Guild Wars 2

Phantasms should be reworked to be short-lived burst/utility, not long-living 1v1 grief tanks that die instantly in a zerg.

Make SB 1200 range and LB 1500 range default. Remove Eagle Eye trait and start making traits that aren’t gimmick garbage.

Changing the location of stunbreaks was not a good solution. The solution should have been making the bad utilities better, for instance giving signets better on-activate effects to promote active instead of passive play. Giving signet of air a stunbreak doesn’t solve this problem because eles have no use for the passive and the active doesn’t come with any other defensive utility; they’re only using it because it’s a low cd stunbreak and we’re desperate.

Meanwhile you have Glyph of Elemental Power being such a joke that it’s not even worth it for the stunbreak.

I never seem to have problems with it. Perhaps you didn’t tag the mobs or players?

Mammoth.1975:

I spend a lot of time on this forum, ‘a small amount of hyperbole’ I can accept. Yet I can’t make it through these videos. Think about it.

If I wanted to hear a series of completely erroneous statements presented as ‘facts’, I’d go to a political rally.

He’s not presenting them as facts so much as commonly shared observations, and he’s very much correct in that sense. The fact that he takes the time to explain his concepts should make it self-evident that he doesn’t think they’re irrefutable and don’t need proper dialogue.

Mammoth.1975:

Stopped watching at about 30s in. Just like I do with every one of these when he makes some unsupported unsupportable claim almost immediately.

The priority was only in paid tournaments? The only difference between paid and free was better prizes and a higher entry barrier.

When he stops making obviously absurd statements I may make it through an entire one.

The small amount of hyperbole doesn’t really detract from the main points of the videos I’ve seen from him so far.

I still don’t understand the stun-breaker change. Those skills were conceptually fine as they were; the problem was a lack of viability of OTHER utilities. However, nerfing something just to make an unappealing skill more appealing is a terrible way to balance. Putting the stunbreaks on skills that really have no other defensive utility is counter-intuitive and essentially forces you to waste slots just to avoid being stunned into oblivion.

Nova.8021:

I disagree with that video whole-heartedly. I have careered a glass mesmer main since I have started back in October and not once has an Ele done that to me or even came close. It is great that one ele was able to do it, but that one ele doesn’t represent even a 1/10 fraction of eles in pvp; not even by a long-shot.

Although I suppose it is anecdotal evidence vs. anecdotal evidence in this scenario. I do feel eles need a boost. Controlling the elements has never felt so underwhelming considering I can conjure an imaginary image to hit 8.9k with my number 4 skill.

The problem is that the mesmer in the video wasn’t paying attention; the ele left stealth at a location where he could have been spotted. Despite being a fairly quick spell to cast, Earthquake is pretty obviously telegraphed. The spike being used MUST be executed instantly, meaning if you fail to land Earthquake your one-trick-pony has died and you must wait the 45 seconds for your full burst to come back. That build also devotes its entire utility bar to spike assist, leaving survivability in the dust.

Long story short: had the mesmer been paying proper attention, there’s absolutely no way he would have died to that spike.

The only way weapon swap during combat would be excusable is if the slots you had already used before swapping kept their recharges.

LightningBlaze.4913:

Why everything about the ele needs to be compared. Stop with that outlook on the profession and you will enjoy it better. With my ele the dmg i do with lF goes from 2-4k. It has been proven very helpful to me on various situations.

The investment you would theoretically have to make to get that kind of damage on lightning flash is terrifying. You are also probably hitting paper with it. The fact is that LF got screwed over in comparison to other blink utilities. It is now the only one that both doesn’t break stun and can’t exceed 900 range, with the former being all to important in a meta full of stuns and fears. The ONLY really positive thing about this skill is that you can use it to break aegis before using a skill like Updraft or Churning Earth. The only reason people take it now is because (as was mentioned before) the ability to blink on a profession that has the lowest base armor and health is absolutely invaluable. That doesn’t mean the numbers are even close to ideal.

