Guild Wars 2

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m referring to the ability to mold together skills and make them land at the same time. You can activate skills and utilities during the cast time of another skill without interrupting it, causing the animation to finish as well as the second skill to land. There are countless examples of this being “abused” on nearly every class. I’m curious, do people think this is a legitimate and intended mechanic of combat? Or are people doing this essentially exploiting?

Examples

- Thief: Probably the most used. Steal can be used during animation like CnD or PW. Much of the over the top burst isn’t from thief skills being OP themselves (Backstab really is actually balanced) the problem stems from being able to mold together all of a thieves burst to land at the same time. (Cast CnD animation, mold together with steal to port to enemy..CnD lands same time steal hits and stealths you, allowing for BS…3 burst abilities hit with in half a second)

Guardian: Judge’s Intervention. Works the same way. Cast it during a weapon animation to port to enemy and land the weapon skill cast from range. Most commonly used with banish. "O your target dodged your knockdown? Don’t worry just use JI to port to them as the banish animation finishes.

Ele: Churning Earth. Pretty good skill if you can land it. Problem is it has a long cast time and a smart player can just dodge away from you. Not! Just use Lightning Flash to port to where ever your target tried to move away to. Now you can always land your CE.

I could go on but you guys get the idea. So exploit or intended combat mechanic?

Intended combat mechanic. I can’t image the Devs playing the game and not realizing that this was feasible. In fact, I recall a pre-beta post explicitly stating the way they were coding animations was to allow for quick skill uses mid-animation. Getting locked into any sort of cast without being able to do anything is silly in an action-oriented game, and would really ruin the flow of PvP. Things like Churning Earth already do that enough as it it, and it would never land on anyone who was awake without Lightning Flash. Good players still dodge it even with the combo. All you need to do is count off the seconds manually, once you hit 3 you dodge. Boom, 30 second CD, 4 second cast-time skill wasted, as well as a stun-break.

The free 4k~ crits on Steal are stupid, IMO. Requires no setup, and little thought. It’s free damage since Thieves are going to open with Steal pretty regularly anyway. That said, the combo in and of itself is fine. It’s a good headgame to play causing a chunk of damage, closing the gap, and causing the Thief to vanish all at once for 5 initiative – a hefty cost. Nothing wrong with this other than Mug, IMO.

All in all it raises the skill-cap for classes that can do this. LF + CE is great and all, but sometimes I find it significantly more useful to LF + EQ or Updraft to interrupt a stomp, open on the target, or interrupt a revive. EQ has a short cast-time, and it requires some pretty fast fingers to do it. Comboing skills together like this should be encouraged and rewarded, not stopped.

It’s most definitely an intended mechanic. Its just like using skills that were not on the GCD in other MMO’s.
@Animosity
Without any traits, the C&D-Steal combo actually costs 6 initiative, half of a Thieves entire bar of initiative.

Most def an intended mechanic.

Unintended mechanics would be the mace block bug.

Kid Taylor.5479:

Animation cancelling has been around for aeons, deal with it,

You’re not cancelling anything. Your molding together skills to turn two things into one. And what about my post made you think I’m not “dealing with it”. I love ability molding and use it all the time.

Zunhar.4079:

It’s most definitely an intended mechanic. Its just like using skills that were not on the GCD in other MMO’s.
@Animosity
Without any traits, the C&D-Steal combo actually costs 6 initiative, half of a Thieves entire bar of initiative.

Steal gives 3 init, and BS is free. So really your doing 15k+ damage for 3 initiative. But I’m not trying to turn this into a thread about thieves.

For me is a game breaking feature. The reason are “macros”. Before anybody tell me that macros are not allowed, take a look at GW2 official mouse.
http://steelseries.com/products/games/guild-wars-2/guild-wars-2-gaming-mouse
As you can see, you can make mouse macros.

The ability to land 4 or 5 skills in less than 1’5 sec without interrupting each other, give too much advantage to users with gaming mouses and keyboards. Perhaps I’m so unskilled, but I find difficult to land 3 necro areas in less than 950ms, but with a macro I have just to click a button.

Sozai.4071:

Zunhar.4079:

It’s most definitely an intended mechanic. Its just like using skills that were not on the GCD in other MMO’s.
@Animosity
Without any traits, the C&D-Steal combo actually costs 6 initiative, half of a Thieves entire bar of initiative.

