Easy fix to hundred blades; quickness

[oscuro.9720]

Could they not just give 100b 1/4s quick per strike like flurry does with immob? This would solve the problem of a faster 100b combos with quickness possibly becoming a ridiculous skill, since it is running quickness by default.

That would result in an effective cast time of 1.75, but it can’t get faster and can be countered with boon strip or not getting hit. Coeff/s would be 2.05 which would be solid damage, plus a small window of added quickness (about .5s when aftercast is taken into account).

[Jzaku.9765]

You have permanent quickness in endgame PVE and 100b is still honestly a garbage skill. 

[oscuro.9720]

4 minutes ago, Jzaku.9765 said:

You have permanent quickness in endgame PVE and 100b is still honestly a garbage skill. 

I’m mostly thinking of competitive tbh. 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Just reduce the cast time to 2s.

[oscuro.9720]

26 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Just reduce the cast time to 2s.

Part of the reason I say add quickness is because it may be easier for them to implement. Maybe increasing the movement speed of the animation is a problem or a more difficult? Honestly idk and dropping the cast to 2-2.25s would be ideal imo. Just offering even easier solutions. 

[Katary.7096]

5 hours ago, oscuro.9720 said:

Part of the reason I say add quickness is because it may be easier for them to implement. Maybe increasing the movement speed of the animation is a problem or a more difficult? Honestly idk and dropping the cast to 2-2.25s would be ideal imo. Just offering even easier solutions. 

You may very well be correct. However, the baseline animation can be sped up or slowed down already with quickness and slow respectively. And considering that quickness used to give +100% action speed (instead of the current 50%) at one point and back then Hundred Blades worked fine with it, I think it is rather difficult to believe that the reason for GS#2 not getting a shorter casttime is because it is too difficult to implement.

[Hotride.2187]

I think this is the way to go. If you reduce GS2 cast time to 2 sec, it will annihilate with quickness. But if you give it a reasonable quickness duration, that cannot be abused by doing GS2+stow, it will help a lot with making the skill actually usable. So quickness per strike sounds fine. Just make sure you don't have quickness left at the end of a full cast.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Hotride.2187

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

2 hours ago, Katary.7096 said:

You may very well be correct. However, the baseline animation can be sped up or slowed down already with quickness and slow respectively. And considering that quickness used to give +100% action speed (instead of the current 50%) at one point and back then Hundred Blades worked fine with it, I think it is rather difficult to believe that the reason for GS#2 not getting a shorter casttime is because it is too difficult to implement.

This. There is the ability to sped up 100B. Let's do it.

[Katary.7096]

1 hour ago, Hotride.2187 said:

If you reduce GS2 cast time to 2 sec, it will annihilate with quickness.

Yeah, total casttime would be around 1.3sec. Currently Hundred Blades is a rather weak skill, but compressing what it does into 1.3sec sounds pretty extreme.

 

2 hours ago, Hotride.2187 said:

So quickness per strike sounds fine. Just make sure you don't have quickness left at the end of a full cast.

I can agree with the concept, but how would this work in practice? Characters can have anywhere between 0 and 100% boon duration after all.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Then make it 2.5s. 3.5s is on the other end of extreme.

[Girth.9731]

I made a post similar to this one a few years back, trying to provide ideas for improvements that could realistically be implemented.

First off, from a PvP/WvW standpoint, the skill isn't terrible if you have a build that can utilize it properly. From my testing its about a 40% increase in DPS compared with autoattacking so it does do respectable damage. The problem, in my mind, is that much of the damage of the skill is tied up in the final hit which, without quickness, will essentially never land on a good player, even if you get a long CC like Bull's Charge to connect (this is why I love using Sigil of Celerity on my GS). This is not an acceptable state for a skill and it desperately needs QOL changes.

Many people have argued that we should be allowed to move during 100b, similar to what Anet plans to do to Flurry. While this would improve usability, the problem with this suggestion is that the animation of 100b would look very bizarre if the character model were moving. Thus, Anet would have to either create a new animation or replace it with an existing animation that would work better with player movement. Neither is likely to happen. Additionally, the stationary channeling of 100b is what gives the skill its unique feel.

So, what should be done? Well, I think there are a two easy changes Anet could implement to dramatically improve the usability of the skill without changing its identity or power level significantly.

