Guild Wars 2

Since this is being discussed in the altruistic hammer guide, I decide to let the whole community know since it’s not only about hammer.

This is regarding the using of dodge to partially skip the animation of a 3rd attack within a chain (use dodge to interrupt the recovery animation of the 2nd hit then use the 3rd hit to interrupt the dodge animation). Here’s a video demonstration with the hammer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sDPdy8xMDTo

The ninja skip allows the hammer to speed up its chain by 37.5%. It only takes 75 frames to apply Symbol of Protection (as oppose to 120 frames when attacking normally). The tests were done by frapsing two entire clips with 30 frame per second and analyze them with Adobe Photoshop CS3. The time was calculated from the moment the damage number of the first attack appear to the moment of Symbol of Protection was applied.

The ninja skip also works with our other melee weapons. Here’s the result I got from 1 handed sword:

Normal: 62 frames or ~2.07 seconds.
Ninja skip: 49 frames or ~1.63 seconds. That’s an increase of 21% approximately.

I expect that the longer the 3rd attack swing of a weapon, the more benefit you will get off by executing this technique. I also want to note that this move is much harder to pull off on a greatsword due to the fact that you cannot cancel the dodge with the 3rd attack (I can only pull it off by colliding into an object to stop the dodge animation). So for you greatsword lovers out there, sorry that you have to sit there and do the boring auto-attack.

This is extremely powerful for us guardians due to the fact that we have access to permanent vigor and two weapons with the slowest 3rd swing. I also want to note that this is not exclusively for guardians, other classes can do it too.

If you guys want, I also have clips of the mace to analyze.

These kinds of tricks walk the line between techniques and exploits for me. I’d rather not use them, or waste a dodge for that matter. Sure, it isn’t exclusive to Guardians, but that’s beside the point. I guess I’ll wait and see if Anet’s ever cancels the auto-attack chain when you start a dodge.

I was unaware of this..as a hammer/AH guardian, I dodge between step two and three of the auto chain to essentially make it LONGER..this way the symbol lines up with mighty bow EVERY Cd..shortening the chain would kind of defeat the purpose for me

thanks for posting this Trung! whether or not it’s an “exploit” yet or whether you decide to use it or not, it’s still good to know what’s out there. at least, this provides some info as to what some of your enemies may be doing when faced up against them?

with the auto-attack chain, don’t think it’d be viable for them to simply cancel the auto-attack chain if interupted by a dodge. the mechanic now is that the chains are based on a timer if i understand correctly? and like Mimmik said, and myself, i use the dodge in between the hammer chain to better utilize and time the mighty blow attack to 1) heal and 2) trigger a combo. and that works for me. if this “skipping” isn’t intended, am sure there are other ways to go about it without hurting what’s working for some already.

Mimmik, i see your point as well, of course, if able to do this, you don’t have to do it every single chain attack. think of it as offering another viable option? or perhaps, you could give up 2HM and go for another trait you’d been eyeing. sure you might be doing two autoattk chains for each MB, but since each chain is that much faster… just a thought.

Not hitting mighty blow on cd is a big dps/burst loss..by adding the dodge time to the auto chain you ate able to use mighty blow every cd which not only ads to damage but also applies max uptime of retaliation, which is even more damage..speaking mainly with pvp in mind the dodge also keys you put the symbol where you need it more frequently since you can dodge in any direction and still walk the cast time..so as i said, exploit or not i would never want to shorten my hammer chain :P

@OP
Great that you posted this
@Kasei
Personally i agree with you but its better to post it and at least give Arenanet the opportunity to answer on them than to use it in the “shadows”. I find it to be fishy but if we post it and use it then at least our backs are clear.

@Mimik
It increases the dps in all builds, the chain infact has just as much, if not higher, dps then than MB.

Regarding “losing” one MB each rotation, it can be solved by just do one step of the chain and then mb.

