[SW] Feedback: SW Stance Cooldown – The Case for 3 Seconds

[Lescargo]

Personally, I don't even use Guerrilla Training; I feel like it's a waste of a tactic slot for something that just boosts DPS.
And the more I think about it, the more I feel like that tactic is a noob trap. You don't really need it to kite and survive.

Look, in PvP, saying "you don't need to kite or survive" only works if your opponent is basically AFK. Against a real player, that logic completely falls apart:

Real players kite you: A good player isn't going to stand there and take your full combo. They’re going to line-of-sight you, pop defensives, and waste your cooldowns. If you can't kite, you can't chase them down or stick to them to actually land your damage.

PvP is all about the reset: High-level fights aren't a face-tanking DPS race; they're about burst windows. If you get caught out with zero defensive or mobility tools, an opponent will bait your burst, disengage, and come right back to delete you while you're helpless.

Whoever controls space wins: Kiting isn't just running away—it's controlling the fight. Mobility lets you dictate when a trade happens. Without it, your enemy decides when you fight, when you heal, and when you die.

Mitigation is offensive pressure: Calling Guerrilla Training "just a tactic that boosts damage" ignores how versatility wins fights. That 15% flat damage reduction in Assault stance isn't just a stat—it gives a full Assault build the mitigation to trade in close quarters and out-pressure melee, while giving a ranged spec a critical emergency button to quick-swap into Assault, eat a heavy burst combo, and survive an unwanted jump.

It changes the pace and keeps the gameplay engaging: Running a tactic like this unlocks a completely different playstyle. Instead of playing Shadow like a stationary glass cannon, sitting in one spot trying to ranged one-shot people, it actually encourages you to shift gears, get mobile, and play a far more active, high-tempo game.

At a 3.0-second stance cooldown, Guerrilla Training isn't a trap—it's a high-uptime engine. Swapping every 3 seconds lets you chain on-switch buffs constantly while staying hyper-mobile.

Ultimately, holding onto a tactic just for raw numbers misses what actually determines success in RvR and Scenarios: adaptability, target pressure, and surviving the assist train. Paired with a 3-second swap cycle, Guerrilla Training isn't about padding stats—it’s the key that breaks you out of the stationary glass-cannon trap and lets you play an aggressive, fluid game without constantly getting punished.

You're misreading what I wrote; I said you don't need that tactic to kite and survive effectively.

Actually, I should have said, "I don't need that tactic to kite and survive effectively."
But that would sound pretty arrogant right off the bat, and people on this server have an issue with arrogance..

In fact, I think Guerrilla Training is interesting on paper—having the option to boost speed and mitigate damage when needed is great, and I've tested it.

but the problem is that it takes up a tactic slot, so I lose out on DPS. Personally, I prefer having extra DPS—which can be clutch for securing kills—over a situational defensive tactic like Guerrilla Training.

If you need it to survive and kite, then go ahead and use it. Personally, I can do without it. The more I play SW, the more I realize it's a class that requires you to play very offensively to essentially earn your survivability.
Of course, there are times when you need to kite, detaunt, or leap out, but offense is generally your best defense.

It would be great if the effects of Guerrilla Training were baseline for the class rather than a tactic. But honestly, I think that would be a bit OP; that's actually why I've never brought it up, even though the idea is very appealing.

[leechbg]

Stance requirements should be removed completely for SW and Mara, and all abilities should gain benefits based on what stance you're in, similar to how aura tanks have abilities modified by type of auras. Retune both classes after. The dynamic clearly doesn't work for one of the members of this slanted mirror.

It will never happen, but a boy can dream.

Honestly? No. In actual practice, that logic completely falls apart during live gameplay.

"Tactical accountability" is just the neat theory people throw around to justify hard lockouts. Once you step into actual RvR or a tight Scenario, the reality on the ground is completely different:

It drives stagnation, not skill: Players don't sit there thinking, "What a rewarding skill check!" They get fed up fighting locked action bars and stance GCDs, so they just park themselves in one stance—usually Scout or Skirmish—and stay there 90% of the time. The friction doesn't make people stance-dance better; it makes them stop stance-dancing entirely.

The punishment is totally asymmetrical: If a Marauder gets caught in the "wrong" stance, who cares? They're still in melee, hitting buttons, and applying pressure. If a SW gets jumped by a Witch Elf in Scout, sure, you can pop Vengeance to set up Take Down for a stun—but Take Down has a 1-second cast time. Any competent melee will just interrupt you, stun you out of the cast, or chunk half your life bar before it ever goes off. You could drop a Point Blank Moral knockback, but that requires building morale first, is super situational depending on whether the WE has immunities up, and shares DR with your Take Down stun anyway. That leaves Whirling Pin as your only truly definitive, instant survival tool, and it sits on a massive 30-second cooldown. Once that's spent, your core rotational bar is still locked behind useless 100ft snipes with cast times. For a Mara, a bad swap is a minor DPS loss; for a SW, it leaves you with a bricked primary toolkit while your only real panic button goes on a long cooldown.

