Guild Wars 2

Aomine.5012:

Swagger.1459:

It’s not only a “feature” Stale, the ranger sword was purposefully designed to be a “high skill-high reward” weapon that the devs have masterminded to teach players true skill, timing, patience, character, humility and honor. The devs truly slaved to make it a unique weapon that stands out among the other “boring” swords. While everyone admits that it is a “wonky” weapon to use, players see that their camera turning and keyboard finess really improves and that looks great on job applications…

Also, the frontal attack bleeding restriction from short bow is another well planned “feature”, and I sincerely hope that staff gets the same type of treatment. I think it would really elevate player skill if we could only damage and heal from the front. Doing so would create a beneficial opposing balance between these two weapons and that serves to help players learn and master the art of battle field awareness and positioning.

But I don’t see any high-reward from using sword…
Why do I use a weapon that relies only on spamming AA and some clunky evade spam? (Sword 2 is very clunky as well, the evade pops up way too late and the evade frame is super short, and it takes too long to finish the back leap)

With Revenant’s sword, they do high and consistent damage, block incoming attacks, pull enemies, long evade while using sword 3 (and high dps long range). That’s what I called high reward weapon for skillful usage..

I grab sword just to use my off-hand because axe is an even weaker option..

Personally I do not want a 2-hand weapon like staff. I’d rather be scepter for ranger so we can utilize our off-hand weapon and becomes a support class using Warhorn or mix hybrid class using torch, or dps class using off-hand axe.

Staff 4 is terrible and staff 5 has very long CD and short duration anyway, so I’m ok to give up those 2 skills. (Revenant’s hammer has 6 secs/12 cd mobile projectile block, Druid has 5 secs / 20~25 CD unmobile projectile block. See the double standard treatment here?)

Come to think of it, we have TOO MANY CLASSES using staffs already, and NONE of the new classes can use scepter… Why not give Druid a scepter, and staff to Revenant and Daredevil? If Anet can fix axe 5 and makes it mobile, we really don’t need staff 5’s clunky projectile block at all.

Well, we will just have to agree to disagree.

On my Ranger, I have logged 3,707 hours. I started using sword since launch, even before the meta builds formed. I still use it, it is my MAIN weapon receiving more focus, priority and dedication than any other weapon in the game on any class.

I still disagree with how it works.

It does have one advantage, and I kind of agree with the OP on this. It FEELS powerful, aggressive and when in some situations even satisfying. However, here comes a massive list of bullet points of where it falls short.

PvE (This is my main game. I’ve Rangered through exploration, farms, story, LS2 challenges, Liadri, Fractals, Dungeon Master, Dungeoneer, solo holding SW forts .etc)

• Aside from the Lyssa boss in Malchor’s Leap, I can’t think of any other case where the sword’s leap/chase was of any advantage in PvE over free movement.

• Whenever I need to type something to the party during melee in a casual fractal, my attacking stops because of the need to have auto-attack off.

• Turning off auto-attack is nowhere near flawless in preventing accidents. Two days ago a party member or two heavy-bursted an enemy dead on a platform a split second before I had the chance to not-press 1 again.

• The free movement of the greatsword feels better than sword overall. Shame it doesn’t do much damage.

• Any weapon that relies heavily on the ESC key, I cannot suggest. ESC’s cancel functionality cannot be rebound to a more convenient key.

• Skills 2 and 3 are very nice, but they have a relatively high failure rate. In PvE there are even some cases (Tequatl for example) where their evasion is completely ignored by attacks that still can’t hit regular old dodge rolls.

• Sword AA will always “push” an aggroed enemy back. This can greatly annoy your party. There’s nothing you can do to stop it because enemies tend to back away from point blank attackers. Unlike with other melee weapons, sword does not have the option to stand back and keep swinging.

• Ironically the sword can still be annoying in stacks because you can’t position yourself inside the enemy like everyone else.

• You can’t take advantage of using your camera angle in addition to untargetted swinging when surrounded by mobs. If you do this, you will leap away. That’s often undesired.

• Any competent player can chase a target they crippled. They don’t even need the leaps to help them.

