Guild Wars 2

Because this forum limits title length to 45 characters which is not enough to say a full sentence, here’s the full title of this post:
Why do you lose bloodlust stack when you go underwater?

What is with this buggy game? 25 hard-earned bloodlust stacks are lost as soon as you drop to water with your character. Those stacks aren’t lost if you simply weapon-swap during battle for example.

You need to put a bloodlust sigil on one of your underwater weapons too.

If you put a sigil of bloodlust on one of your underwater weapons, you will not lose the stacks.

It’s nice to know that at least the player can spend 10 gold to fix an issue that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Zenith.6403:

It’s nice to know that at least the player can spend 10 gold to fix an issue that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

And why shouldn’t it be there in the first place, pray tell? I mean, I agree that Bloodlust and the associated weapon sigils shouldn’t be there at all but . . .

Zenith.6403:

It’s nice to know that at least the player can spend 10 gold to fix an issue that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Why do the bloodlust stacks I built up underwater disappear when I walk on land?

Zenith.6403:

It’s nice to know that at least the player can spend 10 gold to fix an issue that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

It was put in to fix the exploit of people using a stacking weapon to gain stack and then swapping to a non-stacking weapon, but keeping the stacks.

Bob F It.5701:

Zenith.6403:

It’s nice to know that at least the player can spend 10 gold to fix an issue that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Why do the bloodlust stacks I built up underwater disappear when I walk on land?

If you don’t have the same sigil on a land weapon.

Why? Because it makes no sense to lose it. If it’s a balance concern them why not make the stack inactive during water battles and weapon swaps?

Zenith.6403:

Why? Because it makes no sense to lose it. If it’s a balance concern them why not make the stack inactive during water battles and weapon swaps?

Are you really that cheap that 10 gold is going to ruin you? It’s been this way since April. Why are you just now noticing/concerned about it?

Brave Mallyki.1563:

It was put in to fix the exploit of people using a stacking weapon to gain stack and then swapping to a non-stacking weapon, but keeping the stacks.

- I’d like to address the word ‘exploit’ here. Something that is designed and coded to work like that is not exploiting. I’m guessing they removed stack loss when switching between land weapons because losing the stack like that would be stupid. But then they forgot to do the same for swapping between water and land weapons.

There are much, MUCH better ways to balance a feature like stacking sigil without outright punishing the player. I think ANET should hire some player experience specialist on their ranks.

Zenith.6403:

Brave Mallyki.1563:

It was put in to fix the exploit of people using a stacking weapon to gain stack and then swapping to a non-stacking weapon, but keeping the stacks.

- I’d like to address the word ‘exploit’ here. Something that is designed and coded to work like that is not exploiting. I’m guessing they removed stack loss when switching between land weapons because losing the stack like that would be stupid. But then they forgot to do the same for swapping between water and land weapons.

I don’t know how to break this to you, but stacking a sigil and then getting rid of the sigil but keeping the effects? Seems pretty, I dunno, “exploit-y” to me. But then, that’s just me . . . can’t imagine a meat-side game I’d play which would allow that sort of thing. “Oh, I built 20 armies in Ukraine but moved them to Mongolia, but I still get the benefit of 20 armies when defending Ukraine, right?”

There are much, MUCH better ways to balance a feature like stacking sigil without outright punishing the player. I think ANET should hire some player experience specialist on their ranks.

I advocate removing them entirely. Stacks work nice in a game designed to curb their effects, like a MOBA. Not so much in open world where it is easy to cheese.

Ranger pets have a similar oddity to them. As you are on the surface of the water, you have no access to any of your skills or profession mechanics, this includes the Ranger’s pet. The pet simply despawns when you hit the surface of the water.

This means that if you are using the trait that builds up attribute stacks on your pet, or your pet has boons, touching the water (or diving in) will destroy that. Unlike the sigil stack issue, you cannot “simply” pay 10g to get around this clunky behaviour.

Zenith.6403:

Why? Because it makes no sense to lose it. If it’s a balance concern them why not make the stack inactive during water battles and weapon swaps?

The problem is that people exploited that, after the April 15th update people used to do one of the two things:
1 – Go underwater to stack bloodlust and then go to land with full bloodlust stack and use other sigils on land.
2 – Have a bloodlust sigil on the underwater weapon, then equip a land weapon with bloodlust, stack on land, then equip other land weapon w/o the bloodlust sigil.

Bloodlust was created to make the player choose between a powerful sigil that will be useless after certain point or use other things that is weaker but is permanently useful.

tl;dr: If you want bloodlust underwater you need an underwater weapon with bloodlust.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I don’t know how to break this to you, but stacking a sigil and then getting rid of the sigil but keeping the effects? Seems pretty, I dunno, “exploit-y” to me. But then, that’s just me . . . can’t imagine a meat-side game I’d play which would allow that sort of thing. “Oh, I built 20 armies in Ukraine but moved them to Mongolia, but I still get the benefit of 20 armies when defending Ukraine, right?”

- Right. It could also be seen that your character is building up bloodlust by attacking with a weapon holding a sigil that loses its progression benefit as soon as you reach max stack. This can be seen as trade-off, if you’re spending lots of time stacking the bloodlust with inferior weapon before you switch to your main weapon. Furthermore instead of stacking bloodlust the player could be stacking toughness, healing or critical chance, which grants additional layer of player customization.

Or all stacking sigils could be removed altogether and replaced with something that gives flat bonus to attributes. Personally I think the stacking mechanic is more fun, but that wasn’t really the point of this thread.

