October 8th - Weakening Charge

[Toraseishin.1932]

I touched on Weakening Charge in my comment under the main thread, but I want to expand on this point:

While I understand why many are praising the proposed change, most are not taking into consideration the role/purpose of the movement in the first place. It's OUR ONLY GAP CLOSER in the staff kit. And I mean "gap closer" in terms of a skill that has a built-in function of resetting your character's position in melee range against the target - whether that be a leap, a teleport, a shadow step, or a dash. (I explain why I don't count Helmet Breaker in this case, later)

Weakening Charge's current movement is problematic for 2 main reasons:
- It has inconsistent aim. As I mentioned in the post, it can move you through or away from a moving target very easily. It also runs the risk of moving you into danger zones - since you can't be sure you'll end up where you intended (the target).
- It begins the first strike at the same time as the movement. So if you have just a bit too much space between you and the target, you'll lose 1 or more hits during the approach.

So it's pretty clear why this skill needed to be revisited. However, simply removing the offending aspect without replacing it with something better is not the solution we needed. Because again, Weakening Charge is our ONLY gap closer for Staff. Without it, our only option then is Steal (17-25 second cooldown), and otherwise we will be left manually positioning our character for every single skill in the kit - making combat feel floaty, less impactful and more tedious. Vault is a manual ground-target skill with high initiative cost, and while Helmet Breaker is functionally a gap closer on its own, it is conditional upon using Debilitating Arc (a situational evasion skill, which moves you backwards and breaks the flow. Creating an additional gap in order to close a gap with the follow-up skill is not a viable alternative to Weakening Charge).

The vast majority of melee kits in the game (and MMOs in general) have some form of gap closer (as I defined in the first paragraph), which play a key role in both function and flow of combat. Interestingly as well, many of these gap closers tend to fall under the 2 skill, unless the kit has multiple options. Some examples (Leap/Teleport/Shadow-step/Dash):
Thief: Staff 2 , Dagger 2
Warrior: Dagger 2 , Sword 2
Guardian: Sword 2 , Sword 5 (as well as a slew of other Willbender (aka "Blue Thief") skills)
Mesmer: Sword 3 , Spear 4 , Spear 5
Revenant: Sword 3 , Sword 5
(Engineer Spear 2, Ranger Sword 2, and many more...)

BUT, there's a bit more to Weakening Charge than it being a simple gap closer for Thief:
Staff is Daredevil's native weapon. Daredevil combat involves frequent dodging - meaning you're moving around a lot more than other classes. So Weakening Charge was/is both a key skill in the DPS rotation, and a necessary means of redirecting/moving your character back to the target (specifically, up against it) after dodging.
With that movement removed entirely, imagine dodging over the target, getting slightly out of range.....and then manually turning around and running back....constantly.... 😅

Additionally, others have mentioned that it will lose synergy with certain Acrobatics traits that require movement skills, as well as any movement-based relics.


So....again with my proposal from the main thread:
Replace Weakening Charge's current movement with a short-range Shadow-Step to the target before executing the whirl animation.
This would:
- Preserve Weakening Charge/Whirl's gap-closing function
- Provide a reliable and consistent means of sticking to the target while getting all strikes in (given the target is within range)
- Allow for stationary execution of the skill if there is no selected target within the range threshold (similar to how Steal functions)
- Add a more Thief-like flavor to the staff kit without taking away from its current feel/look/role/function.

A similar approach to the shadow step can be observed via Guardian/Willbender Sword 5 (following the initial dash), or more simply - how Flash Combo cleanly and instantly executes a shadow step into a multi-strike attack.

Thank you for reading my wall of text 🙏

Edited September 17 by Toraseishin.1932
Further clarification + additional skill example

[WCocytus.4591]

Yeah, it is kind of weird.
Without the movement part, the staff 2 is just more dps version of staff 4.
Like seriously,  staff 4 with 1 less ini + a bit more damage - reflect is soon to be Weakening charge  Whirl

[TheThief.8475]

Press WASD for god's sake

They will probably increase the range of the whirl so it should be no problem hitting even if you are not super close to the target

This is better both in PvE and PvP, an inconsistent movement is not a good thing.

