Guild Wars 2

The animations for dual wielding have always bugged me. You literally stand there with your secondary weapon as you swing with the primary weapon.

The way cooldowns work are in increasing refresh times, so the offhand weapons typically are on cooldown from anywhere between 15-45 seconds, with the exception of thieves who work on an initiative based system.

Most people probably don’t think about this, but in the past I have trained with dual wielding fighting styles, and any fighting training tries to teach you to use both hands and be ambidextrous.

Our characters use the off hand weapon as an afterthought.

The only way I could see this being remedied would be to integrate the second weapon in the auto attack chain either cosmetically or functionally. (just an animation, or have the auto attack chain include an attack from the off hand with off hand stats).

Or to reduce the cooldown on offhand attacks and adjust them to be more frequently used.

I think the first option would work more seamlessly into how the game is now. If this remedy is even considered as an update that is =p

You try swing 2 weapons at the same time its not a good way to fight. Most of the time when you dual wield weapons you tend to use mostly the “main” hand weapon your left or right more then your “offhand.” The offhand weapon becomes more of a def tool that can be used in a pinch to attk. Why would you want to try to inflict dmg with your weaker side in the first places when you can do it with your stronger side?

Yeah the only effective 2 weapon fighting styles are light weapons, you’re never going to see an effective sword/mace wielder in real life because that will never be as effective as someone with a sword/shield or 2 daggers.

Then again we are heroes of the land so I can’t really argue that it’d be cool to see more variety with this.

I have tried swinging 2 weapons at the same time in real life. See eskrima/arnis:

http://youtu.be/Mf8jWtCdFWI?t=50s

Or even fencing with a dagger off hand or a main gauche is a familiar European style of dual wielding combat.

Also there is the Japanese style of combat with 2 weapons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi

Jski.6180:

You try swing 2 weapons at the same time its not a good way to fight. Most of the time when you dual wield weapons you tend to use mostly the “main” hand weapon your left or right more then your “offhand.” The offhand weapon becomes more of a def tool that can be used in a pinch to attk. Why would you want to try to inflict dmg with your weaker side in the first places when you can do it with your stronger side?

Simply because your opponent will anticipate you attacking with your left hand again because you do nothing else. Being capable of attacking with both weapons alike creates diversity for yourself and openings in the opponents defense. If you use your offhand weapon simply for blocking, you could as well just take a shield.

CMF.5461:

I have tried swinging 2 weapons at the same time in real life. See eskrima/arnis:

http://youtu.be/Mf8jWtCdFWI?t=50s

Or even fencing with a dagger off hand or a main gauche is a familiar European style of dual wielding combat.

Also there is the Japanese style of combat with 2 weapons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musakitten

hank you CMF, I was about to make this exact same post!

As a practitioner of martial arts for 14 years, I’ll say that it makes way more sense to alternate weapon strikes because the natural swinging of your body will carry one weapon into the other.

For heavier weapons, such as mace, it may not look as quick as certain dual swords, but there are dual weapon sets for things like Double Melon Hammers.

Also in a lot of martial arts the idea of ambidexterity is key in many things. Like RoterFuchs said if you are only dangerous with your primary hand then your attacks can be read and anticipated.

When I was taking arnis, you were forced to train and use your off hand. There was not supposed to be a disparity between left and right. If all your sides are dangerous then you have a more complete offense and defense as well as more flexibility in stance and positioning while fighting.

Also a good point DigitialKirin, with the idea of flow of strike, many times a second attack with your offhand helps flow the strike more naturally with the movement of the body.

This is as opposed to attacking and reeling your striking arm back for a second attack. Very open and exposed with large gaps in your swing.

Imagine you swing with your left hand to the left and right hand to the left, now you have both hands on the left side, then you swing with your right hand to the right and left hand to the right. Now you have both hands on the right side, continuing the flow of attack. (not the only way to do this an pretty rudimentary)

<—-L R / R L—→

Versus having your right hand swing and return to the right hand position every time with putting in your left hand attack every now and then.

<—-R / <—-R / <—-R / L——> / <——R / <——R

On some level I agree that the current implementation where your offhand just sits there most of the time is not ideal in some situations. However, there would be a number of things getting in the way of “real” dual wielding.

The first would be that not all off-hand weapons are actually “weapons”. Stuff like focus, torch, warhorn, ect are not things that you would actually use to attack. So at the very least, this would require 2 completely different sets of animations (one for dual-wielding actual weapons EG Sword / Dagger, and one for dual-wielding a weapon and a non-weapon EG Axe / Warhorn).