PvP (I’m not an expert here, but I have experience. I am Tiger rank. 99% of my PvP experience is on Ranger. I almost always win in 1v1 scenarios against other Rangers.)

• Sometimes the sword is great, sometimes it isn’t. I found that early on, it helped me chase foes a lot, but not quite as much anymore. In certain fights against enemies with teleports or wide movements, I can even get thrown off. If they don’t have minions, teammates or clones for me to swing at then the sword AA won’t even help me leap at them in that case.

• In contrast, I have no problem chasing with the greatsword.

• My best sword moments usually accompanied point tanking condi builds where skills 2 and 3 were part of the evasion-tanking and the AA was only really used to help slam fools who stuck around. The chasing intention of it was pretty much ignored.

In conclusion: I’m not a top level PvP player, but I do quite well in PvE. If anything, the sword’s AA functionality has no place in PvE. I can see a few good uses in PvP, but I can also see enemies learning how to turn it against us if builds including it became too popular.

I suffer through it because I love Ranger and I love swords. I still dream of a brighter future for this otherwise wonderful weapon.

Thz.7569:

The argument Anet has made that it has huge implications in pvp due to stickiness is moot. The chain absolutely needs to be streamlined with every other MH sword.

An animation-locked auto chain has no part in this game.

The stickiness argument doesn’t even makes sense. The leap is so neglectable that if you had the option to move forward while auto-attacking, wouldn’t notice any difference.

Einlanzer.1627:

Thz.7569:

The argument Anet has made that it has huge implications in pvp due to stickiness is moot. The chain absolutely needs to be streamlined with every other MH sword.

An animation-locked auto chain has no part in this game.

This. Everyone’s pro-root arguments are just asinine.

There is a lot of ranger apologist in this forum. This is one of the biggest reasons this class has been broken for so long, I think.

Also sword is the only melee weapon that can’t hit at “max range”

Other classes can actually stay alot further, even with the AA icon turning red, still hit foes while spamming 1 in a safe distance.

For ranger’s sword, it is the only melee weapon that’d make you basically “attached” to foes, and put you in serious danger in certain fights.

Also sword 2 is a clunky mess too. The backward part is way too slow, plus the evade frame is very short. By far the most clunky evade skill in the game. (GS AA doesn’t count though, it’s not on demand evade)

Yet after 3 years , no fix for Ranger’s sword.
Revenant’s sword auto got fixed immediately after people complained about the projectile part of AA. Ranger’s sword got huge complaints for 3 yrs and not a single change whatsoever.

All the attention are putting on Revenant now. Irene is just working on Druid, and the whole ranger core problems would be ignored for another 3 years like always.

Kitty.1502:

There is a lot of ranger apologist in this forum. This is one of the biggest reasons this class has been broken for so long, I think.

Why is it not ok for a lot of us to like a weapon? I find a lot of value in sword, and it’s one of if not the biggest reason I’ve got 3k hours invested in my ranger. People like different things, and it doesn’t make sense to take away something half of the ranger community dearly loves.

The only solution to this is that they give ranger another 1-handed melee weapon. I’ve been wishing for a mace for years. It would make everyone happy.

It took me like 1-2 months to learn every single encounter on the game and figured how to play with sword. There’s currently NO content where sword is not viable. You can melee all the bosses/encounters in game and perform as good as everyone else.

Yet here we are, 3 years after launch with people still refusing/are unable to learn how to deal with something that was here since day #1 and makes the class unique.

Fluffball.8307:

Kitty.1502:

There is a lot of ranger apologist in this forum. This is one of the biggest reasons this class has been broken for so long, I think.

Why is it not ok for a lot of us to like a weapon? I find a lot of value in sword, and it’s one of if not the biggest reason I’ve got 3k hours invested in my ranger. People like different things, and it doesn’t make sense to take away something half of the ranger community dearly loves.

The only solution to this is that they give ranger another 1-handed melee weapon. I’ve been wishing for a mace for years. It would make everyone happy.