Move with dodges and movement keys and do damage with damage keys, simple as that.

Btw Steal is also a gap closer (the way you mean it),  and helmet breaker (tho is very situational)

[Toraseishin.1932]

6 hours ago, TheThief.8475 said:

Press WASD for god's sake

They will probably increase the range of the whirl so it should be no problem hitting even if you are not super close to the target

This is better both in PvE and PvP, an inconsistent movement is not a good thing.

Move with dodges and movement keys and do damage with damage keys, simple as that.

Btw Steal is also a gap closer (the way you mean it),  and helmet breaker (tho is very situational)

Just a suggestion: You could actually read the post (in full - not just the first few sentences) before replying. Helps to avoid missing the entire point, and mentioning things that have already been addressed and explained, among other things....

[TheThief.8475]

1 hour ago, Toraseishin.1932 said:

Just a suggestion: You could actually read the post (in full - not just the first few sentences) before replying. Helps to avoid missing the entire point, and mentioning things that have already been addressed and explained, among other things....

I did read the whole post, i just think your points makes no sense

[Toraseishin.1932]

On 9/14/2024 at 4:16 PM, Toraseishin.1932 said:

-snip-

And I mean "gap closer" in terms of a skill that has a built-in function of resetting your character's position in melee range against the target - whether that be a leap, a teleport, a shadow step, or a dash. (I explain why I don't count Helmet Breaker in this case, later)

Weakening Charge's current movement is problematic for 2 main reasons:
- It has inconsistent aim. As I mentioned in the post, it can move you through or away from a moving target very easily. It also runs the risk of moving you into danger zones - since you can't be sure you'll end up where you intended (the target).
- It begins the first strike at the same time as the movement. So if you have just a bit too much space between you and the target, you'll lose 1 or more hits during the approach.

So it's pretty clear why this skill needed to be revisited. However, simply removing the offending aspect without replacing it with something better is not the solution we needed. Because again, Weakening Charge is our ONLY gap closer for Staff. Without it, our only option then is Steal (17-25 second cooldown), and otherwise we will be left manually positioning our character for every single skill in the kit - making combat feel floaty, less impactful and more tedious.

-snip-

The vast majority of melee kits in the game (and MMOs in general) have some form of gap closer (as I defined in the first paragraph), which play a key role in both function and flow of combat.

-snip-

BUT, there's a bit more to Weakening Charge than it being a simple gap closer for Thief:
Staff is Daredevil's native weapon. Daredevil combat involves frequent dodging - meaning you're moving around a lot more than other classes. So Weakening Charge was/is both a key skill in the DPS rotation, and a necessary means of redirecting/moving your character back to the target (specifically, up against it) after dodging.
With that movement removed entirely, imagine dodging over the target, getting slightly out of range.....and then manually turning around and running back....constantly.... 😅

-snip-

Alright, let me explain these^ particular points in more technical terms, in case my initial wording wasn't clear enough:

Gap Closers:
The issue of gap closers (or lack thereof) is less about simply being close enough to hit a target, and more about how melee skills interact with a target's hitbox.
The various types of gap closers (leap, teleport, shadow step, and dash) are different methods of bringing the character to the edge of a target's hitbox. This is essentially an invisible barrier that marks the outer-most threshold of a target's vulnerability to taking damage, and also serves as a point of collision for gap closers.
Melee skills that are NOT gap closers do not have collision with this barrier - which is why you can freely move about inside and through a target while continuing to attack.

Shadow steps and teleports simply re-locate the character's position to the outer edge of the hitbox - which is why if you use a shadow step gap closer while inside a large target, you will be re-located back outside the target.
Leaps and dashes (Weakening Charge would technically fall under a dash) of course just move the character across terrain and stop once the hitbox is reached. If used while inside the target's hitbox, the skill is usually just executed in place.