The second would be weapons of different ranges. Something like Sword / Pistol, for instance. At melee range, no problem, swing the sword and fire the gun point-blank. At long-range though, then what? Unable to attack at all because your mainhand is melee? Have to swing your sword at the air once hitting nothing, then your next attack would be a ranged gunshot?

Also, would this be actually altering your basic attack (so Sword / Dagger would be a different basic attack than Sword / Axe) or would it be the same basic string just with different animations? If the former, then its a fair bit of extra work and makes certain combinations of weapons preferable over others just because of better basic attacks, and if the latter then it might not make sense (you might end up stabbing with an Axe or something).

Oh, very good point electro. I was not considering ranged/melee dual wielding and how that would effect combat.

As far as multiple animations, those could be integrated in with the auto attack chain to switch off on what attack is next, thus creating a left right style combat.

Maybe for ranged/melee dual wield add a second point blank quick shot in. Or just leave that attack out for some setups, as that is not apart of the normal idea of flow of combat. Not unheard of though.

For the different combinations of sword dagger versus sword axe. I think the second option you mentioned would work better of having the off hand do the same attack, for the sake of keeping more things viable.

Yes it is stupid.
No it has nothing to do with “real life”
Yes they should fix it.
No it won’t happen, unfortunately this should’ve been addressed in beta and fixed but anet is lazy and there is no way they’ll ever get it done anymore.

Kryptonite.9376:

…
Yes they should fix it.
No it won’t happen…

I agree as it has always bugged me too, but I don’t think it will ever be done. They seem to be too interested in adding silly festival events instead of fixing problematic content. I suppose once the box has been ticked (combat animations check, and so on) it is really hard to revisit unless enough people complain about it. The funny thing is I’ve had a blast going back to single player rpg’s where issues like these are fixed by the community if the developer drops the ball.

I’ve never really thought about it. Do the animations stay functionally the same regardless of what the off-hand weapon is? e.g. Does your arm stay in the same position if you’re holding a warhorn in your off-hand as it does if you’re holding a dagger or sword?

Answered my own question I think, it looks like it does.

The thief p/p action is pretty close because the Unload cool down is fairly short. I love running around like that in PvE. I call it my Matrix build.

RoterFuchs.9216:

Jski.6180:

You try swing 2 weapons at the same time its not a good way to fight. Most of the time when you dual wield weapons you tend to use mostly the “main” hand weapon your left or right more then your “offhand.” The offhand weapon becomes more of a def tool that can be used in a pinch to attk. Why would you want to try to inflict dmg with your weaker side in the first places when you can do it with your stronger side?

Simply because your opponent will anticipate you attacking with your left hand again because you do nothing else. Being capable of attacking with both weapons alike creates diversity for yourself and openings in the opponents defense. If you use your offhand weapon simply for blocking, you could as well just take a shield.

From a real life view though your opponent knows that attks from your “weaker” side will come slower and with less power then from your other side. They do not need to think too much on the weaker side of a person as they do from the strong side.

Jski.6180:

RoterFuchs.9216:

Jski.6180:

You try swing 2 weapons at the same time its not a good way to fight. Most of the time when you dual wield weapons you tend to use mostly the “main” hand weapon your left or right more then your “offhand.” The offhand weapon becomes more of a def tool that can be used in a pinch to attk. Why would you want to try to inflict dmg with your weaker side in the first places when you can do it with your stronger side?

Simply because your opponent will anticipate you attacking with your left hand again because you do nothing else. Being capable of attacking with both weapons alike creates diversity for yourself and openings in the opponents defense. If you use your offhand weapon simply for blocking, you could as well just take a shield.

From a real life view though your opponent knows that attks from your “weaker” side will come slower and with less power then from your other side. They do not need to think too much on the weaker side of a person as they do from the strong side.

You should pay some attention to CMFs posts. As he has stated (and as it should be) both your hands should be equally strong. Apart from that, if my opponent is ignoring my offhand because he thinks its weaker, well that doesn’t suddenly make my blade dull. It will hurt if ignored.

RoterFuchs.9216:

Jski.6180:

RoterFuchs.9216:

Jski.6180:

You try swing 2 weapons at the same time its not a good way to fight. Most of the time when you dual wield weapons you tend to use mostly the “main” hand weapon your left or right more then your “offhand.” The offhand weapon becomes more of a def tool that can be used in a pinch to attk. Why would you want to try to inflict dmg with your weaker side in the first places when you can do it with your stronger side?

Simply because your opponent will anticipate you attacking with your left hand again because you do nothing else. Being capable of attacking with both weapons alike creates diversity for yourself and openings in the opponents defense. If you use your offhand weapon simply for blocking, you could as well just take a shield.