I’ve been dreaming to use Dagger mainhand as ranger for ages..
It’s so strange a ranger can’t go D/D. Most of the MMO I played, ranger can use dagger.
Not the petty staff thingy…

Let’s hope our next specialization lean toward aggressive melee fighting style, with Dagger doing massive damage. Then I can finally use off-hand at will w/o clinging to both of the awful choices ranger has (axe = weak dps, sword = clunky mess)

Aomine.5012:

Let’s hope our next specialization lean toward aggressive melee fighting style, with Dagger doing massive damage. Then I can finally use off-hand at will w/o clinging to both of the awful choices ranger has (axe = weak dps, sword = clunky mess)

My point exactly. While I disagree with sword = clunky mess, a dagger mainhand or melee specialization would make me very happy. See, everyone wins.

So random thought. Here is something I posted a while ago in the PvP forums.

Fluffball.8307:

For example ROM can chug a bottle of rum, be talking to viewers, and still dodge skills out of the corner of his eyes that I never even saw. I simply don’t have the reaction time to do what he does and have to get by purely on me having played a lot. And that hard caps me to a certain level of play. I know when a ranger is probably going to use PBS and be ready to dodge it, but I can’t just be doing something else and miraculously dodge the KB if I’m not waiting for it.

I wonder if people who like sword are just used to “planning ahead” rather than fast twitch, instinctive dodge type of players. And taking it further, I wonder if there is an age difference involved? Maybe most people over 25 likes sword and most people under dislike it. It would be interesting to see some numbers.

My current PvP build uses quickness and the sword autoattack to burst people down. It’s not something I just plop down, I wait until I feel safe.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

It took me like 1-2 months to learn every single encounter on the game and figured how to play with sword. There’s currently NO content where sword is not viable. You can melee all the bosses/encounters in game and perform as good as everyone else.

Yet here we are, 3 years after launch with people still refusing/are unable to learn how to deal with something that was here since day #1 and makes the class unique.

Unique as to people want you to melee bosses at max melee range but you can just attach to boss? Unique as to you can’t control your attack radius to cleave the way you want because you’re forced to attach to foes in one direction? (Other weapon can hit foes while not facing foes because they can control where they want to cleave)

We also have this unique off-hand axe that’d root you in place, while Engi’s reflection shield 4 is unrooted, Guardian shield 5 is unrooted, and so on? (All of them are projectile reflect related, so ONLY ranger hasn’t change)

We also have this unique war-horn 4 that does low damage, long CD, eats retaliation like breakfast, and has no additional effect right?

I really don’t give a dam about those unique but inferior mechanic…

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

It took me like 1-2 months to learn every single encounter on the game and figured how to play with sword. There’s currently NO content where sword is not viable. You can melee all the bosses/encounters in game and perform as good as everyone else.

Yet here we are, 3 years after launch with people still refusing/are unable to learn how to deal with something that was here since day #1 and makes the class unique.

I have the feeling you haven’t done lvl 50 fractals much?

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

It took me like 1-2 months to learn every single encounter on the game and figured how to play with sword. There’s currently NO content where sword is not viable. You can melee all the bosses/encounters in game and perform as good as everyone else.

Yet here we are, 3 years after launch with people still refusing/are unable to learn how to deal with something that was here since day #1 and makes the class unique.

Yeah well not too much content like that"yet". If Arena net takes raid difficulty seriously then there is just NO WAY that sword will remain viable as it is. The easiest way to make an encounter more difficult is to demand better player reflexes & make you move around more. In all typical raids in WoW & other mmos “not standing in the fire” is super important, all this “let’s use weapon dodges” won’t work when you need to melee from farther away or you need to go to a specific tiny point where there is no fire and failing frequent reflex checks will be inevitable with a sword. Yeah sure some players will still able to make sword work, but the moment you need to move around with sword ranger your dps just drops too effin much, the problem with this is only that currently our other weapons just aren’t good enough, the range limitation on longbow is ridiculous too ..

I realize that some ppl enjoy a challenge, but I don’t like being handicapped like this. I gotta admit that doing some boring dungeon like AC is way more fun on sword ranger than PS warrior, because you actually need to pay some amount of attention, but this is still bad design.

Also in high level fractals max range melee is a thing, on ranger you cannot do it, as a result if you are amazing your dps merely drops, if you aren’t amazing you will keep dying, but either way you will never do as well as other classes in those max melee situations.

