Guild Wars 2

I’ve been PvPing for awhile, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement. One trick I have yet to master (if it’s even a real trick) is how to progress through the stomp (finish) animation quickly. Every now and then I find players who have like a 1 second stomp. In the animation. their hand goes up, but they don’t pause at the height, and come straight back down to complete the stomp. While mine have that 1 to 2 sec pause at the zenith.

Today, while I was playing my guard, there was a warrior (not zerker) who would successfully complete his stomp on me before I could get my #2 downed skill off. My screen would go red when I went downed and it seems before I could really do much, I would already be dead and need to wp. I wasn’t killed by dps because I would have the finisher sticking out of my corpse. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t lag either, because my ping is very good.

I’ve played others too, tho not often, who go through the finisher animation quickly. I thought at first it was lag, but it doesn’t seem to be the case, but that’s always a good excuse too. I’ve tried weapon swap in animation but that interrupts the finisher. So any tips?

Having quickness increases stomp speed.

Quickness increases any animation by 50%, including Stomps.

Beware when fighting Mesmers and soon Revenants though; both have access to Slow (Revenant in downstate) which makes stomping painfully slow, leaving you wide open for enemy retaliation.

Warriors have quickness. “heightened focus” if it is not on CD, they just need to auto attack you once to proc the trait and then stomp you.

Quickness abilities and traits, most classes have a form of it.