MBs main strenght isnt the dps, even though nice, its the mobility in combination with dps/aoe that makes it powerful.

The fact is that you can perform more actions in a given timeframe which corresponds to more dps or same dps and more cc/utility within that timeframe.

You can also apply this “technique” as a thief who uses uncatchable, but it is much much harder to do without the guidance of a castbar.

While this “technique” almost makes combat fun or rather interesting, those who understand why and how this “technique” works already know that it’s going to get fixed for the greater issue that it causes.

I’d say have fun with it while you can(that goes for sword wave spamming as well), and hope that some semblance of combat complexity finds its way into the future game updates.

Exploit. Dodging isn’t for reducing attack times.

Silver.8023:

Exploit. Dodging isn’t for reducing attack times.

When we started the original discussion i would have agreed with you, and i still find it fishy to be honest, and i dont use it myself, even though i know how to, but after we discussed it i changed my mind.

The fact is that the autoattack supports this very nicely and its also doable on all chains which might imply that its actually a feature, otherwise they have to rework the entire chainsystem.

It also adds a lot of skill into the game and as such we can only hope for it to be a feature.

Hence i alos find it very smart of Trungalung to post about it so Arenanet can make an official saying in the matter.

Btw has Arenanet stated that the dodge shouldnt be used for anything else then avoiding damage?

The fact is when you do this, avoiding damage, and you are skilled enough this often is the result of fast and precise fingers. Thats how i found out, by playing the game and then it just “happend”.

It’s an exploit, but really it’s not that game breaking. It’s not like you can spam dodge and do this all the time.

Well I don’t think rolls are only meant to dodge as you can trait them to heal for example so sometimes you are gonna use them to help out allies even if you don’t really need to dodge. Mesmers can use them offensively to create clones, elementalist can use them to cleanse conditions and there may be other use too but I don’t know all professions yet. In a way that’s just a way to use it offensively in my opinion. To be honest, I don’t do it, nor have I trained myself to do so as I mostly enjoy doing dungeons on my guardian and I still use MB as soon as it’s up as there are generally lots of combo fields around.
On a side note, my main is a mesmer and before a patch, some people used to press the esc button to speed up the animation of the auto-attack on the greatsword because the last bit of the animation wasn’t doing damage. Anet patched to speed up the animation so we don’t have to use a strange mechanism to be effective. Maybe we can hope they do the same for the hammer so you won’t have to roll to make it more effective.

I’d probably reserve judgement on calling this an exploit. Personally I quite like it when there are quirks in the game mechanic which you can explore and discover to make you more effective on the battlefield – it adds depth to the gameplay.

Obviously there is a line you can cross with anything like this, and I guess ultimately it’s up to Anet to decide what is/is not acceptable. ( It’s not like other MMOs don’t have animation cancelling quirks either )

I believe this could use some attention from a Mod, to tell us if it’s an exploit or not.

Arenanet only bans for exploits that affect the economy of the game or extreme things like flying all over the map to ninja orbs and such. Don’t worry about using this trick.

On one hand, this exact thing has existed in the fight game genre for 2 decades under the term “Canceling” and is actually built into the system now. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary_of_fighting_games#Cancel

On the other hand, I wouldn’t put it past Anet to decide this was a bannable exploit.

This reeks of being an exploit, not a feature. Personally, if I encountered someone doing this in game, i would report it.

I would expect this little dicovery to bring about a nerf. The less than 1% of people who can pull this off will end up hurting all of us.

it seems more people seeing this as an exploit now. again, i guess we’ll wait on ANet’s official word, if they choose to address it.

just hopefully it won’t be like Relentliss says and they just nerf without trying to understand the situation and/or interacting with the community here. i love the hammer, and hope for none of it to be changed it’s great the way it is. no need for buffs and definitely not nerfs now.

I do feel this is an unintended feature.
Suppose this works with healing channeling – who wouldn’t do it?
And the dps increment is pretty severe.

