mode, and this quick and dirty run-down will tell you all about it and why you want it.

What is Elective Mode?

By default, Elective Mode is an option in the game that is turned off. It's recommended to turn this on when you get a chance.

Elective mode allows the player to place multiple skills from the same category to their key bindings.

How do I turn Elective Mode on? Once you join a game, simply hit ESC > Options > Gameplay > toggle on Elective Mode.

What does Elective Mode allow you to do?

By default, the attack buttons in Diablo 3 are bound to the following: Left mouse button, right mouse button, and the 1, 2, 3, and 4 keys on the keyboard.

The skills in Diablo 3 fall into six categories. These categories vary by class, but every class has six. E.g., The Wizard's six categories are: Primary, Secondary, Defensive, Force, Conjuration, and Mastery.

With elective mode off, a wizards Primary skill must be bound to the left mouse button, a Secondary skill must be bound to the right mouse button, a Defensive skill skill must be bound to the 1 key, a force skill must be bound to the 2 key, a Conjuration skill must be bound to the 3 key, and a Mastery skill must be bound to the 4 key.

By extension, it means the player can only use one skill from each category when selecting which six skills to use. Once they choose a Primary skill, that is the only Primary skill they can use until they switch it out with another Primary skill.

With Elective Mode on, the player is allowed to place multiple skills from the same category on their key bindings. A player could use four Primary skills if they so desired.

With a basic Ice Wizard build with Elective Mode turned on, the player can select both two Defensive and two Force skills. With Elective Mode off, this would not be possible since the player would be forbidden from using multiple skills from the same category.

tl;dr: Leaving Elective Mode off will limit your skill choice combinations, and by extension, customization. It is highly recommended that you turn it on as soon as possible.

Just one thing I'll add and that is that with elective mode off, you may accidentally drag buttons off of your action bar in the heat of combat, and there doesn't appear to be any way to lock down the buttons while Elective Mode is on. However, you can turn elective mode off once you've configured your skills on your action bar and they will lock in place. When you want to change skills again, just toggle Elective Mode again from the gameplay options menu.

Diablo III: Maximized Window Fix

I don't know if anyone else has this problem, but it was bugging the hell out of me, so I thought I'd share a solution I found.

The problem is this: Running Diablo III in windowed mode, but maximized. That is, you can still see the taskbar, but otherwise, the game is filling the remainder of the screen. This is how I play World of Warcraft, but Diablo 3 does not allow you to maximize in windowed mode. (WTF BLIZZARD)

So the first thing you will need to do is install a program called AutoHotkey. This part is pretty straight forward.

Next, you need to make a script that you will use to fix the window. To do this, open notepad and paste this:

^!f::
WinGetTitle, currentWindow, A
IfWinExist %currentWindow%
{
   WinSet, Style, -0xC00000 ; hide title bar
   WinSet, Style, -0x800000 ; hide thin-line border
   WinSet, Style, -0x400000 ; hide dialog frame
   WinSet, Style, -0x40000 ; hide thickframe/sizebox
   WinMove, , , 0, 0, 1920, 1040
}   
return

Note: Where you see "1920, 1040" in the script above is for a desktop resoluton of 1920x1080 on Windows 7 with large taskbar icons. These numbers will be different depending on your display resolution, windows version, and icon size. See additional info below.

Now save the file, (on the desktop is fine, or somewhere else if you want it out of sight) - it doesn't matter what you name it, but save it with a  ".ahk" extension. (Ex: "Fullscreen.ahk")

Once you've got the script created, right-click on it and Run as administrator. (If your windows account is an administrator, then just select Run Script.)

Now you're ready to open up Diablo III -  make sure you have it in windowed mode, and in focus - then press  Control+Alt+f and BAM! Maximized window mode. 

*Addition information on window size settings: The first number should always be the horizontal resolution of your display. The second number is going to be your vertical resolution minus the number of pixels needed to show the taskbar. In windows 7, large icons make the taskbar 40 pixels vs. 30 pixels for small icons. After some searching, I believe Vista and XP taskbars are 30 pixels as well.  

If subtracting either 30 or 40 pixels doesn't work for you, the best way to find out how many pixels to leave for your taskbar is to screencap your desktop (press printscreen to copy screen to the clipboard) and use an image editing program, like Photoshop, to crop out the taskbar. Once you've done that, the dimensions of the resulting image should tell you how many pixels you need to cut out. If all else fails, you could just guess, edit your script, run the script, test it, guess, edit, run, test, etc. till you find what works.