Guild Wars 2

Hello!

Posted here for ALL classes to see. Didn’t really know where to post since this was so general, so here it is.

If you love your class, you’d want to know all the little tricks you can do with them. I made a similar guide on reddit on combat mechanics and have already posted some here, and I was going to make a video for this, but I think a text guide is good enough. Maybe for the necromancer part only, since its really hard to believe it…

Assist Transfer

This trick lets you have the precision of Assist Aim for an AoE targeted skill. Like any “aimed” target skill, it will predict where the enemy will be and target it. This also lets you bypass certain “minimum” distance skills on siege weapons like cannons.

For this example, I will use the Engineer’s Grenade Kit.

First, you must have an enemy targeted and a rifle/pistol in hand(pretend your an engineer).

Spam the #1 skill while swapping to the grenade kit. No matter where your cursor is, it should throw the #1 skill grenades perfectly on top of the enemy. You can do this with #1 -> #1-5 but I find it more consistent with just #1->#1.

This is most apparent when you use the Mortar Elite Skill. You will be able to shoot a mortar shot directly at your feet, despite not being able to normally. If for any reason you need to know that specifically, there you go.

This does work with melee weapons. The best example for this is the Mesmer, who can transfer the assist aim of the Sword #1 to the AoE target of Greatsword #3. So for a quick aim, never miss #3, you should want to use this trick when swapping weapons in combat.

This may not work with some AoE targeting, or some combinations, but it does work.

Canceling

I didn’t think a lot of people knew about this until I actually came back to these forums and stuff. This same trick is most famous for the Elementalist’s Lightning Whip + Sigil quick healing.

So, quick run down on how its done: Bind a key to “Stow Weapon”, preferably somewhere you will access it like a normal skill. Before a skill finishes casting, use stow weapon, and it will cancel it. Note that a finished casting skill usually has a delay that cannot be canceled except with swap weapon, and even then, it’s not particularly useful for stuff other than assist transferring.

This is used specifically for many things, but the most general use is this:

Priority Cast: Skills are queued when you cast them. If you need that major heal / interrupt or whatever done NOW and you’re in the middle of attacking, best bet is to hit the stow weapon key at the same time as the skill, just make sure the stow weapon key is hit first. The skill you are casting currently will be canceled and will immediately cast the skill you want with no delay.

Feinting: You can feint animations. This will put the skill on a short 4s CD, but you could bait anticipating characters into dodging or something. Extremely useful on skills that have overly visual animations, such as Engineer’s Tool Kit #5. On some skills, like Elementalist Staff Earth #2, it will actually put down a “fake” AoE that disappears after a while, which could be ridiculously confusing for some people. This does NOT work on anything that instantly begins casting (ex: Heartseeker, Eviscerate, etc). To tell the times you can feint, anything that has an effect (damage, finisher, buff, effect) that takes effect, that is when you can no longer feint and will just cancel it altogether. An example would be most channeled spells: You can feint before the damage procs, thus resulting in either no cooldown or the 4s cooldown. Things like leaps and stuff, definite no feinting at all. Mesmer’s Sword #2 has a cast time of 1/2 seconds. Feinting in that time puts the skill on a 4s CD, allowing you to have a really short evade if you are going to use it like that.

Feinting Bug: Some skills are bugged with feinting, which could make it extremely strong. Coincidentally, Mesmer’s Heal that reflects projectiles can be canceled before it finishes, going on a 4s CD. This means you can get a roughly 1 3/4s reflect every 6 seconds when you want (counting the cast time), while with a Guardian’s block heal you can’t. The reason for this, IMO, is because Mirror gives a buff that reflects but doesn’t actually cast until it heals, while Shelter casts immediately as you channel a block.

Quick Draw: This is the most famous use for it. The reason for why it works with Lightning Whip is simple: The cast bar finishes, but the skill is still going. All you are doing is canceling the after effect and casting it immediately, repeatedly. Since it counts as a full cast, the signet effect activates.

Other uses for this technique:
- Enhanced Stealth Attack: For main-hand pistol thieves, you’re in luck. You’re stealth attack, Sneak Attack, can be upgraded to 7 shots if you are shooting from a distance. Simply cancel as the second shot fires and re-use, initiating the full 5 shots for a total of 7.

You can use this trick to combine your weapon swapping and quick drawing. Dagger Main-Hand and Shortbow is a popular one. While in shortbow and stealth, quick draw the immobilizing shot into a steal and backstab combo for an immobilizing backstab combo.