Gale doesn’t need to be AoE. A recharge reduction would more than suffice. It’s pretty sad that it has a longer base recharge than Updraft but is mechanically subpar in every regard but range. You could also add some secondary effect, providing a boon to the ele or a condition to the target e.g. aegis (the force of wind temporary guards the ele) or vulnerability (the blasted target has its defense weakened by the force of wind).

Most of the focus’ needs are obviously in the Fire/Water lines. Fire 4 will continue to be worthless as long as it is either a) a line and b) an inferior source of damage. D/F has no need for Fire 4 because of Fire 3, and it’s too awkward for S/F to use reliably in a fight due to the necessity to precisely aim your blast finishers. Fire 5 needs to have the recharge reduced and a secondary effect added that is unique to the elementalist and unrelated to the aura itself. The only use it has right now is to keep fury up.

Water 4 needs a slight damage increase and a secondary effect to the chill. A single target chill is only marginally useful in a team fight when the skill essentially does nothing else. Water 5 needs a larger area of effect and should reward the player for properly chilling the foe with some secondary effect.

Conan.8046:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7lglchYNew

who needs smell.

It has awesome eyesight and comes at 200 mph.

If only birds in gw2 didn’t fly 3 feet above the ground at all times..

JonathanSharp.7094:

As devs, we’re always watching the meta and trying to make sure we don’t “force” the meta in one direction or another. Metas are always driven by player perception, so our goal is to provide the players with multiple viable choices, and let them decide how they want to approach the game.

If players perceive that conditions are the strongest meta, what good does adding more conditions and buffing condition application do?

The meta drastically shifted after the change to power builds via quickness changes etc, and condition damage was already on the rise before that. Many players, including myself are perplexed as to why the dev team chose to make changes that would snowball the meta to where it is now; the player base knew exactly what would happen when the update went live.

I guess it looks fine for a semi-durable spec, but I’d feel weird having 1700 base power. I guess I just want more oomph before might stacks. I have about 1400 toughness on my build and about 2k power with a crit chance that can get into the 40s when I have two weapons instead of staff. I’m finding your runes (though I guess they’re good for maintaining the might stacks you want with your sigil) kind of boring. The main problem I’m seeing is that you don’t have quite the toughness to really tank damage, but you don’t have enough base power to make up for not being a great damage absorber. I could be totally wrong and your results might be amazing, but I think Power/Precision scale better than Toughness/Healing Power/Etc.

I too have a mixture of Soldier/Knight/Berserker stats. Mine looks something like this at the moment:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhImcbzR5gjDAEFvYiQxDNUeMTO2A-jEyAYMhQCCA9JhZviox2IKiGr2BTVSEV7NKiWNA-w

I have more power, crit chance, and crit damage, while you have a little more toughness, vitality, healing and boon duration. I’m actually working on getting more soldier-stat weapons, but they require a bit more grind on my part so I have mostly Knight’s right now.

I don’t think that’s necessary. However, a VAST number of minor traits are so bad that it makes their respective lines look unappealing for no other reason, even if some of the majors are decent.

Mesmers and Necromancers have this advantage to a degree as well.

Kain Francois.4328:

Personally I think the autoattack chain needs a slight damage boost, and Maul needs both a damage boost AND a blast finisher.

Fact: Engineer Bomb AUTOATTACK is better than Maul in every way!

Adding a blast finisher will necessitate a rebalance for the entire weapon. Rangers have access to a larger variety of combo fields than other professions. The weapon needs QoL changes across the board in terms of smoothness/movement of execution with a few damage buffs.

Atherakhia.4086:

This has everything to do with a pet’s bad ai. I’ve mentioned it several times myself. Stealth doesn’t drop agro in PvE (it used to). Since you don’t drop agro, the pet doesn’t drop target. /end

I apologize if I was unclear. Pet AI aside from this function is pretty much the same before/after the implementation. Without this function, pet AI would still be bad.

Miiro.3124:

It can be used offensively and defensively and you guys are here crying or defending it. Lets just call it what it is, its both. Mind = Blown.

