Guild Wars 2

I would be Happy with 1h sword if they made one change: Dodging should interrupt current actions, including the lightning fast 1h sword combo we have.

this is all it would take to fix everyone’s complaints…

You are new around here, right?

Yeah, that is the thing people complain the most about the ranger sword, there are a few ways to work around that issue but those are still just work around.

Most PvP players like the way sword works, for PvE (outside dungeon bosses) it is a very clunky weapon, for WvW opinions get divided.

I’ve been around but never posted. all the “fixes” I’ve seen were more involved, when all they really need to do is make dodge interrupt. my only problem is that.

Actually, the entire sword animation would have to be changed so that the autoattack doesn’t act as leaps anymore, which is the reason you can’t interrupt them with a dodge (leaps are the only skill you can’t interrupt with a dodge, presumably because you aren’t grounded).

This would require a skill team, balance team, and art/animation team to “fix” a skill that is arguably 50/50 love-hate as far as the community expresses.

Understandable that the weapon has a learning curve and even then can still be frustrating, particularly on the new map today, but even then, it takes a lot more work to make what most people think is a “simple” change than what people give the process credit for.

jcbroe.4329:

Actually, the entire sword animation would have to be changed so that the autoattack doesn’t act as leaps anymore, which is the reason you can’t interrupt them with a dodge (leaps are the only skill you can’t interrupt with a dodge, presumably because you aren’t grounded).

This would require a skill team, balance team, and art/animation team to “fix” a skill that is arguably 50/50 love-hate as far as the community expresses.

I find that odd, VERY odd actually, since a weapon swap will break the chain instantly (also the case for GS#3, for example). Implement the same for dodge, without the weapon swap ofc, voila – done!

Don’t do things needlessly complicated; settle with a simpler solution when there exists one.

jcbroe.4329:

Actually, the entire sword animation would have to be changed so that the autoattack doesn’t act as leaps anymore, which is the reason you can’t interrupt them with a dodge (leaps are the only skill you can’t interrupt with a dodge, presumably because you aren’t grounded).

This would require a skill team, balance team, and art/animation team to “fix” a skill that is arguably 50/50 love-hate as far as the community expresses.

Understandable that the weapon has a learning curve and even then can still be frustrating, particularly on the new map today, but even then, it takes a lot more work to make what most people think is a “simple” change than what people give the process credit for.

It would be simple to just speed it up, it’s basically a clunky heartseeker and thieves have no problem dodging out of those because they are done with very fast and back on the ground.

Speeding up sword one and sword two would go a long way.

Anet have stated that they are indeed working on a “fix” for the sword AA, but they have not told us any proximate time of implementation, not even a soon™. so don’t hold your breath.

OGDeadHead.8326:

jcbroe.4329:

Actually, the entire sword animation would have to be changed so that the autoattack doesn’t act as leaps anymore, which is the reason you can’t interrupt them with a dodge (leaps are the only skill you can’t interrupt with a dodge, presumably because you aren’t grounded).

This would require a skill team, balance team, and art/animation team to “fix” a skill that is arguably 50/50 love-hate as far as the community expresses.

I find that odd, VERY odd actually, since a weapon swap will break the chain instantly (also the case for GS#3, for example). Implement the same for dodge, without the weapon swap ofc, voila – done!

Don’t do things needlessly complicated; settle with a simpler solution when there exists one.

And how you do imagine that the code for weapon swapping (or stowing) is anything like the code written for dodging?

One deals with interchanging active objects while the other is a movement based action that is dictated by in game physics. They use two entirely different mechanisms.

It isn’t impossible, but it isn’t just a situation of copying and pasting either. If anything it would mean that the autoattack speed would have to get slowed down to allow for a delay period in between attacks so that a “cancel action” function gets sent to the server in order to cancel animations and allow people to dodge in between the attack chain.

Prysin.8542:

Anet have stated that they are indeed working on a “fix” for the sword AA, but they have not told us any proximate time of implementation, not even a soon™. so don’t hold your breath.

Source?

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Prysin.8542:

Anet have stated that they are indeed working on a “fix” for the sword AA, but they have not told us any proximate time of implementation, not even a soon™. so don’t hold your breath.

Source?

It was mentioned during the Ranger CDI. I wish I could dig it up for you. Jon Peters had also mentioned that he would tinker with the sword before that, but whatever tinkering he claimed he did he stated afterwards that it didn’t make it into the patch and that it would be looked into further down the line.