Steal gives 3 init, and BS is free. So really your doing 15k+ damage for 3 initiative. But I’m not trying to turn this into a thread about thieves.

As mentioned, you have to TRAIT to make steal return initiative. It doesn’t do it on it’s own.
Backstab, without modifiers like Signets, will hit for about 4-5k damage. Not a whole lot.

I think they’re all intended mechanics, although I wouldn’t mind seeing steal/mug not work WHILE using CnD, just to spread out glass cannon thief burst a bit and give more time to react.

Regarding Churning Earth for elementalists, they have to burn a utility skill to lightning flash on top of you, so your best best is to run when you see CE start casting (forcing them to burn the flash) and then dodge roll when CE goes off (causing it to miss). Viola, they burn a long cooldown weapon skill, a utility skill (and escape tool) and you take no damage….

Churning Earth is the same cast time.. always, just dodge it, no mater where we teleport to, just time the dodge. I’m simply amazed everytime I actually hit someone with the skill 1v1. In group fights its a different story because not everyone is paying attention to your casting animations, they are just trying to avoid any red rings they see.

Rhoto.8791:

Churning Earth is the same cast time.. always, just dodge it, no mater where we teleport to, just time the dodge. I’m simply amazed everytime I actually hit someone with the skill 1v1. In group fights its a different story because not everyone is paying attention to your casting animations, they are just trying to avoid any red rings they see.

You can also watch the animation where we just left and to tell when it will go off. Also most eles (well I do, don’t know about other eles) try to use teleport at the last second. I like using CE to cover the point so they leave, then either cancel it or teleport after them, followed by an immobilize then updraft, to keep them out of the point.

I think using instant casts to effectively negate long casting times is an exploit. It is the long casting time which is supposed to balance the skill’s effect. How is it fair to shortcut that with an instant cast? I suppose the instant cast will be on a longer CD generally, and take up a utility slot… but it feels like an exploit to me.

PS – dont get me wrong, i do this, but i think the game would be better without it being an option.

It doesn’t negate the cast time at all. It is simply used part of the way through an ability to take you to your target, so you can reliably land the skill. It doesn’t shorten the cast time either. It simply moves you to your target and then the precasted. skill connects

I believe the word you are looking for is “meld”

I never use macros I prefer to be in total control, I do have a razer naga bound to most of my skills from healing to utility, but never use a sequence to play for me, I like to be in control.

In guildwars one I liked to be in control also, and not just of my character but in control of other people so to say by playing domination.

It’s intended..all these abilities are intended to not have a global cooldown.
Utilizing macros is definitely an exploit but then again, I think macros are just another cheap trick to enhance a beginner’s skill slightly; in fact it would hinder one’s performance to perfection

Macros are great for the unskilled, terrible for people who know what they are doing. You can macro the Steal and CnD together effectively, certainly, and not be hindered, but who cares? It’s one button instead of two.

Try doing that with CE + Lightning Flash. You have to target the LF, so your macro isn’t exactly going to be accurate here. It has to be done manually. Try macroing backstab to your Steal + CnD, you’ll likely miss or get front-shots some of the time. Being totally in control prevents these sorts of hiccups, and there are extremely few circumstances where macroing a long chain together is more effective than doing it manually.

They could make Steal ground-targetted in an AoE, and just take the item from the player closest to where you land to prevent macroing the combo. But as I said before, it really isn’t that big of a deal, and it doesn’t take any sort of special skill to do it manually. Latency can royally screw over a macro, too. One small lag spike for half a second can cause half your macro to not execute.

I used to play UO, where EVERYONE macro’d EVERYTHING. There are some things you can macro, and be marginally effective (mostly against bad players), but to be the best, you have to take control.

Their are a lot worse ones then the thief back stab combo that if you knew about you would change your mind.

If this wasn’t possible, blinds would be useless.

I’m pretty sure any kind of automated computer intervention that could be construed as giving you any advantage is a bannable offense. At least that was anets stance on these things in gw1.

As an ele, I rely on the ability to meld abilities. Air attunement with S would be evidence that this is intended it believe.

I think this was intended, and the whole reason skills that can activate without interruption were introduced, although thief can use it a bit too well.

Also, Churning earth is rubbish without this. A player doesn’t have to be very smart to get out of the red circle, so it’d be a wasted skill otherwise. Even using this, a smart player will just dodge at the end of the skill, so the attack will miss even if you warp to them, because they’re in their avoidance phase from dodge.