Guild Wars 2

I need to do some jumping puzzles. I am asuming asura mesmer is a good starting point? . And there is no such thing as being to detailed in reply because i’m nub at jp’s. I have HoT so any profession is available and i have the tomes to insta-80. this is just going to be my jp toon. Plz advize.

Mesmer, necro and maybe thief.

I say thief because they might be able to utilize staff 5 high arc leap for precise jumps?

It’s hilarious that this is actually a thing. Assura or human Female Mesmer. As for build you don’t need a build to do jumping puzzles but I would imagine, Rune of the Snowfall and falling damage traits to prevent deaths from falling.

Or guard F2 and GS3 to do some long leap.
Mesmer is only useful to teleport other players at the end.
And don’t forget falling damage reduction from traits.

^above is not true. Portals can be precast before a difficult jump so if you fall you can portal back instead of having to redo the jumping puzzle.

Perfect example of why to be careful who you take advice from.

Lol, don’t think i’ve ever seen the request for a jumping puzzle build. Anyways, I would run something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhQQFgdncfC1qh9fCmfCEgilhjq+SDVmBAnigKA-TRQSAAw+DCBwE-e

- Asura (obviously) for small size
- Chrono for the alacrity for faster portal cooldowns + passive movement speed
- offhand focus for swiftness for that extra boost on longer jumps
- Pack runes for swiftness duration.
- Boon duration food to bring swiftness duration up to 50%
- Descent into madness trait for reduced fall damage (not that it matters much in jp’s)
- Warden’s Feedback trait for reduced focus cooldowns (more swiftness yo)

The rest you can fill in. If it were me tho, i’d take zerker weapons, armor, trinkets. Would probably drop platinum doubloons in the trinkets to buff that boon duration for more swiftness.

Edit: just thought of a couple items to pick up for the build as well.
- Head to Lake Doric and get the new shrinking tonic. Can make your character even smaller.
- Head to Fisher’s Eye Bridges in Timberline Falls and talk to Danka. Buy a stack of the experimental teleportation guns. You can use these to jump across gaps, I use these all the freakin time, super useful.

Best class for JP, Mesmer: portal and fall damage reduction trait.
Best race, Asura: just make the tiniest asura ever, and you’re gold.

I usually prefer Engie, though: Engie’s rifle 5 is still the best jump skill, IMO.
Also: permaswiftness is really easy with Engie’s streamlined kits, and you have some very decent sources of stealth if you need to skip mobs.

If you have a level 80 and HoT, then I too suggest going to Lake Doric and getting the shrinking tonic. Then play a human. Asura are normally smaller, but they tend to bounce and flail a lot as they move. Human animations and proportions will feel more natural to you.

Of the standard classes, you have some choices. Engineer has the best standard jump skill, with Rifle 5. Thief has a better elite spec jump skill, with Staff 5. Elementalists have a couple of tricks, like Mist Form, that can be oddly helpful in a few JPs. And, of course, Mesmers have portals.

All classes have a falling damage reduction trait, if you care to take one.

I, personally, like human necros the best for JPs. Asura are just a bit too bouncy for my brain to register whether or not a jump will work, norn and charr are obviously just too big, but humans and sylvari are just the right size for me. Spectral Walk can be used before a tricky jump, and then you can use Spectral Recall to go back to your starting point if you mess up the jump. Plus, with some falls, popping into Shroud as you fall can keep you from dying from fall damage.

As for a build, I don’t have a special build I use. I just put the +25% movement speed signet and Spectral Walk on my bar. I don’t usually bother with putting the fall damage reduction trait on, but it is an option.

Not a build but a few tips:

Fall damage traits

All professions have a trait which halves the damage they take from falling. Some puzzles don’t have drops that can kill you and some have drops so big the trait won’t help, but there’s plenty in between so it’s well worth it.

Speed boosts

I suggest having a few options (e.g. 25%, 33%) and remembering where they come from so you can turn them on and off as needed because sometimes a jump is actually easier without a speed boost, or with less than the maximum (particularly when your target is a very small platform and there’s nothing to stop you overshooting it). Also avoid anything which gives you random boons or doesn’t allow you to control when they appear. There’s nothing worse than suddenly having a speed boost applied as you jump so you over-shoot your target. (Except finding it came from someone above you who you didn’t even know was there but who decided to “help” by changing how far you’ll jump at the last second with no warning.)

Think about your keybindings

I’m left-handed so the default W to move forward and space to jump is really awkward for me. I can push space with the heel of my hand while pushing W, but not very accurately. I rebound Jump to the \ key which I can reach much more comfortably. If you want to use any skills just before/after jumping or while moving make sure you can reach them easily as well. If necessary you could designate a section of the keyboard (number pad?) for jumping puzzle controls so you don’t need to change your normal controls.

