Guild Wars 2

Greetings,

I’ve been experimenting with the mechanics of combat and a few abilities. A few abilities stood out, which could have their animations cancelled to allow players to perform more actions in a shorter period of time.

I’ve made a post on Reddit discussing and explaining the technique, and am curious if doing something like this is an intended feature or Guild Wars 2, or should be considered an exploitable bug and therefore should be removed.

The link is here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/zfmxw/greatsword_mesmers_cancel_your_1_ability_for_more/

The videos are:
http://www.twitch.tv/therealzerve/b/331198903
and
http://www.twitch.tv/therealzerve/b/331222273

Hope to hear from one of the higher ups as to if using this technique is okay, or if I should get banned for advertising an exploit :[.

Thanks,
Zerve

I’d definitely say it’s unintended, hence a bug. The simplest solution for ANet would be to spread out the damage so the last damage tick happens at the end of the cast time.

The problem with doing that means that the animation wont match up with the damage. I hope this ability or animation gets changed completely for two reasons:

1. Having to using a clunky mechanic like this to get optimal DPS is difficult and un-intuitive to players.

2. Having an awfully long animation where the player sits there idly while an enemy beats on them because they are “recovering” from their attack is anti-fun.

Zerve.9075:

The problem with doing that means that the animation wont match up with the damage. I hope this ability or animation gets changed completely for two reasons:

1. Having to using a clunky mechanic like this to get optimal DPS is difficult and un-intuitive to players.

2. Having an awfully long animation where the player sits there idly while an enemy beats on them because they are “recovering” from their attack is anti-fun.

If all classes can do something to this effect I say they leave it in. Animation cancelling is key to high level play in many other skill-based competitive games, where mastery of the mechanics is important.

BUT if not all classes / weapons can animation cancel then yeah, it should probably be taken out. Or added in.

it’s probably a bug, but at the same time, it’s a really nice idea that could turn into a feature, like cancels in fighting games :P

Hopefully it gets fixed. Bug exploits are bug exploits. Not saying anyone should be banned for it, but it should certainly be fixed.

Canceling out of a heal to dodge instead means you dodge instead of healing, you don’t get to heal and dodge at the same time, or heal any faster, canceling any skill activation should work the same way.

If you cancel a skill, it should be because you want to do something else, not ‘max your dps’. They need to adjust the way the skill works (and any others that can be abused in this way), but they absolutely cannot remove the ability to cancel a skill, because that’s an important gameplay mechanic.

Animation skipping killed Age of Conan.. And when it was fixed, it was too late.

It is an unintended use of game mechanics and thus is an exploit to use it to gain an advantage.

In my opinion the skill needs to be reworked. It’s because cancelling GS1 HAS NO DRAWBACKS that it could be seen as overpowered. As mentioned by others in this thread, cancelling any other spell still enables the full duration of the cool down regardless of how much of the spell was actually used.