Weakening Charge's shortening "bug"

For the uninitiated, the Daredevil staff skill Weakening Charge can have its traveling distance shortened by a significant amount if one untargets, faces their camera vertically to the ground, resets their character's position and then uses the skill. I think this interaction should be removed from the game, especially when considering that this borders on a bug with the means of performing it.

What got my attention to this quirk of the skill in the first place was the problem it creates with the staff daredevil's meta rotation for boss fights and raids involving both auto attacks and the shortened Weakening Charge, which conflict with eachother since former requires repeated mashing of the first skill while having no target selected, yet the latter requires having no target selected to function in the first place. It's an annoyance to the point that I gave up trying to use the rotation, and instead chose to forego ~1500 dps in exchange for a rotation that doesn't require more input than I feel it deserves, and is much less grating on my fingers as well.

Now I've taken this compromise for a good year at this point, but the recent imbalance of elite specs' damage made think that this would be a good time to take a look at this skill and rework it either partially (changing the way it moves the player) or reworking it entirely, since frankly, it has very little application across all game modes outside of that very specific way it is used in the raid meta build's damage rotation.

I dunno about raids or whatever, but this skill definitely needs a radius increase. There's no reason that Warrior's GS Whirlwind can consistently hit 3-4 times over the same distance when Weakening Charge struggles to hit once.

This isn't a feature exclusive to weakening charge. Every class that has a movement skill like that (burning speed, heartseeker etc) can be shortened, and it's quite useful in PvP. To change it would be nerfing it, as you can successfully land all three hits this way in many cases (steal + weakening charge)

I would be fine with them changing the skill to have revenant's third auto chain animation, and just having it be a twirl that allows you to move while cleaving around you. Would make it a lot better all around imo

Every class that has a movement skill like that (burning speed, heartseeker etc) can be shortened, and it's quite useful in PvP.This is not true, Whirlwind Attack being one of the most obvious counter-examples. And even though you cannot shorten it, it still manages to be much more useful than Weakening Charge, as someone above already mentioned.

How useful this shortening is in PvP is debatable. I know you can get an extra stealthing leap finisher with shortened Heartseekers, but it also makes you more likely to reveal yoursel from someone walking inside of your smoke field.

While I agree that this bug shouldn't be in the game (same for heartseeker or burning speed on dagger 3 fire on elementalist and maybe more skills) I really do like the rotation.

With that bug the rotation is harder to manage perfectly at real fights and I do like you see the difference in DPS between someone completely new to the rotation and someone who practiced it. Ifhey just "fix" it, it would be a huge unnecessary nerf.

But if I can choose to fix (with some buffs to get the same dps) or just to let it stay, I would choose the latter.

@knyy.6427 said:While I agree that this bug shouldn't be in the game (same for heartseeker or burning speed on dagger 3 fire on elementalist and maybe more skills) I really do like the rotation.

With that bug the rotation is harder to manage perfectly at real fights and I do like you see the difference in DPS between someone completely new to the rotation and someone who practiced it. Ifhey just "fix" it, it would be a huge unnecessary nerf.

But if I can choose to fix (with some buffs to get the same dps) or just to let it stay, I would choose the latter.

Yes, because I'm sure people enjoy going through encounters staring at the ground from overhead and having the bosses untargetted the whole time. /s

@Cougre.6543 said:

Every class that has a movement skill like that (burning speed, heartseeker etc) can be shortened, and it's quite useful in PvP.This is not true, Whirlwind Attack being one of the most obvious counter-examples. And even though you cannot shorten it, it still manages to be much more useful than Weakening Charge, as someone above already mentioned.

Whirlwind attack wouldn't classify as the same coding as the aforementioned "movement" skills due to it being a ground-target skill that has a predetermined path. I guess I should have been more specific.

As for the revealed problem, it's not an issue if you aim away from your opponent, and that doesn't really have to do with the shortening bug. Part of learning to play thief is learning to avoid revealing yourself; it's simply a thief issue.

When I raid and want to use weakened, I always try to make sure I'm in a good enough position to where I know I'll land all 3 hits even with passing through the boss. It's not a skill that, in its current state, is meant for all 3 hits to hit consistently; the way they designed it seems to be for group fights and cleaving mobs, not really a single-target skill. I don't really know why it would be a main rotation skill in the first place.