Guild Wars 2

ShadowPuppet.3746:

That being said, I still don’t find the sword so incredibly difficult to use as to classify it as being broken and unplayable in pve.

It takes much more effort than warrior axe for example to produce the same-ish results.

It’s certainly not unplayable. I play sword/axe + sword/warhorn in dungeons.

However, even a very skilled player is going to get messed up by it every once and a while. Examples:

• Warrior/Thief in your party eviscerated/backstabbed an enemy you were 1-1-1-1ing 0.001 seconds before you press your last 1 and lunge off a cliff and die because you no longer have a target to lock but the skill’s safety has not yet kicked in.

• Enemy drops a fatal attack and you have a split second to respond. Hopefully your leap finishes that fast so you can dodge.

No one can convince me that they’ve gotten to a point where this no longer happens to them and never will again.

Not gonna lie, i LOVE the leaping nature of the sword and gluing to the enemy, but at the same time it makes fighting near a cliff freaking awful, like to the point i’ll just use my longbow instead…

ShadowPuppet.3746:

Not sure this has been mentioned or not if it has been I apologize ahead of time, the two other evade skills #2 and #3 can be used at any point in the chain to evade, which breaks the animation root then allowing you to dodge. There does seem to be a slight delay on the #2 skill at times but three is pretty much instant, I won’t say that the auto animation root after the third chain is perfect, but this weapon is far from being broken to the point of being unplayable in any game mode. Having said this, I really can’t see the reason why a dodge doesn’t simply cancel the attack chain, I know it has been brought up that it is in fact a leap and you shouldn’t be able to dodge during a leap but perhaps there is a way to make it distance to target sensitive or something, meaning if you are right next to the target you wouldn’t be leaping anyhow, not sure it would be possible but it is something to think about I suppose

Skill #2 requires waiting for the animation to end, THEN hitting the mob one extra time, then dodging back and trying to accidentally not jump back into the fight. #3 is slightly faster since it doesn’t add in the extra attack after, however it still requires the initial animation to finish.

DarkWasp.7291:

ShadowPuppet.3746:

That being said, I still don’t find the sword so incredibly difficult to use as to classify it as being broken and unplayable in pve.

It takes much more effort than warrior axe for example to produce the same-ish results.

It’s certainly not unplayable. I play sword/axe + sword/warhorn in dungeons.

However, even a very skilled player is going to get messed up by it every once and a while. Examples:

• Warrior/Thief in your party eviscerated/backstabbed an enemy you were 1-1-1-1ing 0.001 seconds before you press your last 1 and lunge off a cliff and die because you no longer have a target to lock but the skill’s safety has not yet kicked in.

• Enemy drops a fatal attack and you have a split second to respond. Hopefully your leap finishes that fast so you can dodge.

No one can convince me that they’ve gotten to a point where this no longer happens to them and never will again.

No it’s true, sometimes unlucky things happen….it is far from a perfect setup, I am just not sure how it can be changed or fixed without losing the leap. Obviously no class can dodge in the middle of any leap ability they have so how should this weapon with a leap in the autoattack chain be fixed? If the leap gets removed from the chain then it makes this weapon just like every other version of 1h sword in the game with slightly different skillsets, the leap in the auto chain is what makes this weapon unique. This uniqueness has both positives and negatives, I for one like the leap and accept that sometimes a random sequence of events is going to leave me taking a dirt nap, because I simply can’t see a way for them to fix this weapon without either removing the leap or completely breaking their own rules in regards to being able to dodge during leap animations. If they add evade frames during the leap then the weapon becomes ridiculously overpowered so what is the solution?

ShadowPuppet.3746:

If they add evade frames during the leap then the weapon becomes ridiculously overpowered so what is the solution?

I don’t quite get this. Why?

Even if executed perfectly in a PvP scenario, a ranger is just going to leap incredibly close to an enemy, interrupt the damage from the skill and evade instead. Sure, I guess this gives the ranger exclusive (hah yeah right) ability to close distance very fast and then avoid getting hit for a half second.

I’m not quite certain how that’s going break the balance of the game.

I see it like the thief complaints. People are constantly frustrated by thieves and their stealth and high burst damage. However, I can’t see a problem with it. It’s what thieves do.

Can’t being good chasers AND good dodgers be what rangers rangers do? While each class should be on equal grounds with other classes, that doesn’t mean they should all be the same class. They each have their own strengths.

We’re not asking for more dodges, we’re not asking for longer dodges, we’re not even asking to deal damage while dodging. We’re simply the ability to stop what we’re doing in less than half a second and use our current dodges (cooldowns and all).

It would make us better, yes. OP? I highly doubt it. And in PvE warriors could use a little more company up at the top of the dungeon efficiency chain.

What about removing the leap from the auto attack (don’t panic yet), and giving it to the sword skill 3 “Serpent’s strike”, making it a 3-way chain. Also return the pre-beta knock back to the “Kick” part.

