So after playing a long time on my ranger, guradian and a thief, I have tried myself a warrior (with fast hands trait) and was amazed how “right” it felt during combat. But my amazement was even bigger when I tried kits on engineer – it just feels so kitten fluid being unrestricted, and now going back to my other characters – I’m feeling crippled by the cooldown on weapon swap, thus the name of the topic.
The only “overpowered” thing I see without weapon swap on EVERY class in the game, is the skill “2” on weapons, wich most of the time has a very short cooldown – thus all such skills could be ramped up to 8-10s cooldown with appropriate buff in it’s effectiveness.
So how do you guys feel about it, any thoughts/responses are welcome.
P.S. I don’t know if such topic was brough up already, sorry in advance.
Hmm well it would require a lot of work to rebalance weapon skills (especially cooldowns) to prevent crazy combos, and then there’s ele as well – can you imagine what it would be like if there was no cooldown on attunement swapping? kitten scary to think of that – eles would reign supreme.
9 seconds on superior sigil of intelligence Trixie.
By utilizing 2 dual weapon sets without a weapon swap cooldown by the time you got back to your 5th swap it starts all over again.
Personally, I like the CD on weapon swaps because it means I have to think about what I’m doing. If I want to switch from a single-target weapon to an AoE one, I have to be sure it makes sense and that I’m not going to press two buttons and just want to go back to the other weapon right away. It makes even minor considerations in combat more meaningful, and that’s a good thing.
Combat options and diversity. Weapon cooldowns give more meaning and significance to swaping weapon sets. They also allow for:
- effects on weapon swap from traits
- sigil effects on weapon swap
- warrior mastery being able to skill into weapon swap cooldown
All of which add layers of decision and skill to the combat system.
All of the things you mention have nothing to do with the 10s cooldown on weapon swap button, almost every weapon swap trait and sigil has a cooldown of it’s own, recently warriors got 4s icd on Versatile Power, rangers have 9s cooldowns on both Tail Wind and Furious Grip traits. We could’ve easily have a sigil timer implemented, something like their icons with numbers until it’s ready again.
The only thing left afaik is the elementalists attunements procs like sunspot, wich could just get 7.5s cooldown to it, and criticals would instead reset the Lighning Bolt icd.
Hmm well it would require a lot of work to rebalance weapon skills (especially cooldowns) to prevent crazy combos, and then there’s ele as well – can you imagine what it would be like if there was no cooldown on attunement swapping? kitten scary to think of that – eles would reign supreme.
I admit I am not an expert on the ele class, but I fail to see how no (or lower) CD on attunement swapping would do little more than make it easier to correct a mistake in a rotation. The abilities themselves would still have the same cooldowns.
Also, as an aside for the thread in general (something to keep in mind about Engi) I’m 80% sure that Engi swap has a global cooldown (something like 1 second). Whereas normal weapon swap has no global cooldown. I might be a little off on the details, but I think that’s what it is from memory.
Point being, there is a little bit of a difference in how it’s balanced.
Combat options and diversity. Weapon cooldowns give more meaning and significance to swaping weapon sets. They also allow for:
- effects on weapon swap from traits
- sigil effects on weapon swap
- warrior mastery being able to skill into weapon swap cooldown
All of which add layers of decision and skill to the combat system.
All of the things you mention have nothing to do with the 10s cooldown on weapon swap button, almost every weapon swap trait and sigil has a cooldown of it’s own, recently warriors got 4s icd on Versatile Power, rangers have 9s cooldowns on both Tail Wind and Furious Grip traits. We could’ve easily have a sigil timer implemented, something like their icons with numbers until it’s ready again.
The only thing left afaik is the elementalists attunements procs like sunspot, wich could just get 7.5s cooldown to it, and criticals would instead reset the Lighning Bolt icd.
Okay let’s go through all of these for the slow among us:
- Weapon swap sigils have 9s icd, true. Guess why those were implemented? Due to classes being able to weapon swap faster than every 10s. Like warriors for example with Fast Hands (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fast_Hands) or elementalists with their 4 attunements. Could we have Sigil timers? Sure. We could implement timers on everything, or just design the combat system with weapon swap timers (also Fast Hands would become useless).
