Guild Wars 2

What does it offer really? 4 is majorly overshadowed by the shield, and 5 is too much of a niche ability, and outside of pvp, axe does its job better.

More importantly, both skills are defense/control oriented, when Shiro is supposed to be the assassin legend. I would prefer something similar to Guardian’s GS 5 for sword 5.

Shield was supposed to be defensive
Axe was supposed to be utility
Sword was supposed to be damage&control – it doesnt do it job atm.

2 reasons;

-Shacking wave hits less than autoatk and that 2sec immo doesnt do a jack vs current builds
-Graps shadow makes no sense..a pull in melee range? Plz.

I’ve found some niche uses for it. Like Staff 5, it’s great for getting enemies away from trebuchet or capture points, as well as hauling them off of someone they’re about to stomp. Yanked someone out of the AoEs fields they tried to trap me in, also.

It’s a decent tool for positioning control, and people don’t expect it. Not amazing, but useful.

I would love to have a leap in sword 5 and increase block time in sword 4, also increase cripple range from sword 4 to 900 like ranger gs 4

Sword OH is terribly underwhelming. Axe with its shadowstep performs so much better. Little use for the sword pull in pve.

I never have luck with Sword 5 in moving targets. The block is nice situationally, but Axe is so much better.

IIRC, as per the Shiro reveal stream the idea behind skill 5 isn’t just control, but rather pulling an enemy out of a group to assassinate them away from their buddies. Which fits perfectly fine with Shiro.

Having it just be a straight-up ranged pull would probably be more universally useful, but it would also remove the uniqueness of the skill, and would require you to already be away from the enemy group in order to pull off that sort of assassination type maneuver.

Having a shadowstep would be completely redundant with Shiro’s stance, which already has a built-in shadowstep in its utility set. So that’d be pretty boring.

I’d rather the skill stay as it is, but just get some tweaks to reliability and pull distance. Maybe give it a small ranged attack aspect (maybe something like 300) to help with the reliability and let you catch fleeing opponents a bit better while still keeping the general flavor of the skill in-tact.

As for the block… yah, its pretty lackluster. I don’t have a problem with OH sword having a block, as Herald is an elite spec and not part of the core Revenant so I don’t think its really fair to say that sword can’t have defense because shield already does. But it does need some help in overall effectiveness, namely as far as Shackling Wave. It should do a lot more damage, maybe get a wider cone and / or longer AoE (600 range perhaps).

I think we know what idea was behind grasp shadow but you really cant isolate anyone with 600 range pull in melee..lol

Wanna isolate someone? Engi magnet says hi. Melee pull makes no sense and either it should be changed to it old datamined 600 range version/ raised to 1200 range or simply become a knockdown in melee. That shadowstep backward is also troublesome in pve as it causes you to dps loss so you never want to use sword offhand over axe.

Another thing is that shacking wave hits like a wet noodle when it should hit as hard as debilitating slam which means 120% damage increase from current value. Its a joke that 10 energy cost skill hits for less than autoatk from staff

Sword 4 block is fine since it’s a mobile block and the cooldown for the block is lower than shield. The secondary attack is just weak and pretty much always ignored – it should punish in a large range and doesn’t fulfill either a control or damage role. “Sword 5” just needs it’s cast time reduced (aka Shadow Strike) so it can connect since 600 range isn’t really a disengage with a 1/2s cast time plus aftercast. But if Sword 5 also received a chill or short immobilize or a blind, it would help with the soft control aspect much better.

The problem really with both sword offhand weapon skills is neither are the equivalent of sacrificing the range/mobility/damage of axe nor the raw defensive utility of both shield skills.

Just give it a 300 range and a 600 shadowstep.

The target gets pulled 900 and you move 600.

However the shadowstep should go off regardless if it hits or not.