Guild Wars 2

I’ve always felt that lightning reflexes should evade in the direction you are moving. It works nicely when facing an opponent but when running away it becomes utterly useless.

@vespers: That is a learned skill with Lightning Reflexes (and other abilities like it). You have to quickly orient yourself right before you use it, then re-orient and keep on going the direction you intended.

Those of us who also play Mesmer are pretty comfortable with it because Mesmer Staff Phase Retreat is (in my opinion) one of the hardest ones to benefit from this (have to be very quick). If you just run around for a bit practicing this, I’m sure you’ll get it.

There is also a hotkey you can set that will turn your character 180 degrees when you push it. This can be very helpful if wanting to run forward, roll forward, continue running forward as you:

• Running forward
• About face 180 degrees
• Lightning reflexes
• About face 180 degrees
• continue running

You know, I had completely forgotten about Preparations. I loved those in GW1.

Still, I think those would fall under “boons” as far as how they work (e.g. passively) and I do prefer that the game moves in a direction towards more and more active aspects and away from the more passive ones.

One thing I’d love is if Beastmastery gave my pets points in all the same stats that Celestial does. Last I checked, it currently it doesn’t give them Condition Damage nor Healing Power.

• The Healing Power would be nice when using Natural Healing and/or a pet that can heal (though, admittedly, I hardly every think about using a Moa or the Fern Hound)
• The Condition Damage would be nice when using any of the myriad of pets that inflict damaging conditions and/or when taking the Rending Attacks trait.

Sebrent.3625:

@vespers: That is a learned skill with Lightning Reflexes (and other abilities like it). You have to quickly orient yourself right before you use it, then re-orient and keep on going the direction you intended.

I’m very familiar with about face since i use sword leaps all the time but it just adds another layer of annoyance to using the skill.

The other thing is sword leap chains are barely if not any faster than simply running forward with swiftness (and since most rangers have very little you usually have none).

LR is even worse because it is a much shorter distance than sword. By the time you get it off you’re already overrun.

What you call “annoyance”, I call “more control over my ability” … and I’m a fan of putting more control in the players’ hands.

You want it to roll forward, others want it to roll backwards. Solution? Pick one and have players take a fraction of a second to orient their character to have it go in whatever direction they want.

Lightning Reflexes already gives you Vigor, is a Stunbreak, and can be traited to remove conditions. It rolls farther than a single Sword #2, but less far than chaining them together. I don’t see the problem here. It’s already a great skill.

Sebrent.3625:

What you call “annoyance”, I call “more control over my ability” … and I’m a fan of putting more control in the players’ hands.

except having it go in the direction you choose does not result in less control it results in more control by not having to deal with an unreliable about face so this point is completely invalid.

You want it to roll forward, others want it to roll backwards. Solution? Pick one and have players take a fraction of a second to orient their character to have it go in whatever direction they want.

no… everyone would be happy if it went in the direction you select. I have no idea why anyone would be against the idea of having go in the direction you select. Nobody loses. it would have no effect on your ability to go backwards at all. Another invalid argument.

To add to that as i have already explained, having to use about face slows you down. it is slower to use it than it is to just run normally which makes it a terrible skill outside of situations in which you face the enemy

anyway not going to waste anymore time on this silly discussion. your arguments are terrible and make zero sense.

If you want to run away before or after LR, just turn the camera, what a big issue (you can already evade the way you want). If you evade toward you’ll have to turn the camera in the same way to face again your oponent, or turn the camera to take distance backward (and now you don’t even know what your opponent is doing since he’s behind you), it’s pretty much the same thing except that it would complicate the fight. You want to complicate the fight to run easier. + it’s a break stun, it need to be instant, you don’t want to lose time buy choosing a direction, it’s dumb.

Currently, Lightning Reflex moves you in the direction that is 180 degrees from where you are facing.

You want it to roll in the direction you are currently moving…

To be moving in a direction, you need to be holding down one or more movement keys.

• How will this work when you are unable to move (e.g. immobilized/stunned)? Will it revert to just rolling backwards?

We’re playing on PCs, not game controllers with analog sticks. We have forward, backwards, left, and right and the 45 degree combinations between.

• To get rolling in any direction more fine-grained than that, you have to incorporate turning with the mouse … which is what you already have to do with the current incarnation of Lightning Reflexes.

If about-face is too slow for you, feel free to mouse turn yourself. About face is fast enough that Mesmers are able to use it with Phase Retreat for additional mobility and Phase Retreat doesn’t move you that far … if about-face is quick enough for Phase Retreat, then it’s quick enough for Lightning Reflexes.

Your suggestion could work fine, but I see the above issues and don’t really see any benefits except for those that are not satisfied with the same about-face that every other class uses for similar skills. As such, it seems like making this change would be a rather large waste of developer resources that could be much better allocated elsewhere (spirits, shouts, pet AI, etc.).

I have yet to see anyone else say “Rangers would be ‘fixed’ if Lightning Reflexes rolled in the direction I was moving”.

I’m somewhat confused by the fact that you aren’t bringing up how the rolls on MH Sword work if you Lightning Reflexes is such an issue.

I’m also confused that you previously mentioned that the Sword rolls farther than Lightning Reflexes when for it to do that you need to make quick use of the about-face hotkey. Otherwise it isn’t really gaining you any extra over Lightning Reflexes.

Feel free to have that attitude. I’ll continue having discussions about the points with or without you.