Halan.7931:

Daredevil staff 3 is an instant roll backward, ranger sword 2 should work similarly.

We’ve wanted Sword 2 this way for years. Irenio’s our man. He can do it. Come on, Irenio. QoL for Sword. At least do this change.

Fluffball.8307:

So random thought. Here is something I posted a while ago in the PvP forums.

Fluffball.8307:

For example ROM can chug a bottle of rum, be talking to viewers, and still dodge skills out of the corner of his eyes that I never even saw. I simply don’t have the reaction time to do what he does and have to get by purely on me having played a lot. And that hard caps me to a certain level of play. I know when a ranger is probably going to use PBS and be ready to dodge it, but I can’t just be doing something else and miraculously dodge the KB if I’m not waiting for it.

I wonder if people who like sword are just used to “planning ahead” rather than fast twitch, instinctive dodge type of players. And taking it further, I wonder if there is an age difference involved? Maybe most people over 25 likes sword and most people under dislike it. It would be interesting to see some numbers.

My current PvP build uses quickness and the sword autoattack to burst people down. It’s not something I just plop down, I wait until I feel safe.

You really should do a research then because your believes is so biased.

You’re referring people who dislike sword as immature right?
That’s the most biased and illogical assumption I’ve ever seen.
So hoping for a mechanic that doesn’t handicap yourself is an immature thought to you then.

As a reference, you need to also observe the general age group of GW2 and use the exact proportion of each age group to avoid bias.

Aomine.5012:

You’re referring people who dislike sword as immature right? That’s the most biased and illogical assumption I’ve ever seen.

Wow you went from 0 to 100 in no time. Calm down buddy, this isn’t reddit.

My hypothesis is based on boxing. I’ve been boxing for 20 years, sunk dozens of thousands of hours into practicing how to fight hand to hand, and I just can’t react the same way a noob 16 year old boxer can. Some guy with no experience will come in and slip my punches and I can’t slip his, so I have to rely on thinking it through. Slipping is far and away the better choice, but I can’t do it. See the metaphor with sword? If you can dodge a .25 second tell CC in PvP, maybe you prefer GS.

Pounce should probably be made a leap finisher as they don’t seem too interested in any design change on sword at the moment.

I’ve said this for 3 years every time this topic comes up:

The FACT, yes, FACT is that Sword AA was designed originally to knockback during the AA. This effect was removed and replaced with cripple. This thereby removed completely any and all need for a pseudo-Leap in the following skill and in is fact counter-intuitive when combined with cripple. Instead of doing a re-design so close to launch it was band-aided and thrown aside along with everything else.

In addition to this the other 2 skills are both designed in a way that you would expect to see in GW1 and quite frankly do not belong in GW2. What I mean by that is that in GW1 you could not move while using a skill, so by making the skill path for you it gives the illusion of active, dynamic combat but in reality is just a poor excuse of static gameplay. Since GW2 is not designed for this the skills become clunky, ineffective, and frustrating.

I more than fully understand that there are people that actually like the way Sword plays, especially after having spent so much time learning how to cope with it’s poor design and it gives them a sense of accomplishment or superiority in saying, “Well I MADE it work eventually and it’s good NOW.” This however is the exact reason IT NEEDS TO BE CHANGED. You should not be making a weapon work. You should not be dedicating yourself to learning “tricks” which amount to nothing more than workarounds for a faulty design and claiming that it makes “skill”. It does not.

I’ve given suggestions from Sword re-designs all the way to re-purposing Axe to a melee weapon so hopeless Sword fanatics don’t have to cry about it changing while giving an alternative melee option many times and every time they’ve been ignored.

Can Sword be used in a specific niche? Absolutely.
Does that mean it shouldn’t be changed? Absolutely Not.

Everyone needs to stop defending the weapon and instead offer constructive suggestions that not only fulfills but also broadens the weapon’s niche. Stop clinging to a broken weapon because learning a few workarounds gives you a false sense of accomplishment.

Castaliea.3156:

You should not be making a weapon work. You should not be dedicating yourself to learning “tricks” which amount to nothing more than workarounds for a faulty design and claiming that it makes “skill”. It does not.

