What are Active Skills & how to equip them in Diablo 4

When you first jump into Diablo 4, it can be quite daunting when you don’t have any active skills to your name - here's what you need to know about what they are and how to equip them to the Hot Bar.

Joshua Boyles

02nd Jun 2023 12:23

Images via Blizzard

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When you first jump into Diablo 4, it can be quite daunting when you don’t have any active skills to your name. To make matters worse, the game doesn’t do a fantastic job of explaining how you can equip active skills once you earn them.

To make life easier for Diablo 4 players, here’s everything you need to know about what active skills are, how to equip them, and how to customize them.

What are active and passive skills?

There are two types of skills in Diablo 4: active and passive. While passive skills are attributes that affect your character in the background, active skills are ones that you can trigger manually.

The skill system in Diablo 4 with active and passive skills

You can tell the difference between an active and passive skill by looking at the shape of the skill’s icon. Active skills are square, while passive’s are diamonds.

Usually, passive skills are unlocked once you’ve purchased a particular active skill. This will then affect how the skill it’s attached to will operate. You can use these additional nodes in the skill tree to tailor your character build to your preference.

Active skills sit on the Hot Bar at the bottom of your screen and must be triggered by a button press to use. Once triggered, they will then enter a cooldown period before you can use them again. Only six active skills can be assigned at any time, including a primary and secondary attack. Players will need to play through the game before they can unlock more than a couple of active skill slots.

How to equip active skills

Once you have purchased an active skill with a skill point, assigning it to the hot bar is relatively easy.

On PC, you can simply drag the chosen skill from the tab on the right to the location you’d like to assign it on the Hot Bar itself.
On consoles, you can press the left stick while looking at the skill menu to assign and rearrange active skills on your Hot Bar to your liking.

The skill menu in Diablo 4 from the Barbarian class

Once this is done, you should see all of your active skills at the bottom of your screen with the corresponding buttons assigned to them.

How to customize active skills in Diablo 4

There is a way for you to customize certain skills in Diablo 4, and while this option won’t appear on all of them, there are some skills that let you change the weapon that uses it.

Customising skills in Diablo 4

If you hover your mouse over a skill on the Hot Bar, there may be an option to press the scroll wheel to select which weapon the skill utilizes. By default, this option will be set to automatic, which will use the weapon that deals the most damage per second. However, you may have another weapon that has a buff effect that synergizes especially well with that particular skill.

Active skills are the backbone of the Diablo 4 character and build system, so it’s imperative that you understand what they are and how they work. Know you know how to equip and customise them!

How to unlock Hot Bar slots

It'd be fair to say you'll want to unleash your destructive power with even more flair, but it'll take a little bit of time to earn additional slots on the Hot Bar.

There are a total of six Hot Bar slots, and each is earned at different levels. Keep powering through to Level 8, and you'll find you have more slots to add your Active Skills to.

About The Author

Joshua Boyles

Joshua is the Guides Editor at GGRecon. After graduating with a BA (Hons) degree in Broadcast Journalism, he previously wrote for publications such as FragHero and GameByte. You can often find him diving deep into fantasy RPGs such as Skyrim and The Witcher, or tearing it up in Call of Duty and Battlefield. He's also often spotted hiking in the wilderness, usually blasting Arctic Monkeys.

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