Rework some weapon skills

[EvilZombie.6801]

I would suggest rework gs3 swoop as it occasionally bugged out missing the hit

 

Change= ground target similar to druid staff3 ancestral grace where you leap forward as the eagle wing soar into air and slam onto the ground like a hero landing

 

Sword2 i literally don't get it the rolling and same as dagger4

 

Shortbow 3 leap backwards sometime the animation felt off when you are pressing forward

[Jonas.2079]

Sword needs to be reworked a bit in general. I think that the mobility skills should not  be needed for DPS but should be used when mobility is needed. Serpent's strike should be the bread and butter dps skill, with good power damage and powerful poison damage. Sword should be a foil to Axe as a mainhand weapon, with the latter being ranged, bleed and power focused, Sword should be melee+mobility, Poison and power focused. There is a clear design space on ranger for a Poison-focused ranger that uses traps, sword, and potentially quickdraw in the Skirmishing traitline that is held back by sword's poor condi damage. Furthermore, because Serpent's strike is an evade, it should be possible to use it reactively to an attack. As it stands it's locked behind an engage.

 

My solution would be as follows;

 

Sword 1: Add some poison to the third autoattack

 

Sword 2 would be Serpent's strike, and could be a a "special Ammo" skill with 2 charges with some ICD between ammo usage, so you'll only be able to use it about as quickly as you do now with the whole Monarch's leap - Serpent's strike - Hornet sting - Monarch leap - Serpent strike combo we have today. The ammo ICD should probably reflect the autoattack chain, so that its available after 1 or 2 full chains with quickness.

 

It is a "special" ammo skill, because both ammo charges should recharge simultaenously. This is to make it so that the number of uses remains the same in a rotation as it does today, as we get to use Serpent's strike twice between each cooldown cycle. Poison damage should be buffed, as mentioned earlier. 

It would also be nice that if instead of the weird rolling animation, it functioned similarly to a mirage ambush, allowing you to move freely in the evade frames to position yourself, followed by a short dash to target with the serpent's strike animation. This way, you could also move your back away from cliffs that Hornet's string would normally yeet you off.  

 

Hornet's sting (current sword 3) is an evade as well, and therefore I suggest that it is placed as a flipover skill for Serpent's strike, instead of for Monarch's leap. Whenever Serpent's strike is not available (both between ammo uses or when ammo is recharging), Hornet's sting is available. If used, it will have it's own ICD. Hornet's sting resets Skill 3, monarch's leap, if it hits. Hornet's sting should be a low damage skill that you'd only use for evasion/mobility when you need it. 

Sword 3 is Monarch's leap. Doesn't have to change, should stay as a low dps, but nice mobiliy skill that you use when you need it, NOT to access your damage skill. Unlike previous sword incarnations, we do have it available as an engage at any time, so that functionality is not lost. 

With these changes sword would feel less clunky to play, and it would open up for interesting build options that, with the right numbers, could be a viable, flexible option to the axe that is dominating ranger builds atm. 

[kharmin.7683]

I love Sword 2 and Dagger 4.  I use them a lot with my core ranger along with Sword 3 for a bunch of mobility.   Just need to practice to feel the correct flow. 

[Gotejjeken.1267]

They just need to up sword damage, and swap hornet sting and monarch leap so your engage is on 3 skill; that way it matches every other melee weapon (gs and dagger).   

They need to rework poison entirely though, as too many ranger weapons focus on it and it's a terrible condition in terms of damage.  In addition, there's too much cleanse and it's hard to reapply / stack (unlike bleed). 

I really don't like hybrid weapons anyway, at least in the way they've implemented them.  They've tried the hybrid power/poison/bleed thing with dagger, axe, and sword and it just doesn't work.  Just leads to cele builds everywhere, or going full power and just ignoring the condition aspect.    

