Thoughts on swords?

[felincyriac.5981]

the more I use it, the less I enjoy it. It feels weak? The flip over skills also seem very bland, they don't seem like impactful skills that should cost life to use...

 

only thing I like is the autos tbh

[Shuzuru.3651]

11 hours ago, Tren.5120 said:

It just doesn't make any sense to run it if GS does more damage and you're basically forced to melee because of the gap closers in the rotation, anyways.  For a power build you spend over half your time in Shroud, anyways 😛

I find it really, really underwhelming.  If I wanna go ranged, I'm better off going Condi Scorge instead.  It's less annoying to play, IMHO since the weapon skills don't force-reposition me.

Reassure me, you're not using sword 3 in the rotation for damage, right?

If you do, please don't, that thing is clearly a dps loss that should only be used when you need a gap closer, healing or boon corrupt.

But I don't think sword is meant to outperform GS, that would make no sense, it's more a range complement option, which is nice for dps uptime as it's damage kit is fully ranged and the gap closer allow to get back in melee faster.

[Esufer.8762]

big fan on swords for wvw and spvp (mostly main hand, you'll have to pry my focus from my cold dead offhand)
not so much of a fan of the flipover on the 2 being as weak as it is in wvw. (it feels great in spvp). Feels like it should be on par with the initial attack like it is in other game modes. the only benefit is that it's not a projectile, otherwise feels like you're better off using autos. I guess it can hit people running in different directions/in stealth? doesn't come up often.

Edited March 5 by Esufer.8762

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

I guess I do have an animation complaint with Sword 3 in that it feels like you should be stabbing your target, not hilt-bashing them.

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

ok, I finally gave up trying Harbinger and Core Necro and went S/S (with P/T) Reaper AND, while they're fairly weaker than GS/Staff Reaper, they feel not bad at all and it's pretty fun to play.

amazing mobility, great healing, good synergy with traits, range and melee capabilities, lots of CC and as strong as my best DPS Harbinger but with a much better survival and way more fun to play!

 

[oDIn.6405]

Am I the only one that actually enjoys how swords complete the power reaper kit ? I tried this tonight in W4 with pugs and i gotta say that I LOVE IT. especially on Deimos. I start in swords 111245 shroud 24532 go out of shroud and switch to GS 2345 , switch to swords rinse and repeat. When Deimos used pools or pizza the mobility is insanely useful. I managed to get 18,3K dps with 0,1K below the first place. The group was a PUG , but nontheless, it is soooo much more enjoyable to play this class at last and now you can adapt to almost any situation.

[Generic name.3905]

On 3/2/2024 at 11:42 AM, Asum.4960 said:

E: Also Gorge, the Sword 3 flipover mobility skill sacrificing a little bit of health and therefor putting the user in combat, slowing you down as well as preventing mount follow up will never feel good for general ooc traversal. It's so unnecessary. 

Yes, this is so annoying. I really hope they change that too.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

While I like them -animations gap-closer etc- I don't really get what purpose they fill !?
It has a nice gap-closer on mainhand, for power reaper and may be harbinger, but the more I play them the more I wish we had a "pur" utility/support weapon.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

On 3/2/2024 at 5:42 AM, Asum.4960 said:

E: Also Gorge, the Sword 3 flipover mobility skill sacrificing a little bit of health and therefor putting the user in combat, slowing you down as well as preventing mount follow up will never feel good for general ooc traversal. It's so unnecessary.

Why are you bothering with them for ooc movement when you have mounts?

[Daevhalla.7823]

I admit I'll probably not switch out my main hand for a sword, but on the offhand I enjoy 4 quite a lot, only wish the cast time was reduced.

[Asum.4960]

5 hours ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

Why are you bothering with them for ooc movement when you have mounts?

For one, I personally quite enjoy using mobility skills on the tail end of combat before combat break gets through to get going already, and secondly, there are plenty areas where mounts are not available - esp. in PvP and most of instanced PvE. 

Other times you may wish to use a mobility skill to break out of combat, and quickly mount before something else puts you back into it. Using a mobility to range out of combat, just for the mobility skill to briefly put you into combat, just for that to be enough time for another trash mob to flick a pebble at you, locking you back in a combat state, isn't a fun experience. 

