Guild Wars 2

If you haven’t yet seen the upcoming changes here, I encourage you to check them out. Specifically, there is one change at the bottom that I believe absolutely should not happen, and that is to make movement skills like Warrior’s Whirlwind (GS 3) and Guardian’s Leap of Faith (GS 3) unaffected by movement impairing conditions, specifically Chill and Cripple, or movement increasing boons, specifically Swiftness and Super Speed.

So here’s what is currently happening. If you were to use Whirlwind to travel some distance while crippled, you would travel a shorter distance than if you were to use it while not crippled. If you were to use it with swiftness, you would travel a longer distance than if you were to use it without swiftness.

So here’s where the problem lies, and it’s mainly with one class (although it affects all classes): Warrior. Warriors have easy access to 4 movement skills that could be affected by cripple or chill: Bull’s Charge (a uitlity), Whirlwind (GS 3), Rush (GS 5), and Savage Leap (Sword 2). It used to be that all of these were affected by cripple and chill, and so Warriors with those conditions couldn’t get out of fights very easily. However, now that has completely changed. Instead, a Warrior running Bullscharge and GS/S+WH can cover a distance of 2150 units in a matter of seconds, and then cover another 600, then another 450, and in about 5 seconds after that, another 1200. With this amount of mobility, even thieves can find it difficult to keep up, and while yes, they can immobilize the Warrior to stop them, Warhorn 4 can apply swiftness while curing immobilized (as well as cripple and chill). Not to mention that due to how overpowered this can be, Arenanet is almost certain to notice and try to nerf these skills, and that’s just not something that I want to see.

Now the reason why this is so bad, is because in a WvW or PvP environment, it basically gives the Warrior the ability to get into a fight he shouldn’t have, and walk out without consequence if he pops a stance or two and just uses his movement skills. Before, his escape would’ve been a lot more difficult if he traveled a shorter distance, or had to cleanse his conditions. Not to mention PvE, where running past trash mobs is a legitimate strategy in almost every dungeon.

Another reason why this is not a decision beneficial to the game, is that it detracts from the in depth nature of its combat system. I’ve always considered it incredibly cool that if you slow someone down, and they use a skill, the skill looks slower too. I’ve also loved how you could use a Warrior’s Whirldwind attack to deal a lot of damage when crippled, as people are in range of every swing from it. If ArenaNet were to remove this almost unique feature, the game would definitely lose some of its flavour.

And the final reason why I don’t like this decision is that classes with a wide access to movement skills are going to have a very large advantage over classes that don’t have that same mobility, like Necromancer, or Mesmer, or Engineer, and these classes are already not seen a lot in the meta. This is just going to widen that schism between these classes, and that is not something that no player truly wants to see.

To close, I think that it’s essential for us to have a discussion about this issue. About whether we think movement skills need to be changed as they are, and how to do so, because it isn’t something we’ve truly had yet. I know that there will probably be a lot of debate regarding this, and I welcome it wholeheartedly, and I want to know what you think. I would also appreciate it if we could get someone at ArenaNet to give some more insight into why they want to make this change. With so many large changes incoming, and an expansion coming right behind them, this is the time to lay it out and decide: what do we want Guild Wars 2 to become.

Well, speaking about WvW specifically, it doesn’t really matter too much for warriors since the majority of them will be running 93-98% reduction in movement impairing condition duration already. If anything, this will make it harder for them to escape because their movement skills will no longer be affected by their passive move speed or swiftness.

I am concerned about situations where using a movement skill can make you move slower though. For instance, the super speed->rocket boots combination won’t work anymore. However, since super speed gives you the maximum amount of move speed regardless of conditions or combat status, I’m wondering if it might create a situation where using rocket boots with super speed will temporarily slow you down since the rocket boots speed is normalized. This would apply to other movement skills as well, of course, I just use that as an example since engineer has some of the most accessible super speed.

They also didn’t mention whether or not the movement skills have the speed normalized to a state where the in-combat and out-of-combat are the same. The post states “movement-speed increases or decreases do not impact the distance travelled by your character”, so one would assume that combat status no longer affects it. But then is it normalized to out-of-combat speed or in-combat speed?

I see some good aspects to these sorts of changes, but some rather large negatives as well. For now, I’ll just be a fence sitter.

EDIT: Come to think of it, I think the movement skills actually do move at the same rate in and out of combat, so perhaps that last point I was making is completely irrelevant. The only thing that should affect them are conditions and boons or other miscellaneous movement speed decreases and increases.

I see this a more of balance than anything.

Currently, warriors have two options for pvp and wvw.

Mobility set, (which is sword warhorn and greatsword…)
and then their dps set….

One or the other, meaning they are set for mobility OR dps…. not both.

Almost all the other classes, particularly thieves, do not sacrifice any damage potential to keep their mobility.

