Guild Wars 2

Please fix sheath cancelling for greatsword auto attack and for illusionary leap cast time. Pressing sheath whenever we use these skills should not be an optimal requirement

At least it isn’t D/D Ele Signet abuse..

Fixes: Buff ileap to 1/4s cast time which is roughly the same as sheath cancelling it.

Nerf greatsword auto to complete at end of cast.

Exasol.2765:

Please fix sheath cancelling for greatsword auto attackt

What do you mean by this?

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Exasol.2765:

Please fix sheath cancelling for greatsword auto attackt

What do you mean by this?

The Mesmer Greatsword auto attack channel deals the damage near the start of the channel so you can “stow weapon” to break the cast after the damage has landed and then immediately auto attack again. This makes the attack far more efficient as you ignore the rest of the animation where no damage happens (its like mini quickness for free).

The argument then lies between “it takes extra micro so its rewarding that play” and “unintended design flaw which is being abused.”

Coulter.2315:

GrandmaFunk.3052:

What do you mean by this?

The Mesmer Greatsword auto attack channel deals the damage near the start of the channel so you can "stow weapon" to break the cast after the damage has landed and then immediately auto attack again. This makes the attack far more efficient as you ignore the rest of the animation where no damage happens (its like mini quickness for free).

Because graphics are fun, here’s a very rough example of the mesmer GS attack:

o = damage tick
- = non-damage tick

Regular cast:

o-o-o----o-o-o-----o-o-o----

Sheath-cancelled cast:

o-o-o/stow weapon/o-o-o/stow weapon/o-o-o

or rather:

o-o-o-/o-o-o-/o-o-o-

It’s a significant DPS increase to stow immediately after the third damage tick, rather than wait for the natural autoattack cycle to kick in after the skill’s aftercast.

Coulter’s explanation was great and all, I just wanted to add some o and - to the thread. Wheee.

You basically cancel it after roughly 80% of the yellow bar is full to negate the aftercast.

BlackTruth.6813:

At least it isn’t D/D Ele Signet abuse..

The DD Ele signet was barely used… It was only relevant as something people could rage about while DD Ele was overpowered, not as something that actually mattered.

Are we at the point where something as weak as the mesmer greatsword autoattack damage is complained about? It’s on the mediocre side of all ranged autoattacks, with several of them having higher numbers and coefficients.

I never thought I’d hear someone complain about mesmer autoattack damage.

The same thing with ileap. The skill spawns a clone immediately but has an unnecessary cast time. Canceling it lets you swap slightly faster, reduce the recharge time, or cast something else right away like a phantasm before swapping or autoing to remove blind or aegis to get the immobolize.

Why are you even worried about mesmer autoattack on GS? How many mesmers do you even see in Solo Q that still play shatter? I see a bunch of condi mes but rarely any shatter.

And I’d say for how much of a disadvantage playing a mes gets now, that little bit of “extra-damage” is more than ok. I bet you that autoattack even when cancelled and casted twice, won’t do as much damage as a single rocket turret shot.

Besides the point, it’s barely anything to complain about especially since most of the meta can basically tank the autoattack in the face and still basically out-heal it…

The only fix is to just normalize the damage per cast time.

Mesmer gs isn’t the only weapon or skill like this, it’s just another case of Anet being bad at designing and balancing things. Took them well over a year to fix the bug with dodge being cancelled by certain melee attack chains. Look forward to this being possibly addressed in the late winter of 2016.

This happens because sheathing doesn’t wait for after-casts, and because spatial surge deals too much damage on the first hits. Moving the damage packets later in the animation could help ease the issue, or making sure sheathing animations wait for skill aftercast animations instead cancelling them.

Channeled direct hit attacks like spatial surge and arc lightning should have never been autoattacks to begin with anyways. They should have been skills with a recharge like Ghastly Claws and Confusing images.

As autoattacks they are cheap and lazy skills that can only be avoided by moving behind a wall and ensure a stream of damage and lots of hits to trigger on-critical effects as long as there’s line of sight.

Its attack and effects should be swapped with mirror blade, making spatial surge a longer channel that deals the vulnerability on the first hits, might to allies in the line, and summon a clone on the last hit, and making mirror blade bounce just once as an autoattack.