I don't really see a reason to uniquely hamper Necromancer with this awkward ~2 second in combat time every time they whish to use their mobility skill. It's a tiny but constant annoyance, just so a skill can cost 2300 HP for some arbitrary "thematic" reason, while also healing 2400 HP!? Just pointlessly bloated design while lacking actual depth.

[Maultrace.5761]

Can someone tell me what's so broken about flip skills that it requires us to literally kill ourselves over it? I just don't understand why this mechanic needs to exist...

[Aenesthesia.1697]

OK, so i finally took the swords to raids. 

While i ended up doing decent damage on Deimos (21k on target), none of my sword attacks ended up in my top 15 most damaging skills.  

On top of that, I barely used gravedigger, I guess I was caught too much in sword/sword and gravedigger only amounted to 1% of my damage, meaning I could have done fairly better by camping greatsword. 

There was always the fear of hitting #3 and ending up triggering the oils, or jumping out of the plaftorm. 

During Matthias, it was nice to use #3 to cleanse and drop the poison, I hate that fight though and always avoid wing 2.  

I guess i have to get used to them but, for the moment, i only see them as a very convenient (and fun) mobility tool... 

Edited March 8 by Aenesthesia.1697

[Sjentra.3409]

Sword offhand is ok; but that's because most of our offhand weapons are average at best.
Sword main hand; movement is nice; but dmg is still too low; you'd be better off even using axe.

Flip over skills are clunky to use because you can't precast them and by the time it flops over your halfway through your autoattack chain and you only have like 2 seconds to figure out if you want to use it or not.

[Dadnir.5038]

On 3/6/2024 at 9:48 AM, Maultrace.5761 said:

Can someone tell me what's so broken about flip skills that it requires us to literally kill ourselves over it? I just don't understand why this mechanic needs to exist...

As a player you see this mechanic in a risk/reward perspective, but you're wrong, there is nothing like that involved in this mechanic.

The mechanic is simply a "fun factor", it only exist to add some flavor within the thematic of the necromancer in such a way that it stir the inner fantasy of the playerbase and thus rekindle it's "passion" for the game (which would hopefully lead them to invest money into the gem store).

[XECOR.2814]

Just from wvw perspective.
Since this was supposed to enable some kind of backline Necro build like Trig said while introducing the weapon.

All flip skills attacks need like 20% damage buff.
Just having a damage number smaller than the initial skill number is such a bad mechanic, especially when u hide it behind the HP cost, cast times and los restrictions.
Both Sword#2 and Sword#4 initial and flip skills need much higher damage numbers that the current.

In general if they lets say dont buff damage on the swords, it will never be picked up for any meaningful gameplay reasons. It would just be a meme weapon for people who don't know better. 

Edited March 8 by XECOR.2814

[Shagie.7612]

On 3/6/2024 at 12:00 AM, Asum.4960 said:

For one, I personally quite enjoy using mobility skills on the tail end of combat before combat break gets through to get going already, and secondly, there are plenty areas where mounts are not available - esp. in PvP and most of instanced PvE. 

For what it's worth, if you have it up/don't mind using the cooldown, you can weapon swap at the tail end of the sword 3 cast to get the full dash and it won't drain HP.
Not a bad option in pvp when running back from respawn or something.

[Vennyhedgie.5369]

The health sacrifice reduction on the patch made the entire mechanic kinda pointless. You often just barely even notice it now. In the beta, playing swords and harbinger together FELT like you were risking your life. I liked that, that felt like it had a purpose. Harbinger as it was designed is probably the worst elite spec in the game. It had no identity. The swords fix that because they actually sinergize very well with the blight life reduction mechanic, making every move and actual, carefully thought out decision.  

The sacrifice skills need to do almost literaly twice the damage they're doing now, bringing back the previous health sacrifice numbers to actually feel like a risk (in PvE).

[XECOR.2814]

7 minutes ago, Vennyhedgie.5369 said:

The health sacrifice reduction on the patch made the entire mechanic kinda pointless. You often just barely even notice it now. In the beta, playing swords and harbinger together FELT like you were risking your life. I liked that, that felt like it had a purpose. Harbinger as it was designed is probably the worst elite spec in the game. It had no identity. The swords fix that because they actually sinergize very well with the blight life reduction mechanic, making every move and actual, carefully thought out decision.  

The sacrifice skills need to do almost literaly twice the damage they're doing now, bringing back the previous health sacrifice numbers to actually feel like a risk (in PvE).

play without gear if you want to feel like risking your life.

