GW:EN Sneak Peak: Sloth is a Sin

As a follow-up to this Sinful dirge, I missed this during the event, but when I was going over the Assassin skill lists (I am a very, very sick person.) I noticed this huge update:

Fox Fangs: reduced activation time to .5 seconds.

Jungle Strike: reduced activation time to .5 seconds.

That leaves you with Fox Fangs as an off-hand attack that costs 5en, recharges in 8 seconds, swings in a half, and can't be blocked. The text could read “you present your opponent with an ornately wrapped gift box” after that, I'd still be thrilled. Fox Fangs could use, I think, a slightly lower recharge time. As a general rule, I think conditional off-hands, the ones that let you skip the leads, need long recharges – on the order of 12 to 15 seconds – while non-conditional off-hands, the ones that require a lead attack, like Fox Fangs, need to be the quickly recharging one. That way you're rewarded, somewhat, for not taking the shortcut by being able to at least try to pop off that first part of your combo more often (While conditionals pay for freeing up that skill slot by being cumbersome if you can't meet the condition.). It would suck in the extreme to have your combo screwed up because of whiffing on Fox Fangs, which is there because of the numbers, not the effect, so since it can't hit without a lead in the first place, I think it needs to keep pace with those leads, so it's always available as a bridge to what you really want to hit. I can't conscience setting it down on the lower end of lead times – 2 seconds now for Unsuspecting, and 1 for Jagged – so I'd set it somewhere in the 4~6 second range. Jungle is similarly too hot to cooldown at 10recharge and I'd, again, set it lower.

But, that's a minor, fiddly detail. Because, man, that 1/2 cast is exactly how you get people to use leads and the non-conditional off-hands that are linked to them. Instead of grabbing Black Lotus and calling it a day. The reason is that you get from your lead to your dual almost as fast as you can get to your dual by skipping your off-hand.

That's important because when you are a melee attacker, whether it's a Sin or a Warrior or even an IW Mesmer, you know that even while you're zeroing in on your target the clock is ticking until you'll be shutdown. Until the Blind hits you. Until the ward or Aegis goes up. Until they activate their stance or start to kite away, snaring you and laughing while you chug after them, or whatever else your opponent has built into their plan to deal with people getting in their faces and raging. You don't know exactly what it will be. Just that it's coming. And that you only have the briefest of windows of opportunity to get the dirty work done. The killing work. It's especially true with Sin because once you start missing your hits, then your combos and your damage totals are blown.

Conditional off-hands are so valuable to a Sin because they give them a leg up when racing the clock. It's the same reason that an IAS is bolted to their bar – each and every second counts because they'll only get a few of them. Skipping that lead attack means they need to spend one swing less getting to the heavy dual attacks where the money shots and falling bodies are. That's one more swing before the defender's gate swings shut.

The new Fox Fangs or Jungle Strike will only take a half second, no matter whether you're Flailing or BoAed or in Tiger Stance or just swinging normally. That's a full half second off the speed of your swing when you're boosted by an IAS. You'll complete a three-hit combo in about 2.5 seconds instead of 3. Not quite as good as the 2 seconds you need to jump from Black Lotus to Horns of the Ox but closer. And maybe equal since you'll be adding a third hit and whatever effects from that lead attack (This, of course, depends on whether or not the effects of any of those lead attacks are worth it. At a glance...they aren't. But that's a separate, balance not mechanical, issue. Still, I wouldn't mind giving something like Black Mantis Thrust to Fox Fangs/Jungle Strike to Trampling Ox a whirl. You need a hex and Shadow Prison is counterproductive, so...Shadow Shroud? Maybe. Still needs some bamfing power, though...). The anti-blocking provision of Fox Fangs means you don't have to worry, temporarily, about some of the more common counters, like wards or an Aegis.

A nice change, in other words, and one that I'd take even further, if I could. If I was going to rewrite some of these skills to make lead chains more attractive, that's how I'd go. Wild Strike seems to be another off-hand that would be ripe for a 1/2cast swing speed, although that makes it extremely powerful, then. Repeating Strike, too, if there was some way to tie it to a lead and not an off-hand. But, more than that, I'd extend it to lead attacks, as well. Disrupting Stab, for example, I'd add a 1/2 swing, cut the recharge, and take out the skill disabling – just make it a straight interrupt. That way you could outpace the Black and Golden chains of the world in terms of raw number of combos but also race them in the time it takes to pull those combos off.

It's all about the speed, it's all about getting those combos churning over as quickly as possible, though, and a skill like Fox Fangs gives non-conditional chains a way to compete against the conditional chains in the only place it matters; on the face of the stopwatch.