Practice, practice, practice

Even (or especially) when you’re not in jumping puzzles. Practice jumping on and off and across all kinds of things so you can get a sense of how far and how high your character can jump. Also practice jumping onto slopes, uneven surfaces and things which may or may not have collision like plants, ropes tents, rock walls around the edge of maps.

With enough practice you can just look at where you want to be and know if it’s something you can stand on and if you’ll be able to reach it. Which means you can look along a section of a jumping puzzle and know before you even start where you need to go and how to get there, which makes doing it much easier.

(Also for this reason I actually find jumping easiest on a female norn, because their range is roughly the same as what I can do in real life – it makes it much easier for me to gauge how far I can jump. I find the asuran animation deceptive – they look like they’re running faster and really hurling themselves forward so I keep expecting them to go further. But that may just be me.)

Practice any skills you’ll be using too

For example if you’re going to use mesmer portals get to know how far you can go from your first portal before you lose the ability to place the second. Learn how long it will last before the skill resets and how long it stays around after you place both portals. That will allow you to gauge when and where you can use it – if you miss a jump will you land somewhere where you can portal back up, or will it be too far? If you land just below the platform do you have time to try and climb up or will you lose your portal in that time? Can you make a second attempt before the portal closes?

Whenever possible take your time

Sometimes that’s not an option because some puzzles have a time limit where the platforms will disappear. But those are rare. So if you’re not sure where to go stop and take the time to look around. Sometimes if you climb up onto a ledge or go slightly in the wrong direction you can get a better view of what’s ahead, or find you’re actually going in the right direction and you had it wrong before.

If you’re tense or nervous or your hands are stiff or whatever take a break. I’ve actually stopped within sight of the end chest in a difficult puzzle to go and make a cup of tea and water my plants because I realised I was so worked up I was more likely to mess up the final jumps.

Just remember that there’s no bonus for doing a puzzle quickly. It doesn’t matter if other people go past you (even on the timed puzzles), the only thing that matters is getting to the end so it’s better to do it slowly and carefully than rush and mess it up completely.

Ardid.7203:

Best class for JP, Mesmer: portal and fall damage reduction trait.
Best race, Asura: just make the tiniest asura ever, and you’re gold.

I usually prefer Engie, though: Engie’s rifle 5 is still the best jump skill, IMO.
Also: permaswiftness is really easy with Engie’s streamlined kits, and you have some very decent sources of stealth if you need to skip mobs.

I got through some harder jumping puzzles and things like finding the lost badges in the Silverwastes using my engineer and the rifle. Definitely a must have for some of these puzzles. Especially for the ones with the tiny beams sticking out of the wall.

Also the new Endless Minature Tonic is great and well worth buying as it makes you smaller than any asuran you can make.

Zealoux.5142:

Or guard F2 and GS3 to do some long leap.
Mesmer is only useful to teleport other players at the end.
And don’t forget falling damage reduction from traits.

Don’t forget the mesmer can lay portal before jump….. if they miss…portal back This helped me with checkpoint JPs

i use the cat tonic and wait to get a small cat XD

I’ve been known to bring my asura engi into JPs every so often for tricky circumstances. They have the ground targeted rifle blast jump. I’ve found it to be useful sometimes.

Mesmer is great but staff 5 on thief is practically guaranteed to help. If you aim the center of the circle where you want to land its pretty much guaranteed to land on a solid surface. I used it for the orb puzzle in timberline falls and it’s excellent for any puzzles that have wooden planks or narrow beams. The only ones that will probably give you trouble and be better on a Mesmer are aetherblade, the second part of morgans spiral, and possibly southsun but those are generally more difficult anyway. The griffin one might also pose a bit of a challenge.

The reason I prefer thief is also because the staff 5 helps you to prevent over or undercalculating a jump. Specifically the beams that are sometimes spaced or slanted to be tricky.

shadow return of thief shouldn’t require line of sight! what’s the issue with it being a short lived, personal portal? why would that be bad?

Another good reason for choosing engie is those few JP sections that are in darkness. Flamethrower autoatack isn’t exacly a good lintern, but it DOES gives you enough light to explore some of those areas, easy and quick. The Obsidian Sanctum in particular, I did it using this cheat.

Using an AOE target to show the shapes of the terrain in that Pirate JP obscure section is another of my favorite tricks.