Every profession has weird little “tricks” that need to be learned. ALL video games are about learning and using the mechanics that are given to you in ways the developers did not intend. That’s how PacMan was beaten.

Sword tricks ADD to the abilities of ranger. Even if you despise the weapon, it still gives you the ability to do some really weird and crazy things.

Think you missed the section of Castaliea’s post after “tricks.” It’s true that every profession has weird little “tricks” that need to be learned, but Sword is not one of them: It’s a workaround.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Think you missed the section of Castaliea’s post after “tricks.” It’s true that every profession has wield little “tricks” that need to be learned, but Sword is not one of them: It’s a workaround.

I mean we go in circles. The sword gives movement that probably wasn’t intended. You can dodge CC using the autoattack. Both sides go back and forth, we all know the arguments. Sword UNARGUABLY OFFERS ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES. No one is going to convince anyone else so these threads are useless.

Agree to disagree. These threads on sword auto attack have some benefit of bringing up issues players may or may not have with the weapon. Jon Peters took his shot at trying to improve sword and had only marginal success.

I’ll call these threads useless when Irenio makes an attempt and is unable to allow dodging during the current chain without a complete rework.

I’ll agree Sword #2 is bad. Should not have to be an Oracle to know when to use the thing.

Animation lock is decent for certain circumstances, not decent for others. Either make it a toggle or figure out some way to put some invuln frames in there. Somehow I’m guessing dodging to cancel is out of the question as that would be ‘too hard’ for the average Joe to understand.

No offense but anyone who tries to defend the sword auto attack should really try out doing lvl 50 fractals with it and then post a video of it. Then we can discuss the video and point out why it shouldn’t be the way it is.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

No offense but anyone who tries to defend the sword auto attack should really try out doing lvl 50 fractals with it and then post a video of it. Then we can discuss the video and point out why it shouldn’t be the way it is.

No offense but you should really try WvW roaming with sword and show how amazing it is. It has strengths, dude, that’s why these threads are always stupid.

Also, I’m not a huge PvE player, but maybe someone like yelloweyedemon can show you how he uses sword in PvE. I can use it in all the dungeons, I stopped doing fractals out of boredom. I used it in level 80 something fractal back in the day but its a different system.

IMO main hand sword to me feels like a (High skill=just to make it work) kinda weapon.

Deleena.3406:

IMO main hand sword to me feels like a (High skill=just to make it work) kinda weapon.

It is to an extent. Thus this thread.

Easy to use in low pressure, difficult to use in high pressure, clutch in extreme pressure. It’s not a family friendly weapon but it does add value.

Deleena.3406:

IMO main hand sword to me feels like a (High skill=just to make it work) kinda weapon.

Perhaps high risk, negligible reward sums it up.

I don’t play ranger because of the messed up AA sword chain.

s/d Ranger is one of the only specs that can completely avoid a Revs UA without burning both dodges.

turn off auto attack and its fine, it took me months to get used to it now its whatever

Fluffball.8307:

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

No offense but anyone who tries to defend the sword auto attack should really try out doing lvl 50 fractals with it and then post a video of it. Then we can discuss the video and point out why it shouldn’t be the way it is.

No offense but you should really try WvW roaming with sword and show how amazing it is. It has strengths, dude, that’s why these threads are always stupid.

Also, I’m not a huge PvE player, but maybe someone like yelloweyedemon can show you how he uses sword in PvE. I can use it in all the dungeons, I stopped doing fractals out of boredom. I used it in level 80 something fractal back in the day but its a different system.

It has some strengths and some major weaknesses that significantly reduces the usefulness of a ranger in anything hard in PvE. Buff sword to counteract the nerf to WvW rangers for all I care, but don’t keep the weapon’s horrible design.

DarkWasp.7291:

On my Ranger, I have logged 3,707 hours. I started using sword since launch, even before the meta builds formed. I still use it, it is my MAIN weapon receiving more focus, priority and dedication than any other weapon in the game on any class.

I still disagree with how it works.

It does have one advantage, and I kind of agree with the OP on this. It FEELS powerful, aggressive and when in some situations even satisfying. However, here comes a massive list of bullet points of where it falls short.

