Guild Wars 2

Recently, I was thinking about how lackluster Opening Strike was in general and how it only gives vulnerability but then came up with an idea. What if the opening strike buff also gave us a unique #1 skill for each ranger weapon when its up much in the same way a thief has access to backstab while stealthed.

Basically, when the ranger has Opening Strike buff, his #1 weapon skill is replaced with an opening strike variation. Only when the the Opening strike skill is used, will Opening strike buff be consumed.

An example of what a few Opening Strike #1 weapon skills could look like:

Longbow: Opening Strike – First Blood
Charge your bow attack for high damage that pierces. Inflict double damage if Foe’s health >90%.

Sword: Opening Strike – Whirling Leap
Make a spinning leap to your Foe damaging anyone in your path. Can hit up to 5 targets.

And so on, don’t worry about the examples. Just made those up on the fly as examples of what the skills could do. This would make opening strike and their traits far more valuable and give power rangers a bit of flavor.

Pro’s: Doesn’t replace old skills, gives each ranger weapon a unique opening strike variation. Would be far more useful to power rangers, and give them a bit of a opening burst so to speak. Opening strike traits are now far more valuable since the opening strike of each weapon will be quite a bit powerful to make up for their telegraph and the fact that you won’t always have it unless you trait remorseless which considering it is a grandmaster trait is a fair compromise.

Cons: Would require devs to create 7 unique opening strike weapon skills for each mainhand weapon available to ranger. Probably would be too much work for the developers and careful consideration would have to be used when creating the skills in order to find a good balance.

So, does anyone think this is a unique and useful idea?

I like the idea of expanding on a unique mechanic, but things like aegis, protection and long duration blocks/invuln greatly reduce the potency of an ability that can only ever be used on one very specific attack per fight unless heavily traited otherwise.

We would also need more access to stealth or a rework of how Remorseless functions.

Yeah, true. Blocks would definitely be a little too convenient against these kinds of moves and I also agree remorseless is a bit restrictive. It would be useful against trash mobs but this idea suffers against champions where there is little to no chance to recover opening strike off a mob.

I can think of two methods that could help but might be a bit much.

1. Opening Strike is unblockable (Like Warrior Signet) but not undodgeable.
2. Remorseless also auto reapplies Opening Strike every 20 seconds, and this cooldown is reset everytime Opening Strike is used (To prevent back/back opening strikes, might need to make a special case to prevent Natural recharge plus hunters shot allowing back to back X/Longbow Opening Strikes, although that would kinda be cool )

Edit: Now that I think of it, I just wanted to mention that this idea would give us some really nice synergy with thieves and mesmers that could stealth us. We just might have a real burst then, heh.

All Opening Strike needs is a 100% crit chance & faster aim for the first time.
So we can hit some dmg before our buddies overkill something. Its a haste…

Actual new skills seems unlikely, however, perhaps unique effects in terms of boons or conditions for each primary weapon.

For example: Shortbow can inflict confusion while longbow confers fury.

I’d be happy if Opening Strike’s vulnerability duration was increased and Remorseless also made it unblockable but w/e.

Thanks for the comments so far.

All Opening Strike needs is a 100% crit chance & faster aim for the first time.
So we can hit some dmg before our buddies overkill something. Its a haste…

I assume you mean with a bow? But in anycase, we already have 100% crit chance via 3rd minor trait in marksmanship.

The biggest problem I find with Opening Strike is that it has bias towards specific weapon setups which limits its usefulness and fun. In its current iteration, there are very few ways to take advantage of Opening Strikes. Every other class in general already has ample access to vulnerability and can reapply it from time to time making our one time application of vulnerability from opening strikes lacking and even if you take remorseless, the vulnerability is still not worth it most of the time.

The weapon problem is that even with precise strike minor trait, the ranger only has like 2 attacks that are worth using with it and that limits build diversity greatly.

These are the main reasons I came up with these idea, it was so that every weapon would have a strong attack to take advantage of our opening strike buff allowing a large number of builds to get more than just a little vulnerability application and to help fix the fact that Ranger powerbuilds in general lack any meaningful burst.

I don’t expect Anet to implement this but I would hope that it gives Anet a decent idea of how to encourage build diversity and synergy.

Actual new skills seems unlikely, however, perhaps unique effects in terms of boons or conditions for each primary weapon.

For example: Shortbow can inflict confusion while longbow confers fury.

That’s not a particularly bad idea and would be implementable in a reasonable timeframe but it doesn’t really fix our current issues with OS and it would need remorseless to really shine which means that durations would have to be lowish to keep it balanced with remorseless.

Its still a decent idea overall and could be useful if Anet wanted to implement it.

While I like the idea, double damage on a LB opening shot would be insane for an autoattack. That would hit harder than a Kill Shot, and could easily one-hit kill most players when people started building around that. I could see people hitting for 20k. Couple that with Remorseless and you’d have a slaughter machine going 1 v 15. :-D

Ignore the balance in the weapon examples, I threw that together in a second just as an example to what the OS skills could look like. It is highly imbalanced and because I’m lazy and didn’t want to bother to balance numbers against the wiki.

It’s the OS idea I want people to discuss and my ultimate goal for posting this idea.

Note: Keep in mind, that is why I did not post damage, activation time, ect values for the examples. These OS attacks would have damage values separate from the current autoattacks and I did not want people to detract from the topic by questioning whether my example skills were OP or UP. Assume for the sake of discussion that all the OS skills are balanced in line with their ease of use/telegraph/opportunity cost.

My Idea (built up a little and reposted from a previous thread)::::

• Remove Vulnerability on Opening Strike.
• Opening Strike Applies a 25% damage buff on any attack you open Combat with.
• Remorseless still functions as normal, reapplying opening strike on killing a foe and gaining stealth.
• All Weapon Skill 3’s apply a stack of opening strike when they sucessfully hit an enemy.
• Opening Strike (the effect) can stack up to 5 times, either by waiting for it to stack naturally before ever entering combat, or taking advantage of skill # 3 on weapons and the Remorseless Trait. One attack will remove only 1 stack of opening strike, meaning you can have up to 5 attacks with 25% more damage.
• The 25% damage buff can stack with all other effects.

Might be a bit overpowered. That 25% might need to be reduced a little.

This allows a Ranger to be very strong in the opening stages of combat, and also gives them a source of extra damage at regular intervals no matter what weapon they are using.

I love this idea. Maybe not exactly this, but this concept I love.

In my opinion, just remove the minor opening strikes trait.

Remorseless: Every 10 seconds, you gain a opening strike. Vulnerable condition last for 3 seconds.

Rangers are not a one-shot one-kill class. They depend entirely only pressure damage.

I don’t understand your suggestion, Runeblade. I assume you mean to say that remorseless should replace the minor and a new grandmaster trait should take its place but OS giving just 1 vulnerability stack every ten seconds is practically a nerf even if OS were to stack.

BTW, no-one is advocating that OS should one shot kill people. I didn’t include damage numbers or suggest they use my quickly made skill examples just to avoid this misconception.

• I never specified a vulnerability stack. It could be from 1 stack to 25 stacks.
• I said remove the minor and rechange grandmaster.
• Opening strikes right now is bad because it is only useful for the beginning of battle.

Okay, I agree with you then.

Although I personally don’t like vulnerability on OS all that much. It’s decent when your by yourself but once your running in a decent group, you end up capping at 25% vulnerability and then OS traits might as well not exist.

I think expanding OS to be more than just a vulnerability increase would do a lot more for the class.

Yeah I’ve ment it for Longbow. It takes ages to hit the target, and in WvW, people die before first shot. Pretty awkward when shortbow has no casting time at all…