There is a lot of posts on the forums complaining about SnS combos recently so I think it would be good to give a suggestion on how to balance it before it gets nerfed into the ground. (Coming from someone who has used SnS since week 1 of release)
The main issue with SnS isnt the stun and it isnt even the leaping strike stagger. It certainly is strong and allows for good follow up with other weapons (that may or may not need their damage tuned). But the main issue is that leaping strike is very hard if not impossible to react to. This makes the whole thing very tough to deal with. The main counter to SnS is to just block the leaping strike but you cannot block it on reaction which turns it into a guessing game of when they are going to do it. So basically a 50/50 with huge rewards and very little risk.
There are two good solutions that I can see without destroying the weapon.
You can make leaping strike punishable if it gets blocked. So if you manage to block it you will have enough time to counter with an ability of your own before they can dodge out or perform any other action. This change maintains that kind of 50/50 guess but makes it much more high risk high reward.
You can add a kind of small wind up before the leaping strike so it becomes something that you can react to if you are expecting it. With this it is important to not make it too long like how shield rush has an enormous wind up before it goes off making it borderline useless in my opinion. So a small delay like .25-.33 seconds so that if someone is expecting the leaping strike they can react to it with a block or dodge but short enough so if they were not expecting it they would still not be able to react in time. This change would also curb stomp the current play style of using leaping strike and if it fails run away until it comes off cooldown and try again.
In my opinion option 2 is probably better as it gets away from the 50/50 guessing game that a lot of people do not like at all and forces players to think more about using the ability rather than just tossing it out and hoping for the best.
Just make light weaker (either less dmg bonus or less armor), that will fix many of the problems currently reported. If then a light hits you with this combo, youâll have all the ways to counter.
The problem is that by asking to nerf sns, youâre nerfing tanks even more, they are already in a miserable position. What must be slightly nerfed is light.
Making light weaker would not change anything. I can 100 to 0 people while wearing medium armor. Nerfing light will only hurt mages and rangers.
On top of that did you even read the post? The proposed changes would not affect tanks almost at all. No damage is being nerfed just how a single ability interacts. Which is only making it a bit harder to start these SnS combos. If someone is truly tanking in pvp they probably wouldnt even use leaping strike and this certainly wouldnt affect pve tanking at all.
you clearly never played tank.
the fact these light sns builds are viable is because light can escape anything, it has shirking fortification and energy, dodge roll, and damage mitigation is not so bad. Since you have no risk you can just jump on others and cc chain (not exactly a chain since anyone with some freedom can escape easily). Add some risk and it wonât be worth it.
Alternative idea, just half the stun/root times for everyone, then change CONST 300 bonus to +100% stun duration, thus in practice tanks are the only one that can cc-chain, but they have no dmg to shot you.
And you are clearly just out to get light armor nerfed regardless of the actual point of the post.
Also freedom will not save you. I have tested these combos on people with 5 pieces of freedom and you can still chain everything together the only thing that changes is the timing is tighter and the order of the abilities change or in the SnS/spear case you simply just cant dodge in between abilities while doing the combo. If anything it becomes stronger on people with all freedom because then they wont have as many resilient pieces. Freedom is extremely overrated.
And yes there should be risk when doing certain things which was the point of the original post. Leaping strike currently has no risk for huge rewards. And since you cant react to it because it is so fast it becomes a guessing game.
Definitely agree with @SIMPLY_FABULOUS. You canât react to leaping strike because the animation is too fast. Short wind up would be great solution to this.
Help me understand why comboing 5 players in a few keystrokes with one weapon is okay but comboing 1 player with 2 weapons is outrageousâŚ
Do me a favor and go into OPR and just use a sword and shield the entire time, in all light armor (no medium chest for you) and then come back here and tell me youâd nerf that weapon.
Youâre out of your mind if you think sns is the problem.
If you read the first paragraph youd see that I have used SnS since nearly day 1. So yes I have used it in opr and in nearly every opr i have ever done. Just because SnS by itself is not strong damage wise doesnt mean it isnt very strong when used with another weapon. No one is saying the big aoe combos arent an issue they certainly are. And comboing one person with SnS isnt the issue its more so about how easy leaping strike makes it to start the whole thing as well as having 0 down side if you happen to fail the leaping strike. None of these changes will make it so you cant combo anymore.
