So, it seems like Anet has something against the attack speed meta that is woven throughout so many MMO’s of our time. Not that I blame them, but it seems their Quickness buff has become not worth the drawbacks it usually takes to actually obtain the buff. It was a bit of sleep-deprived musing by myself and Cryptomiser, coming up with a solution to this (in our minds) issue.
What if they could replace it altogether and just throw in something chance based, which Anet seems to like so much more. We came up with the idea of a replacement buff called “Double Strike”/“Double Tap” and it would read something like this; “Double Tap: For 5 seconds user has a 10% chance to cause a cast ability to trigger it’s effect(and/or damage) a second time.” Of course once an ability is copied by this new buff, the buff is consumed. If the player never catches the 10% then the buff fizzles out and can’t be used again until the ability that granted it cools down again, or internal cooldown does the same.
Though we thought of a twist, we thought that maybe with the combination of sigils and/or spells from sources beyond the original player it could be staked to be used more strategically to create a better chance to unleash a burst with this ability, similar to quickness. It was thought that maybe the stacking effect would work as follows: “Each stack of Double Tap increases the chance to double an ability by half the current percent, but doubles the duration of Double Tap.” We thought that it would be capped at 3 stacks, considering how hard it was to get too many rounds of quickness going at once. For example:
First stack: 5 Seconds, 10% Chance to double an ability.
Second Stack: 10 Seconds, 15% Chance to double an ability.
Third Stack: 20 Seconds, 22.5%(Rounded down to 22%) Chance to double an ability.
This way, a little bit of stratagem would come into play having to choose spells carefully and cooperate with groups and players to get the optimum amount of chance out of the buff. Not to mention having to plan carefully which ability to use to make the most of the double effect. As some skills won’t be useful with it, or even hinder the player if timed wrong. I mean, of course there are still many aspects we haven’t covered, like if some effects can’t be directly doubled in a balanced way, perhaps it could simply increase their durations or boost their effects. And of course, Double Strike/Double Tap would be available from abilities that applied drawbacks like quickness currently does.
Anyway, that was out little musing on a nice chance based boost for folks, so that Anet would not have to worry about folks abusing an attack speed meta. Obviously it’s not perfect, but we thought it sounded fun.