1. Reduce the total channel time and damage of the first 8 strikes proportionally, but add damage to the final hit

The goal here would be to make the final hit easier to land and more rewarding when it does land, without significantly changing the DPS of the preceding 8 strikes. I think a total channel time of 2.5 seconds would be ideal. Thus, even without quickness, it would be feasible to land the entire skill on a CC'd opponent. The damage of the first 8 strikes would be lowered so that their DPS does not change, but the final strike would have its damage slightly increased to make it more rewarding to land. I think the final strike should hit for a little less than a >50% health Arcing Slice. This would dramatically improve the usability of 100b and incentivize Warriors to channel the entire skill to get the damage of the final hit.

2. Increase the max targets from 3 to 5

I mean, the skill is called Hundred Blades, why the hell does it only hit 3 targets?

 

[Hotride.2187]

7 hours ago, Katary.7096 said:

I can agree with the concept, but how would this work in practice? Characters can have anywhere between 0 and 100% boon duration after all.

No concentration in conquest. And in wvw war doesn't really have competitive/meta power roamer builds. Even if you would get 5 seconds of quickness at the end of GS2, what are you going to do with it? Do 2 more dmg on top of the other 3 you did to the toughness stacking perma prot weakness spamming build you are fighting?

Edited June 13, 2023 by Hotride.2187

[KryTiKaL.3125]

17 hours ago, oscuro.9720 said:

Part of the reason I say add quickness is because it may be easier for them to implement. Maybe increasing the movement speed of the animation is a problem or a more difficult? Honestly idk and dropping the cast to 2-2.25s would be ideal imo. Just offering even easier solutions. 

Neither of these things would be true in the case of implementation because they literally already have the animation rigging done to accomplish this. Its on Catalyst, Hammer Skill 2 on Water Attunement; Rain of Blows.

It doesn't do as much damage, but its Elementalist they have 15 other skills to deal damage or accomplish something else...Warrior does not.

[oscuro.9720]

2 hours ago, KryTiKaL.3125 said:

Neither of these things would be true in the case of implementation because they literally already have the animation rigging done to accomplish this. Its on Catalyst, Hammer Skill 2 on Water Attunement; Rain of Blows.

It doesn't do as much damage, but its Elementalist they have 15 other skills to deal damage or accomplish something else...Warrior does not.

I’m just trying to give them every benefit of the doubt since not doing so is a path to madness (as we have seen some people on these forums take 😂).
 

I think reducing the cast is the best option, but this may be easier? Just slap a boon on and you fixed it. I doubt there’s a fix that’s easier than that. 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

15 minutes ago, oscuro.9720 said:

I’m just trying to give them every benefit of the doubt since not doing so is a path to madness (as we have seen some people on these forums take 😂).
 

I think reducing the cast is the best option, but this may be easier? Just slap a boon on and you fixed it. I doubt there’s a fix that’s easier than that. 

Slapping a boon on it doesn't where said boons are already perma up kept. Cast time reduction helps everywhere though.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

41 minutes ago, oscuro.9720 said:

I’m just trying to give them every benefit of the doubt since not doing so is a path to madness (as we have seen some people on these forums take 😂)

*sneezes somewhere in the distance*

Reduce the cd to one second so i can use it as a gap fill whenever i have a chance

Edited June 13, 2023 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Katary.7096]

14 hours ago, Hotride.2187 said:

No concentration in conquest. And in wvw war doesn't really have competitive/meta power roamer builds. Even if you would get 5 seconds of quickness at the end of GS2, what are you going to do with it? Do 2 more dmg on top of the other 3 you did to the toughness stacking perma prot weakness spamming build you are fighting?

Fair points.

[Dahkeus.8243]

The skill without quickness does feel painfully slow, and even if the damage of the skill wasn't an issue, it's just not fun without quickness.  They should reduce the cast time at the very least and revisit the damage of the skill at the same time because it does feel lackluster in a lot of situations for the type of stand in one place and swing your sword wildly skill that it is.

[fable spirt.8465]

Can they allow us to move while using hundred blades like with fury. It sucks getting locked down. For animation they have plenty of animations to replace it with that wouldn't cost too much to implement. 

[Guy.9207]

Rework hundred blades to behave like Scrapper hammer 3. Doing so will make it in line with the rest of the kit which mainly involves mobility one way or another.

[Peacekid.1463]

if u want a better HB give it cripple w vaccum in its skill so it can be usefull