Disarmament

Disarmament is something I wanna discuss as a possibility in GW2 and whether it would improve play. I think it would.
In GW2, the weapons you are wielding play an integral part in what you can accomplish. They are the things which grant you useable skills. They decide what roles you have available. They dictate how you can and may play your character.
Being able to take away this variance from a player is an incredibly powerful form of shutdown and control. It can prevent the erection of barriers by Guardians or the use of Eviscerate by a Warrior. It can be used to disrupt an entire tactic and prevent players from constantly switching back and forth between roles. Lastly, an Assassin disarming another character a la Nika in the Factions trailer would look ****ing awesome.
Obviously there need to be some limitations: people need to be able to guard themselves from it (high conditionality). They shouldn't be shut down the entirety of a match (low duration). Disarmament should lead to people dropping their environmental weapon rather than having it merely be disabled (then the other team can pick it up. CONJURE LIGHTNING DIDN'T SEEM THAT GOOD AN IDEA NOW HUH!?). This last point may need to be limited to PvP-only. Dropping PvE environmental weapons and having the enemy pick them up sounds annoying more than fun.
And now. I want YOUR opinion. /yeah!|||IMO, if they were to implement something like this it would not actually make you drop a weapon, but instead disable the skills associated with the weapon for a couple of seconds.|||I like it.
However, what kind of conditional would you implement for something like this? Elite status? High cooldown?|||Ugh, disarm is so frustrating. Standing around aimlessly, only being able to use your few spells or shield attacks (if you have holy power) while you wait for your melee attacks to come available again. Pssh. After my first Hellfire Ramparts run as a tank I bought a weapon chain for my mace. **** disarm.
I won't mind a WoW clone for the most part, but they can leave that "feature" out. Getting stunlocked/knock-locked will be frustrating enough as it is.|||Quote:








Disarmament is something I wanna discuss as a possibility in GW2 and whether it would improve play. I think it would.




Generally, I'd want to avoid perma-disarm (or any near-perma inability to play). Making it too conditional makes it either OP if you pull it off, or UP if you can't do it. I'd rather see a much shorter effect and the ability to pull it off easier... e.g. after an attack chain, skills take 2x to activate for 3 seconds (call it fumble instead of disarm).
Would it be fun? It depends on how it's implemented, and how it interacts with everything else in the game. Shutdowns are fun in GW1 until it gets to the point that you can't play anymore. Then it's just annoying.
It's also more fun if you can avoid the punishment, e.g. not cast for a duration to avoid diversion's effect.

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Ugh, disarm is so frustrating.




It's the type of thing that's fun to inflict, extremely annoying to get. Blackout, disrupt, KD, fear, diversion... very annoying to be unable to use skills.
Now, diversion is kinda fun to get hit with because you can wait a bit and avoid the effect. But the punishment I'd rather it be damage than a long cooldown.|||Disarm isn't one of those fun abilities. Blackout you can kite, interrupts you can fake out, fear you can dispel or interrupt, diversion you can wait out/veil off, stunlock you can trinket/thunderstorm/shield out of.
Then there's Disarm, which some Hellfire orc decides to unleash on you as you pull a group of 6, then you're left standing there useless for 8 seconds or so as some idiot death knights throw down Death and Decay and unload everything they have on some off-target. Then when disarm wears off and you can finally use Hammer of Justice once or twice to attempt to regain aggro and..
..disarmed again.
Being a paladin, it's not terrible. They still have spells, and a shield attack that uses Holy Power. However, I'd hate to be a warrior or a druid. Or rogue, but that'd be a pvp thing, as they don't tank.

That said, if there was an interesting gw2esque way to counter being disarmed, like spinning your character around so that the disarmer isn't able to get a hold of your weapon, that'd be acceptable. Disarm would have to have a fairly long cooldown though. I wouldn't want to be spinning my character around trying to avoid disarmament every 10 seconds.|||I don't know how disarm is implemented in WoW, but I'll assume that it'd likely be different in GW2 if only because it's a different game. Same goes with stunlock, I don't have experience with being stunlocked in WoW or how to get out of it. It was annoying in Diablo 2 though, but it rarely happened.
What you said Shawn... being able to avoid it by playing well is an important aspect of fun. Still, effects that take away control from the player should be of short durations. Nobody likes being a sitting duck.|||So, similar as in Perfect Dark on the N64? Could be interesting. Would that only work for environmental weapons then? I doubt having a mechanic that would make it easy for someone else to "steal" their �ber-weapon of awesomness will be popular (but I'm sure you didn't have that in mind anyway).
However, as RabidCoqui mentioned before, a disarm skill that basically blackouts your weapon skills will be implemented in GW2, I guess.|||I like this idea especially from an RP standpoint.
As a player used skill I see it as being unconvincing as far as attributing it to all professions equally. Sure, a warrior might knock the shield out of another warrior's hand, but does an Elementalist really care? Nah, better the metallic shield to carry the lightning shock they are sending. Even if the warrior did have the intterupt, it would be a bit pointless (so far) seeing that most of the other professions use range attacks (even Guardian). Maybe have it as a skill between the warrior for use on the Guardian when he does go hand-to-hand; or even with the eventual "other fighter class"? Dunno.
Rather than a player used skill, I would rather actually like to see this idea implemented as a universal effect based on percentage of armor/tactical position/level/etc. vs. damage. For example, sometimes you get knocked down in the game, and sometimes you get thrown across a field (i.e. Guardian video with the Charr); or even getting pounded by something hard enough for that matter, or burned, or shocked, or etc. Maybe if one gets knocked down hard enough they have a chance of getting their weapons knocked out of their hands as well, giving the opponent more time on their side to act (on top of the initial knockdown). In this sense, I could see it being used both in PvE and PvP. Though here It would have to be that player owned weapons looked like they fell on the ground, but still show equipped in their inventory (so they do not loose them); but the action of picking them from the ground allows you to use them again). Of course environmental weapons would be free game.|||I don't like the idea of having to look for my weapon on the ground. Motion sickness is one reason, but also it doesn't sound fun. Environmental weapons, those are fine to knock out of player's hands though.
Also, a sharp pain to the arms would cause you to be unable to use your weapons (whether warrior or ele), and could be caused by any profession (potentially). This could easily be a condition... with all that go with conditions (removable etc).