Feedback:User/Avaera/Reactive Dodge

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I understand that the intent of Guild Wars 2 is to provide a more action-oriented, twitch-based combat through mechanics such as dodging out of the way of incoming attacks.

While this is not at all a feature that I would normally look for in a MMORPG (I prefer focusing on long-term character development and slower strategy-type decisions, not really fast-paced abilities that rely on player reflexes and reaction times as found in FPS titles), I would like to suggest an alternative, inferior form of dodge be added to the game. This is entirely from a PvE perspective - I don't really have any interest in PvP.

This is not just to provide a fallback for players with less motor skills or action gameplay expertise like myself, one of the main reasons I find dodging irritating is that I play the game from another country, so my ping is quite high, often sitting comfortably around 0.5sec. Adding that kind of delay to reaction time means that I have a much lower margin of error than players located geographically close to the game servers, and thus even though it may appear that I have hit the dodge key before an attack lands, I will still be struck before my character actually rolls away.

My suggestion is as follows:

Evasion (Reactive Dodge)[edit]

Evasion is a self-boon that lasts until the next ground-targetted attack that would affect your character, causing you to dodge backwards automatically right before the attack lands, consuming the boon.

To apply evasion, you would triple tap a movement key, or tap the relevant keybind. This would require a full endurance bar, and would take your endurance down to 0 until the evasion buff is removed. Once the evasion is triggered, your endurance would start to refill again.

If necessary, an additional cooldown timer might apply between consecutive uses of the ability.

When the boon is triggered and you evade backwards, any ability you are currently activating would be interrupted.

Reasons:

  • Provides a means of benefiting from dodge for players with poor network connection, physical limitations or disabilities, or poor reaction times.
  • Doesn't overpower dodge itself, because evade is:
    • more costly (full endurance, plus preventing active dodge while up)
    • less flexible (the evade is always in one direction, backwards)
    • less reliable (this won't avoid targetted or projectile attacks)
    • less fluid (could interfere with your offense by interrupting your attack)

Despite these drawbacks, I think evasion would still be advantageous to have in your bag of tricks. You would be able to activate it if you know the boss you are fighting is about to AoE, or you expect the NPC you are fighting to perform a big blow but have trouble predicting in advance when it will arrive in order to 'beat the lag'.

Just a thought.