The small delay will just make people have to actually think about when to use it. As an example the best time to leaping strike someone is when they are in the middle of a HA or LA animation. This Makes it guaranteed everytime. This will still be possible. What wont be as guaranteed would be just tossing it out randomly hoping the other person doesnt block or dodge in time. And obviously hitting someone that isnt even looking at you wouldnt change at all.
Very common tactic that people have adopted with the SnS is to just randomly toss out the leaping strike and if it fails just run away until it comes off cooldown and try again. 50/50 guessing game with 0 risk. All these changes are trying to achieve would be to get away from the 50/50s and make things more skill based rather than luck.
A good example of how it would be would be like vault kick. Vault kick is slow enough to where if you just toss it out randomly you will get dodged every single time. But if you mix up how you use and and think a bit you can still hit it very consistently.
I riposte, block and dodge leaping strike all the time. In my opinion you can easily react to it if you pay attention, however if you donât youâll get punished, which is how it should be.
The community really needs to stop complaining about things that are clearly not OP, just because they died to it once In OPR.
Realistically SnS has absolutely nothing going for it without leaping strike, which is why they originally buffed it. Make it worse and it immediately gets degraded into a tank-only weapon once again.
Leaping strike is also a great escape tool. If you nerf it because this (not at all a problem) combo then youâre giving even less utility to the weapon and actually forcing people into using it ONLY for the combo.
If you want build diversity and balance, you make other abilities better. Half the abilities in this game are useless (and many not just in PvP). You make combat more strategic. You make combat more responsive (so, yes, you do have to dodge or block quickly to not get hit by certain abilities).
And you say thereâs no risk to the combo but in order to do it you are LITERALLY the lowest armor you can bet in the game and you are USELESS in group fights on point (unless the other team is trash).
Sounds pretty balanced to me.
(By the way, I donât use the combo. I play sns and bow in light because apparently I hate myself).
What do you mean zero downside? When I block leaping strikes I immediately follow up with a shield bash or leaping strike+shield bash of my own. Works(almost) every time.
There is a reason why 3/4 of every OPR GA Players and half of this GA/IG.
And this is not because the other Weapons are so OP.
When SnS is so OP, why i havenât seen more then 2 Sns Player (with Tanks) on 1 OPRâs on Evonium.
Maybe because itâs useless. A SnS Combo can kill 1 Player offside the Zerg, maybe every 30 sec. In the meantime the Zerg have taken all 3 Forts on the OPR Map.
And the funniest thing, everything out of the GA/IG Meta is for the Meta Player
If a SnS Player uses leaping Strike he hasnât any escape abilities anymore, but hey itâs
Well then they clearly dont know they can dodge out and avoid any counter if the leaping strikes gets blocked. I have tested this before even if they riposte the leaping strike you can dodge out. You will only be countered if you continue to try and attack after getting blocked.
A guaranteed counter would be to just shield bash as they fly in with leaping strike that will work everytime since shield bash has grit given that you can react fast enough which brings us to my main point
Its great that some people can react to it but the average player is not able to especially when taking different pings into account.
As the SnS combos get more popular and they fix the shield attribute issue even more people will begin using it. When that happens the average players will get destroyed by the combos and there will be even more complaining than you are already seeing.
I have no problem dealing with leaping strike but things are balanced towards the average player. And given AGSâs track record of âbalancingâ things not named GreatAxe it will probably be nerfed into the ground. A good example is the ice spike combo that got nerfed because the average player couldnt deal with it. Same exact thing is going to happen here so this post was a suggestion for balancing that would not destroy the weapon for people that actually get good at it.
Because if you are good you will only be using leaping strike when the target physically cant do anything about it like during recovery animations of attacks or abilities. These changes would not affect players that use it like that
Bruh no one is saying GA or IG are fine where they are. This is just addressing an issue that will probably only get worse especially when the 3v3s come out. Trying to avoid getting it over nerfed.
There are plenty of posts talking about how broken those two things are