Except it’s not. You’d be hard pressed to come up with a GS build that outshines anything else in the offense department. The weapon lacks basic skill flow/damage to make itself threatening even when specced for power. The animations are too slow and obvious with not enough pay out. Telegraphing is good, but the GS has very little you actually need to watch out for.

Sol.4310:

You really need to watch the discovery channel more, animals use there nose to smell. So doesn’t that mean this “thief” never shower’s. Tbh it’s his own fault, shower at least once a day and your chances will become better.

I didn’t know birds had a great sense of smell.

Conan.8046:

Link ability please.

Not sure if you’re trolling here, but I’ll assume you aren’t. It’s not tied to a named ability. It was an adjustment to pet AI in some past patch that allowed them to better re-initiate on targets that were coming out of stealth. The problem is that there is (I’m guessing) not much room for distinction in the code when taking vastly different circumstances into account.

What the OP is saying (that I apparently understood better than a lot of people) goes something like this:

1. Ranger enters a skirmish with an opponent and uses f1 to make the pet attack before taking any other actions.

2. Ranger gives no orders that would make the pet change its target throughout the fight.

3. The ranger successfully drives off their attacker, who stealths at low health and goes to hide behind a wall. The opponent is NOT visible, but happens to be just inside the pet’s leash range.

4. The opponent is downed while in stealth due to some ticking effect (conditions, etc)

5. Opponent unstealths behind aforementioned wall. Since no conditions are still ticking after being downed, there is no visual indicator to the ranger that he/she is even there, yet the pet still tracks and follows when the Ranger has absolutely no other clues as to their opponent’s whereabouts.

This has nothing to do with pets’ otherwise bad AI; the OP is pointing out a specific function that would single-handedly make the Ranger OP if in theory all the professions were otherwise perfectly balanced.

What about non-binary gender identities?

Stealth wouldn’t be as much of a problem if the targeting system wasn’t so awful in this game. I do feel your frustration; I don’t think stealth should have been included to the degree that it is, or even at all for that matter.

Without reliable CC in your build, you’re not going to do much against stealth spam. I don’t WvW a lot, but from what I understand those characters do not do quite as much damage and pretty much stealth all the time to annoy i.e. griefing 6 people.

Conan.8046:

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

I’m saying its AI-maphack, its seen in almost every game, it’s not a hack. Tell me something why do you feel a clueless Ranger, with no map awareness, that would just capture the point the walk away, rightfully being punished by allowing me to neutralize it, should be rewarded because the AI does the searching for him, regardless of not being to actually see me?

Oh right we are going to complain about something that isn’t in the game. Sounds logical.

This actually does happen. The reason I don’t advocate removing it altogether is that since the ranger’s damage balancing is tied to their pet being present, the pet has to have some way of working with a terrible target system. That said, I think it would be safe to slightly decrease the leash length, and half the leash length again if the target stealths to flee and exit combat, so that the pet does not pick up a target so far away.

Just brainstorming here.

xbaunx.6438:

I’d take a 50% reduction in cast times. Maybe 35% increased projectile speed as well.

Most of the skills have decent cast times; their problem often lies in the animation time (Earth/Water 2), inability to properly punish foes (you can only get stunned by Air 5 once even if you run through both sides), or lack of any notable effect (Earth 4 and to some extent Fire 4(the field left behind is good for nothing but combo fields and has a very thin line in which to do so)). There are more problems with the set than these skills, but those are some examples of things you could adjust.

When you break the concept rules of your game with one profession, then give it a weapon that has such a great combination of damage, utility and escape, you’re asking for trouble.

Staff needs QoL changes as a standalone weapon before adjusting traits imo.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

But spirit rangers will suffer some tweaks after PAX.
This is a mechanical issue that won’t get resolved unless attention is brought to it.

I don’t want to see rangers nerfed to the ground. In fact, fixing this won’t affect a single thing inyour average gameplay while positively pushing the game into a more higher skill cap, where actually looking around your surroundings (situational awareness) is rewarding.