PvE (This is my main game. I’ve Rangered through exploration, farms, story, LS2 challenges, Liadri, Fractals, Dungeon Master, Dungeoneer, solo holding SW forts .etc)

• Aside from the Lyssa boss in Malchor’s Leap, I can’t think of any other case where the sword’s leap/chase was of any advantage in PvE over free movement.

• Whenever I need to type something to the party during melee in a casual fractal, my attacking stops because of the need to have auto-attack off.

• Turning off auto-attack is nowhere near flawless in preventing accidents. Two days ago a party member or two heavy-bursted an enemy dead on a platform a split second before I had the chance to not-press 1 again.

• The free movement of the greatsword feels better than sword overall. Shame it doesn’t do much damage.

• Any weapon that relies heavily on the ESC key, I cannot suggest. ESC’s cancel functionality cannot be rebound to a more convenient key.

• Skills 2 and 3 are very nice, but they have a relatively high failure rate. In PvE there are even some cases (Tequatl for example) where their evasion is completely ignored by attacks that still can’t hit regular old dodge rolls.

• Sword AA will always “push” an aggroed enemy back. This can greatly annoy your party. There’s nothing you can do to stop it because enemies tend to back away from point blank attackers. Unlike with other melee weapons, sword does not have the option to stand back and keep swinging.

• Ironically the sword can still be annoying in stacks because you can’t position yourself inside the enemy like everyone else.

• You can’t take advantage of using your camera angle in addition to untargetted swinging when surrounded by mobs. If you do this, you will leap away. That’s often undesired.

• Any competent player can chase a target they crippled. They don’t even need the leaps to help them.

PvP (I’m not an expert here, but I have experience. I am Tiger rank. 99% of my PvP experience is on Ranger. I almost always win in 1v1 scenarios against other Rangers.)

• Sometimes the sword is great, sometimes it isn’t. I found that early on, it helped me chase foes a lot, but not quite as much anymore. In certain fights against enemies with teleports or wide movements, I can even get thrown off. If they don’t have minions, teammates or clones for me to swing at then the sword AA won’t even help me leap at them in that case.

• In contrast, I have no problem chasing with the greatsword.

• My best sword moments usually accompanied point tanking condi builds where skills 2 and 3 were part of the evasion-tanking and the AA was only really used to help slam fools who stuck around. The chasing intention of it was pretty much ignored.

In conclusion: I’m not a top level PvP player, but I do quite well in PvE. If anything, the sword’s AA functionality has no place in PvE. I can see a few good uses in PvP, but I can also see enemies learning how to turn it against us if builds including it became too popular.

I suffer through it because I love Ranger and I love swords. I still dream of a brighter future for this otherwise wonderful weapon.

I think this is good feedback, I hope it’s on the dev’s radar.

Simply all the discussions and posts like this regarding the sword over the last years should warrant the devs looking into it imho. Even if some people do well with it doesn’t mean it has a good design and shouldn’t be looked into.

Swagger.1459:

skills should not be about learning how to work around poor design. If this design is so good, then let’s give it to all swords and see how the player base reacts.

Additionally, enjoy your rooting and wonky movement while a sword wielding Revenant tears you apart…

Ranger sword could be infinitely better and there is not a valid reason why only 3 skills can’t be fixed or replaced… 3

It’s not about ‘working around poor design’ BUT, rather choosing a weapon that is designed for what you’re trying to do. This sword is awesome and is perfect at what it does.

Vatlaaw Fierceshot.5713:

I might be alone by saying this, but please do not change the way it works. While I agree that it’s a little wonky when learning how to use it, I also believe it’s very rewarding once you get the hang of it and know how/when to use it. It has its own niche and I enjoy its play style very much.

So please, do not change it.

- A 1800+Hr Ranger Vet

+1 for sure. This thing is so good at doing what it’s designed for.

For those who feel like there’s something to ‘work around’, you should probably be using greatsword or Axe.

Tman.6349:

Vatlaaw Fierceshot.5713:

I might be alone by saying this, but please do not change the way it works. While I agree that it’s a little wonky when learning how to use it, I also believe it’s very rewarding once you get the hang of it and know how/when to use it. It has its own niche and I enjoy its play style very much.