Zenith.6403:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I don’t know how to break this to you, but stacking a sigil and then getting rid of the sigil but keeping the effects? Seems pretty, I dunno, “exploit-y” to me. But then, that’s just me . . . can’t imagine a meat-side game I’d play which would allow that sort of thing. “Oh, I built 20 armies in Ukraine but moved them to Mongolia, but I still get the benefit of 20 armies when defending Ukraine, right?”

- Right. It could also be seen that your character is building up bloodlust by attacking with a weapon holding a sigil that loses its progression benefit as soon as you reach max stack. This can be seen as trade-off, if you’re spending lots of time stacking the bloodlust with inferior weapon before you switch to your main weapon. Furthermore instead of stacking bloodlust the player could be stacking toughness, healing or critical chance, which grants additional layer of player customization.

We’re not discussing what stat is being stacked. Honestly, I could care less about the what is being stacked when you said “that shouldn’t be an exploit”. Except more than a few people posted how other players were exploiting the skritt out of this. Which leads me to the standard “this is why we can’t have nice things” photomeme and moving on . . .

I also used the analogy because that’s what it feels like to me by saying “I want to have all my stacks stay even if I don’t have a means of keeping them”.

Or all stacking sigils could be removed altogether and replaced with something that gives flat bonus to attributes. Personally I think the stacking mechanic is more fun, but that wasn’t really the point of this thread.

Or just letting stacking sigils operate in sPvP alone and give flat bonuses in the world.

Anyway, what was the point of this thread? Oh, right, complaining about something which works the way it does for a good reason.

Thank you for creating this topic. I was wondering why I keep losing the stacks I build up.
Good to know that adding sigil to water weapons will resolve this. I would not have figured it out without the help of this topic.

Zenith.6403:

- I’d like to address the word ‘exploit’ here. Something that is designed and coded to work like that is not exploiting.

It was coded to work that way; it was not designed to work that way. The design is that while you have a stacking weapon equipped, you maintain your stacks – swapping weapons does not make you lose stacks, but un-equipping the stacking weapon does.

The un-equipping of a stacking weapon but maintaining the stacks was the exploit that they wanted to close. However they still want to allow you to equip and un-equip weapons that are not your stacking weapon without losing your stacks, as that would be really prohibitive.

The problem was that then people would equip a stacking weapon to gain stacks (on land), equip an underwater weapon with a stacking sigil, and then swap out the terrestrial weapon for one without a stacking sigil; so the whole ‘gain stacks with a weapon then put it in your pack’ unintended design was still being used.

So they had to split water and terrestrial weapons and require you to have a stacking weapon in both places to hold your stacks.

The alternative is to make you drop your stacks when you switch any weapon – stacking or not – which was judged to be a bigger problem (and I agree).

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Or just letting stacking sigils operate in sPvP alone and give flat bonuses in the world.

The reasons why it still works fine in PvP, is because you don’t need to pay 10g per sigil, and Anet removed underwater combat entirely from PvP. The problem is that Anet has abandoned underwater combat when they consider anything about the game balance and the like… however it still exists as a thorn in their side.

Personally I think sigil stacks are a boring mechanic (as it is just arbitrary numbers), but they’re just too powerful to ignore in favour of something else.

Surbrus.6942:

Personally I think sigil stacks are a boring mechanic (as it is just arbitrary numbers), but they’re just too powerful to ignore in favour of something else.

Nothing is too powerful to ignore. Even arrow carts can be ignored with impunity if you’re sneaky

Maidah.2539:

Thank you for creating this topic. I was wondering why I keep losing the stacks I build up.
Good to know that adding sigil to water weapons will resolve this. I would not have figured it out without the help of this topic.

Same here, I have been avoiding the water like it was the plague. Thanks OP.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I also used the analogy because that’s what it feels like to me by saying “I want to have all my stacks stay even if I don’t have a means of keeping them”.

- Spending great deal of time underwater to stack sigil after going down seems like a drawback to me. That time could be spent more productively.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Anyway, what was the point of this thread? Oh, right, complaining about something which works the way it does for a good reason.

- One should never balance a game by removing player convenience or breaking logic. Balance the numbers, that’s what they are for.

Zenith.6403:

- One should never balance a game by removing player convenience or breaking logic. Balance the numbers, that’s what they are for.

They didn’t remove a player convenience, they fixed a bug that was exploited by the players and was never intended to be that way.

IndigoSundown.5419:

It’s a gold sink.

1. Build stacks on land.
2. Don’t want to lose them by swimming across to get to the other side?
3. WP instead. 1,5 silver gone.
4. Of course, eventually the 10G for a second sigil would actually save you money.

You lose stacks on WP.

Surbrus.6942:

Ranger pets have a similar oddity to them. As you are on the surface of the water, you have no access to any of your skills or profession mechanics, this includes the Ranger’s pet. The pet simply despawns when you hit the surface of the water.

This means that if you are using the trait that builds up attribute stacks on your pet, or your pet has boons, touching the water (or diving in) will destroy that. Unlike the sigil stack issue, you cannot “simply” pay 10g to get around this clunky behaviour.

Which is why my Necro avoids water like the plague… cause my Flesh Golem doesn’t just pop off like a ranger pet. He has to totally be respawned, manually, with the cooldown, even if I just slip and touch water. Irritates me no end that Flesh Golems can’t swim. The rest of my minions swim just fine.