Letting an AI passively do the job for you is BAD DESIGN, unless the goal is to promote passive play, which I sincerely doubt that’s the direction ArenaNet wants to take.

Relying on AI is bad design; a bad targeting system is perhaps worse in a game where targeted skills are so important. The fact that thieves/mesmers/spirit rangers etc capitalize on this bad targeting system is part of what makes them so frustrating at times.

TGSlasher.1458:

Leuca.5732:

I still occasionally run into this problem where my pet is missing its target for no apparent reason, or where it attacks a location it thinks my opponent is when it’s really a few paces to the side.

I think the later is skill delay or lag. Ever seen an elementalist Fire Grab you from 900 yards?

Nope. I’ve even had it happen on test golems, and after waiting for a period of time my pet was still attacking nothing instead of the stationary target.

The problem is that their in-fight pathing is awkward at best and awful at worst. If they were better at following targets I ordered them to and landing skills without delays due to their AI not realizing whether or not they are in range, I would be fine with them not tracking people when their vision would otherwise be obscured. I still occasionally run into this problem where my pet is missing its target for no apparent reason, or where it attacks a location it thinks my opponent is when it’s really a few paces to the side.

milo.6942:

Thesilentflute.8761:

It has nothing to do with a healing class lol.

no healers is one of the main reasons we are stuck with conquest gameplay

This is absolutely correct.

Huge problem with adding maul as a blast finisher before doing anything else to help the flow/dps of the weapon is that it will fail to make the weapon more of a threat in all modes of play, which is what it needs. Nobody is inherently afraid to engage a GS ranger for any reason; adding a blast finisher will not change that. Inherent skill function and animation flow between skills needs to be improved before they can think of doing anything else. The sad thing is that these attributes are still in a terrible state (save for Swoop, bless its lovely pathing) after TWO QoL buffs to the weapon.

CachoDm.4639:

Lets all quit if they’re not fixed by next patch. Or we can all cry in forums too I main mesmer and they don’t fit in the meta I wanna fit in please anet

“They” should include the myriad other things that were broken in the last balance overhaul. If something isn’t done about this situation in the next overhaul, I probably won’t be coming back from my hiatus.

Aza.2105:

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Direct because conditions is for nubs. Honestly though as someone mentioned in another thread, conditions should be an added effect not a real source of damage.

They were a real source of damage in gw1, issue with that is gw1 was actually a more balanced game than gw2. There were plenty of anti condition skills and counters in the game. Where as in gw2 there is only condition removal and convert.

The balance issues are a result of dumbing down the original system.

The best way to put it was that they were a source of long-term damage/debuff. Even with every condition/punishing hex possible on a player, they could cease action and severely limit incoming damage enough so that their backline could attempt to cleanse them, because degeneration and regeneration were separate from regular damage and healing and had set caps. GW2 has completely run askew with this concept; some condition builds put out more dps over both short and long-term fights than the vast majority of power builds, and they don’t sacrifice much defense to do so.

milo.6942:

Thesilentflute.8761:

It’s a shame that they were so close to balance then just went nuts with a few classes and made the game a joke.

they lost any hope for balance the day they announced gw2 would have no monks, no energy, and pre-set weapon skills.

The lack of a healing class was indeed a huge blow to balance, and the inclusion of such would have drastically limited the damage the latter two reasons could have possibly done. The fact that they added a class that actually uses some sort of energy system (with built in options to help replenish it) while ignoring cooldowns ran this askew even more, because it’s basically a violation of the rules within the game’s design. The removal of the holy trinity seemed more like a marketing ploy; GW2 would have been just as successful upon launch if they had kept everything combat-wise the same but included a healing class so that the other professions could be properly organized and balanced out.

Personally, I would have been ok with having a selection of skills linked to a weapon, that you could combine in any way you chose. This would have possibly opened up different weapons for multiple styles of play from the get-go. It would also have allowed for the trait system to be much more about point investment with a few bonuses rather than a second library full of skills, with most of them being completely inferior.

