Guild Wars: Why the New Crippling Slash is So Good

Like most right thinking people, I've been very pleased with the fallout from the latest mega-patch. Again, I wish these updates were happening faster and in smaller doses but this time around, it seemed almost note perfect - about the only thing I didn't like was how it screwed up my UI. I had to revert to default to get the morale bonus and score count notifications back from wherever it was that they'd been stashed away and now I'm in the middle of tweaking it into something I can live with again. Annoying.

One of the things that most surprised me was the excellent change to Crippling Slash. When I first looked over the new skills, Crippling Slash was one of the ones I quickly dismissed as useless – it was a four adren Hamstring and, you know, there are better ways to spend an elite slot. But with the addition of Bleeding on top of that Cripple, it's now pretty much the best sword elite ever. The reason is as simple as it is complex: it's now an elite version of Sever Artery.

Let's face it, for all the new bells and whistles each chapter, the standard Warriors have changed shockingly little from the game's inception. It's an old stereotype but it still remains true, sword Warrior bars start with Sever+Gash and go from there. It used to be Final was a given there but these days I'm of the school of thought that Sun and Moon is strictly better. Everyone runs a lot of +health so it's harder to get below that 50% mark and even when you are a good, effectively with Deep Wound 200+ damage isn't the killing blow it once was, at the same time there's a lot of blocking stuff around and Sun and Moon chews through that while charging your adrenaline faster – and, most importantly, costing less to build up and not draining your pool when it's used.

But, throw in the default IAS, speed buff, healsig, rezsig and you're quickly running out of slots to play with. You either give up one of those extremely useful utility skills or you have exactly one open slot on your bar. And for your average Sword Warrior, that used to be the elite slot. Other weapon lines have effective elites that fit into their typical attack chains but Sword Warriors, generally speaking, had rather lackluster elites. Nothing to compare with Eviscerate or Dev Hammer, say. You can run those roles without those elites you can use those strong elites to make you better at that role. While, on the other hand, Sword had a perfectly good attack chain even without an elite. Which is why, I think, Sword Warriors would typically be the ones to run the other stuff. Things like Charge! or Bull's Charge or YAA! found their way onto those Sword bars because they weren't tied to any one elite.

And this created the situation where each weapon line had its own flavor. Axes were, hands down, the best for DPS. While their average damage wasn't much higher than a sword's they had better crits to boost their damage. And they had the easiest access to the deadly Deep Wound – no other weapons could lay down a Deep Wound and follow it with a strong hit as fast as an Axe. Hammers could deal a lot of damage, too, but their slow swing rate and lack of a shield meant they weren't really well suited for face raging. No, where they excelled was in disruption. Their job, much like it is now, is to disable a character and go to town. The knockdowns and how they can blow up an opposing character are how they earn kills. Whether that's because they've flattened a Monk or they've linebacked an opposing frontliner, it's the same basic idea (As a bit of an aside, I'm not exactly too keen on the concept of a linebacker or a Warrior who's whole job is to disable an opposing frontliner. While that's certainly a fine tactic, I don't think it's something to be built for. Essentially, you're making an even trade – one of your frontliner's for one of theirs – but such a tradeoff isn't helping you to win. It's the same thing as loading up your Mesmer with interrupts and telling them to stick to an enemy Elementalist like glue – that Ele isn't going to get off many spells but there are better, more effective ways to use that type of character. A disruptive character that can only disable one opposing member of the enemy is about as useful as a defensive character that can only hold off one attacker. It's making uneven trades that leads you to winning, not trading pawns for pawns.).

Sword Warriors, then, were the utility Warriors. They kicked out a decent amount of damage and were threatening enough while that flexible elite slot meant they could carry a lot of different things. Maybe not quite as much as other Warriors but when you wanted someone big and scary to kill people while still doing something else, well, odds are it was a Sword Warrior you reached for.

There were attempts to give Sword Warriors an elite to match what other Warriors had. But when your core role is flexibility, it's hard to come up with something to augment that. The closest any skill came, I think, was Dragon Slash. But then, it's place was to supercharge the adrenaline and, thus, DPS, of the standard sword chain. It made it faster and, therefore better, but, like any other sword elite, existed outside of that chain.

What the addition of Bleeding to Crip Slash does is break that long-standing chain. It slots right into Sever's place in the troika. And earns that elite spot by providing a low-priced snare that leaves a target ripe for Frenzying on with impunity. While at the same time putting down that Bleeding which unlocks the Gash part of the chain. It instantly rivals D-Slash as the great, elite sword attack. At the same time, it's not insanely overpowered to the point where Sword Warriors become the go-to model. It's within balance while being powerful enough to matter.

But the real brilliance of this change to Crip Slash is how it keeps that core flexibility at the heart of the Sword Warrior. By replacing Sever on the bar, it leaves that critical slot free while you've still got your attack chain, buffs, self-heal, and rez covered. That last remaining slot can be used for, well, everything. Stay pure Warrior and you can add a Shield's Up or a Bull's Strike or something to help you kill faster. Go W/E and you can put a Shock in there. W/Mo and you can slot a Mending Touch or Holy Veil. Whatever you want, whatever your team needs, you have the space to pick it up.

Like a lot of people, I think, I've been running one in the RA the past few days. I tend to go WaMo for the Mending Touch to deal with blindbots. But it's RA so I try to be as self-reliable as possible because, you know, Vengeance Monks. However, when it's TA time, I'd go with something like this:

1. Crippling Slash
2. Gash
3. Sun and Moon Slash
4. Disrupting Dagger
5. Rezsig
6. Frenzy
7. Dash
8. Healsig

I'm a fan of disruption on my frontliners, in case it's not obvious. But here you have a nice ranged, non-attack interrupt to blow up an Aegis, pick off a critical hex, or stop a rez. And Dash recharges nice and fast for a stance toggle for Frenzy while being great as a short term distance chewer. With Crip Slash, after all, you only need to get in range before your target gets snared and you can switch to an IAS and lay down the pain.

It's not quite as solid as the venerable Shock/Axe or Dev Hammer but, you know, give the Crip Warrior a few months of shakedown. It'll get there eventually.

The new way of handling skill templates is great, too. Forget being able to post them in chat and trade them in game. Just the fact that you can organize them into folders now is a revelation. That's a whole 'nother post, though.