So please, do not change it.

- A 1800+Hr Ranger Vet

+1 for sure. This thing is so good at doing what it’s designed for.

For those who feel like there’s something to ‘work around’, you should probably be using greatsword or Axe.

Neither if which are a main hand melee weapon…

DarkWasp.7291:

On my Ranger, I have logged 3,707 hours. I started using sword since launch, even before the meta builds formed. I still use it, it is my MAIN weapon receiving more focus, priority and dedication than any other weapon in the game on any class.

I still disagree with how it works.

It does have one advantage, and I kind of agree with the OP on this. It FEELS powerful, aggressive and when in some situations even satisfying. However, here comes a massive list of bullet points of where it falls short.

PvE (This is my main game. I’ve Rangered through exploration, farms, story, LS2 challenges, Liadri, Fractals, Dungeon Master, Dungeoneer, solo holding SW forts .etc)

snip – all your lovely points!

In conclusion: I’m not a top level PvP player, but I do quite well in PvE. If anything, the sword’s AA functionality has no place in PvE. I can see a few good uses in PvP, but I can also see enemies learning how to turn it against us if builds including it became too popular.

I suffer through it because I love Ranger and I love swords. I still dream of a brighter future for this otherwise wonderful weapon.

2000hr+ Ranger. Agreed to everything here, as I’m in a very similar circumstance. I also, disagree with OP’s point.

Azure.8670:

s/d Ranger is one of the only specs that can completely avoid a Revs UA without burning both dodges.

turn off auto attack and its fine, it took me months to get used to it now its whatever

It has nothing to do with auto-attack of sword being good though..

You’re using the 2 3 5 on s/d, not 1.

We can fix 1 while leaving 2 3 5 alone..

Also 2 need a QoL revamp too. The backward roll is slow, and the evade frame occurs too late.

Aomine.5012:

Azure.8670:

s/d Ranger is one of the only specs that can completely avoid a Revs UA without burning both dodges.

turn off auto attack and its fine, it took me months to get used to it now its whatever

It has nothing to do with auto-attack of sword being good though..

You’re using the 2 3 5 on s/d, not 1.

We can fix 1 while leaving 2 3 5 alone..

Also 2 need a QoL revamp too. The backward roll is slow, and the evade frame occurs too late.

I usually use the 4 skill too.

Lome.8239:

I personally like the sword as is.

Changing the skill to not have leaps would take away the leaps. No thanks.

Learn to cancel/swap if you want to use sword. It takes like 10 minutes on a dodge roll dummy.

wow this guy talk like a pro!. so how long have you been playing Ranger and can you explain how you do all that nonsense you spouted while having that long time of cast time + cancel time before you can use your next skills on your swap? won’t that make you useless for a long time because you cannot cancel a leap?

The sword chain can be kept as it is, but dodging need to override the chain, otherwise it’s dysfunctional. This post does Ranger Sword a big disservice and it’s posts like this that probably make sure the devs remain inactive on fixes that need to happen.

-A 4000+ hr Ranger Vet

~2,000 hours on my ranger and I still hate the auto attack. I’m mostly WvW and open world PvE oriented and solo a fair selection of fractals for a hobby (the harpy one is probably my favourite). Anyway.

The unresponsiveness into evades is my main bugbear, followed by how dangerous the sword is to use in elevated fights on rope bridges and platforms. If skill 3 animated like Death Blossom and Hornet’s Sting activated as fast as Lightning Reflexes, I could almost forgive the speed with which Monarch’s Leap times out (please be available longer) and the horror show of the auto attack.

Speaking of which, I wonder how the auto is going to fare with Action Camera. Anyone going to try that?

Sword needs only 1 change to make it perfect:
Leap only activate when the enemy hit is out of range.
That way when you are in close range you wont leap, if you don’t leap you wont be rooted, if you are not rooted you can’t complain, at the same time in PvP/WvW when the enemy is running away or if you de-target and attack you’ll be able to leap to/away from your enemy.

Cirian.8917:

Speaking of which, I wonder how the auto is going to fare with Action Camera. Anyone going to try that?

Probably the same or close to how it fares when using it with ICM: Clunky.