Fenrir.5493:

Leuca.5732:

Fenrir.5493:

The problem of the passive play is that there is not a lot of active play with no ANIMATONS, so people that cant see anything comming from a necro that does the same animation for every attack cant do anything about it, so this leads to preffer passive bonuses because you are not needed to use them with timing, they stay with you either long time or forever.

With no proper animations this will continue, the only class with proper animations its warrior, and its funny because its the most easy to beat class and that is because you can actully read the warriors movements not like other instagibbing crap other classes have.

Elementalists have a great number of telegraphed skills as well; the problem up until recently was that their mechanics were just numerically too powerful for it to matter.

They can burst you instantly.

See bolded. Burst elementalists are also more than avoidable if you are watching them, and are drastically less survivable than their predecessors. Their spike, if avoided, completely punishes them because of the recharge of the full sequence of skills. I’m no pro player, but I can say that I haven’t had nearly as much trouble with burst eles as I have with other professions/builds.

Fenrir.5493:

The problem of the passive play is that there is not a lot of active play with no ANIMATONS, so people that cant see anything comming from a necro that does the same animation for every attack cant do anything about it, so this leads to preffer passive bonuses because you are not needed to use them with timing, they stay with you either long time or forever.

With no proper animations this will continue, the only class with proper animations its warrior, and its funny because its the most easy to beat class and that is because you can actully read the warriors movements not like other instagibbing crap other classes have.

Elementalists have a great number of telegraphed skills as well; the problem up until recently was that their mechanics were just numerically too powerful for it to matter.

Tutankhamun.3679:

The only thing I want changed on the great sword is for maul to be a blast finisher. Im running a 0/0/10/30/30 with clerics and fighter runes. In pvp. I’m not the best nor is the build the best but the great sword has saved my kitten countless times allowing me to disrupt run away or last long enough till help comes. If I wanted a more offensive great sword I’d play a warrior or guard. It paired with the long bow 2 shouts and some good healing power is a nice mix of defense and offense. I think the great swords kit as many others think, is for a defensive play style which in turn lets you dish out more dmg with your pet. Yes sword dagger is prob better but the condition dmg feels wasted. I prefer sword dagger paired with short bow. If you want a more offensive great sword the you are looking at the wrong class. Play a warrior maybe.

You don’t want it buffed offensively, but you want a blast finisher.

.. what?

Atherakhia.4086:

Swoop’s primary advantage over the Warrior’s Charge skill is that Swoop isn’t affected by movement impairing skills. When they nerfed Ride the Lightning into the ground I thought for sure Swoop would follow.

It most certainly is.

Raven.9603:

wow. that was in every possible way 2 separate posts that were definitely tl;dr.

Is there any way you could address the actual post instead of its length? I think there is a valid discussion to be had here and I’d welcome criticism of my own criticism.

I think having attacks have so many damage packets is kind of a wide-spread problem in this game. I don’t think having a channel only trigger on-hit effects once is right, but you’re definitely onto something with that being a problem.

Xhyros.1340:

Or you could have an increased cooldown, with an appropriate increase in damage/vulnerability to keep its overall dps the same.

Increasing numerical dps and recharges drastically affects the GS’s position as a defensive utility weapon, not to mention kills any sort of hope the weapon has of pumping dps with such highly telegraphed burst and such a slow auto attack. They need to fix basic QoL before thinking of adding finishers or revamping recharges.

The problem is that adding a blast finisher to the set will do only that. They will probably not buff damage (which is what the weapon really needs) and will probably ignore the lack of fluid combinations. You want a blast finisher in exchange for nerfs across the board for the rest of the weapon and on a heal skill that has a long enough recharge to punish already. The ranger should have more access to blast finishers, but overhauling the rest of a weapon just to add that finisher to one skill is blatantly inefficient. I would advocate giving GS better fluidity and base damage while moving blast finishers to utilities in an attempt to bring some of them up to par. I can imagine tying the blast finisher to a high-tier trait, but that’s still not really solving the problems the weapon has with or without the finisher.

