Kneel is fun

[Nasberada.7340]

Kneeling and getting up mid fight to access different skills and managing your ability to move or having range is a core aspect of rifle but the current implementation of kneel have a canceling high priority animation introducing a time tax to change between stances.

Changes that blend both stances only diminishes the identity of the weapon, if a more flexible tool kit is required it must keep the identity.

- Make kneel faster and less intrusive. (being able to get up and down mid animation is enough to keep the combat flow, look at elementalists being able to change attunements in between skills or engineers with kits)

- Make more ways to actively get out of kneel (jumping is one of the more popular ideas since we have many Wave type attacks in PVE)
 

[Serperior.6541]

Turn Sniper's cover into a short sidestep kind of skill, like bladesworn, you know it makes sense too considering unkneel version of the skill is also a shadowstep

Edited November 12, 2022 by Serperior.6541

[Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497]

The better changes to kneel would have been...

Keep old kneel range.
Kneeling while moving will cause a short range slide.
Dodge rolling and pressing kneel through animation ends the animation in the kneel position.
Using the movement keys longer than what is necessary for a roll would disengage kneel.
Rolling in kneel, and holding a movement key at the end of the animation will disengage kneel.

The above is all you had to do to not make kneeling feel like garbage.

Something nice to have?
Introduce new trait called "Darn Good Ground" Increases stamina regeneration while in kneel, Increases distance of dodge roll (Not dependent on rifle), also further increases the range and velocity of rifle rounds while kneeling.

Edited November 13, 2022 by Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497

[Doggie.3184]

20 hours ago, Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497 said:

The better changes to kneel would have been...

Keep old kneel range.
Kneeling while moving will cause a short range slide.

Immediatly makes me think of the prone leap in MGS5.

Raiden here is what an actual Deadeye is. XD His Rifle even has AoE.

Kinda lazy to not at least add a crawl or crouch-walk animation. It's not logical to walk at all. If you're standing as a Sniper you mind as well run. It's not like walking in this game makes you harder to be detected.

Edited November 13, 2022 by Doggie.3184

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

I 100% agree with jump to exit kneel stance (to transition to standing stance), but only if jump isn't allowed with the new RP walk. I also think things should be improved further in terms of visual clarity (weapon skill colors change when in kneel stance along side a subtle sound for the user). 

Personally, I honestly never felt like kneel was all that fun in it's current form for PvE instanced content. It was fine for Open World, WvW and PvP to me though. I am not a fan of the range decreases, especially in competitive modes, but am curious to see how a RP walk in kneel stance will feel.

I feel like if they wanted to have some movement in kneel stance maybe decrease the range when the user starts to move in kneel stance. There could be a cooldown on entering back into max range if the user stopped moving for X amount of seconds with max range being set at the start of kneel in case the user starts their kneel without moving.

Edited November 12, 2022 by ZeroTheRuler.7415

[kash.9213]

3 hours ago, Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497 said:

The better changes to kneel would have been...

Keep old kneel range.
Kneeling while moving will cause a short range slide.
Dodge rolling and pressing kneel through animation ends the animation in the kneel position.
Using the movement keys longer than what is necessary for a roll would disengage kneel.
Rolling in kneel, and holding a movement key at the end of the animation will disengage kneel.

The above is all you had to do to not make kneeling feel like garbage.

Something nice to have?
Introduce new trait called "Darn Good Ground" Increases stamina regeneration while in kneel, Increases distance of dodge roll (Not dependent on rifle), also further increases the range and velocity of rifle rounds.

That sounds like a legit stance system and would make peeling around in Kneel less unfairly dangerous around larger fights. I appreciate the stab they took with the change and it sounds mostly alright, minus that range change, will have to see how fluid it is going into Kneel and the slow crawl. Right now I gamble with a weird Jump+Dodge+Death's Retreat combo and press Kneel around the middle of the arch animation when moving with a group or whatever to land in stance, but there's no guarantee on which side of the DR animation the dodge evade will land on if it even registers.