Lightning Touch

[Gorani]

After a short hiatus, Skills of Interest is back with a weapon skill. It is dagger time with the freshly changed Lightning Touch.

Lightning Touch

,	Current GW2wiki description (August stress tests, 2012) : Shock your foe and inflict weakness. Weakness: 5 s Range: 300

Weapon	Attune.	Icon	Skill		Traits affecting the skill
Dagger Main Hand	Air		Lightning Touch	10	Aeromancer's Alacrity - All your air weapon skills recharge 20% faster. Air Training,Bolt to the Heart,but those apply to every other Air weapon skill too.

Change-log (since February 2012)

• The damage output of the skill was changed a few times during the BWEs 2012.
• Before the May BWE, Lightning Touch was an AoE skill with a cone shaped radius.
• Prior to the August 2012 stress tests Lightning Touch was dealing three stacks of Vulnerability for 6 seconds and had a recharge of 6 seconds. It also did about 25% less damage.
• October 22nd, 2012: The skill still affects only the closest foe, but the attack angke has been increased, so the skill hits more often against moving foes.

Skill assessment

• The Weakness condition is very strong at reducing the damage output of foes. Without using Glyph of Elemental Power while in Air attunement, Lightning Touch is the only viable option the Elementalist has to inflict this condition (Stoning only causes weakness for 1 second, so very hard to time).
• Although the recharge was increased to 10 seconds, the length of the condition allows you to keep it up 50% of the time, when you cast it on the same foe.
• The trait Aeromancer's Alacrity can reduce the recharge to 8 seconds.
• The range of 300 does indicate that it is not a "touch skill", despite the name. (Melee skills usually have a range of 150).

[Domitilde]

I have not used any ele skill that requires a dagger. I am leery of having to be so close, if I can help it, for attacking. Do other not mind the close range? Since ele is my preferred, I'll probably try it, but do dagger related skills have much, if any, advantage over the old wand and staff?

[Gorani]

I have not used any ele skill that requires a dagger. I am leery of having to be so close, if I can help it, for attacking. Do other not mind the close range? Since ele is my preferred, I'll probably try it, but do dagger related skills have much, if any, advantage over the old wand and staff?

Dagger skills in general hold "higher rewards for higher risks". A higher reward can be more damage (e.g. "Drake's Breath" which does do 4 stacks of burning for 3 seconds compared to "Flamestrike' s" 1 stack for 2 seconds - plus Drakes's Breath has four channeled damage pulses & Flamestrike only one), or longer durations of conditions and shorter recharge times.
As you have to be able to move into range, hitting foes is more difficult for those that don't move well with "WASD".
I think I will start out at longer range in PvE, too - moving slowly to daggers.

So, what is that good about Lightning Touch? Like I said, Weakness can provide a great tool to keep a foe a lot less dangerous if it is applied 50% of the time of the encounter (for Power based builds, as glancing blows don't work against condition damage & critical hits).

[Tsukasa Kusanagi]

I have not used any ele skill that requires a dagger. I am leery of having to be so close, if I can help it, for attacking. Do other not mind the close range? Since ele is my preferred, I'll probably try it, but do dagger related skills have much, if any, advantage over the old wand and staff?

To be honest, I preferred all daggers to the others from my limited beta play. It does require a ton more dodging, but Like Gorani said, the damage seemed to be better.

[Domitilde]

Thanks for the replies. Once I feel confident in my mastering GW2, I'll give the daggers a try. Guess it means I better not just sell any daggers from now on unless each new is better.

[Mawgleah]

My main this time around is going to be an ele, but I think I'll stick to ranged skills for a bit. It appears that I'm going to need to upgrade to a better laptop before GW2 will run at it's optimum for me. My personal response time is slow to begin with, add to that the lag from my computer and any close-quarter fighting finds me pummeled to a pulp before I can move out of the way. Apparently lag on my end is not shared by the target on the server side *grins*.

However, this does look interesting and means I'll hang on to any good daggers I stumble across.

[Redean]

To me it sounds awesome if you see an enemy to let off either a big or flurry of attacks. That extra 5 seconds basically lets you hammer out some more damage without too much risk (if it is a single target). Perhaps it would also be a good combo with Armor of Earth in enabling yourself for melee range (which the bonus damage for melee range trait may make melee range more desirable for those who bring it).

[Gorani]

October 2nd, 2012: This skill has had its attack angle increased.