The reason stone giant is unwanted isn't really the animation but the fact that the first cast doesn't do damage and technically has a cast time. That means you drop block. That combination makes it undesirable except as a debuff or occasionally as a stun utility but it's pretty weak in that regard. They had reworked it to be a proper stam spamable but changed it again to the current state. I think it would be better if it was treated as a spamable again and they did away with the intial casts cast time and lack of damage. As a trade off you could make it take 4/5 casts to max out stagger and leave the stagger debuff at the same overall damage increase.

This is how I'd fix it. Feel free to share if you agree or want it to change.

1. Instant cast, retains unique aoe stagger application. Aoe's can't be dodged, guaranteeing 1 stack of Stagger to multiple enemies.
2. Melee, 0 range, no projectiles. This is what DK's ARE. If we want a ranged spammable, we can search through other universal skill tree's.
3. Keeps physical damage upfront, but offers poison damage on 3/4 hits for passive/status effect synergy.
4. Stagger only scales well for damage dealers up to 6k like Engulfing Flames, forcing tanks to drop the skill in favour of a Stam Dk potentially.
5. No stun, but offers increased damage dealt if target already has 3 stacks of stagger. This helps the skill become a real, bursty spammable for DK's instead of it only being used for the Stagger uptime.

Wellsley wrote: »

Since we know that there will be no real stamwhip (stamina cost), it might be time to review the animation of stone giant.

I've seen more players who prefer to use heroic slash or power slam... Who themselves are less used than molten whip and dizzying swing.
Even in pve I don't see many players using it.

The stone giant exists but almost nobody wants to play with it, due to bad animation.

Stagger is in every trial group just about and is very strong. It's less commonly used solo/4-man of course since the debuff isn't worth it, whip is better. Personally I like to use it in dungeons though, having a ranged spammable is useful and the initial hit is AoE.

If they just removed the cast time for the initial AoE I'd be happier with it. It's clunky to use because you're not sure if its been 12 seconds and needs to be recast, or you've used the spammable part 3 times and it needs to be recast so the cast time can be quite jarring in a rotation.

If you still don't want to give us a real stamwhip, fine, at least give us a real stamina spammable. Please make the necessary changes to stone giant.

Honestly I felt like stone giant was better before they changed it to have a cast time aoe activation the only thing I would have changed is the stun to another effect maybe off balance

I play it in PvP and I solely use it in a rotation to proc mountain blessing, right ever I stun and fracture the opposing guy/girl, it's handy that it's AOE with the first hit and it hits pretty decent allowing to get some damage in while refreshing minor brutality to get ready to burst. While I agree that it could use some extra work it's not as useless as a lot of people say.

While I don't love the changing identity after the first hit I have had some succes in using the ranged attack on sorcerers that are trying to get away, right before I gap close on them and while the stun is unpredictable I have noticed that almost no-one expect the ranged stun. It catches a lot of people of guard and combining it with a gab closer gets them into trouble.

I could live with it if they removed the stun and ranged attack and just stuck with the first "crush".

If this skill changes, what are your suggestions for animation ?