Guild Wars 2

I’m chopping down an Orrian Sapling, when I’m suddenly attacked. I hit Dodge, but the tree-chopping animation mindlessly continues. Sometimes even hitting run, jump or escape fails to interrupt the chopping in any timely way.

I’m whacking away at a dungeon boss using Ranger Sword-1, which has an interminable 3-part Slash>>Kick>>Pounce attack sequence, when red circles spawn on top of me. I hit Dodge in plenty of time, but the game ignores it- the lengthy Sword-1 attack sequence continues until the circles explode and kill me.

I’m whacking away at a fractals mob on a high platform using the same Ranger Sword-1 when the target mob suddenly moves to the edge of the platform. Even though I do not want to follow him over there, the Sword-1 animation forces me to do so, and even though I know what’s coming and spam Dodge (and run, jump, escape, etc.) my poor character mindlessly sticks with the mob due to the 3rd part of the Sword-1 attack (Pounce). She dutifully continues her attack until she plummets off the edge of the platform when the unstoppable attack animation makes her circle the mob.

Just as I fire off my Ranger Longbow-2 Rapid Fire attack at a Champion Wurm, I see the Wurm launch a boulder at me. I hit Dodge at the perfect time as the boulder is almost to me, but nope! The game forces me to complete my lengthy Longbow-2 animation whether I want to or not. POW! I take a 3-ton boulder (to the knee- giggle) and drop to the ground.

The above scenarios are not unique to the Ranger profession- they are pretty much the same for any skill that has a cast time for all professions. I have level 80s of every profession, and the Ranger Sword-1 loss-of-control-animation is by far the worst offender, but not the only one.

Dodge is a core mechanic of GW2. Its primary purpose is to get away from your current location quickly, on short notice, so as to escape impending damage. Please, Anet, make Dodge interrupt all animations-in-progress instantly and actually perform a Dodge instead of finishing whatever animation happens to be running.

I’m pretty sure you can interrupt the logging animation by using a skill or moving and Rapid fire by dodging. Are you sure you weren’t out of endurance or something? or maybe lagging?

The Sword autoattack is a problem though, but they have no intention of changing it

Never had this happen, dodge always interrupts any gathering I am doing. I am thinking you are having server:client lag issues.

Happens to my ranger using greatsword all the time it’s why i don’t melee with my ranger no way to dodge other than skills no matter how much i spam my arrow keys

Ranger is the red-headed stepchild of the professions. Despite the sword auto being hopelessly broken, we’re going to have to live with it. It had an interesting progression though.

Players: Ranger sword auto roots us in place!

Devs: No, it doesn’t.

Players: Really, sword auto roots us in place.

Devs: Well, it shouldn’t, and if it does, we’ll look into fixing it.

Players: Sword auto STILL roots us!

Devs: We’re working on a solution.

Players: Sword auto is Still causing issues!

Devs: It’s a feature.

I hate when I am stuck rezzing. No matter how many, or whichever, key I hit, I just continue rezzing. Well, until I am downed, of course. Sigh.

It doesn’t happen every time, but more often than not.

stale.9785:

Ranger is the red-headed stepchild of the professions. Despite the sword auto being hopelessly broken, we’re going to have to live with it. It had an interesting progression though.

Players: Ranger sword auto roots us in place!

Devs: No, it doesn’t.

Players: Really, sword auto roots us in place.

Devs: Well, it shouldn’t, and if it does, we’ll look into fixing it.

Players: Sword auto STILL roots us!

Devs: We’re working on a solution.

Players: Sword auto is Still causing issues!

Devs: It’s a feature.

This really made me laugh.

On topic: OP, I can dodge while chopping unless I’m lagging, which does happen in my neck of the woods.

Fixing the 1h auto attack on ranger sword is probably about the only thing they could do to get me to go back and play that profession.

Ranger sword has a dodge. There is no issue.

Reviving someone, however..

Honestly all melee strikes and even bow firing should not let players move like 2 kids in a long coat.

It’s just not right when your lower body is disconnected with the upper body, whatever strike you deliver uses your lower body, and firing arrows (if anyone had experience on archery) needs a certain amount of stability and not running around at full speed left to right.

GOSU.9574:

Never had this happen, dodge always interrupts any gathering I am doing. I am thinking you are having server:client lag issues.

Dodge most definitely does not stop or interrupt the harvesting animation.

You’re doing something else to cancel it first.

I usually try to move my character via double tap a direction or weapon swap, but this is unreliably inconsistent at best. I’ve had both of these methods fail sometimes – usually at the start of a second cast of the gathering animation.

Yes annoying,I have the same issues too.
My favorite one is with warrior greatsword 5 skill when I deselect somehow the target and I want to charge back then I charge off the cliff <3 or much farther from the boss…really lovely

stale.9785:

Ranger is the red-headed stepchild of the professions. Despite the sword auto being hopelessly broken, we’re going to have to live with it. It had an interesting progression though.

