What was the reason given for sword 2 change?

[EnderzShadow.2506]

I've been gone a while. I'm curious, if anyone can tell me why the change was made to sword 2?

Is there an upside I'm missing?

 Because at first glance it looks like either a nerf or making it easier for the inexperienced.

 

 

5 Years later and ANET same as ever.

 

[Beddo.1907]

Sword got 2 dashes to make it a mobility weapon and give it a purpose. Looking at how often I see sword played, it failed. It's not really a nerf in my opinion, although some people act like sword was some mystical 10/10 weapon and now it's bad somehow.

[EnderzShadow.2506]

Thank you for replying. Ive played since release.

I don't  believe it to be an intentional nerf. But it is a nerf based on what you just said. "it's not a nerf but no one plays it." That's not a random coincidence 😉

 

Sword had 2 leaps on one weapon skill alone. Was it a 10/10 weapon? No. Damage was poor but no one used it for damage. 

 

It was very useful getting in/out of fights and repositioning and LOS during a fight.

 

Ok well, thanks again 

[Beddo.1907]

26 minutes ago, EnderzShadow.2506 said:

"it's not a nerf but no one plays it." That's not a random coincidence 😉

Nobody played it before changes either. It wasn't a good repositioning tool for a while, since other classes either stay in range afterwards anyway or have twice the mobility. 

Sword now could become good if they cranked up the numbers and added a way to reset the dash/es.

[Sansar.1302]

16 hours ago, Beddo.1907 said:

Sword got 2 dashes to make it a mobility weapon and give it a purpose. Looking at how often I see sword played, it failed. It's not really a nerf in my opinion, although some people act like sword was some mystical 10/10 weapon and now it's bad somehow.

It where  good and now it is close to 100% unusable.

[aetemes.2603]

I thought it's an intentional nerf when I came back, because ranger try hards used to do all kinds of shenanigans in pvp with it...not sure though maybe they did it because the movement of it was "weird" for new playes..now it's an extremley boring two leaps like sooooooo uncreative my God..just try a little! Add a jaguar visual/audio hype effect and I'll take it.

But saying it is dead..is that true? doesnt power sb use it for pve damage?..I think it was really dead in pve, this made it useful in both cases no?

Edited October 25, 2023 by aetemes.2603

[EnderzShadow.2506]

7 hours ago, Beddo.1907 said:

Nobody played it before changes either. It wasn't a good repositioning tool for a while, since other classes either stay in range afterwards anyway or have twice the mobility. 

Sword now could become good if they cranked up the numbers and added a way to reset the dash/es.

Aw, gotcha.

For me, 'before changes' was more than 4 years ago.  I've got some catching up to do.

[EnderzShadow.2506]

5 minutes ago, aetemes.2603 said:

I thought it's an intentional nerf when I came back, because ranger try hards used to do all kinds of shenanigans in pvp with it...not sure though maybe they did it because the movement of it was "weird" for new playes..now it's an extremley boring two leaps like sooooooo uncreative my God..just try a little! Add a jaguar visual/audio hype effect and I'll take it.

But saying it is dead..is that true? doesnt power sb use it for pve damage?..I think it was really dead in pve, this made it useful in both cases no?

Shenanigans, exactly 😆

I had a lot of fun using it. 

 

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Sword was meta in sPvP like a month or two ago, but then people used it and got it nerfed for doing 'too much damage'.  

Anyway, think Pounce is fine it's better than anything else that was on #2 slot--it's Serpent Strike for me that needs its animation back.  Double leaps aren't great since they are linear and Pounce doesn't go super far anyway so mobility is low.

Other than that, think it's fine--trait is also better as strider strength is better than strider defense as it does yield a lot of power.    

[Remus Darkblight.1673]

Give pounce evade frames too.

Probably get called OP then because S/D would have 3 evades. Even though Mesmer can do similar with S/S and distortion, or D/D Thief spamming death blossom.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

1- sword now hits very hard, definitely does not need its coefficient raised.

2- it's not dead, atleast in pvp as it was and still may be one of the meta weapon kits on power slb.

