Balancing the Mounts

I've been playing with the mounts, and think I have a good handle on them, but once I got used to all the options the Griffon provides, I don't tend to use the others very often. They all still have their own uses, but none of them can really compete with the Griffon in most situations. I think it's fine for the Griffon to be generally better, since a lot more goes into earning it, but its innate flight bonuses are enough for that, the other mounts should still have general use benefits. I definitely don't want to see the Griffon nerfed, but here are a few ways that I could see the existing ones improved in a way that I don't think would harm anything, and would make each more worthwhile to use.

JackalThe Jackal is theoretically the fastest land mount, but only by a nose, and he can theoretically cross any gap that a Raptor can, but due to the nature of his ability, he tends to drop while in midair, meaning that against perfectly horizontal gaps he has a tendency to smack face first into the other side and drop, which makes navigating many maps a hassle. My suggestion is to give them time freeze while teleporting. Obviously, they can't actually stop time, this is a real time game, but similar to how in Dishonored you can freeze in midair to get your bearings during a teleport attempt, this would allow you to better control your movement, without falling as you do so.

Here's how I see it working: You tap jump, then tap it again, which teleports you forward, same as now. You repeat, and teleport again, same as now. If instead you are aiming for precision rather than speed, however, you'd tap jump to jump, and then HOLD jump. This would cause you to stop dead in midair, sands swirling around you, and you could aim where you want to go. When you release jump, you would teleport to that new location, and if you released and immediately held jump again, you would be hovering during that jump too. You should never be effected by gravity during these jumps, you should never fall lower than the height of the first teleport, unless you wait between holding jumps.

Now, for the combat balance of it. Obviously holding still in midair would be very dangerous if you were left exposed, enemies could still attack you, so I believe you should be permanently in Evade frames while holding jump. But then this could be an issue, where you could just hang out in a risky area for minutes at a time, right? The balancing factor here would be endurance, instead of spending a bar of endurance each time you initiate a teleport, it would spend the endurance when you release it. In the meantime, endurance would drain, giving you about maybe five seconds before it empties one bar (out of three). It would only ever expend up to one bar per teleport, so you could either let the clock tick down to zero or release it at any time and the cost would be the same, this would just be a max cap on how long you could wait. If enemies attack you while doing this, perhaps it would drain the bar faster, forcing you to teleport earlier.

SkimmerThe most basic thing the Skimmer needs is the ability to be summoned while standing in Quicksand, Sulfur, Java, etc. It is just too annoying to find yourself in these kill terrains and being unable to recover in any way. It could also help if Skimmers could function underwater, giving you higher speed mobility, but I understand that might be a technical challenge. If it's possible to give the Skimmer one more ability, I would give it a "crouch" function, sort of the opposite of the "lift" function, this would cause it to go very low to the ground, and on level terrain it would raise its speed to Raptor+ levels (while you had endurance left), but it would be less efficient on hills.

SpringerThe Springer quickly becomes a basic "vertical tool," useless for anything other than climbing. I'd like to make it a bit more practical. First, I would like it to be able to charge high jumps while in motion, any time you're holding down jump, it should be charging, allowing you to more easily approach something and then leap. Second, I would like to make it so that its default, non-charged leap has more horizontal speed to it, allowing it to cover a distance similar to the non-upgraded Raptor leap (only after the Springer's jump has been upgraded), and making it so that when the player is constantly hopping forward, the Springer's speed would be more comparable with the other mounts. Not as smooth a ride, but it'll get you there.

RaptorSo what about the lowly Raptor? Even in the current pet meta, there's almost no reason to use the Raptor after getting the Jackal, and especially after the Griffon. I don't think the Raptor can, or should try to compete on speed or traversal, and if we did buff him up further, it would make a lot of the changes above a bit pointless, just moving the bar. Instead, I think that where the Raptor should excel is in its ability to tank. Raise the Raptor's health and Toughness considerably, so that it's very hard to dismount a player on a Raptor. The Raptor would not only be at least as good as most mounts in terms of speed, but it would also be a better "blockade runner," capable of just tackling its way through large packs of enemies, like most of the southern Desolation map.

Also, and I'm just throwing this one out there, but maybe give it the ability to mount up while in combat, but with some sort of cooldown so you can't abuse it by constantly mounting and dismounting to avoid damage. It would just be nice if, occasionally, you could dismount to interact with something, and be able to mount up and get away even if an enemy tags you once. I'm not sure if there's a way to do this, like you can mount up during combat once but then it puts a 1-5 minute debuff on you that prevents you from mounting up again while in combat, but if it's possible, I'd love to see it, and again it would give players more reason to use a Raptor.

Not only would this added variety be good for players in that it gives them reason to continue playing with all the mounts, but it'd work out great for ANet, since if the players are right in speculating that they will add "mount costumes" to the game at some point, allowing players to cosmetically alter their mounts for a price, it would be important that players would be using ALL their mounts fairly often, since otherwise why would they bother getting an alternate mount skin for a mount that they never even use?

Raptor out-speeds Jackal, actually. While I have won a race against Raptor riders, that was only because of the Jackal's superior turning radius. I only won by a half second, maybe less.

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:Raptor out-speeds Jackal, actually. While I have won a race against Raptor riders, that was only because of the Jackal's superior turning radius. I only won by a half second, maybe less.

I believe that the balance is that the flat run speed of the Jackal is slightly faster, but that the leap-speed of the Raptor is more efficient, giving it higher max speed. In either case, it's not faster enough to make much of a difference outside of pure races.

I find all four are in a good spot as is. The raptor and Jackal are of comparable speeds. The raptor, however, handles uneven terrain a bit better (I just wish it required holding the Spacebar to make it do its super-jump, and just normal-jump when tapping. No, I don't want to lose the ability to super-jump by holding space. Why can't this game differentiate between a tap and hold?) The Springer is the toughest mount (Slow+steady), and its basic jump goes higher than any other's (Making it also capable of crossing rough terrain, even more easily than the Raptor, but not quite as fast). The skimmer is more of a 'gentle cruise" - yes, it's the slowest mount (Aside from walking gryphons.) - but it can skim over almost anything without interruption, and its 'jump' allows even skimming over not only rough terrain, but hordes of enemies as well (With Jackal 4). The griffon has amazing mobility, but it can be a complete PITA to handle in tight spaces that work better with the Springer, and its so slow on ground that it's easier to use a jackal, raptor, or even Skimmer than trying to manage hop-gliding.

i don't think mounts work that way in GW2.

@Ohoni.6057 said:JackalHere's how I see it working: You tap jump, then tap it again, which teleports you forward, same as now. You repeat, and teleport again, same as now. If instead you are aiming for precision rather than speed, however, you'd tap jump to jump, and then HOLD jump. This would cause you to stop dead in midair, sands swirling around you, and you could aim where you want to go. When you release jump, you would teleport to that new location, and if you released and immediately held jump again, you would be hovering during that jump too. You should never be effected by gravity during these jumps, you should never fall lower than the height of the first teleport, unless you wait between holding jumps.

I like this idea. I would love if the Jackal were able to port slightly upwards if you aimed up when crossing a ravine for example. At the very least, it shouldn't drop altitude if when teleporting.

Raptor still seems the fastest to me and I see no point in Jackal.Expecially jumping over long gaps with speed which the Jackal can't do which I aim to do many times to get to my destination fast.