This is a much needed balance, because warriors have been reduced to bunkers in pvp instead of offensive players.

…and many players get really defensive over any sort of suggested alteration to their class that could be viewed as negative… so the only other option is to go along and boost the classes that aren’t up to speed. (no pun intended)

This is going to help DPS warriors become more viable in pvp….. but I’m afraid that warriors who still choose to run mobility are going to turn into something broken.

If these changes really are implemented, warriors running mobility sets are going to become uncatchable… and they will become the new thieves…. where they come in and bother you and then just leave when they get in over their head.

EyeofSauron.7865:

If you haven’t yet seen the upcoming changes here, I encourage you to check them out. Specifically, there is one change at the bottom that I believe absolutely should not happen, and that is to make movement skills like Warrior’s Whirlwind (GS 3) and Guardian’s Leap of Faith (GS 3) unaffected by movement impairing conditions, specifically Chill and Cripple, or movement increasing boons, specifically Swiftness and Super Speed.

So here’s what is currently happening. If you were to use Whirlwind to travel some distance while crippled, you would travel a shorter distance than if you were to use it while not crippled. If you were to use it with swiftness, you would travel a longer distance than if you were to use it without swiftness.

So here’s where the problem lies, and it’s mainly with one class (although it affects all classes): Warrior. Warriors have easy access to 4 movement skills that could be affected by cripple or chill: Bull’s Charge (a uitlity), Whirlwind (GS 3), Rush (GS 5), and Savage Leap (Sword 2). It used to be that all of these were affected by cripple and chill, and so Warriors with those conditions couldn’t get out of fights very easily. However, now that has completely changed. Instead, a Warrior running Bullscharge and GS/S+WH can cover a distance of 2150 units in a matter of seconds, and then cover another 600, then another 450, and in about 5 seconds after that, another 1200. With this amount of mobility, even thieves can find it difficult to keep up, and while yes, they can immobilize the Warrior to stop them, Warhorn 4 can apply swiftness while curing immobilized (as well as cripple and chill). Not to mention that due to how overpowered this can be, Arenanet is almost certain to notice and try to nerf these skills, and that’s just not something that I want to see.

Now the reason why this is so bad, is because in a WvW or PvP environment, it basically gives the Warrior the ability to get into a fight he shouldn’t have, and walk out without consequence if he pops a stance or two and just uses his movement skills. Before, his escape would’ve been a lot more difficult if he traveled a shorter distance, or had to cleanse his conditions. Not to mention PvE, where running past trash mobs is a legitimate strategy in almost every dungeon.

Another reason why this is not a decision beneficial to the game, is that it detracts from the in depth nature of its combat system. I’ve always considered it incredibly cool that if you slow someone down, and they use a skill, the skill looks slower too. I’ve also loved how you could use a Warrior’s Whirldwind attack to deal a lot of damage when crippled, as people are in range of every swing from it. If ArenaNet were to remove this almost unique feature, the game would definitely lose some of its flavour.

And the final reason why I don’t like this decision is that classes with a wide access to movement skills are going to have a very large advantage over classes that don’t have that same mobility, like Necromancer, or Mesmer, or Engineer, and these classes are already not seen a lot in the meta. This is just going to widen that schism between these classes, and that is not something that no player truly wants to see.

To close, I think that it’s essential for us to have a discussion about this issue. About whether we think movement skills need to be changed as they are, and how to do so, because it isn’t something we’ve truly had yet. I know that there will probably be a lot of debate regarding this, and I welcome it wholeheartedly, and I want to know what you think. I would also appreciate it if we could get someone at ArenaNet to give some more insight into why they want to make this change. With so many large changes incoming, and an expansion coming right behind them, this is the time to lay it out and decide: what do we want Guild Wars 2 to become.

1 word: teleports

TheBlackLeech.9360:

I see this a more of balance than anything.

Currently, warriors have two options for pvp and wvw.

Mobility set, (which is sword warhorn and greatsword…)
and then their dps set….

One or the other, meaning they are set for mobility OR dps…. not both.

Almost all the other classes, particularly thieves, do not sacrifice any damage potential to keep their mobility.

This is a much needed balance, because warriors have been reduced to bunkers in pvp instead of offensive players.

…and many players get really defensive over any sort of suggested alteration to their class that could be viewed as negative… so the only other option is to go along and boost the classes that aren’t up to speed. (no pun intended)

This is going to help DPS warriors become more viable in pvp….. but I’m afraid that warriors who still choose to run mobility are going to turn into something broken.

If these changes really are implemented, warriors running mobility sets are going to become uncatchable… and they will become the new thieves…. where they come in and bother you and then just leave when they get in over their head.

for the last part you are wrong..they will not become new thieves…for no stealth and their movement skills are bound to cd’s and travel time and bound by ledges/hills unlike insta teleports…perfect balance and besides…whats a full mobilty war good for anyway? orb runs? perfect change