Tman.6349:

This sword is awesome and is perfect at what it does.

It’s not perfect.

Tman.6349:

Swagger.1459:

skills should not be about learning how to work around poor design. If this design is so good, then let’s give it to all swords and see how the player base reacts.

Additionally, enjoy your rooting and wonky movement while a sword wielding Revenant tears you apart…

Ranger sword could be infinitely better and there is not a valid reason why only 3 skills can’t be fixed or replaced… 3

It’s not about ‘working around poor design’ BUT, rather choosing a weapon that is designed for what you’re trying to do. This sword is awesome and is perfect at what it does.

Yeah, those Revenant swords are pretty awesome and perfect!

Swagger.1459:

Tman.6349:

Swagger.1459:

skills should not be about learning how to work around poor design. If this design is so good, then let’s give it to all swords and see how the player base reacts.

Additionally, enjoy your rooting and wonky movement while a sword wielding Revenant tears you apart…

Ranger sword could be infinitely better and there is not a valid reason why only 3 skills can’t be fixed or replaced… 3

It’s not about ‘working around poor design’ BUT, rather choosing a weapon that is designed for what you’re trying to do. This sword is awesome and is perfect at what it does.

Yeah, those Revenant swords are pretty awesome and perfect!

Not to mention when using UA (Revenant sword 3), it EVADES FOR LONGER PERIOD OF TIME than sword 2 and 3, WHILE DOING MASSIVE DAMAGE.

Also the AA on Revenant’s sword does WAY HIGHER damage than Ranger’s sword AA, while doesn’t has to deal with the clunky self-root.

I’m not going to discuss sword 4 and 5 on Rev because despite each of them have viable function, shield still seem to be more powerful in difficult contents or PVP/WvW,

From an animator’s point of view I always thought the sword was largely limited due to the way it was animated. Most attack animations will have an exit animation back to combat ready idle and an exit animation to dodge or a state animation tree that would allow the game to programmatically blend the attack animation with the movement animations (strafe, walk forward, walk right, walk left, etc) These exit animations would be for every attack in a chain. If there is a character deformation through space (or movement although poly characters don’t really move through space they deform through a skin deformer) Then that would complicate a re design in skills as the game would have to some how do an additive process in addition to the state machine to compensate for the characters inherit deformation in the animation. If that makes sense.

So if a character leaped ahead in the animation say 3 units but now you wanted to remove the root you would have to program it so that the game would move a moving character back three units and then figure out how far the player has moved the character in the direction the were moving. I think. The alternative would be to re animate the character so there was no inherit deformation in the animation but that would require animating an entire attack set. Either way its probably not an easy fix.

At least that was the way I understood it while looking at the animations. I could be completely wrong and the leap in the aa chain is programmatically added. But I would be surprised if this were the case.

Mr Pin.6728:

At least that was the way I understood it while looking at the animations. I could be completely wrong and the leap in the aa chain is programmatically added. But I would be surprised if this were the case.

It has nothing to do with animations of the rig itself and everything to do with the way the engine moves the root control (or whatever the asset is called) though the game environment.

For whatever reason, you can not override an action that moves you via a script with another action short of swapping the weapon that is the source of the skill.

It’s much easier to observe with Dart on the spear or Swoop on the GS. It’s universal. You get the same issue with the underwater skill ‘Slipstream’ on the Mesmer which always bugs the hell out of me when people use it in WvW.

Interesting. I was under the impression rooting the character was an aesthetic choice due to the way certain animations would interact with the root control movement. Sword auto attack 2 (kick) comes to mind. The animation has my norn perform a drop kick which would look awful (and really show the root control moving) if the character wasn’t rooted in place. Its… odd (in that its uncommon I guess?) that its a limitation of the engine.

They could totally fix all concerns if after Slash was completed, they just checked if the target was more than 150 range away, if it is, then kick/pounce. If it is not, just use Slash again. As long as the current functionality stays so that you can use it for mobility as well.

If swapping weapons breaks the animation, even if you swap to another sword, then they can use that same code to insert into the #2 & #3 skills to break the animation when you use them and also into the beginning of each link of the AA chain to check if you have used the dodge keybind.