Weakening Charge:
Weakening Charge is a bit of a..."special" case. It travels a distance of 450 units in total. If the distance between the character and the target is shorter than that, the movement appears to stop once the outer hitbox threshold is reached. But the movement isn't actually being cancelled - it's just meeting a point of collision and pushing against that barrier. THIS is the reason why it sometimes skirts past a moving target if the target's hitbox is slightly too far to one side, and also why certain objects like the Primordus Ley Siphons in Dragonstorm cause the skill to glide back and forth against whatever weird shape or size that hitbox is.

The final outlier is sometimes it seems to ignore the target's hitbox collision entirely, and just moved right through like any other melee skill. This is likely a bug.

Combat Flow:
The role and importance of gap closers in melee combat isn't only to quickly bring you back into melee range (which reduces DPS downtime); They help define where the edge of the hitbox is (combat spatial awareness(?)), and provides a feeling of the target being solid (because you have skills that meet a point of collision). This also, therefore, significantly reduces the amount of guess-work needed to position melee skills relative to the hitbox.

Now as far as Daredevil and Staff, here's some math:
Standard hitbox size: 48 units
Bound (dodge) distance: 300 units
Weakening Charge travel: 450 units.

When you are against a stationary target's hitbox threshold and bound directly over and behind it, you have: 300 - 48 = 252 units of space.
Currently, Weakening Charge can be used instantly upon landing the dodge, and moves much faster than running the same distance - bringing you right back against the target's hitbox while doing damage. The 450 unit distance leaves some grace for a moving target to widen that initial gap a bit.
Now let's say they remove the movement, and increase WC's attack radius to match that of Dust Strike (180 units). In a perfect situation with a totally stationary target, you'd have: 252 - 180 = 72 units of distance left to run back to the target in order to reach the hitbox threshold.

So - even in the most perfect of conditions, there will always be period of pressing W (and approximating the hitbox radius) before you can press 2 and continue. Now, given that most cases will NOT be perfect conditions and targets will absolutely move somewhere (unless it's a large boss with a large hitbox), there will be significantly more running involved, and flow of combat will always be interrupted to some degree.

Staff combat will absolutely not feel as smooth under most conditions, and Daredevils will be discouraged even further from being the acrobats they're designed to be.
And again - this particular conundrum would be resolved in its entirety, if Weakening Charge's current movement was replaced with a short-range shadow step to the target.

Edited September 18 by Toraseishin.1932
typo

[kash.9213]

On 9/17/2024 at 1:13 AM, TheThief.8475 said:

Press WASD for god's sake

They will probably increase the range of the whirl so it should be no problem hitting even if you are not super close to the target

This is better both in PvE and PvP, an inconsistent movement is not a good thing.

Move with dodges and movement keys and do damage with damage keys, simple as that.

Btw Steal is also a gap closer (the way you mean it),  and helmet breaker (tho is very situational)

It sounds painful to actually play, especially for keeping up and positioning. Turning into a shadowstep would keep it feeling appropriate and not awkward. It would still help pve players stay under control in their grid while also still allowing people to keep up with a moving fight on target and allow positioning and distance closing off target or on target in Action Camera. 

[Vidit.7108]

There is a lot of solutions to the movement issues with weakening charge that don't result in completely removing it's movement.

For example it could have a range threshold since they've just shown they can add those to skills now with spears. It could require a target to allow for movement and you stay stationary without one, which stops a player from accidently killing themselves with a nearby hazard.

Removing it changes a lot about how staff daredevil has functioned since it came out. We're down to Vault being the only skill they didn't drastically change. The design of the weapon has seriously faded now and the benefits haven't been especially great, helmet breaker being spamable was really slick and after this update you're better off not bothering to use it.