Players: Ranger sword auto roots us in place!

Devs: No, it doesn’t.

Players: Really, sword auto roots us in place.

Devs: Well, it shouldn’t, and if it does, we’ll look into fixing it.

Players: Sword auto STILL roots us!

Devs: We’re working on a solution.

Players: Sword auto is Still causing issues!

Devs: It’s a feature.

Now that is funny.

So far as I can recall weapon stowing interrupts any animation except dodge

Edit: Just checked, it interrupts all skills except movement skills, like leap skills and unfortunately, the ranger sword attack chain. It will however interrupt channels, including mining/logging.

There a lot of small differences in animations so game experience is really your best friend here. There are solutions to a number of problems though -

Ranger sword – turn of auto-attack or use greatsword or accept the risk
Reviving – be watchful when reviving and give yourself time to break off then dodge (get busy when the enemy is casting rather than when the red circle is on you)
Movement skills and weapon skills (like block) can interrupt some animations. Switch to the right weapon before you start your troublesome animation.
Slot utilities like lightning reflexes for extra freedom.

Once you know the times when the animation problem is going to happen you can generally manage it. I don’t think this is any worse than any of the other visual/ control/camera/interface problems since you can manage it to some degree.

Halcyon.7352:

GOSU.9574:

Never had this happen, dodge always interrupts any gathering I am doing. I am thinking you are having server:client lag issues.

Dodge most definitely does not stop or interrupt the harvesting animation.

You’re doing something else to cancel it first.

I usually try to move my character via double tap a direction or weapon swap, but this is unreliably inconsistent at best. I’ve had both of these methods fail sometimes – usually at the start of a second cast of the gathering animation.

It most definetly DOES. I just did it within the last hour……

Rezzing and harvesting definitely freeze my chars on place. There have been a number of times that I’ve died while trying to rez someone. I can spam hitting the dodge button and nothing happens.

I’ll have to try the switch weapons trick. I wonder if it needs to be done right before the dodge or can be done proactively to ready my char for a dodge.

I’ve always had to move from where I was harvesting or rezzing before I was able to dodge. I wouldn’t have to move FAR , but I’ve never been able to go straight from chopping or trying to rez to a dodge.

As far as Ranger sword auto; you’ll find a good number of players who LIKE that it “locks on” to enemies, and they find that worth the tradeoff of having to anticipate attacks more than reacting to them.

I’m not exactly one of those people (it CAN be handy, but I mostly find it a nuisance), but there IS considerable pushback to removing the root effect, which might be why Arena.net has been reluctant to commit to such a change.

GOSU.9574:

Halcyon.7352:

GOSU.9574:

Never had this happen, dodge always interrupts any gathering I am doing. I am thinking you are having server:client lag issues.

Dodge most definitely does not stop or interrupt the harvesting animation.

You’re doing something else to cancel it first.

I usually try to move my character via double tap a direction or weapon swap, but this is unreliably inconsistent at best. I’ve had both of these methods fail sometimes – usually at the start of a second cast of the gathering animation.

It most definetly DOES. I just did it within the last hour……

You’re doing something to cancel the harvest animation before dodging.

Do you use double tap to dodge, or do you have a key bound to it? If you double tap, you’re probably pressing a movement key three times in actuality – one to cancel your current cast, and twice more to dodge.

If you bind a key to dodge and press it while harvesting, nothing happens.

Learn to use the ESC key…..not sure HOW you are doing decent combat without it.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Learn to use the ESC key…..not sure HOW you are doing decent combat without it.

Again, it personally takes much longer for me to hit the escape key to cancel something.

It’s much faster and more instinctive to me to either move or weapon swap (on my engineer).

The problem is the leap movement, you can’t dodge in the middle of a leap and the sword auto attack with ranger have leaps.
The work around is to turn off auto-attack, and keep pressing 1, but don’t spam it or it will make a buffer with AAs, so when you know an attack will come stop attacking and dodge. Also some skills interrupt it, mainly the sword #3 or the LR utility.

Yeah, devs firstly said it was a bug, then they said it was working as intended, then they said they would look about it and many months later nothing else was heard.

Pro-tip. Always, and I mean always disable auto attack on Ranger sword. Sure, it might be a bit tedious having to hit 1 all the time to attack, but disabling auto attack on sword is a must. There is a window in which you can continue the attack chain, so learn the timings. I almost never have a problem with the chain, except when my ranger pounces into a Knock down or an AOE, but that’s the risk of using the highest single target dps weapon for a ranger.
If you’re sticking to auto attack on sword 1, then sorry that’s a rookie mistake. If you’re doing harpies with sword, that’s just suicide. Swap to Greatsword when you’re fighting harpies because GS 4 does not trigger on their rapid fire (it’s the same as warrior off hand sword riposte) or you can interrupt them with 5.

