Guild Wars 2

I think. =) Replied to someone earlier, came up with this idea:

In a nutshell:

I do mostly PvP, and feel like condition damage is waaay less effective than direct damage. I play a staff Ele and couldn’t burn and bleed someone to death if my life depended on it. I would point to my original post, but actually have a NOVEL idea that would make all condition builds immediately more effective without actually touching them. GET READY FOR THIS.

Get rid of walking backwards. Boom. Done. If a character just turned and walked towards the screen instead of walking incredibly slowly backwards when you press the ‘S’ key, it would change everything for the better. Think about it…

DoT builds could ‘poke and run’ much more often, making that DoT more important. Unless you ran forward again, your back would be turned to the opponent, so Thief/Ranger/(do you crit automatically from behind?) type stuff where you receive bonuses for that would still be effective, if not more so. Speed buffs like Swiftness and debuffs like Cripple and Chill would also be finally be much more relevant in combat because battles would become a little more linear and less distributed on one spot like they are now.

Fact is now, I can start running in one direction, turn the camera with the right mouse button, and boom, I’m running looking backwards, but it takes too long. Allowing me to run backwards would still expose my back, which makes it fair for the attacker(i’m the retreater here), but allow me take a step back on occasion without having to use up a roll to do so.

What do you think?

The whole running backwards is so you can cast while running away, slowly. If you want to run away while looking at the enemy, use “Look Behind” while running.

There’s a key to be mapped for instantly turning your character and camera by 180°

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GreenNekoHaunt.8527:

There’s a key to be mapped for instantly turning your character and camera by 180°

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Yep two keys to map and you can run away while looking (and even casting some things) backwards. Problem solved.

“S” moving backwards like I’m talking about = 1 button, 0 camera changes.

‘X’ to turn around (1 button press, 1 camera change), “W” to run, and ‘Y’ (either mouse camera movement or ‘look behind’, another button press and camera change)= 3 button presses, 2 camera changes, while having to hold the run, camera, or look behind buttons – exponentially more complicated and time consuming.

You say you do mostly PvP yet pressing 3 buttons instead of just 1 is too much of a hassle? With all that is going on in PvP those 3 buttons shouldn’t make such a difference imho.
Srsly, it’s not that hard. It’s the same with fast casting spells, just practice it for a while and you’ll do it instinctively. 2 camera changes shouldn’t challenge you too much since ideally you’ll be changing camera alot to mind your surroundings anyhow.