Guild Wars 2

So a lot of abilities had their aftercasts reduced this patch, which is great because a lot of them were too long (staring at you Long Range Shot).

However, there are a few rather obvious ones that seem to have been overlooked. Vital Shot (Thief Pistol), Explosive Shot (Engi Pistol) and Dual Shot (Warrior Longbow) all have very sluggish rates of fire for their offensive specs. I was expecting these to get a speed-up along with the Ranger Longbow and some Staff/Scepter autos, but they didn’t, what gives?

Thief’s Pistol is a particularly egregious example because of how Initiative works. Body Shot got an independent buff, but Body Shot in a vacuum was never the problem, it was how Vital Shot’s weakness caused Body Shot (along with Head Shot and Black Powder) to directly compete with Unload, which takes over Vital Shot’s role of primary basic DPS. This means that instead of choosing between different types of utility, you’re choosing between basic DPS and any utility at all, which totally breaks the whole set.

The entire reason why P/P is so bad on Thieves is because Unload takes on the role that Vital Shot should have and completely breaks every other skill in the process by changing the resource game from “this utility or that utility” to “any utility or DPS”.

I don’t understand how this has been overlooked for 10 months, and with this patch addressing aftercast delays and skills being weaker than they should be it’s even more amazing that this has been overlooked.

I mean, why would you buff something that would prevent shoehorning an entire class into one or two viable builds?

Thieves is a bad example anyway. The newest of SB nerfs shows that the real problem is that thieves still have ANY use for a ranged weapon…even if that is solely utility now.

Next shortbow adjustment for thieves: “Trick Shot” removed and Replaced with “Nerf Dart.” Base damage reduced to 1, attack no longer ricochets. “Infiltrator’s Arrow” removed and replaced with “Stand and Die.” Casting Skill #5 on thief shortbow now roots thief in place until death.

The engineer pistol is particularly silly. Side by side with rifle, pistol #1 should fire faster than rifle #1. But if you fire up a stopwatch, they have equal rate of fire. This because the longer aftercast makes up for the faster windup on pistol.

Honestly, ANet should just come out and document the aftercast so that people can account for it being there. I have seen a pile of “what is aftercast?” since the patch notes landed.

Then again, it seemed to take a whole lot of community yelling before ANet even documented windup. I am just curious what they hope to accomplish by holding these kinds of things secret.

digiowl.9620:

The engineer pistol is particularly silly. Side by side with rifle, pistol #1 should fire faster than rifle #1. But if you fire up a stopwatch, they have equal rate of fire. This because the longer aftercast makes up for the faster windup on pistol.

Honestly, ANet should just come out and document the aftercast so that people can account for it being there. I have seen a pile of “what is aftercast?” since the patch notes landed.

Then again, it seemed to take a whole lot of community yelling before ANet even documented windup. I am just curious what they hope to accomplish by holding these kinds of things secret.

Yeah, it’s needlessly arcane and complicated. Why even have an aftercast at all? Instead of having an activation speed and an aftercast, there should just be a single metric “cast time” which the skill executes after the end of and other skills are available immediately or after a very short standardized aftercast like .1 second.

But it really amazes me how broken some skills were entirely because of the odd delay caused by the aftercast (like Long Range Shot) and how much it’s impacted those sets without being addressed for 10 months.