Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer: This is not a strategy guide as to how to play the race, there’s plenty of those around, this is a guide on how to beat the glitchiness of the movement skills during the race.

If you’re like me, you’ve been wanting to hit things over the glitchiness of the movement skills in Sanctum Sprint (or the Bazaar) and subsequently wanted to post an angry letter on the forums about how the skills aren’t working the way they’re supposed to. After noticing plenty of those already, I decided to try and figure out why the skills fail so hard and cost me so many places. The problem, I believe, is due to latency.

Exhibit A: rudimentary diagram on how I understand the glitchiness working
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1289341/Images/SS.png

As you can see from the picture, it’s almost as if the ‘stop player’ event is executing on the server side just after the ‘jump’ event is executed on the client side, it then has to figure out which one is more accurate and then decides the server one is better, stops you in mid-air and you die a grizzly death.
You can also replace the ‘jump’ event with a few others, such as, ‘collides with wall’ or ‘falls off an edge’.

During Sanctum Sprint, every second counts, every failure essentially costs you places so it’s difficult to slow down. However, taking about half a second or less longer before using any of the skills has turned my game around from consistently coming last to consistently coming first (excluding crazy speed runners with no lag).

So here’s a quick little list of tips on playing and succeeding:
- Don’t use the jump skill whilst touching a wall
- Don’t use the jump skill or the sun skill when you know you’re about to hit a wall
- Don’t fall off an edge before the jump skill (or any other skill) activates
- Stop for about 400 milliseconds before using the Lightning Pull

That’s all I can remember, following those rules have led me to playing really well and I’ve even had a few flawless runs with me waiting about thirty or more seconds before the second player crossed the line.
I hope this helps you all

Edit: All that being said, I logged on today and the amount of lag was so intense that it just wasn’t worth doing so take my advice with a grain of salt.

I kinda gave up, between the glitches, and the fact that I just suck rocks at it, I wasn’t even getting the ‘run it 15 times’ credit… because I never actually made it to the end o.O

Don’t forget that there is a stop in the sun skill. You can cancel it after activating it. This helps you avoid falling off edges and saves endurance for the parts with multiple waterfalls.

thanks for this post and i wish i saw this earlier. : )) after about two weeks and during off hours, my lag and glitches were significantly less (playing from Hong Kong on NA). and after lots of experimentation, i’ve discovered all these as well which do help.

HUGE on don’t use #1 or any skill for that matter when you’re near a wall or touching it. you lost precious time having to rejump what would have been a simple jump if you stopped two steps before.

another small tip to Lightning Pull #3, in addition to the 400ms pause, i like to get to the edge of the platform i’m jumping from as much as possible, and aim towards the direction you’re jumping/pulling to. i like to think it helps.

and just saw your edit, lag was more for me last night/today as well. perhaps because ANet’s preparing for the upcoming patch? just a thought.

If you are having trouble even completing the race, be sure to grab ALL of the tall jugs (don’t even bother trying to “run” the race, just grab jugs). As soon as you get the #9 ability unlocked (it’s the blue arrow), just use that and you will warp to the farthest checkpoint that ANY player has crossed (which means you could be moved into 1st place if the 1st place player crossed a checkpoint, and then fell).

This tip will help you get completions, even if it doesn’t help you come in first.

Small correction, that’s the 0 skill, not the 9. Think of it as the Elite.

I finally won this morning, thanks to miraculously getting three of those in a row.

Best tip I can give – you are guaranteed 1st place if you are the only one in the race..
I came 1st this morning .. job done!

Bloodwort MacFangho.4638:

Best tip I can give – you are guaranteed 1st place if you are the only one in the race..
I came 1st this morning .. job done!

lol i’ll have to try that tip on a Monday morning >.< probably then i might be able to finish the race >.<