3a: Current “snake” attack animation, dodging and applying poison
3b: Kick the foe, knocking him back
3c: Pounce to the foe, apply cripple

That would make the weapon to be the only one that has 3-attack chain outside of auto attack. It would solve the problem of losing control of your character during auto attacking, while retaining the uniqueness of the ranger sword. Of course, there would have to be some adjustments in cooldown in order to not make it totally op.

Red Jay.2516:

What about removing the leap from the auto attack (don’t panic yet), and giving it to the sword skill 3 “Serpent’s strike”, making it a 3-way chain. Also return the pre-beta knock back to the “Kick” part.

3a: Current “snake” attack animation, dodging and applying poison
3b: Kick the foe, knocking him back
3c: Pounce to the foe, apply cripple

That would make the weapon to be the only one that has 3-attack chain outside of auto attack. It would solve the problem of losing control of your character during auto attacking, while retaining the uniqueness of the ranger sword. Of course, there would have to be some adjustments in cooldown in order to not make it totally op.

Omg yes, do this now Anet! plox!!

Chopps.5047:

Oh and one more thing guys: THE SWORD ISNT BROKEN. Sheesh. Understand that? L2P

You clearly spend too much time in PvP to actually understand what the issue here is. The sword IS broken. There is a specific aspect of the sword that doesn’t work the way it is supposed to as compared to every other weapon. I’m not asking to change the mechanic. Something you don’t seem to get. I would love for it to be changed, because I also don’t like the mechanic itself, but I wouldn’t ask for it to be changed for my benefit concidering the number of people who like it.

All I’m standing for is the actual broken aspect of the weapon which is that you can’t dodge immediately after each of the three parts of the chain. I don’t care if you can’t dodge in the middle of a leap. I do care if you can’t dodge after your feet touch the ground again. That is a broken mechanic that needs to be fixed. So yes, it is broken, so maybe you can get off your high horse and move on, or at least give it a rest.

Red Jay.2516:

What about removing the leap from the auto attack (don’t panic yet), and giving it to the sword skill 3 “Serpent’s strike”, making it a 3-way chain. Also return the pre-beta knock back to the “Kick” part.

3a: Current “snake” attack animation, dodging and applying poison
3b: Kick the foe, knocking him back
3c: Pounce to the foe, apply cripple

That would make the weapon to be the only one that has 3-attack chain outside of auto attack. It would solve the problem of losing control of your character during auto attacking, while retaining the uniqueness of the ranger sword. Of course, there would have to be some adjustments in cooldown in order to not make it totally op.

The issue at hand is not being able to run the auto attack as an actual auto without it being difficult to dodge, as well as the fact that you can’t break the animation once it’s set. Adding evades to an auto chain is a horrible idea because of the attack speed. You’re giving a class dodges every 2-3 seconds on top of their endurance dodges. That’s without QZ activated.

You’re proposing adding an extra uncontrollable animation to the first hit, which by the way can’t be broken so you can end up dodging yourself right into an aoe due to the nature of serpent’s strike. On top of that it adds an insane amount of dodge, then you have your final leap animation, which still can’t be broken.

Instead of the current: (BA = Break animation) (NB = No break)
BA → NB → NB
You switch to:
NB → BA → NB

Doesn’t solve the issue.

DarkWasp.7291:

ShadowPuppet.3746:

If they add evade frames during the leap then the weapon becomes ridiculously overpowered so what is the solution?

I don’t quite get this. Why?

Even if executed perfectly in a PvP scenario, a ranger is just going to leap incredibly close to an enemy, interrupt the damage from the skill and evade instead. Sure, I guess this gives the ranger exclusive (hah yeah right) ability to close distance very fast and then avoid getting hit for a half second.

I’m not quite certain how that’s going break the balance of the game.

I see it like the thief complaints. People are constantly frustrated by thieves and their stealth and high burst damage. However, I can’t see a problem with it. It’s what thieves do.

Can’t being good chasers AND good dodgers be what rangers rangers do? While each class should be on equal grounds with other classes, that doesn’t mean they should all be the same class. They each have their own strengths.

We’re not asking for more dodges, we’re not asking for longer dodges, we’re not even asking to deal damage while dodging. We’re simply the ability to stop what we’re doing in less than half a second and use our current dodges (cooldowns and all).

It would make us better, yes. OP? I highly doubt it. And in PvE warriors could use a little more company up at the top of the dungeon efficiency chain.

My asking that question was simply to spark conversation about possible solutions to the situation at hand, I agree the animation rooting is problematic at times, one of my initial thoughts to fix this was adding a short evade frame into the auto during the leap portion, but there is no other class barring thief possibly (and even they are on a resource system) that can spam evade frames that quickly. Perhaps if they can clean up the amount of dead time after the chain finishes (period where you still can’t dodge after third attack) that alone would be a big help but it still would not resolve what many people seem to have issues with and that is needing to be able to dodge during the leap portion of the chain. Another possible solution would be to make the ability to cancel via dodge depending on distance to target somehow since technically you are not leaping if you are already close to the mob, which is the case in most boss type scenarios, I am just not sure how feasible that is from a coding perspective. I have seen other suggestions that indicate splitting the skill between pvp where the leap is useful and pve where it is not of so much use, but I admit I still find use in the skill in pve against ranged mobs that like to reposition themselves (admittedly in pve it is much less difficult to simply run after them but again it takes away from the “flare” of the weapon).