- Rapid Axe: Necromancer Main-Hand Axe can be significantly sped up by 30-40% by quick drawing the first hit. With practice, people will mistake you for using the Axe #2.
Epic video of it in action for the non-believers, with normal and rapid right after: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz4PSqwtzAE&feature=youtu.be
I do it very poorly, but you only need to load about 1/4 of the bar before you need to cancel. You’ll see I can’t achieve it 100% of the time but with practice you probably could.

- Skipping: You can increase your auto attack DPS for multi-hit skills depending on the class by skipping smaller hits to get to the hard hitting ones faster. Thief Dagger main hand #1 starts off with two slashes. The second can be canceled to get to the next hit a bit faster. While the different is very small, note that the first two hits of that chain don’t do anything but minor damage. You can also use it to remove a blind or aegis before initiating a harder hit by canceling the double hit. Warrior Axe #1 works with this, Necromancer Dagger #1, Mesmer Sword #3, are the ones off the top of my head.

Manual Aim
This one is pretty common knowledge, but you can manuall aim projectile based skills using the center of the screen. As I stated in my reddit post a long time ago, the center of the screen still retains a design function of “soft” selecting targets as if the game were meant to be played in TPS mode. Using this, you can somewhat aim and do shots that normally won’t hit. Hitting things in stealth, flamethrower, hitting things up on keep walls, stuff like that.
Also really fun to do if bored.

Discolation
Another common one to finish this off, you can dislocate the spawn effects of certain AoE abilities such as Meteor Shower and Smite.
What do you mean spawn effects? Each “hitting” object of these skills spawn within a random location you set, which is the AoE of the skill, based on your current locating when finished casting. Meaning if for some reason you move way too far, equivalent to the diameter of the skill, nothing will happen.
This trick has been done in speed runs by condensing the spawn area to the very edge of the AoE. Note that the spawn area, when dislocated, is the initial circle (the AoE) minus the same sized circle based on how far out of range you are in that direction.
Perhaps a chart will help? http://i.imgur.com/8IIVWDh.png
Simply put your AoE range at the maximum distance, ready to cast, dodge backwards and while its dodging place the AoE down.
This is done by abusing the skill queue: dodging or any movement skills take up a space in the “skill queue”, or at least, prevent it from happening yet. Once a skill is queued, it will do it to the best of its abilities, in this case, dislocating the AoE. The way it was programmed to check conditions is probably the reason why this happens. At the time of casting it, you were in range, so it skips the check when it actually tries to cast it. I guess when it starts spawning the objects, it is relative to your location while using the AoE boundries so I don’t know. This is most apparent in turning walls and thrown turrets a certain way by turning your character to face where you want the wall to face.

Well that’s it for now. Hope you learned something useful!

And let me just leave this bit here:
Whether or not these should be fixed is up to ArenaNet to decide. I personally think they SHOULD be “fixed” as these are obviously not intended to be used these ways. Does it take a certain amount of skill to do these? Sure. Are these unfair to people who can’t use it? Yes. All in all, again, its up to them to decide if they are. But one thing for sure, if anything: Stow Weapon does NOT need to be fixed. I think feinting would introduce an even higher level of play (I don’t even do it cuz I’m lazy) and I have only seen like 10 people in my time here actually use it, however, things that abuse quick draw should.

Known trick I haven’t figured out yet:

Dodging while casting. Though I believe this is due to server lag not picking up your dodge, so it never cancels your skill. One thing for sure though, the skill comes first. I have experienced this first hand but… meh.

Fun trick that does nothing:

Using a weapon skill on a different weapon. Ever wondered how hard your hundred blades will hit while wielding a rifle? Swap it before it hits and rifle butt your enemy to death! Shoot bullets out of your shield! Block attacks with a staff!

Edit: Just a though, but in PvE this can actually be used. Start a fight with a very powerful attack from a different weapon, then swap to your actual weapon. An example would be Warrior’s Rifle #3, swap to Greatsword as soon as it starts. No, it does not use the stats of the greatsword. Elementalist Meteor Shower works too I think…

WEXXES.2378:

Didn’t really know where to post since this was so general, so here it is.

I’d say Players Helping Players section

Sooooo many bug fixes will incoming …

Dalanor.5387:

Sooooo many bug fixes will incoming …

Haha well if does then its only for the best. I pointed out these kinds of things with turret engie back in the day and they got “fixed” in a month or two. But in the end, it was for the best to keep it clean and not “gimmicky with unofficial uses”.

rip dodge-storms

Tom Yzf.5872:

rip dodge-storms

I mean that was one fairly open, it was posted on reddit about two months ago.