Guild Wars 2

So something I have noticed with more difficult to land burst skills such as Skull Crack and Kill Shot, if you sheath, dodge, swap weapons, or in any way cancel the skill it does not go on the old CD. I’ve been landing Kill Shot by repeatedly canceling it until they are out of countermeasures then going for the kill (shot). It’s a godsend for Mace as well. Think you aren’t going to hit? Cancel and try again if a few seconds.

For players that have actually used intentional canceling in the past this won’t be a hard tactic to pick up. I’m seeing several interesting new play styles forming in my head already. I hope that this was an intended change and that it remains. It is something that good players will make use of while bad ones will simply continuously waste their adrenaline.

You could always do this, but now that Burst skills share the same CD after self-interrupts as other skills it’s much more practical.

The hard part is timing it within half a second. You have to go from initiating, to realising you will miss, to sheathing in 0,5 seconds for most burst skills.

You can also use it planning to cancel, wasting their dodges to set up an eviscerate or earthshaker. Though I’m sure if you do that you’ll run into “kitten I would of hit them” once and a while.

Cygnus.6903:

The hard part is timing it within half a second. You have to go from initiating, to realising you will miss, to sheathing in 0,5 seconds for most burst skills.

It’s certainly not easy, but it was something I already did with some skills already. It’s not hard with Kill Shot though, considering that cast time. I’ve noticed though that it can actually be a major help. It makes people panic and blow all of their dodges/blocks/blinds/whatever, which was time you wouldn’t be doing damage anyways but now you’ve forced them all out at once and left them wide open.

It’s a cool mechanic and makes the other nerfs potentially worthwhile. This is what I’ve been messing with.

With proper use of your Bull’s/Rifle Butt in addition to your runes and the updated Brawler’s Recovery you can generally stave off condis long enough to kill them before they kill you. I’m wondering if it might be better to take 2 points from Strength to get Forceful GS in Arms. It’s a question of whether the CD reduction + might is more important or the extra damage which is applied to KS. I think Brawler’s Recovery is a must, especially with so many Warriors running around with LB. with this setup you can cleanse the Immob with a movement skill and then swap to get rid of those bleeds.

Skullcracker will probably look like this now, it’s not like Cleansing Ire was that great on it to begin with but there wasn’t much choice before.

Many changes this patch were…questionable. However this new CD reduction on burst skills was a smart one. I think that not only was the skill floor raised a bit, the ceiling rose as well.

i freaked out for a minute, i thought you are saying the new patch denied canceling.

Well, with practice everything becomes better of course.

Thing is, with both your builds, how do you build up adrenaline? Especially with the skullcrack, this will be way too slow. In the end, you have to use a burst skill, what then?

I see BR more of an addition to Cleansing Ire in case of going up against heavy condi, then a replacement.

Cygnus.6903:

Well, with practice everything becomes better of course.

Thing is, with both your builds, how do you build up adrenaline? Especially with the skullcrack, this will be way too slow. In the end, you have to use a burst skill, what then?

I see BR more of an addition to Cleansing Ire in case of going up against heavy condi, then a replacement.

With the Rifle build, you use Volly so frequently you’d be surprised how fast it add up. Don’t forget how many times WWattack can hit as well. I also tend to start the fight off with Berserker Stance to get the early lead and then press the advantage.

With Skullcracker you can use Counterblow as a way to gain after Zerker Stance, especially vs ranged enemies. Let’s also not forget that you’re going to be swapping almost on CD to keep condis off which is also giving adren. It’s not as good as having CI in long fights, but both of these builds are designed to not let it get that far.

So far they seem to be working alright. There’s simply no way to move traits around and not compromise damage (Skull Crack + 100 hits a lot less without both Forceful GS and Unsuspecting Foe) or condi removal, which is a problem in both PvP and WvW if you don’t at least somewhat plan for it.

People are seriously scared of Kill Shot though, you don’t leave them much choice, use your countermeasures or eat what could be a massive hit (helped along by Sigil of Intel) and the GS dmg nerf didn’t hit Skullcracker tooooooo badly since that last hit still hits as hard as ever.

They aren’t forgiving builds that’s for sure, but I think some will appreciate that. I know I do.

EDIT: has anyone else noticed that it feels like in WvW the SPLIT SECOND you stop attacking something you get out of combat. Some would consider that an advantage but it’s actually a massive pain when playing a sharpshooter.