Try watching that video again and try doing it yourself without dodging. Awful lot of difference isn’t it?

The drawback of Hammer hard hitting, combo start and finish chain IS the slow attack speed, and this ‘unintended feature’ removed that weakness.

It will be fixed soon.

Can we exaggerate more please.

It can be done and you pay in endurance to do it. Its not like its huge either since endurance is whats make it possible and using this removes most of the benefits from the dodge itself.

Everyone can do it and its not even difficult, if you go to lions arch and activate autoattack on the dummies you will figure it out in less then 45 seconds and after 2 minutes of training you can do it on every single chain you do.

Then you turn off autoattack and practice for 8 more minutes and after that you can do it manually.

Its not like its rocketscience, blaming 1% of the player just shows a lack of interest/skill so dont blame people that actually put in the time and effort.

And most important of all, if you are good/fast enough you cant avoid it, it happens in regular gameplay if you decide to use a dodge after step two, which btw is normal use of the hammer/mace in the first place.

Ofc its fishy but stating its difficult, has enormous impact, no negatives and is just for a few hardcore players is just wrong.

I think its great OP posted this, now everyone can benefit from it by just spending 10 minutes, or less, in Lions Arch practicing.

you brought up a good point, Brutaly, in that it doesn’t happen through normal gameplay. albeit i haven’t been abel to do this manually yet, it has happened before and i just thought it was a Glitch until you and OP brought it mor eto the community’s attention. again, which i think it great as well – even if just for the sake of it being out in the open.

just hope that ANet doesn’t respond negatively towards it without first trying to understand how this is working and not just based it off negative comments.

Unless A.net can justify this by adding dodge as animation skips for other classes – they’ll just even things out by removing this oddity.

redknight.8036:

Unless A.net can justify this by adding dodge as animation skips for other classes – they’ll just even things out by removing this oddity.

Its there already which is kind of the point, its not for hammer or guardian exclusively.

Seems unintended to me, I wouldn’t get to comfortable on relying on this.

Eh i kinda view this as pribally being an exploit personally. A guardian with the right setup on traits is hard to run out of endurance which means you can possibly keep this up without limit. Seems like an abuse of the system. Simple fix though would simply be if you dodge it resets your attack chain. As in all honesty it should. Not like your auto attack has some massive cooldown or anything.

Resettign the chain would make the game more simple and less versitile, then all skills, not just dodge, should reset chains, not just dodging.

Otherwise it would be a relatively bigger nerf to guardians then other professions since we can dodge more often and at least two of our chains are really slow so often we need to dodge in the chain for it to work in pvp.

Those chainfinishers also has major a impact and are major contributers to our performance in both pve and pvp.

Frankly being able to dodge in the chain is in itself something that adds complexity and should definitely remain.

I’m not even against using it I also quite like things like this, as you say it adds more depth to combat, I’m just saying I don’t think it’s intended and I wouldn’t be surprised if Anet “fixed” it.

You shouldn’t have to use a bug/exploit in the animation to have a better chance at killing people, this needs to be fixed or adjusted.

GunZ the duel anyone? K-style? It practically made the game. Jump>dash>slash>block.

Eitherway, this is up to Arenanet to decide.

Resettign the chain would make the game more simple and less versitile, then all skills, not just dodge, should reset chains, not just dodging.

Otherwise it would be a relatively bigger nerf to guardians then other professions since we can dodge more often and at least two of our chains are really slow so often we need to dodge in the chain for it to work in pvp.

Those chainfinishers also has major a impact and are major contributers to our performance in both pve and pvp.

Frankly being able to dodge in the chain is in itself something that adds complexity and should definitely remain.

The thing is other skill’s do reset the chain. If you use anything other than something like the shouts your attack chain on the auto is reset. For example if i am using my greatsword and let the auto get to the 2nd stage then use leap of faith when i go back to the auto it is reset to strike instead of using the finishing attack wrathful strike. Dodge is no different. You are doing something physical. It should instantly reset the chain. This should be the case on all classes with all weapons.

