Guild Wars 2

Sensing a player that opens their Glider (even briefly) from 2000+ range away and throwing Homing Rocks at them is a bit much. I’m pretty sure I’ve had Homing Rocks thrown at me by White Mantle Knights that were even out of rendering distance, too. That’s pretty much my only gripe about the new content.

Agreed, it’s ridiculous.

I was gliding around the crater trying to find those book pages when suddenly I get pelted out of nowhere by 9-10 rocks and in less than a second I lose 60% of my health off and fall to my death because I wasn’t allowed to activate my glider again in time.

At one time while I was trying to ride the Leyline up to get out of the crater they just kept on pelting me with rocks until I hit downed state and fell all the way back to the floor.

Apparently the Stealth Gliding is borderline useless most of the time as well as they just keep throwing these homing rock-missiles at you.

Oh yes, I used to think that those rocks came from… Litteraly nowhere. Like “Maybe it’s something magical, bloodstone and stuff”. But no, it’s because of these White Mantle Snipers. Please, Anet, do something about it, it’s ridiculous…

That’s the only flaw I saw about LW 3, though.

These homing rocks are annoying and don’t add anything but annoyance to the player trying to glide from one place to the next. It’s understandable that we now have aerial skills but its a bit much when you get knock out of the sky and fall to your death because you can’t reactivate your glider in time.

I think not having the player get knock out of gliding would be the best option, because I don’t think all of use can react fast enough to find the attacker and fight back.

I tried to stealth glide to get away from it, but it doesn’t seem to work.

Agreed. They do ignore stealth gliding. I’ve been pelted too. Not enough to be knocked out of the sky it seems, so I’m not complaining about being pelted. But it seems a shame to gain a stealth gliding mastery and find it ignored.

Yup, totally agree with OP. Great update apart from the fact that every enemy seems to want to throw kitten at me if I approach within a 2 mile radius of them and there is absolutely no counterplay mechanism/

If the fact that stealth gliding doesn’t break combat isn’t a bug, then the devs really to look at this.

As we now also have combat skills when gliding, perhaps a shield skill could be purchasable for a utility slot?

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Agreed. They do ignore stealth gliding. I’ve been pelted too. Not enough to be knocked out of the sky it seems, so I’m not complaining about being pelted. But it seems a shame to gain a stealth gliding mastery and find it ignored.

Not entirely sure but them knocking you out of the sky seems to be tied to wether or not they crit. I’ve been pelted to downed state without getting knocked out and at other times 1 rock was all it took to knock me out of the sky.

I swear if a rock they throw at you manages just 1 crit, you’re knocked out of your glider immediately with a 3 second forced cooldown before you can enable your glider again.

Also tested Stealth Gliding some more, but they just don’t care and keep throwing stones at you as if you were plainly visible. So a Tier 4 skill (5 Mastery Points) is now completely useless in that specific zone when it was working as intended everywhere else.

Aveneo.2068:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Agreed. They do ignore stealth gliding. I’ve been pelted too. Not enough to be knocked out of the sky it seems, so I’m not complaining about being pelted. But it seems a shame to gain a stealth gliding mastery and find it ignored.

Not entirely sure but them knocking you out of the sky seems to be tied to wether or not they crit. I’ve been pelted to downed state without getting knocked out and at other times 1 rock was all it took to knock me out of the sky.

I swear if a rock they throw at you manages just 1 crit, you’re knocked out of your glider immediately with a 3 second forced cooldown before you can enable your glider again.

Also tested Stealth Gliding some more, but they just don’t care and keep throwing stones at you as if you were plainly visible. So a Tier 4 skill (5 Mastery Points) is now completely useless in that specific zone when it was working as intended everywhere else.

Does that mean that elementalists can gain immunity to it by entering earth atunement and equipping the trait that prevents critical hits while in earth attunement?

The glider #5 skill helps some.

Eponet.4829:

Aveneo.2068:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Agreed. They do ignore stealth gliding. I’ve been pelted too. Not enough to be knocked out of the sky it seems, so I’m not complaining about being pelted. But it seems a shame to gain a stealth gliding mastery and find it ignored.

Not entirely sure but them knocking you out of the sky seems to be tied to wether or not they crit. I’ve been pelted to downed state without getting knocked out and at other times 1 rock was all it took to knock me out of the sky.

I swear if a rock they throw at you manages just 1 crit, you’re knocked out of your glider immediately with a 3 second forced cooldown before you can enable your glider again.