Edited November 2, 2022 by Gotejjeken.1267

[Jonas.2079]

12 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

They just need to up sword damage, and swap hornet sting and monarch leap so your engage is on 3 skill; that way it matches every other melee weapon (gs and dagger).   

They need to rework poison entirely though, as too many ranger weapons focus on it and it's a terrible condition in terms of damage.  In addition, there's too much cleanse and it's hard to reapply / stack (unlike bleed). 

I really don't like hybrid weapons anyway, at least in the way they've implemented them.  They've tried the hybrid power/poison/bleed thing with dagger, axe, and sword and it just doesn't work.  Just leads to cele builds everywhere, or going full power and just ignoring the condition aspect.    

 

This wouldn't be great. While skill 3 should indeed be Monarch's leap, I don't want to use hornet's sting in order to use Serpent's strike. At least put hornet's sting as the flipover on skill 2. You'd still need to use Hornet's sting as a part of the dps rotation though, which i don't like as it's too much uncontrolled jumping around. I'd much rather that HS was something you used only when you needed it. 

I do concede that the whole "special ammo skill" was a bit convoluted though -the idea was to provide the same number of uses as we have today without requiring jumping around for dps. A simpler and better solution may be to get rid of resetting Serpent's strike alltogether and just reduce the base CD to compensate. Hornet's sting would still reset Monarch's leap though. 

As far as hybrid weapons go i think that on ranger, it is a must for the mainhand weapons. It would be a sad state of build diversity if this wasn't the case. Axe is already there, being the best condition and the best power weapon for ranger currently, and compatible with every offhand weapon. It's probably a bit too strong, but its not really that OP either with the possible exception of Axe/axe fervent force untamed (although it has a very high apm rotation so it's not actually that bad). Dagger MH isn't the greatest for power (personally i never tried it so idk really), but has both bleeding and poison as well as quickness&some mobility - it strikes me as good allrounder. Sword should be power+poison to fill out the trio, but it's poison application is too weak as it currently is.

 

Again, there is a very clear design space in the skirmishing (with wilderness survival ofc) for a poison based condition ranger using something like sword/torch, Sword/dagger. Trapper's expertise, Strider's defense and quickdraw, avoiding the typical crit+bleed we see on many ranger condi builds. Instead we have picked traits that synergize well with sword/poison (and burning, to a lesser extent).

 

The problem is not really poison as a condition, it does more damage than bleed, the problem is that it is more difficult to apply as many stacks. I suggested to significantly buff the poison application on sword to help alleviate this. Or were you saying that that poison could have an issue in PvP because of it's effect on healing making it difficult to for Anet allow any build to have tons of it? If that's what you meant, maybe a solution could be to split poison into "poison" and "sickness". One is the damage component, the other is the anti healing. The anti healing would be applied a split second after the damage so that cleanses prioritize it. I'm not sure of the severity of this issue, though. 

 

 

[AlexndrTheGreat.8310]

9 hours ago, Jonas.2079 said:

As far as hybrid weapons go i think that on ranger, it is a must for the mainhand weapons. It would be a sad state of build diversity if this wasn't the case. Axe is already there, being the best condition and the best power weapon for ranger currently, and compatible with every offhand weapon. It's probably a bit too strong, but its not really that OP either with the possible exception of Axe/axe fervent force untamed (although it has a very high apm rotation so it's not actually that bad)

A bit off topic for this thread, but I’d say mainhand Axe is quite OP at the moment. Axe 2 getting giga-buffed (damage was increased 5x) really skewed the balance between the other weapons.

If I remember correctly, Dagger and Sword were relatively even in power dps. Dagger had better sustained damage, Sword had better burst damage, and Axe was only ~3% behind both for power damage. Now Axe is the be-all-end-all weapon for power damage, you’d never want to use Sword or Dagger for dps.

There was even a point on SnowCrows where Axe+Axe/Warhorn was almost the best build, beating out Longbow just because you can Axe 2 in either weapon combo.