So basically signets, consecrations and meditations should cancel the chain, they are after all physical.

So basically shouts are the only ones that should be doable within the chain, if we strictly follow that principle.

imo the whole idea of having the opportunity to use skills with in the chain is to increase variation and add means to mix things up.

What you are proposing would make the game very predictable imo.

imo they should go the other way and allow weaponsskills to be used within the chain, that would spice thigns up, going the other way is dumbing down the game. Especially if they have an esport ambition and want skillbased gameplay.

Brutaly.6257:

So basically signets, consecrations and meditations should cancel the chain, they are after all physical.

So basically shouts are the only ones that should be doable within the chain, if we strictly follow that principle.

imo the whole idea of having the opportunity to use skills with in the chain is to increase variation and add means to mix things up.

What you are proposing would make the game very predictable imo.

imo they should go the other way and allow weaponsskills to be used within the chain, that would spice thigns up, going the other way is dumbing down the game. Especially if they have an esport ambition and want skillbased gameplay.

If im not mistaken, and i could be because its been a long time since i’ve used these skill’s, both sanctuary (consecration) and merciful intervention (meditation) do reset it. It really comes down to is it something you have to break attack to do or is it something you can do while still in the middle of your swing. Signets i am unsure of given i find them useless personally and dont use them. But the point is in order to dodge you are deliberately stopping your attack to move as fast as possible. That in and of its self should reset the attack chain. Only class’s that should even have the agility to attempt to attack while dodging would be non metal armor types wielding high mobility weapons such as daggers. But that is a discussion for another topic.

Do you get full “dodge” duration when you ninja skip at the end of the second attack in the chain?

I’d rather ANet just officially implements a system like that.
1 – Give all skills an official recovery time (an idle time where a skill already did what it had to do, but is still finishing the animation)
2 – Give us a way (possibly costing Endurance or increased Recharge Time on the second skill) to “skip” that recovery time.

But “skipping” is not something I feel was intentionally designed that way, and feels awful.

@Sinos
The skills that reset the chain are:
Purging flames
smite conditions
Santuary
Bane signet
Signet of wrath
Weaponskills except shield of wrath, zealots fire, binding blade and protectors strike.

So basically a majority of our skills, physical or non physical, can infact be used within the chain. There is no reason for the dodge being an exception other then skipping scenario.

Should our virtues also be restricted the same way, two of the fill the same purpose as the dodge, to mitigate damage?

To restrict the use of sikills in the chain would be one of the biggest knee jerk actions in the history of gaming, it would break the game and make it much less interesting.

Disclaimer, the list above might be wrong, im at a party so i have no chance to check. Merciful intervention can be used in the chain, that im 100% sure of.

Do you get full “dodge” duration when you ninja skip at the end of the second attack in the chain?

No and you still consume the endurance. So there is a trade off here, its not all gain as people seem to think.

Nurvus.2891:

I’d rather ANet just officially implements a system like that.
1 – Give all skills an official recovery time (an idle time where a skill already did what it had to do, but is still finishing the animation)
2 – Give us a way (possibly costing Endurance or increased Recharge Time on the second skill) to “skip” that recovery time.

But “skipping” is not something I feel was intentionally designed that way, and feels awful.

You are talking about something that would have the same effect as global cool downs, no thanks, this is one of the better things in this game, the absence of global cool downs.

These kinds of restrictions actually reduces the need to time stuff and reduce the need for skill. The game takes care of the timing and you are locked down in restrictions. Its like telling Messi that ha has to pass the ball within 2 seconds each time he gets it.

I dont like this more then you do but once again its not the sky falling down and its not the end of the world and the overall benefit isnt that huge and it has lots of drawbacks to use it. if it was all gain then i would support some of the suggestions here but since it has huge drawbacks just let it be.