Also tested Stealth Gliding some more, but they just don’t care and keep throwing stones at you as if you were plainly visible. So a Tier 4 skill (5 Mastery Points) is now completely useless in that specific zone when it was working as intended everywhere else.

Does that mean that elementalists can gain immunity to it by entering earth atunement and equipping the trait that prevents critical hits while in earth attunement?

Good question! I think I’ll take my elementalist there tomorrow and test it out. If it works it may become a “Go Ele or Go Home” zone.

You have to wonder who thought this would be a fun mechanic getting pelted by heat seeking rocks from eagle eyed WM knights who can see you from massive distances.

Sure you can shoot them down with your skills but the problem for a player vs AI is that we are not omnipresent and will most likely take lethal or critical damage and die.

Considering the density of knights in some areas this is just a pain.

I’ve also found it annoying since there is little counter play to it, if there was a shield skill as one of the glider skills it would make much more sense and would probably be fun, but right now its certainly not. The RNG element of will I be knocked out of the sky or not is just plain stupid and needs reworking.

Glider skill #5 grants stability and is on 5s cooldown. It also seems that hiding your glider and re-deploying it often breaks aggro of the ghastly rocks.

I think they see you from a great range with invisible scopes (or worse, cybernetic implants), and even if you go into stealth, they’ve seen you do it and can instantly estimate the airspeed velocity of any swallow, unladen or otherwise, so said stealth is irrelevant - then those guided missiles! Ow! Is fun to dodge about for a bit, but still!

Agree on glider skill 5 as best option - have used it to evade a few times now. Healing on skill 4 doesn’t really do enough to help, but something like a Guardian-style block on-heal would be good. Its 1 second evade doesn’t really work well when lots of stuff is being pelted at gliders.

Today I learned that White Mantle Knights are portable SAM launchers with heat-seeking ammunition.

I haven’t unlocked the new aerial combat skills yet, so maybe there’s a solution there? If not, this really needs some attention.

Stealth gliding works. The problem is that the aggro/attack range on surface-to-air attacks is ridiculously long and as a result the attacks have to seek if they’re to have any chance of striking the target.

The moment you deploy your glider, anything within that range (and it has to be at LEAST 2500 range if not even more because I swear I get attacked from enemies that I can’t even see yet!) will aggro and launch a seeking attack at you.

Even if there weren’t a 1 second cooldown between deploying your glider and going stealth, the first round of attacks is already in the air the moment you deploy.

This needs to change. I understand that aerial combat requires a longer range to be useful, but getting turned into a pin cushion by a hundred enemies that are so far away you can’t even see them is just obnoxious.

Possible solutions:

Make players non-targetable by these extra-long-range surface-to-air attacks for 2 seconds after deploying the glider. This would cover the gap between deployment and stealth, ensuring that players don’t get immediately destroyed the moment they take to the air. After the two second period, however, it’s open season and you’d better use your stealth wisely. I prefer this option.

Alternatively, the attacks seek through stealth, but stealth makes you immune to stuns, etc. that would cause you to fall from the sky so you only take damage from the attacks.

Took my elementalist there today with the Stone Heart trait and let myself get pelted by rocks to test the ‘Crit=Crash’ theory.

Sure enough I got hit A LOT by these homing rocks but never got knocked out of the sky once. So the White Mantle knocking you out of the sky with their homing rocks definitely seems to be tied to them critting or not.

As such it seems an Elementalist while in Earth Attunement with the Stone Skin trait is immune to getting knocked out of the sky.

It’s still a stupid mechanic though and I don’t know who at ANet thought this would be a fun idea. I mean, I can understand if White Mantle archers and casters would try to use their arrows and ranged spells against you, but throwing rocks that home in on you just to either pelt you to death from impossible range or simply force you out of the sky on crit feels cheap and unimaginative.

Problem is there’s 0 interaction. The range is so high half the time the rocks are in the air before you can see them, and there’s nothing you can do once the rocks are launched to stop getting hit. The mastery you would expect to be useful, stealth gliding, does jack kitten.

So next question: Has anyone unlocked the new glider weapon skills? Are any of them defensive in nature? More to the point, do any of them offer a counter to these mechanics?

I really like the idea of adding in some glider combat, but if we’re just going to get taken out of the air from range with no ability to prevent it, you can keep it!

The range definitely needs to be toned down at least to where we can see the knights. But really anything over 1000 units is still too far imo

OriOri.8724:

The range definitely needs to be toned down at least to where we can see the knights. But really anything over 1000 units is still too far imo

One potential issue with this solution is the impact on player glider attacks. I noticed the auto attack skill has a 2500 range, dealing more damage the closer you are. I haven’t unlocked any of the others just yet, but one possible explanation for the seemingly excessive range is that range values that make sense on the ground may be inconvenient in the air in practice?

