Guild Wars 2

A simple question. I saw these supposed leaked patch notes and a lot of hammer abilities have lowered “aftercast” I’ve never heard this term in an MMO before.

I believe that aftercast is the time that you can’t use any other skills after using a skill? Maybe? I’m not 100% sure…

The aftercast, is that time who must pass before you can use another skill

It means next to nothing in terms of actually balancing the Warrior.

Only marginally better than all the tool-tip fixes we’ve had, in my opinion.

Skills have 2 (or in some cases 3) portions.

“Cast Time” is the time before the skill has any effect, usually represented by a thin cast bar on-screen.

“Channel Time” is the time during which the skill repeats effects, for certain skills. Is represented as a thick cast bar. Example for warrior: Hundred Blades.

“Aftercast” is the time after the skill completes in which you can’t activate another non-instant skill, e.g. that pause after an auto-attack chain completes before the next chain begins.

The cast time listed in skill descriptions is usually just cast time plus channel time, and doesn’t take aftercast into account (which leads to relying on the cast time for theorycrafting DPS or whatever giving innacurate results). Decreasing the aftercast on skills will reduce the time between skill activations, making the weapon feel faster without changing the length of the tell on each attack; a skill with a half second cast time will still be visible to opponents for the same half second before it hits, but the next attack will begin sooner.

These aftercast reductions on hammer skills may significantly improve hammer DPS in PvE, where enemy locations don’t change as often. In PvP, it means missing will be less punishing (and connecting is better than before, as opponents have less time to move before your next attack)

so why am i rooted for ~0.5 seconds longer when i use Staggering Blow (Warrior hammer skill 4)

because in the patchnotes it says that the aftercast for this skill was reduced by 0.25 seconds

can ANYONE explain why the exact opposite was done??…
… its actually worse than just increased aftercast because i cant move for some time now after using this skill and it really often interrupts my CC chain which is one of the few things that can help warrios in pvp

Orangensaft.7139:

so why am i rooted for ~0.5 seconds longer when i use Staggering Blow (Warrior hammer skill 4)

because in the patchnotes it says that the aftercast for this skill was reduced by 0.25 seconds

can ANYONE explain why the exact opposite was done??…
… its actually worse than just increased aftercast because i cant move for some time now after using this skill and it really often interrupts my CC chain which is one of the few things that can help warrios in pvp

I would describe this change as brutally bad.

Orangensaft.7139:

so why am i rooted for ~0.5 seconds longer when i use Staggering Blow (Warrior hammer skill 4)

because in the patchnotes it says that the aftercast for this skill was reduced by 0.25 seconds

can ANYONE explain why the exact opposite was done??…
… its actually worse than just increased aftercast because i cant move for some time now after using this skill and it really often interrupts my CC chain which is one of the few things that can help warrios in pvp

That would be a bug…

Then squish the bug. I reported this, and so did others, the day the patch came out.

The movement impairment i am unsure of, but the reduced by 0.25 means the after cast was 0.75 or higher before. Many of the slower weapons had this. Ranger longbow, for instance, had close to a 1.0sec aftercast and it recieved the same affect to its auto attack, but it is still a slow weapon with an aftercast of 0.75. It basically meant the long bow got a 25% damage buff though because its attacks per minture dramatically increased.
Guild Wars isn’t like most mmo combat because it relies on an animation system where different frames of animation are what do everything. Unlike WoW where you can completely skip or miss animations becuase of the Global Coolodown. This is also why although many skills can be done while moving, A select few like the ranger sword auto attack, ride the lightning for elementalist, heartseek for a theif, etc. all prevent movement during their animation. If they animation didnt complete the skill wouldn’t do anything basically. I just recently started a warrior so I don’t know some weapons well, but if hammer causes a lunge or some kind of forced movement this ould be what is causing the loss of character movement you are experiencing.

It used to work like this. You use staggering blow, which has a long cast time. After that, you were able to use backbreaker and land it by moving towards your foe after knocking them back and land the hit.
Now, your rooted for half a second, preventing your backbreaker every time. This is a huge nerf to hammer IMO, and I’m calling it a (stealh) nerf now. If it were a bug, fix it already.