- Having cds on weapon swaping seperates skills from weapon set A via timer from Skills from weapon set B. It prevents free swaping back and forth to use combo fields with finishers for example. It also gives swaping between the sets more meaning since you know you won’t have access to the alternate weapon skills for x amount of time. It’s not that hard a concept to follow.
I admit I am not an expert on the ele class, but I fail to see how no (or lower) CD on attunement swapping would do little more than make it easier to correct a mistake in a rotation. The abilities themselves would still have the same cooldowns.
Let’s repeat that:“make it easier to correct a mistake in a rotation”.
Again:“make it easier”.
And again:“easier”.
Get the drift?
EDIT: just in case it went over some peoples heads. There is more than just pve in this game. Over simplifying the combat system is not beneficial for other game modes.
I admit I am not an expert on the ele class, but I fail to see how no (or lower) CD on attunement swapping would do little more than make it easier to correct a mistake in a rotation. The abilities themselves would still have the same cooldowns.
Let’s repeat that:“make it easier to correct a mistake in a rotation”.
Again:“make it easier”.
And again:“easier”.
Get the drift?
EDIT: just in case it went over some peoples heads. There is more than just pve in this game. Over simplifying the combat system is not beneficial for other game modes.
I had the drift. Then you buried it in oversimplification. There is a difference between simplifying the combat system and making it so that mistakes are easier to correct.
Engi is not an easy class to pick up and do well with, for example, despite the ease of switching kits.
I’m not sure that I’m invested in this particular feature, but on principle, I don’t think your argument is a good one.
I had the drift. Then you buried it in oversimplification. There is a difference between simplifying the combat system and making it so that mistakes are easier to correct.
Engi is not an easy class to pick up and do well with, for example, despite the ease of switching kits.
I’m not sure that I’m invested in this particular feature, but on principle, I don’t think your argument is a good one.
Oh I agree, luckily oversimplification was not the only argument I gave in this thread.
- Weapon swap sigils have 9s icd, true. Guess why those were implemented? Due to classes being able to weapon swap faster than every 10s. Like warriors for example with Fast Hands (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fast_Hands) or elementalists with their 4 attunements. Could we have Sigil timers? Sure. We could implement timers on everything, or just design the combat system with weapon swap timers (also Fast Hands would become useless).
- Having cds on weapon swaping seperates skills from weapon set A via timer from Skills from weapon set B. It prevents free swaping back and forth to use combo fields with finishers for example. It also gives swaping between the sets more meaning since you know you won’t have access to the alternate weapon skills for x amount of time. It’s not that hard a concept to follow.
Engi is not an easy class to pick up and do well with, for example, despite the ease of switching kits.
Engineer is not the only class in this game. Every played against an elementalist with no weapon swap cooldowns and access to all his fields and finishers? Yeah neither have I, I’m sure the game would explode.
How about the same elementalist under the effect of alacrity?
9 seconds on superior sigil of intelligence Trixie.
By utilizing 2 dual weapon sets without a weapon swap cooldown by the time you got back to your 5th swap it starts all over again.
I don’t think i understand you, friend. It doesn’t matter if your weapon swap has a cd or not, on swap sigils will proc every 9 secs, no matter how many you have equipped on dual or one 2h weapon. So there is really no difference between now and no cd on swap. They also do not stack, so you can use one of each. The only real benefit is that you can proc on swap sigil when it’s off cd and go back to your main weapon instantly.
We can try to compare GW2 to first person shooters (FPS), which do not have weapon swap cooldowns. Disclaimer – whether or not GW2 should be modeled after some FPS elements is up for debate, but for this argument, we will assume that it should be.
Even in FPS, there is cost to weapon swapping, even if it’s not a cooldown. That cost is essentially a short ‘cast time’. While you’re swapping weapons, there is a brief period of time during which you cannot shoot or reload as your character is performing the weapon swap animation. I think it would be cool to remove weapon swap cooldown in GW2, but weapon swapping would still need to have a cost of some sort. I think the best way to do this would be to add a short cast time to weapon swapping (e.g. 1/4 or 1/2 sec). Of course, as others have pointed out, ‘on swap’ sigils would still need to retain their cooldowns. The warrior trait ‘Fast Hands’, for example, could reduce weapon swap cast time (e.g. from 1/2 to 1/4 second).
