Guild Wars 2

as the title says, the Lich Form ability “Deathly Claws” moves insanely slow!
i love using Lich Form on my power necro but i always end up having to jump right in to the middle of a fight (normally resulting in having to leave lich form early or dying.)

this is due to how slow Deathly Claws (the lich form auto attack) moves,
even if you’re only 600 away from your target they can still simply strafe and you’ll miss every attack.

feel free to test it! have someone stand a short distance away (perhaps the length of a capture point) from a lich while the lich spams deathly claws, he’ll hit nothing but air!

Fear not! If you take the new Spite grandmaster trait you can make your deathly claws and necrotic grasps move 100% faster!

Doctor Orderly MD PhD DDS.7625:

Fear not! If you take the new Spite grandmaster trait you can make your deathly claws and necrotic grasps move 100% faster!

Wrong profession. Only Rangers get grandmasters that bad.

Yeah lets buff Lich Form!

It is the same with necro staff, ele staff etc.
Most 1200 range weapons have slow projectils.
Well atleast when it hits it hits hard.

I think if Lich would need a buff, it would be the other skills. None is worth the dps loss you get if you dont use the aa.

<sarcasm>Why does this sound so much like the Ranger’s Long Range Shot (longbow 1)?

Oh, now I see… It’s because the two skills are nearly identical, except that Deathly Claws is about triple the damage and is a piercing attack by default instead of having to trait for it!</sarcasm>

_
Ranger issues aside, I agree that Deathly Claws projectile speed should be improved. But given the damage potential of the skill, I think it almost needs that miss chance to be reasonably balanced compared to what other classes get from elites.

Personally, I dislike the idea of having attacks with projectile speeds so low they can be easily sidestepped. This goes for all skills for all classes. I think that if the devs really feel that a skill needs to have some sort of miss chance to balance it out (due to power or range or whatever it is they are trying to counterbalance), then they should use an RNG-based static chance to miss for the skill. While I like the idea of allowing other characters to improve their chances against a skill through their own player skill, I just don’t think it can work in this way as a balance aspect. The issue is that either a projectile is slow enough to be able to sidestep it, or it isn’t. If it is, then will almost always miss (too high a miss chance for balance considerations), and if it isn’t, then it will almost always hit (too low a miss chance for balance considerations).

And although I think a static miss chance would be better than slow projectile speed, I really don’t like the idea of having some skills with a static miss chance. But I also don’t think that inflicting a miss chance through slow projectile speed is workable in any way. In short, I think that skills like DC and LRS should have projectile speeds fast enough that they will not miss simply due to sidestepping, but would instead require an active dodge or evade. Then they each can be rebalanced as necessary based on damage, secondary effects, cooldowns, etc. if it turns out to be OP without the miss chance. And it simply is not possible to effectively lead a moving target in this game to compensate for slow projectile speed, so I hope the devs didn’t expect players to improve their player skill with target leading to make up for the projectile speeds on skills like this. Positioning can be difficult enough without having to also worry about target leading in addition.

I completely disagree on giving it an increased speed.

It hits hard. I killed plenty of players because they thought the autoattack isn’t something to worry about.

runeblade.7514:

I completely disagree on giving it an increased speed.

It hits hard. I killed plenty of players because they thought the autoattack isn’t something to worry about.

^ said no one credible ever !

lorndarken.3702:

runeblade.7514:

I completely disagree on giving it an increased speed.

It hits hard. I killed plenty of players because they thought the autoattack isn’t something to worry about.

^ said no one credible ever !

^ said by players wearing tank gear.