3- the version of sword we had before this one was great, felt unique and fun to use. All anet had to do was raise its damage to match what it does now and woulda been a awesome weapon. It's boring now animation wise which makes sense cuz I can't think of any sword skills on any class that aren't boring, it's like anet loses all creativity when developing sword skills.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

To the person confused.

It can hit for 10k crits in pvp modes, I get average 4k-5k hits with sword 2 when buffed by sword 3. Sword does a lot of damage now and even slight buffs to its damage will result in nerfs 100% pretty quick. 

Sword was never meta in pve or pvp but since change was the meta ranger power slb builds weapon, it ran sword/warhorn and greatsword. Would hardly call a weapon that's part of a pvp meta build dead, as far as in pve who cares as pve is so easy any decent player can make literally every weapon work well enough to complete any task other than topping damage meters.

Lastly a lot of u are complaining that sword version before this one was more fun and just needed higher damage, I agreed. So what's ther to be confused about? U think it doesn't do enough damage or it wasn't a meta?

[Aaron Forestman.4758]

As fun as the backwards roll was before, that made it pretty much unusable in endgame pve. This way we got a solid weapon that finally got power soulbeast builds to stop using main hand dagger.

[Beddo.1907]

8 hours ago, Psycoprophet.8107 said:

3- the version of sword we had before this one was great, felt unique and fun to use. All anet had to do was raise its damage to match what it does now and woulda been a awesome weapon. It's boring now animation wise which makes sense cuz I can't think of any sword skills on any class that aren't boring, it's like anet loses all creativity when developing sword skills.

The animations looked fancy, but were impractical. 
Hornet's Sting, stab and backwards roll took too long, making the 180 turn mobility slower and as a result inconvenient in comparison to regular mobility. Boosting the animation might have been a solution, but would made it look really off visually and would clash with evade frames.
Old Serpent's Strike had too long animation and was basically worse Stalker's Strike and didn't provide anything outside of evasion.
To top it all off, the skill swap over complicated the weapon, which would be fine if there was a real benefit to it.
As for PvE only, the animations just clogged up space for damage and miss positioned you.

I'd take the new sword which is more practical, with less fancy animations and mechanics, over the old sword.
Just in case: what exactly was old sword purpose and did it do it well?

[DanAlcedo.3281]

I personally never touched sword before the patch. Now it's one of my favorite weapons in the game. 

[Sansar.1302]

14 hours ago, Beddo.1907 said:

The animations looked fancy, but were impractical. 
Hornet's Sting, stab and backwards roll took too long, making the 180 turn mobility slower and as a result inconvenient in comparison to regular mobility. Boosting the animation might have been a solution, but would made it look really off visually and would clash with evade frames.
Old Serpent's Strike had too long animation and was basically worse Stalker's Strike and didn't provide anything outside of evasion.
To top it all off, the skill swap over complicated the weapon, which would be fine if there was a real benefit to it.
As for PvE only, the animations just clogged up space for damage and miss positioned you.

I'd take the new sword which is more practical, with less fancy animations and mechanics, over the old sword.
Just in case: what exactly was old sword purpose and did it do it well?

It where a weapon that had Alot of sustain and made going from close to ranged and back where easy and enabled a play style that is missing now. 

It never needed more damage as is where a defense weapon. 

[psizone.8437]

15 hours ago, Beddo.1907 said:

Just in case: what exactly was old sword purpose and did it do it well?

OG sword used to track enemies, which made fighting invisible enemies really fun.

Even with the autoattack change, sword was great for roaming in WvW. Monarch's leap was the gap closer and Hornet sting was your backwards evade for creating a gap. It was a bit janky, but it was fun to use.

New sword works, it does damage but it's so kitten boring. It was very obviously a PvE change, when buffing greatsword would have accomplished the same overall goal without messing with swords niche.

If mace comes out and is a power weapon that replaces sword in the PvE meta, I hope to god they revert the changes back.

[Zyreva.1078]

47 minutes ago, Sansar.1302 said:

It where a weapon that had Alot of sustain and made going from close to ranged and back where easy and enabled a play style that is missing now. 

