Guild Wars 2

Yes, one of those threads.

But since ANet is finally looking to reword some weapons, this is the best time to remind them about sword #1, or that mainhand dagger we were promised a year ago.

Here here!
Sword auto-attack usability changes would be great.

Sword 1 will never change. Peters may be gone, but his mentality lingers. Main-hand dagger? I bet it’s being saved as part of an Incoming new elite specialization weapon for the next planned expansion already confirmed to be soon or currently being worked on. Wait ’til 2017.

Change the title though to just, “An Opportunity to Look at Ranger Weapons” instead. If we look past the auto attack of Sword, there are other issues with it and other weapons.

• Hornet’s Sting: Reduced or removal of the cast time to remove the clunkiness of it.
• Kick (Sword 1b): Could this possibly be a cleave and have the cripple reduced to 1s? Warrior’s 1c chain on main-hand sword applies 1s of Cripple, damage, and cleaves. This move was never updated since they removed the knockback from it upon release.
• Shortbow: …
• Hunter’s Call (Warhorn): Update it to either have more utility (blind, boon removal, etc.) or up the number of targets it can attack to match Superior Rune of the Mad King. Why is a rune better than our weapon, again? “It’s because it’s Ranger” doesn’t cut it anymore after 3 years.
• Axe: Long after-casts on the main-hand set, and for a skirmishing profession, Whirling Defense roots us. Let’s also bring up Ferocity on Honed Axes because… let’s just merge traits without thinking about their effectiveness in the first place.
• Solar Beam (Staff 1): Mesmer Spatial Surge. Equal treatment, developers. Yes, either let us spam it without a target for posterity or whatever reason we want, or bring down another profession to our misery level – we’d love the company. Currently, the restrictions are in place to remove any benefit of using it out of combat to gain astral force.

Whatever else that I didn’t think of.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Sword 1 will never change. Peters may be gone, but his mentality lingers. Main-hand dagger? I bet it’s being saved as part of an Incoming new elite specialization weapon for the next planned expansion already confirmed to be soon or currently being worked on. Wait ’til 2017.

Hey, mesmer scepter is apparently being changed (though we have yet to see how), which is paired with the ranger’s sword in the “why would you make it’s auto attack work this way” category. You never know.

Doubt it. Every weapon change since launch from every major patch, update, and/or feature pack has been so minor that if Anet actually changed the sword auto, it would mean they finally grew some balls to flip off the players that like that stick ‘n’ leap without being able to dodge programming of theirs.

So, again. Doubt it.

Yea, it’s been over 3 years that this has been posted…

Devs looked at it, said they would fix it, said they were trying out something that would fix it, then realized that their fix didn’t work and gave up on fixing it.

I.e. working as intended.

I so want to like this class…it’s the first character I rolled. However, 1h sword just has terrible mechanics and the elite spec is healer based, which is not the direction I want to go with ranger. Sadly, since no professions can really do anything well without their elite spec (with very, very rare exception), this pretty much means that you run with sparkly-alien-looking healing mechanics, even if you aren’t trying to run as a healer.

The sword was always working as intended, but after much qq they said they would look into making some tweaks (referring to how latency can affect this weapon).
After messing with it they said that the improvement were so minuet that they we keeping it as is.

Funny how some claim that this weapon is so unusable because you cant dodge yet, people use it in condi builds for the evade.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

Funny how some claim that this weapon is so unusable because you cant dodge yet, people use it in condi builds for the evade.

Different playstyles, and you know that, so no need to try and be funny over ppl wanting to change #1, which is what we talk about.

I use sword all the time, but I still hate the fact you can’t dodge when the autoattack chain is running. And no, you don’t have to teach me about turning off autoattack on #1, everybody knows that now.

Turning auto attack off is one of the worst things you can do. That advice has been giving time and time again and is one of the reasons people really haven’t mastered this weapon. Slowing the action down doesn’t help play at a faster pace.

I admit I haven’t used my sword much in hot maps and use the other perfectly good weapon no one likes Axe main hand, but that more about the pools of death than the mechanics of the sword (wouldn’t use gs either).

Serraphin Storm.2369:

Turning auto attack off is one of the worst things you can do.

I don’t, and for that I suffer during some encounters since I can’t react to what’s happening. Well I react, but my char is locked up in the animation. But everybody already knows all of these things. Would I like to see the devs fix this issue? Hell yes. Will they? Not very likely.

To clarify: I want them to leave sword as it is but with the change to it that dodge/evades would override the animation. It can be done, but it would take a real programmer I guess and not some designer tweaking numbers in a database.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

The sword was always working as intended, but after much qq they said they would look into making some tweaks (referring to how latency can affect this weapon).
After messing with it they said that the improvement were so minuet that they we keeping it as is.

Funny how some claim that this weapon is so unusable because you cant dodge yet, people use it in condi builds for the evade.

This cannot be anything else but PvE soul without any real hardcore tries speaking.
How is not being able to dodge at the right time not a game-breaking difference?

I died countless of times in PvP because of it, I died in PvE countless of times because of it, heck, even though last time I played WvW was half a year ago I dieeed countless of times because of it.

No other profession suffers from such a mechanic. None. People use it in condition builds because they don’t use auto-attacks as conditioners.
So could you please enlighten the rest of us, how is a weapon that forces you into such treatments as turning off auto-attack, using Action Camera, Binding a stop-action button (just to be safe using this weapon) a good design?
If you can’t, can you show me one class or one other weapon that requires such a drastic change in game controls?

Please don’t ask him to enlighten us. The guy can’t even follow the advice on his own signature.

Give me bleeding on chain skills and I’m happy.