BurrTheKing.8571:

So something I have noticed with more difficult to land burst skills such as Skull Crack and Kill Shot, if you sheath, dodge, swap weapons, or in any way cancel the skill it does not go on the old CD. I’ve been landing Kill Shot by repeatedly canceling it until they are out of countermeasures then going for the kill (shot). It’s a godsend for Mace as well. Think you aren’t going to hit? Cancel and try again if a few seconds.

For players that have actually used intentional canceling in the past this won’t be a hard tactic to pick up. I’m seeing several interesting new play styles forming in my head already. I hope that this was an intended change and that it remains. It is something that good players will make use of while bad ones will simply continuously waste their adrenaline.

You could always do this, but now that Burst skills share the same CD after self-interrupts as other skills it’s much more practical.

Isn’t this really old? I use weapon stow on important skills all the time to prevent a miss.

MarauderShields.6830:

BurrTheKing.8571:

So something I have noticed with more difficult to land burst skills such as Skull Crack and Kill Shot, if you sheath, dodge, swap weapons, or in any way cancel the skill it does not go on the old CD. I’ve been landing Kill Shot by repeatedly canceling it until they are out of countermeasures then going for the kill (shot). It’s a godsend for Mace as well. Think you aren’t going to hit? Cancel and try again if a few seconds.

For players that have actually used intentional canceling in the past this won’t be a hard tactic to pick up. I’m seeing several interesting new play styles forming in my head already. I hope that this was an intended change and that it remains. It is something that good players will make use of while bad ones will simply continuously waste their adrenaline.

You could always do this, but now that Burst skills share the same CD after self-interrupts as other skills it’s much more practical.

Isn’t this really old? I use weapon stow on important skills all the time to prevent a miss.

You would get a 10sec CD, now it’s around 3 for bursts.

It has always been 3 seconds, on both burst and normal skills. Same as the interrupt CD (non-Power block).

Phoenix.5047:

It has always been 3 seconds, on both burst and normal skills. Same as the interrupt CD (non-Power block).

Last I remembered no. If you in any way canceled a burst skill it went on a 7-10 second CD. I feel like I would have noticed this before if it wasn’t the case since I’ve messed around with rifle so much and you frequently would be forced to break the animation fairly often.

Looks like there is something to test then, eh fellas? :-)

On the topic of canceling skills … which method do you guys use?
– stow weapon
– esc (hotkeyed to something more reachable)

Sebrent.3625:

Looks like there is something to test then, eh fellas? :-)

On the topic of canceling skills … which method do you guys use?
– stow weapon
– esc (hotkeyed to something more reachable)

I have my game set up like a FPS. my attack skills are still 15 but my utilities are Q-E-R-Shift-G. I keep Stow as X and it’s what I tend to use.

Yeah, I use stow weapon as ‘R’. This works for everything except flurry, earthshaker, and eviscerate I think.

I confess I can’t remember what the CD for a cancel cast was prepatch, but it sure feels short atm.

So an update.

After testing a bunch of different builds I gotta say I’m really, really put out. While they CAN work fine in WvW, when it comes to PvP nothing has really changed. I’m fed up with LB and Hammer. They’ve both become boring and feel like a crutch. However, you also aren’t rewarded for running anything more challenging. I like using GS, it’s a weapon that forces you to play around its weaknesses for it to pay off.

The changes to Brawler’s Recovery aren’t bad but still don’t change a whole lot. The only thing I could see it being good for is allowing you to drop Berserker Stance for something else. Maybe something like this or this. I really, really want to be able to use Skullcracker…but honestly the build has several builds that just 100% counter it. I feel like the Sundering Mace trait would need to allow Skull Crack to strip (AKA go through) Stability (on a fairly lengthy icd) before it would ever be a weapon people would want to use again.

I’m really disappointed. Rifle can be fun but still isn’t something you would ever you seriously and the Mace AA buff was nice but doesn’t make it viable. They did NOTHING to nudge people away from Hambow or Axebow in PvP. Even in WvW you’ll still probably want to still run Hammer/Sword + Horn especially with the Signet of Rage nerf. My enthusiasm for the class I’ve put the most time into is pretty much gone.

WvW GS/Hammer this is useful. GS burst is rather visible with the glow effect and you can cancel it with the stow. Kinda easy to bait out dodge by doing GS burst then swap to hammer and burst.

Sure, its not useful to dodge GS burst as it doesnt really do that much damage, so it might not work after a while. But as it is now, people seem to waste dodge when they see warrior getting something glowy going on.

Also, I feel like seathing weapon is something you have to do with Hammer to bring out its full potential :P