Guild Wars 2

Sword offhand is universally regarded as the weakest offhand. That’s not in any kind of serious dispute. Partly that’s because bleed builds are so rare, but also because it doesn’t have anything that’s of much use.

Compare sword block to mesmer sword block. Terribly unfair comparison, I know but it illustrates just how far it has to go to even glimpse the backside of other skills in the game.

Riposte: 2 1/4 second duration. Protects against ranged projectiles during that time, can reflect them if traited. Against melee, blocks only one strike, which ends the skill and gives an extremely weak counterblow+bleed. Can be cancelled to give adrenaline. 15 second cooldown.

Blurred Frenzy: 2 seconds of complete evade, both melee and ranged, while also dealing out 8 hits all of which are of comparable power to the ONE counterblow of Riposte. 10 second cooldown.

What would the justification be for giving the weaker of the two abilities the lower cooldown? Is it any wonder that one of these two swords is used often, and the other is not used except by people who think that dual swords looks cool?

One possible justification would be that it’s a (weak) adrenaline-builder… if you don’t use the blocking part of the skill. But mace mainhand does the same thing and it’s on a 10s cooldown.

All I’m suggesting is to bring sword offhand up to the standards set by the other warrior offhands, NOT to match the power of mesmer mainhand.

The bare minimum for that would be to bring the cooldown down to 10s.

Better yet would be to give Rispote a brief interrupt attached to its counterblow so that it can trigger Distracting Strikes. Go with the weakest one, 1s Daze. Warriors have very few conditions, this would provide better access to one of them.

No. The mesmer sword block from the oh sword does no damage and summons a clone. Of course a mainhand skill is going to be stronger than an offhand block.

While I’m at it, may I ask why it makes sense for Distracting strikes to be where it is in the skills tree? Mace and Hammer are the interrupt generators, and their traits are in the defensive trees where they belong. Most of the other conditions are found in either Defense or Arms.

This means that someone who wants Distracting strikes as part of a condition build has to go to 3 trees to get what they want, and all the other power tree skills have no love for a condition build.

datawais.7209:

No. The mesmer sword block from the oh sword does no damage and summons a clone. Of course a mainhand skill is going to be stronger than an offhand block.

Sounds like someone’s never used a shield.
Or used a guardian.
There is no “rule” that OH must always be less than MH, though that’s often the trend.
Regardless, we’re trying to make sword OH comprable to the other warrior OH’s. Perhaps in your rush to look wise you missed that statement.

datawais.7209:

No. The mesmer sword block from the oh sword does no damage and summons a clone. Of course a mainhand skill is going to be stronger than an offhand block.

really? my mesmer’s sword #4 damages enemies when i block

IMO, Adrenaline rush should be changed to a 4 bleed stack attack.

This way, the warrior only lose the block when activated.

If you think sword offhand is ‘universally’ the worst, you aren’t doing it right. It’s fine as it is simply for the fact that it is great when used properly.

Qid.1937:

If you think sword offhand is ‘universally’ the worst, you aren’t doing it right. It’s fine as it is simply for the fact that it is great when used properly.

As I clearly said, compared to the other offhand weapons… except maybe axe offhand.

I’m not sure how you’re making the leap from a single melee parry every 15 seconds to greatness, but I’m sure you’re finding a way. Maybe you’re fighting opponents that only attack every 15 seconds?

While I can agree that off-hand sword isn’t the best of weapons a warrior can use…

…but how in the holy heck can you compare Riposte to Mesmer Blurred Frenzy? They’re totally different skills in completely different hands. Blurred Frenzy is the #2 attack and is the premiere melee strike of Mesmer because it locks their squishy selves in melee for around a second.

If you’re comparing something to Blurred Frenzy, it’d likely be Flurry and/or Savage Leap (combined make a deadly combo). But you can’t because they do totally different things.

If you’re comparing something to Riposte, then it should be Illusionary Riposte, which frankly isn’t very good either. I think it’s a bit better suited on Mesmer if only because they don’t often sit in melee range long enough to need to block more than a couple of attacks.

“But its clearly different, um… um… because it’s clearly clearly different!” needs just a LITTLE more support then a solemn assurance that its “clearly” different.

Even the mace block can be traited to go down to 8s cooldown. That’s nearly twice the blocks as OH sword. But I suppose that’s clearly different too. Everything’s different from everything! No valid comparisons can be made, because everything is different! Lets all go celebrate the clear differences!

If you please, concentrate more on the proposal, and less on the perfectly-valid comparison to other parries. They’re more for comparison so that no one claims for example that a 8s or 10s cooldown would be OP when in fact other blocks have them and they aren’t considered OP in that context.

I agree that the sword off-hand could use a boost, but I am impartial to talk about as I am actually using off-hand sword almost all the time. Still I haven’t seen any other warrior use off-hand sword in WvWvW, spvp or high level pve. So it seems the other weapon choices are better. My main argument to stick to two swords is totally illogical: they look cool. Yes, appearance matters to good-looking sylvari warrior girls like me.

Riposte counter-attack is actually pretty strong, but the problem is that that bleed can last so long time enemy has usually cured it off. *The cooldown of both offhand sword skills could be reduced to 15 and 12 seconds respectively and the bleeding could occur a bit faster (33% faster), without any fear of breaking the game balance. Mesmer’s blurred frenzy would still be way superior to riposte and mace #2 has a block with much faster cooldown.

Ayna Merciful