I want to say only one thing. If this is considered as an exploit, it must be fixed, but in the correct way, if its a problem of the animation sistem, well devs must look in it.

Fix this kind of problem whit an interruction on the autoattack chain when dodge is the dumbest thing i have read in this forum.
Hammer autoattack is slow, and sometime you have to avoid some great attack in order to place your simbol, and this thing will not only “kill” the hammer autoattack, but all the chained Skills.

Brutaly.6257:

@Sinos
The skills that reset the chain are:
Purging flames
smite conditions
Santuary
Bane signet
Signet of wrath
Weaponskills except shield of wrath, zealots fire, binding blade and protectors strike.

So basically a majority of our skills, physical or non physical, can infact be used within the chain. There is no reason for the dodge being an exception other then skipping scenario.

Should our virtues also be restricted the same way, two of the fill the same purpose as the dodge, to mitigate damage?

To restrict the use of sikills in the chain would be one of the biggest knee jerk actions in the history of gaming, it would break the game and make it much less interesting.

Disclaimer, the list above might be wrong, im at a party so i have no chance to check. Merciful intervention can be used in the chain, that im 100% sure of.

Hum assuming the list is correct, i see the disclaimer, Then about half our skill’s actually break it. It seems almost anything with a cast time breaks the attack chain. Some of this does not follow that mainly looking would be signets, and the spirit weapons which i do beleave casting spirit weapons also interrupts it. But still its in general anything that is not instant. As for the guy saying having dodge break the chain logically your not going to be able to dodge while maintaining your attack. Your going to have to restart so over all its not really that dumb. The dumb thing is that the one big drawback with the hammer is completely voided by dodge which a guardian can basically never run out of if specced correctly.

This is not a feature. It is horrible and frightening that some people actually believe that it is.

It is an unintended anomaly that is being exploited.

How did I come to that conclusion? Simple. It has to clip and/or otherwise distort an attack animation to unnaturally increase the weapon’s intended attack rate.

You’re not using an attack speed buff. You’re abusing an oversight in dodge mechanics to give your character an advantage over other players.

Really sit down and look at what you’re doing. Stop looking at it from the perspective of a number-crunching tournament jockey and look at it from the perspective of a game designer.

It is an anomaly, not a feature, and you are exploiting it. It will be fixed.

@Brutaly
You got it wrong.
I mean each skill has that part of the animation where you’re actually dishing out the damage, etc.
But often, there’s this final bit of the animation where you’re “idle”.
You’re just finishing the animation.
Finishing the spin, the jump, whatever.

There might be a mechanic that allows you to skip that final bit.
Essentially, the same trick players are indicating in this thread, except official.

Its not intended and just like a few kittens have got Orbs removed, you’re going to get our last good 2hand weapon nerfed… you just wait.

Doesn’t matter what people say, this is an exploit. I fail to see how interrupting something makes it complete faster. Feature my kitten

Personally i couldnt care less, this issue people seem to have, even though misdirected and uninformed, is with the hammer, it can be used with all weapons. and as such any future adjustment has to be done to the dodge, not the hammer.

Personally i couldnt care less, this issue people seem to have, even though misdirected and uninformed, is with the hammer, it can be used with all weapons. and as such any future adjustment has to be done to the dodge, not the hammer.

agree, hammer is not the problems here, but the dodge animation, if there is something to modify is the animation, not the hammer and not the single autoattack, because it can be used with all classes, and all the skills.

This move works around the basic of the dodge animation. As of currently, dodging has to interrupt any kind of animation to be effective in a semi-action game like Guild Wars 2. I incorporate that into a chain attack and use it to interrupt its recovery animation. As others have pointed out, the ninja skip is on a very thin line between exploit and “creative use of game mechanic”, and the only one who can ultimately decide this is ANet.

