Guild Wars 2

When renewed focus is being cast, swapping weapons will cancel the ability prematurely. This results in renewed focus going on full cooldown while any expended virtues are not recharged. Reproduce as follows:

1. Use the activated abilities of one or more of “virtue of justice”, “virtue of resolve”, and “virtue of courage” (this is not a necessary condition for the bug, but is necessary to observe the results).
2. While any activated virtues are still on cooldown (i.e. just after using them), activate the elite skill “renewed focus”.
3. At any point during the channeling of “renewed focus” (i.e. while the yellow cast bar is still filling), swap weapon. This can be done at any point during the channeling of “renewed focus”, including just after casting it or when it is almost finished channeling.
4. “Renewed focus” should now be on a 90 second cooldown, whereas any of the virtues that are normally recharged by completing the channeling of “renewed focus” are still on their respective cooldowns.

I first observed this watching someone else’s video, but tested it in game as well. The video evidence can be seen at the 12:30 mark in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_R13VMIQ7o

The guardian (that is, the player featured in the footage) uses renewed focus and then swaps weapons just before the channeling is complete, which causes the very end of it to be canceled and none of the guardian’s virtues are recharged. This was likely done by accident as the player thought that renewed focus had just completed channeling, but instead the player lost the virtue recharges because they weapon swapped a split second too soon.

It would perhaps be better to allow weapon swapping to occur during the channeling and not have it cancel renewed focus, similar to how an elementalist can swap attunements during mist form without having the mist form effect removed. Alternatively, weapon swapping could perhaps somehow be disabled during the channeling of renewed focus so that it’s not able to be cancelled.

In comparison to other channeled abilities, like meteor shower or rapid, it is sometimes advantageous to cancel the channel because you may have to dodge an incoming attack or the opponent has activated a projectile reflect ability, &c. In general, there’s no real benefit from canceling renewed focus since you are invulnerable and uninterruptable during the channeling period. Cancelling renewed focus simply shortens your invulnerable duration, puts the ability on full cooldown, and prevents your virtues from being recharged.

The current implementation imposes some tediousness on the part of the guardian by having them pay extra attention to the channeling of renewed focus and punishing them severely for something that could be purely accidental or caused by a bit of lag. Making it so that renewed focus cannot be cancelled via weapon swap does not somehow replace skillful play or provide them with an unfair advantage, it just removes an annoyance.

EDIT: New idea – change renewed focus so that it is similar to mist form and elixir S in it’s implementation. That is, renewed focus would no longer a channeled ability, but puts the guardian into a “mist form”-like state where they cannot cancel out of renewed focus prematurely (similar to how mist form an elixir S cannot be cancelled).

The only classes who can weapon swap without interrupting skills are Elementalists and Engineers, and this is because they’re expected to combo together a variety of skills from different places (attunements or kits) to be of any use. After learning to play on Ele, it took a while to get used to not swapping while channeling for my Mesmer.

While it makes a lot of sense that players can’t weapon swap while casting skills bound to their weapon, I do agree that utilities and elites shouldn’t be cancelled in the same way... but there are a couple of issues:

1) instant-cast abilities on alternate weaponsets - would these be usable while channeling after a swap?
2) on-swap sigils, or other sigil effects that can trigger mid-channel. Weapon-based traits that can kick in.

I can’t think of any potentially overpowered combinations right now, and there may not actually *be* any such setups, but the interactions between weapons, or weapon swaps, and the skill being channeled do need to be taken into account.

This also happens if you dodge…

cheese.4739:

1) instant-cast abilities on alternate weaponsets – would these be usable while channeling after a swap?
2) on-swap sigils, or other sigil effects that can trigger mid-channel. Weapon-based traits that can kick in.

This could be a potential problem, which is why I was thinking that somehow disabling weapon swapping during the channeling of renewed focus would be better.

However, elementalists can gain such weapon swapping benefits while attunement swapping in mist form, so it’s not like it would be unprecedented (although attunement swapping is not a true weapon swap).

Muchacho.2390:

This also happens if you dodge…

It does. However, I’m not sure if you mean to imply that it is fine as is or if they should change the interaction of dodge and renewed focus in a similar manner to the proposed weapon swap alteration. Here’s a few things to consider:

1. In general, you probably don’t want to dodge out of or otherwise cancel your channeled abilities, but it may be advantageous. For instance, if an elementalist dodges during ether renewal, the ability is cancelled and goes on full cooldown. However, the trade off is that they dodge incoming attacks. As such, it may actually be beneficial to dodge out of the ability if something like an earthshaker is about to hit you.

2. In regards to renewed focus, there’s generally no such tradeoff. You are invulnerable during the casting period, and thus do not need to feasibly dodge for any reason. The only thing you could possibly gain from it is a slight adjustment in position, or that you are able to reinitiate an offensive immediately (instead of waiting a few seconds). Nut I feel it’s very hard to consider that a good trade for some amount of invulnerability and the recharging of every virtue, especially on a 90 second cooldown.

3. If you look at abilities like elixir S and mist form, these allow you to dodge during the effects without breaking the ability (although there is little incentive to do so since you are invulnerable). Cancelling out of renewed focus via a dodge or weapon swap would be similar to having mist form or elixir S cancelled on dodge or attunement swap. If mist form and elixir S behaved like this, it would impose a level of tediousness on the player, and be harshly punishing for a trivial trade off.

In fact, I’m not sure why renewed focus is a channeled ability in the first place since it can only be self-interrupted. It makes just as much sense as having mist form and elixir S be channeled abilities, which they are not. As such, perhaps the solution is not to somehow disable weapon swap, but change the nature of the renewed focus ability so that it behaves like elixir S and mist form. That is, it’s a non-channeled ability that put you in a non-cancellable “mist form” like state that recharges your virtues at the end of it.

Yamsandjams.3267:

As such, perhaps the solution is not to somehow disable weapon swap, but change the nature of the renewed focus ability so that it behaves like elixir S and mist form. That is, it’s a non-channeled ability that put you in a non-cancellable “mist form” like state that recharges your virtues at the end of it.

However such a transform would lock players out of all instant-cast skills, including the activation of any Virtues which are currently charged.
I’m of the opinion that allowing weapon swap while channeling non-weapon skills would be better – I don’t think either of my points above would cause serious problems, and it’d be interesting to see what folks came up with if allowed to trigger sigils while channeling.

cheese.4739:

Yamsandjams.3267:

As such, perhaps the solution is not to somehow disable weapon swap, but change the nature of the renewed focus ability so that it behaves like elixir S and mist form. That is, it’s a non-channeled ability that put you in a non-cancellable “mist form” like state that recharges your virtues at the end of it.

However such a transform would lock players out of all instant-cast skills, including the activation of any Virtues which are currently charged.
I’m of the opinion that allowing weapon swap while channeling non-weapon skills would be better – I don’t think either of my points above would cause serious problems, and it’d be interesting to see what folks came up with if allowed to trigger sigils while channeling.

I agree, although I don’t think it’s too unreasonable to lock out virtue popping while channeling renewed focus since the guardian can always pop them just before using renewed focus (and popping virtue of courage in that way is often wasteful anyways).

I feel that making it function similar to elixir S or mist form is probably more technically feasible than allowing for some kind of non-cancelling weapon swap, although the devs would be the only ones to know what would be easier to do.

Yamsandjams.3267:

and popping virtue of courage in that way is often wasteful anyways)..

Still affects your allies, so not really.

Hm, yeah, just locking out all skills would be much easier to implement and would solve your primary problem, this is true.