Ardid.7203:

Another good reason for choosing engie is those few JP sections that are in darkness. Flamethrower autoatack isn’t exacly a good lintern, but it DOES gives you enough light to explore some of those areas, easy and quick. The Obsidian Sanctum in particular, I did it using this cheat.

Using an AOE target to show the shapes of the terrain in that Pirate JP obscure section is another of my favorite tricks.

It is useful to note that Mesmer and a couple of other classes can equip a torch, and torches do light up the ground in a radius around you. This works in the obscured section of the pirate JP. If you are not on a class that can equip torch, though, some flaming weapons like Honor of Humanity and Cobalt have the same effect.

To the person who mentioned the Experimental Teleportation Rifle, there is a second consumable that allows you to make leaps to TARGETED locations instead. The Experimental Rifle is a purchasable consumable from a vendor that appears after successfully completing a boss event at the Risen Chicken Coops in Cursed Shores (If you see the veteran chickens the event has failed and you will have to wait after defeating them for the real event to appear.) The targeted long-distance leap that this rifle gives can trivialize MOST JPs as long as you cast a stability skill before using it (sometimes it can explode and knock you down instead.) It makes any class viable for JP completion.

Even without this a number of classes have hidden leap skills that can, if used correctly, make some long distance leap/skips possible. Engi Rifle ofc, Ranger longsword (have to animation cancel with weapon swap), Guardian Greatsword, Warrior Sword, Thief Staff. Consider traveler runes to gain an extra utility while still running a speed boost, or ofc snowfall runes if you fall a lot. Chronomancer has move speed baseline, but mesmer itself doesn’t have as reliable a permanent speed boost.

Engineer Rifle is one of the beast targeted leaps in the game as it not only lets you ground target at decent distance, but it also gains elevation, rather than being restricted to a vertical plain like most other classes and their leap skills. Thief staff 5 does exactly the same without a cool-down, plus evades attacks in between. Dragonhunter’s f2 leap also gives targetted vertical leaping, for a much longer distance than thief or engineer, but has a longer cooldown than both. Greatsword can be targetted, though, by having scepter on weapon swap. Ground target scepter two, then swap and use greatsword leap. You will jump to where scepter two targeted.

Sojourner.4621:

Ardid.7203:

Another good reason for choosing engie is those few JP sections that are in darkness. Flamethrower autoatack isn’t exacly a good lintern, but it DOES gives you enough light to explore some of those areas, easy and quick. The Obsidian Sanctum in particular, I did it using this cheat.

Using an AOE target to show the shapes of the terrain in that Pirate JP obscure section is another of my favorite tricks.

It is useful to note that Mesmer and a couple of other classes can equip a torch, and torches do light up the ground in a radius around you. This works in the obscured section of the pirate JP. If you are not on a class that can equip torch, though, some flaming weapons like Honor of Humanity and Cobalt have the same effect.

To the person who mentioned the Experimental Teleportation Rifle, there is a second consumable that allows you to make leaps to TARGETED locations instead. The Experimental Rifle is a purchasable consumable from a vendor that appears after successfully completing a boss event at the Risen Chicken Coops in Cursed Shores (If you see the veteran chickens the event has failed and you will have to wait after defeating them for the real event to appear.) The targeted long-distance leap that this rifle gives can trivialize MOST JPs as long as you cast a stability skill before using it (sometimes it can explode and knock you down instead.) It makes any class viable for JP completion.

Even without this a number of classes have hidden leap skills that can, if used correctly, make some long distance leap/skips possible. Engi Rifle ofc, Ranger longsword (have to animation cancel with weapon swap), Guardian Greatsword, Warrior Sword, Thief Staff. Consider traveler runes to gain an extra utility while still running a speed boost, or ofc snowfall runes if you fall a lot. Chronomancer has move speed baseline, but mesmer itself doesn’t have as reliable a permanent speed boost.

Engineer Rifle is one of the beast targeted leaps in the game as it not only lets you ground target at decent distance, but it also gains elevation, rather than being restricted to a vertical plain like most other classes and their leap skills. Thief staff 5 does exactly the same without a cool-down, plus evades attacks in between. Dragonhunter’s f2 leap also gives targetted vertical leaping, for a much longer distance than thief or engineer, but has a longer cooldown than both. Greatsword can be targetted, though, by having scepter on weapon swap. Ground target scepter two, then swap and use greatsword leap. You will jump to where scepter two targeted.

Excelent info!!

I actually made one of these recently. Asura mesmer, giver’s armour with runes of the snowfall, descent into madness for reduced falling damage, mimic, blink and portal for skills. Basically lots of boon duration for swiftness and maximising reduced falling damage. It actually does make jumping puzzles and general getting around way easier.