Better off asking for a buff on GS auto and move its evade to sword auto.

Condi build use sword for evade, mobility and Fire Shield. It is not perfect, far from it, but it works… kinda.

I play with the action camera and when on melee I don’t always target the enemy, you know what happens if you use sword without a target selected, it can get you killed but it is super hilarious. If you deselect your target just before Puonce you get 2 pounces in a row (to the direction you are facing past the enemy) and combined with a Hornet Sting + leap you can get pretty good distance to your enemy when disengaging.

They could make sword easier to use but I think that it would result in a loss of those little trick you can pull off with it. Some ppl just love the way sword works at the moment but to use it well and effectively is almost beyond l2p, not impossible but Hard with a capital h.

Blue Hare.8612:

They could make sword easier to use but I think that it would result in a loss of those little trick you can pull off with it.

Not really. I’ve posted it before that there is a way to appease both while working with the available coding to allow it to dodge while retaining most of its chase-down/movement.

It literally boils down to altering sword in such an odd way that I don’t think Anet would even think, let alone bother with it.

• Reduce the range of Kick (1b) and Pounce (1c) to 130 range to allow free movement while executing the attack and dodging between casts of 1b & 1c.
• Add ¼s of Super Speed to Kick (1b) and ½s Super Speed to Pounce (1c) (equal amount for each cast time).

Taking into account movement speed while in combat with the cast time of the attack, assuming the player is moving forward during the entire chain, and including the attack range of each attack (130), Kick (1b) is reduced from 300 range down to 230 range while Pounce (1c) is reduced from 430 to 330.

Those 2 changes allows the current, unique animation to remain, while allowing free movement while executing the chain, max-melee range combat on sword, and the ability to dodge between casts of 1b & 1c, and retain about 80% (860 total current range vs 690 total new range) of the chain’s distance (chase-down ability/range).

Even tricks such as the double Pounce you mentioned will be mostly retained with this change, since Pounce (and Kick) would be non-leap, free movement action where the benefits of Super Speed would be able to apply to the player.

The solution is so simple that I’m not surprised Jon Peters never thought of it.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

Funny how some claim that this weapon is so unusable because you cant dodge yet, people use it in condi builds for the evade.

That’s some Grade A intellectual dishonesty there.

We all know what the sword is used for in a condi build and it is not using the auto attack as a source of damage which is what prevents dodging during parts of the chain.

This is the issue.

It is a fact.

No one cares that a condi build that only uses sword for 2&3 works because it makes sparse use of 1.

Changing 1 to not be kitten wouldn’t negatively affect the build.

Condi Ranger is currently just as mediocre as any other vanilla build, and wasn’t even top tier stuff before the xpac so I’m not sure what people are even defending.

The evades on the weapon are good enough to be used in a build purely for the evade. Going with the weapon evade over the normal dodge will help people adjust to using this weapon. Once one is more comfortable with using the will begin to be able to use the normal dodge as the usual except in the half a second your doing the leap.

Question: Why do you think the leap roots?
I like the feel of the sword, I like the aa I wouldn’t be in favor of moving the aa to say skill two. I used the sword both in Pve and Spvp (not as much since Hot).

Changing this really wont open up build for those who camp long bow. For those who are unable to melee with it now. The root is what you blame for your mistakes.

There are traits that other classes have that put their melee game above ranger’s fixing the root won’t change that.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

…

Changing this really wont open up build for those who camp long bow. For those who are unable to melee with it now. The root is what you blame for your mistakes.
…

Reading this made me realize you have no idea which kind of players are you addressing with your arguments.

Well, I did my try here, I know when to stop.

I wish wish i could upvote this whole post a few hundred more times

Tragic Positive.9356:

No other profession suffers from such a mechanic. None.

More to the point, none of the other professions that can use a sword (and there are five of them, I’ll remind you) have this many problems with it.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

For those who are unable to melee with it now. The root is what you blame for your mistakes.

Make a Marauders build using the 1h sword as your primary dps source, film it working because “skillz”, and then prove everyone wrong.

The leaps absolutely do prevent dodges during movement frames. Sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting “L2P!” over and over won’t change facts.

Substance E.4852:

Serraphin Storm.2369:

For those who are unable to melee with it now. The root is what you blame for your mistakes.

Make a Marauders build using the 1h sword as your primary dps source, film it working because “skillz”, and then prove everyone wrong.

The leaps absolutely do prevent dodges during movement frames. Sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting “L2P!” over and over won’t change facts.

In a bunker heavy meta your suggesting Marauders. I also said that since Hot I haven’t been running sword and it has nothing to do with the root.

If you cant use it , Its on you. Removing the root isn’t going to make it useable for those of you who cant use it.

I guess this is the time for /facepalm

I wish we could get some confirmation that anet is specifically addressing this community wide agreed upon problem with the upcoming rebalancing and whatnot….

Anet be like ok lets fix ranger longsword bah to much work lets just say it works like “INTENDED” ok lets look on druids base healing and lets nerf it

Redemer.2601:

Anet be like ok lets fix ranger longsword bah to much work lets just say it works like “INTENDED” ok lets look on druids base healing and lets nerf it

“intended” being the most wonky clunky weapon in the game…

daniellepierce.9718:

Redemer.2601:

Anet be like ok lets fix ranger longsword bah to much work lets just say it works like “INTENDED” ok lets look on druids base healing and lets nerf it

“intended” being the most wonky clunky weapon in the game…

they havent touched it since beta and now when the “notes” are out its confirmed they arent touching it for this balance patch and Im guessing they never will either its pretty much a fact anet has given up on longsword ranger