Heavy stance penalties push players into passive play: When switching stances feels too punishing, players naturally default to the safest possible option—sitting at max range and turret-casting like a glass cannon. The system is meant to reward sharp decision-making, but in practice, it just keeps players from taking risks or ever touching the rest of their kit.

That's why dropping the lockout to 3.0 seconds—or maybe even 2.5 seconds—is the real sweet spot. At 2.5 to 3.0 seconds, you don't erase accountability; if you panic-swap, you're still locked out for almost two full GCDs and an assist train will gladly erase you for making a bad read. But dropping it to that 2.5s mark cuts just enough friction to let players actually stance-dance, making the class feel fluid and aggressive instead of like a clunky, stationary chore.

[leechbg]

Personally, I don't even use Guerrilla Training; I feel like it's a waste of a tactic slot for something that just boosts DPS.
And the more I think about it, the more I feel like that tactic is a noob trap. You don't really need it to kite and survive.

Look, in PvP, saying "you don't need to kite or survive" only works if your opponent is basically AFK. Against a real player, that logic completely falls apart:

Real players kite you: A good player isn't going to stand there and take your full combo. They’re going to line-of-sight you, pop defensives, and waste your cooldowns. If you can't kite, you can't chase them down or stick to them to actually land your damage.

PvP is all about the reset: High-level fights aren't a face-tanking DPS race; they're about burst windows. If you get caught out with zero defensive or mobility tools, an opponent will bait your burst, disengage, and come right back to delete you while you're helpless.

Whoever controls space wins: Kiting isn't just running away—it's controlling the fight. Mobility lets you dictate when a trade happens. Without it, your enemy decides when you fight, when you heal, and when you die.

Mitigation is offensive pressure: Calling Guerrilla Training "just a tactic that boosts damage" ignores how versatility wins fights. That 15% flat damage reduction in Assault stance isn't just a stat—it gives a full Assault build the mitigation to trade in close quarters and out-pressure melee, while giving a ranged spec a critical emergency button to quick-swap into Assault, eat a heavy burst combo, and survive an unwanted jump.

It changes the pace and keeps the gameplay engaging: Running a tactic like this unlocks a completely different playstyle. Instead of playing Shadow like a stationary glass cannon, sitting in one spot trying to ranged one-shot people, it actually encourages you to shift gears, get mobile, and play a far more active, high-tempo game.

At a 3.0-second stance cooldown, Guerrilla Training isn't a trap—it's a high-uptime engine. Swapping every 3 seconds lets you chain on-switch buffs constantly while staying hyper-mobile.

Ultimately, holding onto a tactic just for raw numbers misses what actually determines success in RvR and Scenarios: adaptability, target pressure, and surviving the assist train. Paired with a 3-second swap cycle, Guerrilla Training isn't about padding stats—it’s the key that breaks you out of the stationary glass-cannon trap and lets you play an aggressive, fluid game without constantly getting punished.

You're misreading what I wrote; I said you don't need that tactic to kite and survive effectively.

Actually, I should have said, "I don't need that tactic to kite and survive effectively."
But that would sound pretty arrogant right off the bat, and people on this server have an issue with arrogance..

In fact, I think Guerrilla Training is interesting on paper—having the option to boost speed and mitigate damage when needed is great, and I've tested it.

but the problem is that it takes up a tactic slot, so I lose out on DPS. Personally, I prefer having extra DPS—which can be clutch for securing kills—over a situational defensive tactic like Guerrilla Training.

If you need it to survive and kite, then go ahead and use it. Personally, I can do without it. The more I play SW, the more I realize it's a class that requires you to play very offensively to essentially earn your survivability.
Of course, there are times when you need to kite, detaunt, or leap out, but offense is generally your best defense.

It would be great if the effects of Guerrilla Training were baseline for the class rather than a tactic. But honestly, I think that would be a bit OP; that's actually why I've never brought it up, even though the idea is very appealing.

Fair, I completely missed your point there.

Fair to play SW however fits your style, nothing wrong with that.

I'm just saying that with a reduced stance lockout, it could become a really solid option for other playstyles, too—including Scout SW. Since Scout SW usually runs Instinctive Aim, Bullseye, and No Quarter, that last tactic slot is pretty flexible. Swapping in something like Accelerated Decay, Smoldering Arrow, or Pierce Defense isn't a massive DPS loss, especially if stance dancing lets you constantly rotate those baseline perks like the 25% cost reduction, 20% movement speed, 15% physical reduction buff, and 25% auto-attack damage. That's really the main point here.

Having Guerrilla Training as baseline would be awesome, but yeah, it would definitely be over the top. Making that baseline would push the class into OP territory real fast, which is why sticking to the stance-lockout reduction is a much more realistic to ask for.