It never needed more damage as is where a defense weapon. 

It was terrible as defensive weapon, because neither of the evades were aviable on demand. Now it has only one evade, but that one is more accessible and therefore better. It now also has two leap finishers for more healing or stealth potential and still mobility for engaging or disengaging. It is now better offensively and defensively and play rates of sword have gone way up in all game modes.

Edited October 26, 2023 by Zyreva.1078

[psizone.8437]

7 minutes ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

because neither of the evades were aviable on demand.

There used to be 2 available on demand before it was changed a few years back which made its defensive use considerably worse. 

It was janky as hell but it was a really good defensive weapon.

[Zyreva.1078]

13 minutes ago, psizone.8437 said:

There used to be 2 available on demand before it was changed a few years back which made its defensive use considerably worse. 

It was janky as hell but it was a really good defensive weapon.

Even then it was pretty niche because the crazy dmg power creep after HoT meant you risk getting blown up during the initial cast before the evade frames kick in while not actually having enough counterpressure to force the enemy off of you. Sword was decent during core and early HoT. But the game has changed so much since then that buffing numbers alone wouldn't have been enough to bring sword on par with the rest of the game. Now it might be more boring, but it is stronger in every single game mode and not just in terms of dmg.

Edited October 26, 2023 by Zyreva.1078

[psizone.8437]

11 minutes ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

But the game has changed so much since then that buffing numbers alone wouldn't have been enough to bring sword on par with the rest of the game.

I disagree, I don't see how them buffing the numbers wouldn't have the exact same effect without changing the core of the weapon.

They increased the damage by a lot when they changed the skills. If the previous skills had those levels of damage, it would still be able to apply the same counterpressure.

Other than the damage increase and boon/condi changes (that they could have added to the old skills) the only thing they added was a second, smaller forward leap. With that they removed a backwards leap and an encircling evade.

[kharmin.7683]

On 10/24/2023 at 12:07 AM, EnderzShadow.2506 said:

I've been gone a while. I'm curious, if anyone can tell me why the change was made to sword 2?

Is there an upside I'm missing?

 Because at first glance it looks like either a nerf or making it easier for the inexperienced.

 

 

5 Years later and ANET same as ever.

 

You might want to look over this thread for further info:  https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/132494-silly-sword-changes-no-one-asked-for-merged/?do=getNewComment

 

[Zyreva.1078]

3 hours ago, psizone.8437 said:

I disagree, I don't see how them buffing the numbers wouldn't have the exact same effect without changing the core of the weapon.

Maybe when going back to an older version, but the previous one was a mess and the numbers would need to be crazy in order to make up for that.

Edited October 26, 2023 by Zyreva.1078

[psizone.8437]

4 hours ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

Maybe when going back to an older version, but the previous one was a mess and the numbers would need to be crazy in order to make up for that.

I would prefer a much older version to return but buffed.

But yeah the numbers would need to be increased a lot, serpent strike now does 1100 damage with a power coefficient of 3 whereas previously it did 235 with a power coefficient of 0.8.
 

[aetemes.2603]

I will say when I recently created a new character..I don't know when did they add this whole "difficulty level" to classes. Necro and ranger are classified as easy entry classes. 

So perhaps another aspect of the change was making sure that weapons were simple..as advertised at creation xD...and tbh the old sword pvp use was..kinda sweaty to apply sooo lol.

And as boring as it is..having easy two leaps means easier fields (smokefield -_-) utilising so..it's now very much so useful..just not hype to me.

Most weapons I think have very "iconic" individual buttons/vibe..the fact that it changed from this "I leap I retreat like cats in the jungle!" into a "dagger/greatsword leap" aka medium sword xD is..ok...effective but boring that's all.

I feel if pounce just gets more animation love to start with like bear maul/hawk swoop etc..itd make it more flavorful and rangery. Cause it just feels like a copy paste daggers leap. I dunno..pretty consistent "theme" of making things dull and easy to "balance" so...shrug.

I mean the boredom is in the name..from Monarch's Leap/Hornet sting!..to...pounce.