One of the GS’s major flaws is a lack of damage because the skills do not effectively flow into each other to do anything other than defend/annoy. What you are suggesting will only make the situation worse.

Blast finisher on Maul would give too much synergy with Healing Spring and other fields, even if its recharge was increased. They would have to adjust Swoop and Crippling throw, which would probably end up nerfing GS damage in the long run, and it already does pathetic damage comparatively. What GS needs is a revamp on basic fluidity and speed, with possible additions to pet synergy and perhaps a tad more damage.

DarthDragonVanquisher.6912:

It makes no sense for Sync to shoot themselves in the foot and kitten their OP comp.. All props go to them for coming up with the most effective cheese comp on the planet! & taking it a step further and grabbing the top players from the respective classes to play it on a level not seen before! Also why have one OP spirit ranger when you can have 2? Spirit Ranger OP! i look forward to seeing CC fight that comp, especially since they are carrying an ele to PAX.. Going to be a fun game to watch

I take issue with the bolded words. It took nothing but common sense to see that this meta was coming. Give them credit for running it effectively I guess, but the current direction of the game left little to the imagination when we were trying to guess what would come out of the recent balance patches.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Delayed effect: Dragon’s Tooth and Shatterstone. Activating the skill is really short, but they loiter around for a second or two before hitting the ground. Thus, their high damage is justified by the fact that players can just walk out of them, and they provide a means of area control because of it.

To be fair, you know darn well that Shatterstone was a terrible example there. :P

GS 4: Counter/Throw – Counter attacks are always fun; they punish unsuspecting foes who don’t pay attention to your animations, and set you up for potential combo damage. This skill has three basic potential outcomes: prolonged block, counter, and throw, none of which have any inherent numerical synergy with the pet. The first potential outcome is extremely useful and in my opinion very well-implemented. It is telegraphed, giving your opponent counterplay options while giving you an effective ranged defense on a good cooldown.

The second outcome, the counter is a nice function to have but falls off extremely hard in higher level play, where the telegraphing from the block allows players to bait your counter attack with less powerful abilities because the speed at which the counter executes is pathetic, and does not follow the target it selects effectively. This speed of execution is doubly detrimental to the ranger because it’s exceedingly vulnerable to skills that deal multiple packets of close-range damage in either a short amount of time, deal it while moving, or both. In these situations the ranger will a) counter attack, hitting the foe but receiving much unwanted damage in the process, b) attempt to counter attack, but miss due to bad targeting and then receive much unwanted damage or c) block, realize that the counter will not be effective, and attempt to do a clunky dodge during the counter attack animation.

The third basic outcome has also received some QoL changes, but still fails because of the speed of activation vs. damage/utility when compared to other skills in the game. Because it is a single target strike, it can be intercepted. Because it activates and travels slowly, on top of having a small hit box, it can be very easily dodged at the range you will probably need it to hit if your opponent is that scared of a snare. If your opponent doesn’t mind the snare, or has enough condition removal to not care about it, the damage leaves much to be desired.

GS 5: Hilt Bash – A daze/stun that has numerical synergy with your pet sounds nice; it even follows targets that are in range fairly well, but this is yet another skill that falls off in higher level play due to ease of avoidance and lack of synergy with other skills/traits that should otherwise benefit from it. You receive an effective movement debuff while activating this skill, making it less ideal for catching fleeing foes. Its most powerful effect, the stun, cannot be effectively utilized against skilled foes unless you happen to catch them by surprise, meaning the cc you would likely combo into Maul is not there most of the time to help you land highly telegraphed damage. Its own telegraphing makes it easy to avoid from the front, effectively leaving you with an obvious daze on a decent cooldown. It lacks synergy with abilities like Moment of Clarity, since your pet cannot have both damage buffs at the same time, discouraging the clearest route a hopeful GS user would take if they wished to do higher amounts of damage.

TL;DR – This is not a TL;DR post. Please skip.