If Anet really wants to fix this, it’s simple. Make it so that the 3rd hit cannot interrupt the dodge animation. This will cut back at least 20 frames or 0.66 seconds, but I expect to be even more. The use of dodge to interrupt recovery animation is still there, but its effect has been reduced greatly. This is tied with the whole animation so it’s really a big mess to fix it any other way (no offense but resetting chain upon dodge is stupid).

This move is easy to pull off but requires focus since there’s so much you have to watch out for:

- Do you have enough endurance to dodge (or double dodge) the next fatal attack or will your endurance regenerate fast enough for that attack?
- Is your target in range for the 2nd hit? (the 2nd hit is very crucial since it’s the activation)
- Are you afflicted by the blind condition? (miss attack will totally throw you off on the whole move)
- Are you afflicted by immobilized? (can’t dodge while under its effect)
- Does the target have aegis boon on? (Questionable: will aegis stop your chain attack, or the chain still happens but there’s no damage)
- In PvP, will the target go in the opposite direction of your dodge? (this will allow the target to actually increase the distance)
- Can you see through the countless effect on your screen to time the dodge perfectly with the 2nd hit?

I personally would like them to keep the ninja skip since it adds depths to the game. As of currently, all we do is auto-attacking and wait for the other skills. It also promotes the use of endurance for offense at the cost of survivability. And no, you cannot do the ninja skips forever even with vigor and 40% endurance regenerate food unless you want to be at zero endurance and then get smacked in the face.

If you guys had played WoW, remember priests’ Shadow Word: Death damage delay to cancel crowd control spells like polymorph or blind? That wasn’t the intended mechanic, but Blizzard ultimately decided to keep it because it adds depths to their game. So back to my original point, it’s all up to ANet.

The term, ‘depth’ is subjective. The only thing this adds to the game is a means for people who know how to, a way to do more damage than they should be doing which gives them a clear advantage over people who don’t use it or don’t know how to do so (Mostly in regard to pvp but it applies in pve too). If you can ‘speed up’ attacks voluntarily, why not just make them faster all the time? If this were a genuine feature, it would make not doing feel stupid, like the gunblade attacks in FF8.
The fact that this exploit costs endurance is irrelevant, it’s still an exploit. The karma vendor exploit still cost people karma.
Additionally, there is already a means for increasing attack speed in the game and it’s generally very short duration with a reasonably long cooldown. Why? Because increased attack speed kicks kitten and I think it’s pretty safe to assume that after putting such a long cooldown and short duration on Quickness, AreneNet aren’t just going to turn around and say, ‘Oh hey! You found our hidden attack speed increaser that you can use multiple times in a single fight! You’re a better player than all the others, well, enjoy winning!’.

TL;DR: Exploit.

Exploit.

Not quite as bad as the Mace block exploit.

But still bad.

I won’t sacrifice a dodge to win 0.3s speed on a skill.

But nice glitch.

Dodge cancelling is a mechanic in a lot of games, so it doesn’t look like an exploit. It adds depth there, just as it adds depth here.

There is nothing skill-based about auto-attacking. On the other hand, there is a lot of skill involved in trading endurance for higher DPS by dodge cancelling (ninja skip as called here). Not just because of the timing it takes to pull it off (which is not that bad; got it down after 5 minutes on practice golems), but also because it promotes judgement calls about endurance management and fight awareness in general.

It’s fairly easy to dodge too, if you see your foe dodge cancel, just roll backwards. The mechanic reminds me a lot of Q-stepping from GW1, which was never considered an exploit.

While it may not be intended, and has been stated in this thread, you do have to give up potentially negating damage just to get quicker attacks in.

I like to keep at least 1 dodge active at all times to use to escape bit hits or a PvE Gimmick.

So in essence it’s a fair tradeoff. Potentially take a lot of damage, to do slightly more damage.

Also probably very low priority for Anet to actually fix.

IMO it’s another BUG and exploiting a BUG to your advantage is an exploit. You are more than likely sorry you posted this lols.