- Having cds on weapon swaping seperates skills from weapon set A via timer from Skills from weapon set B
This is my point exactly, the whole purpose of swap cd is to block you from your alternate weaponset, even thou weapon skills have a cooldowns of their own, so in my opinion such system is awfully clunky and promotes nothing more than forced camping of weaponsets and virtually increasing the alternate set skills cooldowns by blocking access to it.
We can try to compare GW2 to first person shooters (FPS), which do not have weapon swap cooldowns. Disclaimer – whether or not GW2 should be modeled after some FPS elements is up for debate, but for this argument, we will assume that it should be.
Even in FPS, there is cost to weapon swapping, even if it’s not a cooldown. That cost is essentially a short ‘cast time’. While you’re swapping weapons, there is a brief period of time during which you cannot shoot or reload as your character is performing the weapon swap animation. I think it would be cool to remove weapon swap cooldown in GW2, but weapon swapping would still need to have a cost of some sort. I think the best way to do this would be to add a short cast time to weapon swapping (e.g. 1/4 or 1/2 sec). Of course, as others have pointed out, ‘on swap’ sigils would still need to retain their cooldowns. The warrior trait ‘Fast Hands’, for example, could reduce weapon swap cast time (e.g. from 1/2 to 1/4 second).
There, an amazing idea! There could also be a visual representation of the charachter’s swap weapons that are sheathed on his back/belt, akin to what we have now outside the combat.
I had the drift. Then you buried it in oversimplification. There is a difference between simplifying the combat system and making it so that mistakes are easier to correct.
Engi is not an easy class to pick up and do well with, for example, despite the ease of switching kits.
I’m not sure that I’m invested in this particular feature, but on principle, I don’t think your argument is a good one.
Oh I agree, luckily oversimplification was not the only argument I gave in this thread.
- Weapon swap sigils have 9s icd, true. Guess why those were implemented? Due to classes being able to weapon swap faster than every 10s. Like warriors for example with Fast Hands (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fast_Hands) or elementalists with their 4 attunements. Could we have Sigil timers? Sure. We could implement timers on everything, or just design the combat system with weapon swap timers (also Fast Hands would become useless).
- Having cds on weapon swaping seperates skills from weapon set A via timer from Skills from weapon set B. It prevents free swaping back and forth to use combo fields with finishers for example. It also gives swaping between the sets more meaning since you know you won’t have access to the alternate weapon skills for x amount of time. It’s not that hard a concept to follow.
Engi is not an easy class to pick up and do well with, for example, despite the ease of switching kits.
Engineer is not the only class in this game. Every played against an elementalist with no weapon swap cooldowns and access to all his fields and finishers? Yeah neither have I, I’m sure the game would explode.
How about the same elementalist under the effect of alacrity?
To add to this, ele’s can trait to give might when they attuned to fire. And then trait to share that boon. Imagine the might stacking that would give. Not to mention permanent speed boost without sacrificing a rune/sigil spot. The cool down is important as they want players to think what they get and what they give up when they swap weapons. Without a cool down no one has to think about that.
Take for insance ele lava font and eruption. Both have short CD’s and are a powerful combination providing aoe might and fury. However the cost of switching to earth to achieve this combo is high due to the significant dps loss of being stuck in earth attunement. If there was no CD eles could literally sit and spam lava font eruption for insane condition and power damage as well as granting themselves might.
Your suggestion to increase the CD on these particular skills would not be effective as other ele builds, such as ones that rely on lava fonts low cd would be ruined. This would create hell in balancing and would basically be a total rework of every class.
And this is just 2 skills on a single class. It gets so much more problematic when applied across every single class.
Overall i think its FAR too much work for something that, so far, hasnt been much of a issue.
ele’s can trait to give might when they attuned to fire
Just add the cooldown to that specific trait, case closed, no?
But I can currently swap to each of the different attunements and get one of each of three of them (might, regeneration, speed, and/or protection). That cooldown would stop that.
Actually what I would want them to do is to remove the cooldown from traits that activate on weapon swap. For example: Quick Draw has a 9 second cooldown. So if I grabbed runes to reduce the weapon swap cd by 20%, I wouldn’t get to use Quick Draw every time I can swap weapons. Furthermore, sigils are the same way. Sigil of intelligence has a 9 second cd to. It makes characters like warriors and runes of the warrior pretty useless when trying to make builds. I think a weapon swap build could be pretty cool on some characters and not too strong.