Just a guess. This is too new for me to wrap my head around just yet. I at least need to unlock the new skills and play around with it more. Right now I feel like I’m at quite the disadvantage in the air and utilize stealth far more than I do offense!

Stealth gliding doesn’t seem to matter because by the time you’ve used it, they’ve already thrown like two more rocks at you. It’s sad because it’s the first time I’ve genuinely thought it could be very useful, but it’s really only good for sneaking past before they aggro to you. I don’t think the rocks should home in once you stealth.

I find that you should just kill them from above before they get a chance to do much damage. Just carpet bomb them with the number 2 skill. You should be able to kill them much faster than they can kill you.

I’m fine with it for the “you don’ have stealth gliding” tax, double so because of the stability skill.

But hey, stealth gliding should be reliable as an aggro dump. Like many mexpensive mastry abilities it has very few contextual uses, so anywhere you can add logical payoffs for leveling them, you really should.

Stealth gliding should really feel like “oh man, I’m so glad I leveled stealth gliding now that I’m flying through this cave of dudes that throw rocks” rather than “why can the cave of dudes throwing rocks hit me while I’m using my mastry skill I did all that stuff to get?”

Without the stealth gliding or stability skill? Totally okay with it being as annoying as it is now. It’s disruptive enough to be annoying, but not so much it ruins the zone. it should just encourage you to seek out the countermeasures.

Okay, so I unlocked glider skill 5 and that’s what I was missing. It’s a 4 second evade + stability on a 5 second cooldown. So here’s a rough idea of how to survive flying around this map, for those who are feeling like a sitting (err, flying?) duck in the air:

When you first enter the air, use glider skill 5 to cover the projectiles that are already in the air. Then stealth to prevent more projectiles from coming. By the time you get out of stealth, glider skill 5 is ready again or you can re-stealth.

Also, it appears that retracting your glider and dropping out of the sky reverts the enemies to their normal aggro and range rules. So if you’re running out of endurance and glider skill 5 is on cooldown, you still have your trusty ability to drop like a rock to prevent additional projectiles from being launched in your direction. Of course, you would ideally reserve this tactic for when you actually want to head downward anyway!

So, amending my previous position. Everything is fine. Better, even! Because gliding in the new map has become a little more interesting. I’ll post again once I’ve unlocked all of the skills and really gotten a feel for it. But it looks promising with just skill 5 unlocked. I no longer feel defenseless in the sky!

I think I’m going to grab skill 2 next. It sounds like it’s a short cooldown area knockdown that applies random conditions. Between that, stealth, and the 4s evade I should be able to not only survive but effectively fight back from above! I’ll let you know how it goes.

I think the #4 skill was an evade too although shorter.

Edit: New skills and what they do.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gliding#Bloodstone_Fen

AliamRationem.5172:

OriOri.8724:

The range definitely needs to be toned down at least to where we can see the knights. But really anything over 1000 units is still too far imo

One potential issue with this solution is the impact on player glider attacks. I noticed the auto attack skill has a 2500 range, dealing more damage the closer you are. I haven’t unlocked any of the others just yet, but one possible explanation for the seemingly excessive range is that range values that make sense on the ground may be inconvenient in the air in practice?

Just a guess. This is too new for me to wrap my head around just yet. I at least need to unlock the new skills and play around with it more. Right now I feel like I’m at quite the disadvantage in the air and utilize stealth far more than I do offense!

Forgot about the whole thing with triangles and distance while you are in the air :/

In my head I was thinking 1000 units distance counted as if you were on the same plane. So you could be 5000 units up in the air and still be hit by a knight that is technically 5099 units away from you, but he would only be 1000 units away from your location on the ground if you were to drop suddenly. I still think 1000 is too big a number, but I had forgotten about the third dimension here so I guess a more elegant solution would work better

OriOri.8724:

AliamRationem.5172:

OriOri.8724:

The range definitely needs to be toned down at least to where we can see the knights. But really anything over 1000 units is still too far imo

One potential issue with this solution is the impact on player glider attacks. I noticed the auto attack skill has a 2500 range, dealing more damage the closer you are. I haven’t unlocked any of the others just yet, but one possible explanation for the seemingly excessive range is that range values that make sense on the ground may be inconvenient in the air in practice?