I think that as a utility weapon, GS has its uses. However, it lacks any abilities that would make it a threat in higher level play due to bad implementation. This post will be broken into two parts since it’s going to be too big for one.

GS 1: Chain – This skill is fun. You get an evade every 3rd attack. This is easy to break down into numbers in a shallow debate and come to the conclusion that this is effective damage mitigation. However, this skill runs into multiple barriers in execution. It has no inherent numerical synergy with the pet, the ranger’s “passive”, which punishes you if you decide to spec more into pet damage while remaining in melee, limiting your build choices with the recent changes to pet damage. This doubly punishes you because the ranger has rather bad base damage on GS 1 to begin with. The bad base damage is then made to look worse by the fact that it’s an extremely slow chain. In an effort to increase the utility of the weapon by increasing evade time and then “balancing” it with slow build up into said evade, Anet effectively kitten the weapon for any major damage at a basic level when compared to many other weapons. Your opponent basically has little reason to dodge your auto attacks just to prevent you from getting an evade.

The knee-jerk response to this line of reasoning is to simply build for more damage. After all, evasion spam is effective damage mitigation. However, this argument fails to address rampant blocks/dodges/evades across the rest of the professions, as well as the trade off between damage mitigation via auto attack spam and the potential dps you are losing by either not weapon swapping or just not using your other skills. GS 1 is not what I like to call a self-fulfilling chain, which conceptually makes sense if you want to keep the evasion balanced, but the slow base speed of the chain means you lose out on enough dps to simply allow your opponent to look for your obviously telegraphed burst/combination skills.

GS 2: Maul – A typical bread-and-butter pseudo burst skill. It has decent damage on a relatively short cooldown. Comparatively, it does a little less damage than a full GS 1 chain (ignoring crits/crit chance), but takes about 1/2 of the time to do so. It also applies 3 stacks of Vulnerability as a result of recent changes. This is a GS user’s only real option if they wish to burst an opponent down. If used on cooldown, the skill effectively keeps an opponent slightly vulnerable. However, this skill has extremely obvious telegraphing (telegraphing is not a bad thing; MORE skills should be this telegraphed) and is really the only thing an opponent has to look out for to effectively mitigate your damage via dodge/block-counter/evade.

Although I haven’t done testing to verify if the condition is applied before or after the damage, this skill brings up a flaw with the rest of the weapon, which is its inability to follow up. Vulnerability needs to be generously applied before sustained dps or burst for maximum efficacy, but GS lacks the ability to do so, since it neither applies a threatening amount of vulnerability for a short period or a modest amount for a long period. I’ve already addressed GS 1’s damage sacrifice for the utility of evasion, but the GS has no other options to pump out damage, leaving you stuck between the decision of waiting for Maul to come off cooldown or switching weapons to continue real dps. We want the GS to be a self sufficient weapon to some degree; having it be nothing but a defense spam or pseudo-setup into real damage isn’t really acceptable when you look at the capabilities other Ranger weapons have and what other professions have. GS is also not a remotely effective counter to the condition meta.

GS 3: Swoop – Swoop is a great gap closer with good range and pretty good pathing ability on a pretty good cooldown. Comparatively, it does slightly less damage than the first two attacks from GS 1 chain, and has no inherent numerical synergy with the pet. When used in melee range, the casting time is slightly decreased, but not enough to warrant an increase in actual dps, leaving this skill as nothing but a gap closer, which it does pretty well, but is not always necessary. This is also slightly counter-intuitive to the GS’s defensive melee nature, meaning that once you are comfortably staying in melee, this skill becomes an escape tool, and nothing more. This skill lacks the damage or secondary utility to make it useful in a prolonged melee fight.

Numerically the equivalent to this skill on a Warrior’s GS does almost twice the damage with a slightly longer cooldown. I’m aware that Rush has animation problems that make it less than ideal, but numerically it is more sound and more useful than Swoop.

Responding and +1 to your post because this guy actually took the time to make a video about a problem that has been in the game forever.