From a real life view though your opponent knows that attks from your “weaker” side will come slower and with less power then from your other side. They do not need to think too much on the weaker side of a person as they do from the strong side.

You should pay some attention to CMFs posts. As he has stated (and as it should be) both your hands should be equally strong. Apart from that, if my opponent is ignoring my offhand because he thinks its weaker, well that doesn’t suddenly make my blade dull. It will hurt if ignored.

So more of a real like thing then in game what i am getting at. There more to it then just a blade if you attk with one hand or side you must move in a way that lets you attk with the other side if you plan to. A fighter is more then just there weapons there body get into swings but to do more then just an attk from one side you must make that first hit not as all in so your still able to get off another attk from your weaker side.

As for in game your the one choosing the skill to use as if your choosing what the 2 arms are going to do. There is no auto attk of the main and off hand there is an auto cast but that not the same thing. You as a player must chose what ability your going to use at any given time and a chose means given up other chose of both offhand ability and main hands in a given sec well in this game its 1/2 a sec.

Jski, I think you are losing focus on what the original discussion was.

Yes there is no “auto attack” but there is an attack chain that is typically left on “auto”, which in essence makes it like “auto attack”. Arguing over auto attack any more than that is just being difficult and needlessly uncompromising.

What I suggested was to graphically through animation or through function of changing the attack chain to include an attack from the off hand.

By doing this, it would make the combat look more natural and less static with the characters off hand weapons.

Off hand weapons in the game only trigger when you use an off hand weapon skill. Most of these skills are on long cooldowns so you only ever see the off hand swing every 15-45 seconds. That is a long gap in time where your off hand is stationary in an action packed fight. Might as well be holding a shield at that rate instead of a deadly weapon, if you are not going to use it.

In real life fighting, there is no need or reason to have to strike with your primary hand in order for your off hand to make an attack, so unsure where you are getting that information from, and I think you are again focusing on things to make a certain logic set work that I don’t see or understand unfortunately.

In the end I don’t think we will see a change to make our off hands look more engaged in combat any time soon. I simply posted it to voice up an opinion is all.

Some good responses here though about the complication of ranged off hands mixed with melee off hands and how having off hands attack more frequently may cause an imbalance in skills and weapons, thus causing favoritism and more difficulty in game balance.

CMF.5461:

Jski, I think you are losing focus on what the original discussion was.

Yes there is no “auto attack” but there is an attack chain that is typically left on “auto”, which in essence makes it like “auto attack”. Arguing over auto attack any more than that is just being difficult and needlessly uncompromising.

What I suggested was to graphically through animation or through function of changing the attack chain to include an attack from the off hand.

By doing this, it would make the combat look more natural and less static with the characters off hand weapons.

Off hand weapons in the game only trigger when you use an off hand weapon skill. Most of these skills are on long cooldowns so you only ever see the off hand swing every 15-45 seconds. That is a long gap in time where your off hand is stationary in an action packed fight. Might as well be holding a shield at that rate instead of a deadly weapon, if you are not going to use it.

In real life fighting, there is no need or reason to have to strike with your primary hand in order for your off hand to make an attack, so unsure where you are getting that information from, and I think you are again focusing on things to make a certain logic set work that I don’t see or understand unfortunately.

In the end I don’t think we will see a change to make our off hands look more engaged in combat any time soon. I simply posted it to voice up an opinion is all.

Some good responses here though about the complication of ranged off hands mixed with melee off hands and how having off hands attack more frequently may cause an imbalance in skills and weapons, thus causing favoritism and more difficulty in game balance.

What i was talking about is using your body to swing weapons when it comes to real life you do not just use your arm you use your full body.

Well lets say your off hand is something that dose not fit your main hand for animation? Say your a mez using a sword main hand and a gun off hand or any thing that NOT a sword how would that work do you just randomly hit some one with your off hand weapon? What it comes down to is ppl are asking for very narrow weapon and class for animation to be changes but they are lumping it into the idea that all dual wielding animation in GW2 is bad and its not.

I think I recognized and addressed those concerns in a few of my posts about varying weapons being paired together. I offered some suggestions to those scenarios as well. I also acknowledged that they are an odd case and expanded my view from the original inception of the idea.

About the full body swing versus arm, that is a moot point as I was not suggesting we do not move our bodies at all. I am requesting that the off hand weapon be utilized more graphically or functionally instead of leaving it stagnant.

Movement of the whole body to complete the swing of course is integrated in an arm swing to make it more natural and effective. Attack animations in the game show good use of shifting of mass and balance in attacks. I simply requested that the off hand weapon be more used in our attacks.