Just a guess. This is too new for me to wrap my head around just yet. I at least need to unlock the new skills and play around with it more. Right now I feel like I’m at quite the disadvantage in the air and utilize stealth far more than I do offense!

Forgot about the whole thing with triangles and distance while you are in the air :/

In my head I was thinking 1000 units distance counted as if you were on the same plane. So you could be 5000 units up in the air and still be hit by a knight that is technically 5099 units away from you, but he would only be 1000 units away from your location on the ground if you were to drop suddenly. I still think 1000 is too big a number, but I had forgotten about the third dimension here so I guess a more elegant solution would work better

I think 1000 is more than fair considering a large amount of ranged attacks are at 1200. Based on my observations, the range is consistent in a 360 degree radius or however you want to call it. I personally have no issues with the existing range of the rock attack. It’s annoying but there are always to mitigate it.

I’ve had a homing Hammer thrown at me before.
How are they so accurate with a hammer off all things.

So I played with glider skill 5 and I have to say this is a really nice ability that I’ve already found a number of uses for. It’s a long range aerial dash evade that lasts 4 seconds, on kitten cooldown. Here are some cool/fun things you can use it for:

Zoom into an updraft and your super speed 4s dash goes vertical, lifting you far higher than the updraft alone.

You only need a brief moment of glider deployment to activate the glider skills, so you can use this as a long-range dash evade on the ground as long as you’re fighting in an area with some protrusions or an incline to leap from. This is also useful with the offensive abilities – the glider AA does pretty high damage at point blank if you just hop off of a rock and hit them at melee range!

And of course the obvious chaining with stealth to fly through the sky without fear. It’s also great for quickly closing distance to ambush white mantle. With those dangerous projectiles you really feel not having this skill when you approach a large group of them!

Very cool. I’m liking this more and more! Nice work, ANet!

Lol, I finally saw the hammer today – luckily I dodged before it got me. I agree the ranged attacks are way, way out there.

I did get all the aerial skills but the 1 and 2 were useless to me as you get killed long before you can target anything much less figure out where it was coming from. Targeting while moving was very hard for me. Half the time I was past what I wanted to hit before I could get a bead on it. I actually made a hit once and they took me right down immediately. I assume I should have used skills 4 and/or 5 right after. Definitely something that needs practice.

Skills 4 and 5 were pretty good as far as getting out of the way or dodging while flying. I was able to avoid a lot of stuff as well as closing and redeploying the glider helped but not when there was a lot of stuff thrown at me. Stealthing does nothing even if you do it before you think you are in range. Also there are enough enemies that if one doesn’t see you all the others do….

I wish we had a practice area to work on those skills. Possibly an area in Heart of the Mists could be dedicated for that.

I got a bad feeling we may need these skills later…….

Aerinndis.2730:

Lol, I finally saw the hammer today – luckily I dodged before it got me. I agree the ranged attacks are way, way out there.

I did get all the aerial skills but the 1 and 2 were useless to me as you get killed long before you can target anything much less figure out where it was coming from. Targeting while moving was very hard for me. Half the time I was past what I wanted to hit before I could get a bead on it. I actually made a hit once and they took me right down immediately. I assume I should have used skills 4 and/or 5 right after. Definitely something that needs practice.

Skills 4 and 5 were pretty good as far as getting out of the way or dodging while flying. I was able to avoid a lot of stuff as well as closing and redeploying the glider helped but not when there was a lot of stuff thrown at me. Stealthing does nothing even if you do it before you think you are in range. Also there are enough enemies that if one doesn’t see you all the others do….

I wish we had a practice area to work on those skills. Possibly an area in Heart of the Mists could be dedicated for that.

I got a bad feeling we may need these skills later…….

I must have forgotten to mention glider 5 also applies stability that lasts a couple of seconds after the 4s evade wears off. So, here’s your strategy:

When you take to the air you won’t be able to stealth, so use glider 5 shortly after takeoff. The lingering stability buff should protect you from most stray projectiles that slip in between the evade and stealth. Then you can either chain stealth if you have the endurance for it, or switch back to glider 5 and repeat.

Using this strategy you can close distance quickly and safely. A knockdown with glider 2 followed by a shot of AA should take out most non-veterans if you’re using a power build, and then you can either land and take it to the enemy on foot or glider 5 and continue the aerial assault.

Thanks! I will try that. I know this is going to take some practice to get it down.

I’ve loved pretty much all of this update as well. My only two complaints is the range on the White Mantle Knights aggro being too large and most importantly this post. Getting hit by the rocks all the time and knocked out of the air is very frustrating. It feels unfair and really kills the fun of gliding completely when in the areas this happens.