I could have sworn Anet has made it clear that this is “working as intended”, never heard of any fixes being mentioned here . Doesn’t matter it’s stupid or not, so long as it’s “intended”, we suck with it. But in any event, I wouldn’t hold my breath for any changes if I were you.

Yes they said that it was working as intended and later they said they would look at it and see what could be done and nothing else was heard ever since.

jcbroe.4329:

And how you do imagine that the code for weapon swapping (or stowing) is anything like the code written for dodging?

I don’t. Question is, what is it in the weapon swapping code that happens first of all, that is capable of interrupting any action, even mid-air when using GS#3 for example?
That code right there is what interests me.

jcbroe.4329:

If anything it would mean that the autoattack speed would have to get slowed down to allow for a delay period in between attacks so that a “cancel action” function gets sent to the server in order to cancel animations and allow people to dodge in between the attack chain.

Pure speculation on your part, since again, the “cancel action” is right there in some form in the weapon swapping code, and works instantly. In other words, no, the animation would not have to get slowed down.

Dodge interrupts attacks. That’s why you have no problem dodging with all other weapon autoattacks.

Dodge doesn’t interrupt leaps. This is by design. If you Swoop and try to dodge in the middle, it won’t work. (You can however swap weapons in the middle of a Swoop to interrupt it, go figure.)

The problem with sword autoattack is a subtle bug combined with a not-obvious behavior of the attack chain.

• The bug is that not only can you not dodge during a leap, the game prevents you from dodging for about a half second after the leap. No reason why it should do that, it just does. As people have figured out, you can tap a movement key or hit a different (non-leap) weapon skill to override this block. Then you can dodge immediately.

• The non-obvious behavior is that while only 2 of the 3 skills in the sword autoattack chain are listed as leaps, the 3rd skill will also leap if the previous skill hits something. This means if you’re whaling away at a target, all three skills are leaps, which combined with the above bug make it nearly impossible to dodge during the entire autoattack chain.

Fixing the bug actually wouldn’t help as much as you might think. Because it’s an autoattack chain and you can’t dodge until after a leap finishes and the attack hits, all three attacks are effectively leaps. So even if they fixed the bug and you managed to dodge out, your next autoattack would just leap right back in. To really fix it, they’d have to special case ranger sword’s autoattack so that a dodge also turned attack off.

A more obvious fix would be to just remove the leaps from sword autoattack. But that would destroy what makes the weapon special for many skilled ranger players – its ability to stick to a target and instantly switch to mobility at the player’s whim for escape or repositioning.

OGDeadHead.8326:

jcbroe.4329:

And how you do imagine that the code for weapon swapping (or stowing) is anything like the code written for dodging?

I don’t. Question is, what is it in the weapon swapping code that happens first of all, that is capable of interrupting any action, even mid-air when using GS#3 for example?
That code right there is what interests me.

jcbroe.4329:

If anything it would mean that the autoattack speed would have to get slowed down to allow for a delay period in between attacks so that a “cancel action” function gets sent to the server in order to cancel animations and allow people to dodge in between the attack chain.

Pure speculation on your part, since again, the “cancel action” is right there in some form in the weapon swapping code, and works instantly. In other words, no, the animation would not have to get slowed down.

It is speculation, I agree.

Some things we do know though;

• Weapons are their own objects, which are designated as active or inactive
• Activating and Deactivating weapons, aka weapon swapping, is instantaneous
• Unequipping a weapon outside of combat during a channel won’t interrupt the channel, or the animation or anything. This implies that there is some sort of mechanism specifically tied to the actual weaponswap action

Speculating entirely, I’d say that the mechanism is more than likely the stow weapon action, meaning that the weapon swap stows the current set and activates the other set.

So, theoretically, because it is instantaneous, if somebody was able to tie a weapon stow feature to the end of the animations, it would create a window to be able to dodge without having to change any of the animations.

Theoretically of course.

Xhulifactor.2417:

I’ve been around but never posted. all the “fixes” I’ve seen were more involved, when all they really need to do is make dodge interrupt. my only problem is that.

Pretty much this …. I don’t have this issue on almost any other character. I really don’t even have it on Greatsword where I’m always dodging right in the middle of an attack animation. And I imagine they’ve GOTTEN bug reports about it by now. They had the opportunity to tell us WHY it hadn’t been fixed during the Dev-Community talks but they ignored it for some reason. What we really need here is someone who can just corner one them at the PAX convention and finally get a real answer.