Guild Wars 2

The issue: whenever running around PvE areas or in WvW you get tagged by some random NPC (which has no chance to even scratch you), which instantly applies movement penalty. This is an unnatural mechanic that can be pretty annoying.

How about instead: movement penalty is applied when you draw your weapon. Disable automatic draw when entering combat. Obviously still auto draw when activating weapon skills (but not support skills).

Pros:

• You slow down when you want to fight and you don’t slow down when you don’t want to fight.
• Above still valid for PvP. If you want to get to your target faster – sheathe your weapon.
• Mechanic that is natural and makes sense.
• Make sheathing more than just cosmetic thing.
• Additional balance dimension (if ever needed) to adjust speed penalty based on weapon size.

Other semi-related ideas

• Add sprint option for every class at hefty expense of endurance
• Add endurance cost to the existing leap/sprint weapon skills

The bottom line is that getting places shouldn’t be tedious. It is already possible to run through and skip alot of encounters in Cursed Shore and dungeons in particular, it is just really annoying for some classes.
And if ANet wants to prevent us from running through some encounters, they can easily give mobs some movement CC skills. That would be much preferable to a blunt and unfair penalty on the entire game.

I shall bump this thread for you sir

I would love to see this in game.
Hate the slowing down “feature”

As long as you’re not struck you won’t get movement penalty. Just dodgeroll when a mob sticks to your feet.

The current mechanic is obviously designed to help you catch someone you are chasing if you can tag them with your weapon. Your change nullifies this design goal. In fact, it kind of does the opposite, since the person trying to run away can afford to sheathe their weapon whereas the person trying to finish them off before they escape cannot.

Also, several classes rely on weapon skills to grant swiftness. For example, the guardian staff #3 skill is pretty much their main way of increasing out-of-combat travel speed. So either they have to draw the weapon, cast the swiftness skill, and quickly sheath it again before the movement penalty makes any significant difference—which is highly annoying and counter-intuitive—or else your change is a de facto huge nerf to their travel speed, which affects PvP balance and PvE quality of life.

I agree entirely. I think the entire in-combat slow down should go. It is unnatural, and it constantly feels like I’m running in syrup just because some enemy decided to attack me. Even when I’m not even near the enemy that is angry with me, and he can’t possibly reach me, it often happens that you stay in-combat. It is very buggy, and often makes jumping puzzles a nightmare. The puzzle at Thaumanova Reactor in Metrica Province is a good example, with the ice elementals. At the Collapsed Observatory some of the Drakes at the bottom of the JP will aggro for some bizarre reason, and make jumping impossible.