CMF what class do you play as? That alone can answer a lot of your own question for what YOUR asking for as a player.

I main a guardian, I have one of each class. Originally I noticed this issue on my warrior.

A guardian swinging a focus around every other attack would look as silly as a warrior not swinging his off hand weapon around.

You are making this a little more complicated than it needs to be.

I’m sure the real reason they don’t have combination animations is because of the dynamic way they’ve set up the combat.

Main hand.
Axe × 3
Dagger × 3
Mace × 3
Pistol × 3
Scepter × 3
Sword × 3

Off Hand Only
Axe × 2
Dagger × 2
Mace × 2
Pistol × 2
Scepter × 2
Sword × 2
Focus × 2
Shield × 2
Torch × 2
Warhorn × 2

Total animations currently = 38

If you only wanted to cover the auto attack you’d have to add these animations over the 10 different weapon/shield combinations:

Main and off hand with unique auto attack based on off hand weapon/shield.
Axe + Unique Combinations + Default = 13
Dagger + Unique Combinations + Default = 13
Mace + Unique Combinations + Default = 13
Pistol + Unique Combinations + Default = 13
Scepter + Unique Combinations + Default = 13
Sword + Unique Combinations + Default = 13

Off Hand Only
Axe × 2
Dagger × 2
Mace × 2
Pistol × 2
Scepter × 2
Sword × 2
Focus × 2
Shield × 2
Torch × 2
Warhorn × 2

Total animation with unique auto attack = 98

Finally if you want to cover every animation combination for dual wielding weapons you’d have to extrapolate the combinations out.

Axe + Combinations * 5 attacks + Default = 50
Dagger + Combinations * 5 attacks + Default = 50
Mace + Combinations * 5 attacks + Default = 50
Pistol + Combinations * 5 attacks + Default = 50
Scepter + Combinations * 5 attacks + Default = 50
Sword + Combinations * 5 attacks + Default = 50

Total of 300 animations.

I’m sure these numbers are accurate as I laid it all out on a spreadsheet to cover all combinations. The amount of work needed to even implement a unique animation for the auto attack would be almost 3 times that of the work done on the current animations. I doubt they would ever contemplate looking at this.

Very nice and in depth analysis stormageddonbk and a very probable answer to why they will not be looking to update off hand animations anytime soon. Still I just wanted to point out the lack of off hand animation throughout the duration of a fight.

I agree with CMF that it would be nice to see this. However, the amount of work an animations it would take is probably prohibitive. I’m not sure the bulk of the playerbase would notice or care. I sure didn’t. But then, I’m not trained in martial arts.

Because of having to make different animations for different combos, I doubt will ever see a fix to this.

Another reason could be pvp. With skill animations tied to the weapon that provide you that skill you can predict skills your opponent is going to use.

Another insightful reason, Miellyn. I wish it could look better, but there are plenty of reasons to keep it as is unfortunately.

I would like better DW animations and believe it wouldn’t be that hard as some stated i this thread.

1.“Pure” offhands(focus, shield, torch, warhorn) do not need a special animation, when using them your character would have animations of using single 1-handed weapon.

2. Ranged offhands should have special animation only when paired with a ranged mainhand (thief’s p/p, ranger’s a/a). It doesn’t need to be something fancy, just shooting with one pistol, then with another etc.

3.There should be a single animation per MAINHAND: when I’m a warrior animations for a/a, a/s, a/m are the same. It worked in WoW where “normal” 1-handed weapons (axe, sword, mace) had the same animations. The only exception would be offhand dagger, there should be additional animations for this weapon.

4.Only autoattack (#1 skills) should have different animations based on DW.

5.About PvP: it would be only additional burden of knowledge, basically different animations for the same skill, it’s not the same thing like the same animations for different skills. And after all when new weapons will be added to the game PvPers will have to learn new animations, like it or not.

So for now we should have:
Warrior: 3 new animations (for a/s/m mainhand).
Guardian: 0 new animations.
Engineer: 1 new animation for p/p.
Ranger: 3 new animations(1 for a/a, 1 for s/d, 1 for s/a).
Thief: 3 new animations(1 for s/d, 1 for d/d, 1 for p/p).
Necromancer: 1 new animation(1 for d/d and I’m not sure if anybody uses d/d on necro )
Mesmer: 1 new animation for s/s.
Elementalist: 0 new animations(for now dagger MH animations look well with focus and another dagger, but this could change with additional offhands added, like torch).

And about realism: we have a warrior that starts spinning in place with GS and then shoot in some direction while spinning, I’m 99% sure no medieval soldier used 2-h sword in that way. Animations should not be realistic, they should be cool.