Guild Wars 2

Because I refuse to play with Longbow!

…

Alright, now to the actual topic; Skullcrack…

As the Warrior community is well aware, Skullcrack is a burst skill on the Mainhand Mace – oftentimes used in a small variety of builds that require the daze to land skills that are else neigh impossible to hit, think of Hundred Blades Yolo

Now the skill is in theory great, and I managed to get a lot of moments filled with pure joy peforming such a combo, but there are two big issues with the skill to me:

• 130 range – and no leap, so without immobilize it is extremely difficult to land
• It get’s countered hard by other builds of a Warrior(!)

I mean really, Earthshaker is an AoE stun – with a range of 600 and a blast finsiher (!) – completely overshadowing Skullcrack…
Let’s look at the other Burst Skilsl as well, Eviscerate is a leap, with damage scaling capabilities, Arcing Slice an AoE Cleaving power attack and the last contender to compete is Combustive Shot which is just a rediculous skill on it’s own… (I won’t mention killshot because… well killshot)

All of these, when compared to Skullcrack, have less of a margin to miss, making mainhand Mace, or just Skullcrack in general, completely underpeforming when compared to the other weapons in their respective builds… Now that the Adrenaline Change kicked in, this made Skullcrack arguably a nightmare of a spec to play – but it gets worse…

Skullcrack is commonly run on, again, burst builds – but the hilarious part is, aside from being underpeforming when compared to the other Burst Skills, is that you can counter it hard with Stability. Granted, Stability was made for these purposes, but on a skill this difficult to land, and seeing as how most popular Warrior builds do have stabilty 90% of the time on their builds, it get’s outclassed by it’s own class!

Proposal
Now I got a suggestion for the skill to make it somewhat more desirable with the following, the previous skill still exists except with an addition with this;

Adrenaline level spent results in a stun, or removes stability:

• 1 bar spent – Stun 1s or Removes Stability
• 2 bars spent – Stun 2s or Removes Stability + 1s Stun
• 3 bars spent – Stun 3s or Removes Stability + 2s Stun

This change would at least give Skullcrack a chance to peform against it’s own class, since you are now just too harshly punished by the skill itself…

Discuss, I would love to hear opions, additions or different ideas to make the skill more desirable…

I’m a skullcracker warrior and I don’t think skullcrack should remove stability. Stability is meant to counter-play stuns. I’m fine with that. Only thing skullcrack needs is a longer range. At 130 currently, u have to be on top of ur opponent to ensure it will hit. It’s too short. The range should be at 200. Then the skill is fine.

PS: if they really want to strengthen skullcrack builds again, then just move Unsuspecting Foe back to Adept.

if you run mace you also run shield > shield bash = a small leap + 1 sec stun
= enough time to land your Skullcrack..

Skullcrack is 3sec stun.. earthshaker only 2sec..
skull crack is harder to see compared to earthshaker (the leap and the hammer above head is so kitten easy to see.. cant miss it to dodge)

If you make it a leap skill it would be kinda OP..

Range from 130 to 200 seems “OK”

Just hate that this skill is 3sec base stun.. + the sigil it becomes a 4sec stun. thats massive!!

But again. people say its HARD to land.. dunno why because you have a daze AND leap stun on shield.. how hard can it be to land a skullcrack after that.. its not that we all run 3x stability.. most players only run 1 stunbreaker + 1x stability..

Frankly, I do run shield with it, but not because I like the shield that much more over the other offhands… Besides, when compared to 2 other popular builds, Sword Condi and Axe/bow, the offhands are optional as you see fit – wheras with Skullcrack you are locked in taking shield… Sword, Axe, Warhorn and even Mace would make not enough sense to run, simply because you miss out on that one leap

You would also argue that somehow Earthshaker is less desirable than Skullcrack because it has a more obvious tell (I cannot tell honestly, the Standard Models are borked), but you have to keep in mind that this skill functions as a ranged AoE Stun as to compared to a single targetted 130 range stun (Which functions on standing on the target)
The reason why Hammer is picked for it’s own build is the area of control, it makes it a potent teamfighter with dangerous and frequent CCing capabilities, which honestly even Mace/Shield can never compare to…
The Shield Bash skill is also on a 25s cooldown, as to compared with Earthshaker, which in theory you could land every 10s (with some emphasis on “in theory”), which leaves the build within a small window of oppertunity speaking only about weapons…

Also, the 3/4s Stun isn’t that bad anymore considering most people, as you state, run one stunbreak and one stability – it is not like Skullcrack can be spammed, and neither can it, or any of your stuns within a build (Shield Bash and Bull’s Charge on occasion). This is not even just because of Hambows, but also Terror Necromancers being the dominating builds for their class… Most people have learned to deal with CC’s in general, making a weapon like this fading more and more away in a niche of slow to no return…

As it stands, Warrior builds are stale, and I mean incredibly stale – but this is also due to weapon sets being undesirable – would you argue that Skullcrack is not? I know that in the past there was this issue with M/S+Hammer being way too much of a pain to deal with, but we have also had this Hambow issue for… well longer than a year now…
I am trying to fill in the lackluster abilities because honestly, I do not want to be shoehorned within the same build(s) for years to come…

I like the idea but….
How about this.
1 bar of adrenaline = 1s stun
2 bars of adrenaline = 2s stun or removal of stability + 1s daze
3 bars of adrenaline = 3s stun or removal of stability + 1s stun.

Just my thoughts. I felt that what you were suggesting was a bit too strong.

Move unsuspecting Foe back to adept, change Skull Crack to 1/4 cast and 2 sec stun on 3 bars, 1.5 on 2 bars and 1 on 1 bar.