Rapid fire channel can be broken by lightning reflexes or using another skill, I usually use point blank shot. The problem with RF is that you can move while using it so the only way to break it is use another skill. Since wurms can’t be knocked back, Point blank shot doesn’t work. Another trick is button mapping. I mapped mouse 3 to dodge and mouse 4 to activate skill slot 7. I always put a stun breaker, lightning reflexes in this case, into that slot and not having to double tap to dodge is a life saver.

@Amnariel. Rush can be so unreliable that you really only should use it in 2 situations.
1. Whirlwind attack to close or at point blank range, maybe for an evade, throw the greatsword and then rush. The range of the greatsword throw and the time of the animation is about right that you will arrive at your target at the same time as the sword is coming back, thus putting in a really nice spike of damage on the target. This is significantly better than trying to use Rush for closing.
2. The single target damage of Rush, when it crits can be awesome, easily 7-8k damage. So it makes for a great in between skill while waiting for hundred blades to recharge.

This doesn’t fully get around the issues with targets that rush doesn’t work on, but it vastly improves the reliability.

stale.9785:

Ranger is the red-headed stepchild of the professions. Despite the sword auto being hopelessly broken, we’re going to have to live with it. It had an interesting progression though.

Players: Ranger sword auto roots us in place!

Devs: No, it doesn’t.

Players: Really, sword auto roots us in place.

Devs: Well, it shouldn’t, and if it does, we’ll look into fixing it.

Players: Sword auto STILL roots us!

Devs: We’re working on a solution.

Players: Sword auto is Still causing issues!

Devs: It’s a feature.

This is made me lol too

But sadly thats anet reaction to everything they cant really fix and that is just a poverty certificate….

If other professions had auto-attacks that rooted them in place, “turn off auto-attack” would not be seen as an acceptable solution. Tapping 1 repeatedly for Ranger sword is an annoying chore, and it makes trying to hit other keys that much more cumbersome. I can’t imagine holding my push-to-talk key for voice chat while attacking. Not only that, but people are bound to lose DPS if they have no true auto-attack chain. It’s only natural to screw up the timing sometimes, or hold off attacking while considering other moves, or just plain not pressing the button as fast as an auto would perform.

And don’t tell me “It has an evade, so of course you have to be locked into it.” Baloney. Ranger greatsword has an evade, and there is no such issue. But what difference does it make, anyhow? So Ranger has the evade. Other professions have other features on their attacks, like cripple, bleed, might, vulnerability, etc.

Auto-attack is how Rangers do damage with sword. The other two skills are primarily mobility, not high damage. Just what are we supposed to do with sword, if not attack? You wonder why Rangers have a stigma in this game, and why many rangers just stick to bows — well, don’t wonder anymore. Any issues we have are swept under the rug, or dismissed as “the fun, quirky mechanics of Ranger” where in any other context such nonsense would be laughed out of the room.

I feel like people (ANet included) just accept this problem, essentially because “it’s Ranger, all their weapons are supposed to be unwieldy and situational, lulz!” If Warrior had this problem with their auto-attacks, it would be considered a bug and fixed on day one.

Fyrebrand.4859:

If other professions had auto-attacks that rooted them in place, “turn off auto-attack” would not be seen as an acceptable solution.

To be fair, others do, just not to the same extent. Both warrior and guardian 3rd auto attacks on greatsword lock you into the animation and cause fumble dodges. You don’t really ever notice it unless you put yourself in situations where you have to make split second moves like boss solos where you can get 1hk very easily.

Fyrebrand.4859:

people are bound to lose DPS if they have no true auto-attack chain. It’s only natural to screw up the timing sometimes, or hold off attacking while considering other moves, or just plain not pressing the button as fast as an auto would perform.

^^ This.
Ranger Sword-1 is a 3-part CHAIN attack. Pressing 1 re-initiates the chain. It is not only possible, but inevitable, that turning off auto-attack and manually attacking by pressing 1 will re-initiate the chain without the previous attack ever having reached the third part of the chain. This will nerf the dps of the so-called highest dps attack in the game for Rangers, making it pointless.

Unfortunately, using Greatsword instead of Sword IS the best option in dungeons and other situations where stacking with the group while maintaining mobility and control of your character is needed. Unfortunately, GS does considerably less damage than Sword would do if it worked right… which is the reason for my OP.

Azrael.4960:

Pro-tip. […] sorry that’s a rookie mistake.

Thanks for the tip from a pro.

I had no idea there was only one way to do things, or that stuff that isn’t working should be ignored, not posted about, and just accepted and worked around by disabling core game functionality.

Signed,
Rookie