Guild Wars 2

At the moment, warrior sword five (riposte) is bugged. As it stands, it doesn’t function the way Counterblow does. Counterblow applies a buff to yourself that blocks the next incoming hit and it does not have a cast bar. This means people cannot interrupt counterblow; using a daze on you while it is active simply means you’ll retaliate as intended (given the attack wasn’t Unblockable).

Riposte, however. Riposte applies a buff much like Counterblow does, but Riposte has a cast bar. This is where the bug and the trouble starts. The cast bar is applied BEFORE the buff, meaning that there’s a gap of 0.25 seconds where an enemy can hit you through the block and damage you, potentially wasting the block. They can interrupt it if they chose, setting it on full CD if they use CC instead of a normal strike. This is…well, that’s stupid. It defeats the purpose of the skill. Simply making it function the same way as counterblow would make the skill 100% more effective.

As it stands, the moment I hit counterblow I begin blocking. This means I can literally block incoming hits 0.01 seconds before they hit, which is excellent as it means skill triumphs and clutch plays are prevalent. Riposte does not function this way, and when I try to do the same and block right before a strike connects I simply get hit through the block even though I am performing the animation and clicked the button at the right time. It needs looking into because it makes riposte very buggy and…awkward to use, knowing you have to time it 0.5 seconds before you even need it, which means people will just avoid it entirely.

I actually have mentioned this detail in the warrior guide on dulfy:

“One fact that is uncommonly known about Riposte is that there is a very brief instant at the start of the animation where it is not blocking (a small fraction of a second). This means that if casted immediately after a dodge roll for example, it may still be possible to take a small tick of damage depending on the timing of the block and the intervals in time of which the attacks being blocked are executed.

This small bit of information is extremely helpful in order to understand that when trying to chain block attacks between Riposte and Shield Stance (in order to skip trash mobs while remaining out of combat), it is always best to begin with Riposte before Shield Stance for 100% block duration uptime for the full 5 – 5.25 seconds whereas beginning with Shield stance and swapping to Riposte will result in a very narrow window of opportunity to take damage and get stuck in combat."

While I don’t think it can be classified as a bug, it’s at the very least an oversight and agree about it being stupid.