I find I am frequently getting shot while stealth gliding in Bloodstone Fen. Isn’t stealth gliding supposed to keep us from getting hit, or does that only apply to certain situations?

My theory has always been that if you stealth after a mob has already seen you (and the mobs in Bloodstone Fen seem to have a visual distance of 999,999,999) then they can continue to strike you, even at ridiculous ranges.

Boysenberry.1869:

My theory has always been that if you stealth after a mob has already seen you (and the mobs in Bloodstone Fen seem to have a visual distance of 999,999,999) then they can continue to strike you, even at ridiculous ranges.

Yeah, this is how stealth works in all cases, pretty much. If an enemy has already started channeling an attack (in this case, their stupid rock throwing from a ridiculous distance away) before you go into stealth, that attack will hit. I’ve not flown around enough in stealth in Bloodstone Fen to see if there’s an exception going on there, but I would assume it’s just a case of these mobs having an insane aggro range rather than stealth getting buggy.

It’s just another one of the BS from White Mantle Knights.

The rocks are actually angling at the last minute to hit us. It’s ludicrous.

Unless they have Anti Air Gun emplacements they shouldn’t be able to knock me out of the air when I’m like 3000+ range away from them..

I have to say the rocks have been much less of a concern once I adopted the various hints players gave about using the flight skills. I think I’ve been knocked down only once or twice since I learned to proactively use the skills, and at most once have I died as a result.

So, as others suggested and I learned to do, I generally hit 5 (and hold it down for a longer blast) the moment I’m airborne unless that will toss me into a ley line. Then I stealth. Then if anything hits me I use the 4 skill to get a small heal. The 5 skill has a very short cd, just long enough to make me hold off on it if I’m about to enter an updraft because it’s an amazing rocket trip if I use it after the updraft takes hold.

So while it’s still faintly ridiculous how good the WM throwing arms are, it’s no longer a serious threat.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I don’t think this is a bug, but rather that it’s feedback on a system. As such, I am going to move it to the Living World forum.

Thanks for understanding.

Thanks for confirming that Anet making Stealth Gliding useless, and making enemies attack us that are too far away for us to see to use our gliding attack skills on them, is on purpose rather than a bug.

Hi everyone,

multiple times now I was killed right in the air because of those homing rocks thrown from the White Mantle. It doesn’t matter how far I am away from them. They throw rocks at me from like 5000 distance away and they have auto-hit. I cannot fly away from them it seems, like they have homing missiles inside those rocks.

I somehow think that can’t be correct.

I do a lot of stealthing and dropping briefly — both cancel targeting of new attacks (although you can still get hit by any projectiles already launched). 5-skill is also helpful.

(I wouldn’t mind them being less intense — those are just my work-arounds since while they continue being mean to us.)

I agree they keep hitting you even if you are very far away or if you use stealth and change direction when gliding they still hit you from miles away with new projectile.

this was probably not intended and is a bug.

Yes, please change this, it is beyond irritating when you’re hit from a range the player can’t reasonably react from. Mordrem in HoT maps were actually pretty good about this; if you got too close, without stealth, you’d take a good hit, but the player could reasonably deal with it. Good mechanic.

Getting hit from outside a semi-obvious visual range is cheezy.

Aveneo.2068:

Agreed, it’s ridiculous.

I was gliding around the crater trying to find those book pages when suddenly I get pelted out of nowhere by 9-10 rocks and in less than a second I lose 60% of my health off and fall to my death because I wasn’t allowed to activate my glider again in time.

At one time while I was trying to ride the Leyline up to get out of the crater they just kept on pelting me with rocks until I hit downed state and fell all the way back to the floor.

Apparently the Stealth Gliding is borderline useless most of the time as well as they just keep throwing these homing rock-missiles at you.

Yeah they can throw them at you even while stealthed I’ve watched them throw at me while I was stealthed.

It’s really not fun.

Devildoc.6721:

Yeah they can throw them at you even while stealthed I’ve watched them throw at me while I was stealthed.

They can throw them at you when you’re stealthed because they had already thrown them at you. Their range is so far that the rocks can take several seconds to reach you. If you stay stealthed, they’ll eventually stop.

Healix.5819:

Devildoc.6721:

Yeah they can throw them at you even while stealthed I’ve watched them throw at me while I was stealthed.

They can throw them at you when you’re stealthed because they had already thrown them at you. Their range is so far that the rocks can take several seconds to reach you. If you stay stealthed, they’ll eventually stop.

Which is ridiculous. What’s their range, 4000?