[felincyriac.5981]

13 hours ago, XECOR.2814 said:

Just from wvw perspective.
Since this was supposed to enable some kind of backline Necro build like Trig said while introducing the weapon.

All flip skills attacks need like 20% damage buff.
Just having a damage number smaller than the initial skill number is such a bad mechanic, especially when u hide it behind the HP cost, cast times and los restrictions.
Both Sword#2 and Sword#4 initial and flip skills need much higher damage numbers that the current.

In general if they lets say dont buff damage on the swords, it will never be picked up for any meaningful gameplay reasons. It would just be a meme weapon for people who don't know better. 

sword 2 flip skill does less dmg than the base skill in wvw, you do more damage to yourself with most of these flip skills 😂

its just fake dmg, you hit like a noodle. They don't even provide extra utility, except for the leap, just "press to hit again" 

Edited March 9 by felincyriac.5981

[Dadnir.5038]

17 minutes ago, Vennyhedgie.5369 said:

The swords fix that because they actually sinergize very well with the blight life reduction mechanic, making every move and actual, carefully thought out decision.

A synergy of risks with no synergy of rewards... Wonderful!

[Vennyhedgie.5369]

20 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

A synergy of risks with no synergy of rewards... Wonderful!

Oh I agree. I mean in the hypothetical that they tweak the numbers.

[draxynnic.3719]

I have the feeling that the sacrifice mechanic on the swords isn't intended to offset high damage, but to offset the healing you get from using the skills without the flipovers. So if you need the sustain, you just don't use the flipovers, and healing comes at the cost of doing less damage than with other weapons. If you want to do damage, you use the flipovers, and then the healing and the sacrifice more-or-less balance each other out and you have similar performance to other weapons.

Basically, it's similar to an elementalist switching to water attunement to trade damage for heals, but instead of changing your weapon skills, you simply choose not to use the flipovers when you need the heals.

This logic does, of course, rely on the flipover skills doing enough damage to be worth making that trade.

[Dadnir.5038]

2 hours ago, Vennyhedgie.5369 said:

Oh I agree. I mean in the hypothetical that they tweak the numbers.

They certainly will tweak numbers but not necessarily in a way that let the player feel that the "sacrifice" is worth it.

The point is that swords is going to be balanced in such a way that they hoover between being a sustain skillset and an offensive skillset. There is 3 targets to the balance of the weaponset:

• Using all skills should make the weaponset competitive damage wise with other necromancer's weaponsets. (Currently the damage output is a bit lower than what would be expected of a necromancer's weaponset)
• Not using sacrifice should make the sustain of the weaponset competitive with the necromancer's weaponsets that focus on sustain. (Currently the sustain output is significantly higher than what would be expected from a necromancer's weaponset)
• There is a need for an equilibrium between sustain and health sacrifice. (Currently the sustain offset the sacrifice by a confortable margin)

As such it wouldn't be surprising to see the devs slightly increase the damage output of the weaponset while reducing it's sustain output in a futur balance patch. "Number tweaks".

Edited March 9 by Dadnir.5038

[Vennyhedgie.5369]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I have the feeling that the sacrifice mechanic on the swords isn't intended to offset high damage, but to offset the healing you get from using the skills without the flipovers. So if you need the sustain, you just don't use the flipovers, and healing comes at the cost of doing less damage than with other weapons. If you want to do damage, you use the flipovers, and then the healing and the sacrifice more-or-less balance each other out and you have similar performance to other weapons.

Basically, it's similar to an elementalist switching to water attunement to trade damage for heals, but instead of changing your weapon skills, you simply choose not to use the flipovers when you need the heals.

This logic does, of course, rely on the flipover skills doing enough damage to be worth making that trade.

The problem with this is that the healing comes before the sacrifice and, very often, is completely wasted because you are at full health already. In PvE at least, GW2 is not the kind of game where you hover around the mid-ranges for health percents. It's very bursty, both in damage intake and healing output, meaning your health often just ping-pongs from almost-dead to full health very frequently. 

I'll be honest, while I conceptually like the idea of the health sacrifice mechanic, it makes no sense for it to exist in GW2. I think the only successful attempt they've made with something similar is with Vindicator's Blue elite skill, because it also prevents you from gaining health while you maintain it.