Curse

Epinephrine · Aug 28, 2007, 05:18 PM // 17:18

I'm sure this will attract heaps of negative commentary, as it is a nerfing of sorts.

When there was little in the way of fast melee attacks, Protector's Strike was useful as a quick follow-up to an attack skill, allowing a mini spike of sorts. As the number of such attacks grows however it is possible to chain several together making for dramatically increased effective IAS, as well as allowing a significantly stronger "spike" by adding to the chain.

This issue has already been dealt with in the past by ANet, with the ranger interrupt-speed skills. All the bow skills that have the ability to be fired rapidly have an aftercast built into them; sure, you can spike with a powerful attack followed by a quick attack, but the aftercast then kicks in, making it a one-two punch, rather than a one-two-three-four.

I would suggest that an aftercast is appropriate for the melee attack skills that operate in a similar manner, for similar reasons. While initially (at the time of the change to the ranger skills) there was little trouble, as many of these attack skills weren't around, don't deal damage, or are non-spammable, the situation has changed, and they are employed to greatly surpass the attack speed of weapons. IAS bonuses are capped with good reason, and the lack of an after-cast on this class of skills flaunts that.

The list of such skills would be:
Mystic Sweep
Eremite's Attack
Agonizing Chop
Critical Chop
Magehunter Strike
Protector's Strike
Savage Slash
Disrupting Throw
Harrier's Toss

To a lesser extent, because of the restrictions in order of use
Jungle Strike
Fox Fangs
Exhausting Assault

Meeting the class of skills, but non-spammable really (probably shouldn't be changed)
Distracting Blow (deals no damage, thus doesn't up attack speed/damage rate)
Skull Crack (very large adrenaline requirement, no damage bonus, already weak elite)

FenrirOfSleipnir · Aug 28, 2007, 10:25 PM // 22:25

Actually, how about you yourself play a warrior first to see if it's easy.
Also keep in mind that warriors have 2 pips of energy regen and get a base of 20 energy, which makes most skills less spammable.

If they're able to spam those skills anyways, then they're just good at what they do and you'll have to find a counter for that, or just run like the wind.

player versus player, man/woman versus man/woman. You use your intelligence to create something that works for you and works well, and use your expertise and timing to smash the other to pulp.

As a note, I never use any of the above skills cause I 1. Prefer Swords over axes/scythes. 2. Magehunter Strike is conditional and so is Protector's Strike.
Savage Slash has been boosted in the last update to encourage usage of it in builds.

Also most/all of the more powerful skills are adrenaline based for warriors, and some of them are also conditional to a certain extent.

sorry if I offended you in any way, but that's the way things are.

Dr Strangelove · Aug 28, 2007, 11:33 PM // 23:33

I think they're ok. Most builds only incorporate one of these, to make the spike a little faster, as with agonizing chop. You really only see them as a pseudo-IAS with warrior's endurance builds, which are effective, but really not all that nasty.

wheel-of-doom · Aug 29, 2007, 12:38 AM // 00:38

Well, maybe you should actually see what these skills are really like before you go and say they need somethign like an aftercast delay.

I've loaded just about every combination of these short cast melee skills on to a couple different types of bars. And although you may be able to attack fast with them, your effectiveness as a damage dealer is severely dampered. As you dont have any of the real side effects that other non activation speed attacks do. Most of these skills don't interrupt like those ranger skills, and even the ones that do are fairly conditional, wheras the ranger interrupt skills which have relatively low recharge could effectively shut a caster up better than daze if they didn't have that delay.

Most melee doesn't carry more than 2 of these anyways.

Epinephrine · Aug 29, 2007, 11:26 AM // 11:26

I have played a warrior - I've been around since the october 2004 BWE... hard not to have dabbled.

I suspect few will agree. I also don't think that the warrior versions are the worst offenders, it's the Dervish users spamming Mystic/Eremite's/Protector's with a nominally slow weapon managing to hit 4 times in about 2 seconds that make it truly absurd. It's true that maintaining an infinite chain of attacks is difficult and really a Warrior's Endurance-type thing (or zeaolous vow) but it shouldn't be possible to take a 1.75 second swing weapon and hit 4 times in under 2 seconds.

Instituting an aftercast wouldn't affect the average use of them either - they'd still be nice spike assists.