Why does swiftness exist?
I’ll take the topic question and run with it. Starting with the buff, or the effect itself, swiftness exists to allow a player to move between point A and point B faster. It is a buff that Anet gives a player as one of many tools in his strategy toolbox. What you use it for is whatever situation you need: reduced travel time in pve, faster strategy execution in pvp, an escape mechanism when your strategy fails, etc. Anet certainly didn’t have to make it or include it in any way but they did. Speed is a thrilling tactic to utilize and adds depth to the game.
Anet also included a number of ways to get a slightly weaker version of swiftness. You’ll note that none of the passive speed buffs equates to 33% and that they don’t stack. To get the 25% speed buff you have to trade something for it:
- a skill slot
- a more powerful rune set
- a stronger trait or trait line
- a better weapon set to equip
- an elite skill activation or other cooldown
For those who use signets to get the speed boost they have to sacrifice a utility slot. What could they have used in place of their swiftness signet? Also if they activate the signet they lose the swiftness buff.
For those who traited it: A lot of traits require a specific weapon or type of weapon (Warriors need to have melee weapons to use theirs). What other weapon could they run to be more powerful?
For those who used runes for it: You can’t combine it with power runes or condition defense runes (Hoelbrak, Melandru) so you sacrifice those areas.
For those who spam their swiftness skills they lose other aspects of the cooldown they used to get the swiftness. Warrior warhorn cleanses conditions. Ranger one adds might and fury. Guardians lose an AOE dps (and forget they can aoe dps with the symbol).
Why does swiftness exist then? It’s an option a player can choose by sacrificing something else to get it. It’s a strategy they can employ correctly to achieve victory over an opponent. If they choose not to use it they can apply resources to other aspects of their character. Think about how many warriors and thieves in pvp were able to escape your otherwise certain victory because they out ran you. That’s why it exists.
Little red Lioka
Time for a visual aid. This is a quick glimpse of the game that you already play with tangential commentary on the feeble impact of swiftness in combat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wuXfhPNRlg
Now, as I’ve said before, swiftness isn’t that entirely useful in most combat situations. The game has mutated in a way which promotes the use of invulnerability periods and scripted movement in order to simultaneously accelerate and stall out combat rather than using the base movement controls available to a player. When combat is at a level which such things don’t need to define combat (such as PvE or WvW outside of frontline zerg players—and in the case of the latter, those guys have the zerg to provide them with swiftness), it’s very easy to sacrifice those abilities for swiftness. Nobody is going to care that you’re a mesmer running centaur runes while doing a dungeon, unless they’re really, really bent on getting some irrelevant speed run time (in which case, that guy would probably be in a group specifically designed to have someone provide swiftness for the group so that the players who don’t have it would just take whatever they need to anyway, thus negating the players’ need to sacrifice anything at all for an otherwise irrelevant, mild movement speed buff). In PvP, the maps and points are small enough that non-permanent swiftness, teleports and movement abilities will zip a player from place to place with no trouble; and the video demonstrates how worthless swiftness is in most combat anyway regarding its raw ability to allow a player to re-positioning amidst ranged damage and teleport abilities.
As a disclaimer, I played a solid 2 hotjoin matches for this footage. However, trying to say that “Oh, it’s not ranked,” is not going to be a valid point given that the prevalence and usage of teleports, instant invulnerability periods and instant damage will only increase as the “skill level” of PvP combat “increases.” Those things define GW2 combat. I chose necromancer as a class to play because they don’t really have those combat-defining mechanics on hand. This allows me to highlight the irrelevance of swiftness in combat (since it’s the only thing that I have going for me reliably if I want to boost my movement speed to any location other than directly to a selected target with DS2), and demonstrate the iron-hold that scripted/instant movement and instant (or at least always poorly telegraphed) damage has on GW2.
Within this environment, again, I ask, “Why does swiftness exist?” if it’s not really going to have an impact on anything that a player actively does and trading something like increased stats/an ability slot for increased movement speed is always done without a second thought in situations which won’t punish a player for lacking those trade-offs?