Guild Wars 2

Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear.

Adding Animation and effect to the mace is fair, but the cast time is not.

Skull crack has a pitiful range and it is single-target.

If the cast time truly needs to happen, then increase the pitiful range so that enemies cannot just step backward to dodge or make it cleave so that I can stun 3 foes at once.

The largest issue with Skull Crack is the unavoidably of it. It is impossible to reliably dodge at the moment because the animation is identical to the mace autoattack in all but the particle effects, and it only lasts 250 ms. Human reaction time is about 200-300 ms. Latency and network lag will be anywhere from 50-200 ms. It is physically impossible to avoid the ability reactively. That is why they implemented this change.

I think people are jumping to conclusions way too early. The cast time is only half a second and I doubt the new animation is gonna flash a big red sign saying you’re about to stun. If you’re good at landing skull crack, you’ll still be good at it post patch; it’ll just take half a second longer.