Relatively Easy Springer Improvement

[Mungrul.9358]

Sorry, I hate saying that coding anything is easy, and don't mean to imply it is, but this one seems like low-hanging fruit to me:
Warclaw has no fall damage.
Give this feature to the bunny too.

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

next improvement is likely going to be the turtle and ArenaNet hate rabbits, so they ain't bothering with the Bunny.

[Manpag.6421]

To be fair, warclaw is the first time ANet have really touched the base behaviour of a mount, so by drastically changing its movement and movement speed, they've now opened the door for more radical changes/buffs to existing mounts. They can't remove fall damage entirely from it, since the first mastery is a fall damage % reduction which it then shares with other mounts with the last mastery, but it might be possible to buff its initial fall damage reduction high enough that the mastery makes it take 100% less fall damage (while remaining just a reduction on other mounts).

They could probably borrow more warclaw mechanics as part of a springer refresh, with some slight differences to have a stronger focus on vertical rather than horizontal movement. I was thinking about this the other day actually, so my three main suggestions that would give springer back its niche are:

1. It no longer regenerates endurance in the air, but gets all endurance back the moment it touches the ground (like griffon and skyscale)
2. It no longer needs to come to a complete stop to charge a jump
3. It no longer needs to be grounded to jump

Currently, springer doesn't benefit from Bond of Vigor at all, a skill that's massively useful on every other mount. By not regenerating endurance in the air, springer would remain much more dependent on terrain than warclaw (which can just keep jumping as long as it has endurance), but BoV would give it a limited double-jump that didn't rely on terrain. In combination with the other suggestions though, this would still let it rapidly jump up cliffs and walls, because even just clipping a ledge or slope while falling would refill its endurance, and it wouldn't need to wait until it had fallen all the way down to do another jump.

I'm sure there are other small tweaks that could be made or new gimmicks that could be added, but those changes would (imo) make it the king of vertical ascent again, and much more seamless to use.

[TheSorcres.9724]

I would be happy for some inprovment for Griffon. I really like how he looks and I would like to use it instead of Skyscale. But its so much more easy to work and move with Skyscale so you don't have better choice

[Manpag.6421]

1 hour ago, TheSorcres.9724 said:

I would be happy for some inprovment for Griffon. I really like how he looks and I would like to use it instead of Skyscale. But its so much more easy to work and move with Skyscale so you don't have better choice

If you like how it looks and want to use it, use it. Griffon is very much a mount that rewards you for the time you put into practicing it, and quickly far surpasses the skyscale for general navigation - just look at any number of videos out there showcasing what it can do. If griffon got buffs to be able to quickly gain height from ground level, it'd make skyscale inferior in basically every way, and then new players really wouldn't be able to keep up with events because not only would everyone be flying, they'd be moving at mach speed.

[Linken.6345]

2 hours ago, TheSorcres.9724 said:

I would be happy for some inprovment for Griffon. I really like how he looks and I would like to use it instead of Skyscale. But its so much more easy to work and move with Skyscale so you don't have better choice

 

[Randulf.7614]

43 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

 

Could watch videos like these all day. Players this and Weeping Willow and their guild are just phenomenal to watch

[Ghastly.3914]

15 hours ago, Arianth Moonlight.6453 said:

next improvement is likely going to be the turtle and ArenaNet hate rabbits, so they ain't bothering with the Bunny.

Nah I wouldn't say Anet hates rabbits, I actually think they adore them.

They'll get an expansion that improves them like warclaw and skyscale. Remember, warclaw's been terrible outside of wvw for many many years; the rabbit's only been bad for a few months.

My hope is that the next expansion 2 mounts get the warclaw love and get updated to be extremely fun and versatile; the rabbit and griffon? The 2 least used? Would be cool.

[Geoff Fey.1035]

16 hours ago, Arianth Moonlight.6453 said:

next improvement is likely going to be the turtle and ArenaNet hate rabbits, so they ain't bothering with the Bunny.

God I hope so!

Bring back GW1 Siege Devourer Mounts! HYAHHHHH!

(Still sad PoF didn't have a Junundu mount and only had a single event for it)

Edited September 21 by Geoff Fey.1035

[Linken.6345]

2 hours ago, Ghastly.3914 said:

Nah I wouldn't say Anet hates rabbits, I actually think they adore them.

They'll get an expansion that improves them like warclaw and skyscale. Remember, warclaw's been terrible outside of wvw for many many years; the rabbit's only been bad for a few months.

My hope is that the next expansion 2 mounts get the warclaw love and get updated to be extremely fun and versatile; the rabbit and griffon? The 2 least used? Would be cool.

I would say skimmer is used less then the griffon.

[Foxypuff.2596]

I'd say the griffon's fine where it is right now.  The springer on the other hand could definitely use an update of sorts as right now it's hardly used outside of defiance break because of skyscales.  And even then the warclaw can break defiance better with the spear charges.

[Manpag.6421]

10 hours ago, Ghastly.3914 said:

My hope is that the next expansion 2 mounts get the warclaw love and get updated to be extremely fun and versatile; the rabbit and griffon? The 2 least used? Would be cool.

Did you seriously just put griffon in the same bracket as springer for least used mount?! It's used plenty; for some people it's their primary mount, for others it's at least used with the same frequency as beetle for crossing maps quickly. It also got two buffs in SotO, getting updraft and ley line use, and according to GW2 Efficiency, more people have it than either warclaw or skyscale.

The two best candidates for buffs next are springer and turtle. Springer has long been overshadowed for vertical ascent, being faster than other mounts at jumping up but being less accurate at it than climbing/flying up walls. It still had a niche for CC until recently, but warclaw does it better now. However, unlike warclaw, virtually all players own one, and it still does get a lot of use because it's your only option until you get late-game mounts.

Turtle is the opposite extreme, in that it's the least-owned mount that would benefit the most from an alternate unlock route à la skyscale. It was also seen as niche on release, so has never seen the level of use that springer has. It doesn't need massive buffs, just some more tools for the pilot to control the speed/acceleration/handling, probably some kind of pilot cannon by popular demand, and a mastery to give 20% better jet efficiency which would give all turtles some limited flight without using Jade Bot modules (and a lot of flight with them). It also needs a heap of bug fixes.

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

16 hours ago, TheSorcres.9724 said:

I would be happy for some inprovment for Griffon. I really like how he looks and I would like to use it instead of Skyscale. But its so much more easy to work and move with Skyscale so you don't have better choice

Griffon is already extremely powerful, it's the only mount that can rapidly descend, and it's substantially faster than the beetle, even though speed is the only strength the beetle has. I think the griffon is more an issue of learn to play than anything being wrong with the mount itself, since it's the hardest mount to master and few people seem to do it since they mistakenly think it's obsoleted by the skyscale.

[Hesione.9412]

Griffon is how I get from one end of Kaineng to the other.

[Inssengrimm.7924]

Springer really need that damage reduction.

But also a jump height boost, a real boost, make it exponential so fully charged jump is really something else. Make it so it absolutely defeats the skyscale on the vertical axis. 
Right now is barely a bit a higher.