ShadowPuppet.3746:

My asking that question was simply to spark conversation about possible solutions to the situation at hand,

Given the way the weapon is designed, and the way other parts of the game work, I don’t think there is a solution. The proposed alternatives all have negative consequences which I think would be detrimental to sword’s effectiveness. Yeah it’s a quirky weapon, but its those quirks which make it preferable to other weapons in certain situations.

Perhaps if they can clean up the amount of dead time after the chain finishes (period where you still can’t dodge after third attack) that alone would be a big help

This bug affects both the second and third attacks (they are both leaps). But even this bug-fix (allow you to dodge immediately after a leap attack) isn’t really a fix. It would just convert the problem from “I can’t dodge while using sword” to “sword auto-attack makes my character jump right back into the red circle I just dodged out of.” It would help, but it won’t stop the complaints.

Another possible solution would be to make the ability to cancel via dodge depending on distance to target somehow since technically you are not leaping if you are already close to the mob, which is the case in most boss type scenarios, I am just not sure how feasible that is from a coding perspective.

Problem with that fix is it breaks ranged weapons. If I’m auto-attacking with my bow from range, I don’t want auto-attack to stop just because I dodged and I’m not near the mob.

If I could get my hands on the code, I would code an exception to auto-attack just for ranger sword. If I dodge while using ranger sword, the auto-attack stops. Period. I have to hit 1 again to re-start it. It’s the only weapon I’ve found in the game where you want this behavior (all the other weapons I’ve used, you want auto-attack to continue after a dodge).

Combine it with the dodge-after-leap bug-fix, and you take care of most of sword’s problems. Unfortunately, because it touches upon three sub-systems (sword’s auto-attack chain cycle, auto-attack on/off, and dodge), I doubt it’d be trivial to implement.

The remaining problem is that the weapon can send you flying off cliffs if you lose your target. I can think of some changes which would mitigate it (automatically turn off auto-attack if you lose a target). But it’s still possible to trigger this behavior if you don’t have a target and hit the 1 key. The weapon can cleave onto a non-targeted mob, which will roll over the auto-attack to the next attack and make you leap (straight ahead and off the cliff since you have no target selectted).

Solandri.9640:

ShadowPuppet.3746:

My asking that question was simply to spark conversation about possible solutions to the situation at hand,

Given the way the weapon is designed, and the way other parts of the game work, I don’t think there is a solution. The proposed alternatives all have negative consequences which I think would be detrimental to sword’s effectiveness. Yeah it’s a quirky weapon, but its those quirks which make it preferable to other weapons in certain situations.

Perhaps if they can clean up the amount of dead time after the chain finishes (period where you still can’t dodge after third attack) that alone would be a big help

This bug affects both the second and third attacks (they are both leaps). But even this bug-fix (allow you to dodge immediately after a leap attack) isn’t really a fix. It would just convert the problem from “I can’t dodge while using sword” to “sword auto-attack makes my character jump right back into the red circle I just dodged out of.” It would help, but it won’t stop the complaints.

Another possible solution would be to make the ability to cancel via dodge depending on distance to target somehow since technically you are not leaping if you are already close to the mob, which is the case in most boss type scenarios, I am just not sure how feasible that is from a coding perspective.

Problem with that fix is it breaks ranged weapons. If I’m auto-attacking with my bow from range, I don’t want auto-attack to stop just because I dodged and I’m not near the mob.

If I could get my hands on the code, I would code an exception to auto-attack just for ranger sword. If I dodge while using ranger sword, the auto-attack stops. Period. I have to hit 1 again to re-start it. It’s the only weapon I’ve found in the game where you want this behavior (all the other weapons I’ve used, you want auto-attack to continue after a dodge).

Combine it with the dodge-after-leap bug-fix, and you take care of most of sword’s problems. Unfortunately, because it touches upon three sub-systems (sword’s auto-attack chain cycle, auto-attack on/off, and dodge), I doubt it’d be trivial to implement.

The remaining problem is that the weapon can send you flying off cliffs if you lose your target. I can think of some changes which would mitigate it (automatically turn off auto-attack if you lose a target). But it’s still possible to trigger this behavior if you don’t have a target and hit the 1 key. The weapon can cleave onto a non-targeted mob, which will roll over the auto-attack to the next attack and make you leap (straight ahead and off the cliff since you have no target selectted).

I have actually used the effect you describe to close distance with ranged mobs in pve, if you have a melee mob right in front of you but a ranged mob further away and targeted simply press the auto and watch as you fly to the ranged mob, but yes I agree with the points you have made. I suppose that is what I am really getting at, there absolutely is no easy fix for this weapon, I personally enjoy using it and have great success with it and the occasional frustration, my hope is that someone who is smarter than I am when it comes to coding and brainstorming will come up with a easy solution to make the weapon more accessible for people that have difficulty/dislike in using it in it’s current form, since it really does seem to be ranger’s best option for dishing out competitive damage in the melee centric zerker train that is dungeon running these days.