Guild Wars 2

Ranger sword auto attack is a janky clunky mess and needs to be fixed, no denying that whether you like the ability or not.

But I don’t understand why the functionality of having a gapcloser on an autoattack is being removed, when that functionality is found elsewhere in the game and works perfectly fine. Why not just copy the functionality of the working ability on on to the one that doesn’t work?

If you don’t know, I’m talking about the elementalist earth shield auto attack chain which consists of two melee attacks, followed by a gap closer. Sound familiar? It always stays on target, never throws you off cliffs, or through your opponent, or in a completely random direction, or just completely fails to do anything at all. For all intents and purposes it seems to work perfectly while having the exact same function they can’t get to work on our sword AA.

So why is it not an option for the new sword auto?

Because we don’t usually get nice things.

We don’t even know what functionality are we going to get. Other sword abilities might get changed as well, such as proposed sequence swap of #2 (gap closer > retreat). I’d wait and see how their changes go 1st.

I am probably one of the few ele who loves earth shield. But it ain’t the aa I like and I almost never use it.

First off, let’s get all of the facts straight about Earth Shield.

1) It’s not 2 melee attacks followed by a gap closer. It’s a melee attack, then a gap closer which is around 300 range that also has an incorrect tooltip, followed by a projectile shield throw of 450 range.

2) During that 2nd strike, which is relatable to the current Ranger sword leap-type attack, it can send you flying through a target when directly center of a standard target hit-box and large world bosses with multiple and/or large hit-boxes.

I went in game to re-check this minutes ago, thinking maybe Anet had 1 melee attack over 150 range that’s a non-PBAoE coded differently as you implied; it is not. I was successful going through targets and flying off course with 2 executions if the first missed. It’s no different than any leap or leap-like skill.

3) Last, but not least, Earth Shield 1b also suffers from not being able to break the animation to dodge out of it other than weapon swap.

Wondrouswall.7169:

First off, let’s get all of the facts straight about Earth Shield.

1) It’s not 2 melee attacks followed by a gap closer. It’s a melee attack, then a gap closer which is around 300 range that also has an incorrect tooltip, followed by a projectile shield throw of 450 range.

2) During that 2nd strike, which is relatable to the current Ranger sword leap-type attack, it can send you flying through a target when directly center of a standard target hit-box and large world bosses with multiple and/or large hit-boxes.

I went in game to re-check this minutes ago, thinking maybe Anet had 1 melee attack over 150 range that’s a non-PBAoE coded differently as you implied; it is not. I was successful going through targets and flying off course with 2 executions if the first missed. It’s no different than any leap or leap-like skill.

3) Last, but not least, Earth Shield 1b also suffers from not being able to break the animation to dodge out of it other than weapon swap.

1) My mistake, I knew this back when, but its been a while (conjures have always been bad but they just got so much worse with the trait reworks) and its pretty easy to forget the order with how cyclical the earth shield auto feels, and then you never actually use that ranged attack as ranged since it only proceeds to that attack if the previous attack placed you in melee.

2) I have been using it all afternoon against single and multiple targets in several maps, and have never had it today or ever before, leap through a target, or away from a target when I didn’t intend it to. I even used it way back when in competitive WvW roaming and can’t recall it ever happening there either.

Yes if I break or change targets between the use of the melee skill and the leap, it can move to the side or angle away from a target, but that is NOT like the current ranger sword, which frequently leaps completely through targets you are locked on to or even jumps away from targets seemingly without any reason. Earth shields ability to break target mid combo can even be a huge boon in evading and positioning yourself and I wouldn’t’ change a thing about it.

Why does it work better? I have no idea, I’m not a programmer, but it does, the earth shield just seems to give significantly better control than the sword auto in who you hit with each attack and where the leap takes you. I can’t leap through targets with it, like the sword frequently forces you to, unless I literally try to do so.

3) I never stated its leap animation could be broken, as no leap animation in the entire game can be so far as I recall, but that’s never been a problem with the Earth Shield because it’s leap is practically instant, leaving almost no opportunity for you to miss an important dodge. There’s no big fancy windup or mandatory strike at the end, you just use it and its done.

EDIT: Also, I don’t get that bloody bug at the end of the earth shield chain that the ranger chain has, the one where it acts like it has half a dozen of the leap skills queued up and you just flies off in to the distance with no control whatsoever over your character. What is the deal with that anyway, how does something like that even happen?

Conncept.7638:

Yes if I break or change targets between the use of the melee skill and the leap, it can move to the side or angle away from a target, but that is NOT like the current ranger sword, which frequently leaps completely through targets you are locked on to or even jumps away from targets seemingly without any reason. Earth shields ability to break target mid combo can even be a huge boon in evading and positioning yourself and I wouldn’t’ change a thing about it.

3) I never stated its leap animation could be broken, as no leap animation in the entire game can be, but that’s never been a problem with the Earth Shield because it’s leap is practically instant, leaving almost no opportunity for you to miss an important dodge.

I’ll quote these 2 points as they are the only ones that need a reply.

The reason Earth Shield’s leap isn’t like Ranger’s Sword is because it consists of a single leap within the chain or skill. Ranger Sword is pretty unique, not only for the animation, but consisting of 2 leaps back-to-back.

It is the primary reason for easily being able to move around almost uncontrollably since it’s two skills that basically tells the player to move where they are facing. The only other skill to have multiple leaps chained together is Scrapper’s Hammer 3, but that skill has built-in fail-safes to lower the risk of moving around wildly than Sword.

Also, even though you never stated the leap animation can be broken, you didn’t have to, as that was one – if not the primary – complaint users had with Sword. If anything, what you posted about an easy and obvious sword fix could have simply boiled down to adding a ¾s evade on Pounce and reducing the range of Kick down to 130-150 to prevent it from automatically moving the user towards a target. Add super speed in there for good measure to have the reduced range be minimal.

At least then, it removes the double-leap hazard that makes the sword chain prone to leaping around and people would not have issues about breaking the animation to dodge since Pounce would have had an evasion built right into it. Best part would have been keeping the unique animation.