Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been playing around with a few traits and had been wondering about Compounding Celerity. Having never been fussed on movement speed, and having read a lot of negative feedback about it on the forums, I never put much stock in it. However I’ve always realised the power of movement speed in combat, and seeing as this is one means to that end I thought about giving it a shot.

For those of you who don’t know Compounding Celerity gives +5% movement speed per active illusion. This movement speed is for forward movement only, so no strafing or back peddling. It should be noted that strafing WHILE moving forward counts as forward moving, so in fact you can strafe with marginal skills with your mouse.

I play a lot of WvW, and one day recently realised I do a lot of forward running. The trouble with most people’s perceptions surrounding mesmer movement speed is that they’re always thinking about charging around keeping up with the zerg. I personally have no trouble outrunning the zerg. That aside, Compounding Celerity has been disregarded because it cannot practically function as a general movement speed booster. So the question remained: what good is it?

I do a lot of roaming, and a lot of solo confusion shatter bomb flanking in mass battles. What I discovered is that there are two profound uses for Compounding Celerity. The first is escaping from behind enemy lines and/or a route. The second is running down fleeing enemies. It’s no secret that we mesmers suffer when chasing. We have gap closers, but sometimes raw movement speed just doesn’t lay in our favour.
Compounding Celerity helps balance the scales.

In combat movement speed is 210 units/second. Assuming two players are in combat, the mesmer chasing the other, generating clones via dodge rolling/sceptre/utilities etc will increase the mesmer’s in combat movement speed to 241.5 unite/second. It may not be the be all and end all, but every little bit counts. So long as you’re staying in combat with the target, you can keep generating clones on them, keep pace, and continue to damage them until either they drop or are forced to engage you.

The other time I found it works is when fleeing an enemy zerg. As a mesmer there are plenty of classes who can chase me down. Compounding Celerity has helped me get that extra distance to get me away from impossible odds. Clone creation on dodge really helps with this as I can continue clone generation, upping my speed, as I escape. Enemy players will generally ignore my clones allowing me that, often-times, crucial distance.

The same becomes true in open plane zerg v zerg fights. I spend a lot of time in the thick of the enemys numbers before making my retreats. Clone creation during escapes creates extra distance, and in a game of numbers it only stacks things further in your favour.

If you’ve been inclined to write Compounding Celerity off you might have good reason. If however you’re heavy on clone creation, and find yourself in chases often, there might be more to Compounding Celerity than you otherwise realised. It’s good, I have to say.

Like many other under-used abilities, it can have its place. The problems are that a) it offers less for more effort than similar traits from other classes, b) you have to be in Inspiration to even get it, and some other traits in that line tend to offer much more in most situations, and c) there are more reliable ways to be faster.

Given the combination of these factors, I’d much rather equip a focus, Blink, or even centaur runes before taking up a minor conditional forward run speed only buff. Sure, every little bit helps, but it’s at end of the list so by that point I’m pretty good on speed and need other buffs from Inspiration, usually.

Focus is useful for so much more than the speed buff, and by the time you can take speed trait, you are already halfway to Warden’s Feedback (+20% duration on over 2x Celerity’s speed increase). Still, might be useful in some builds if focus doesn’t fit.

Blink I almost always have anyway so that’s probably not an issue, but depending on the situation I might need the trait slot for any gaps left when taking a movement utility.

Centaur runes give over twice the speed, usable IC and OOC, and grants it to allies/illusions for mass movement and can be the difference between nailing a shatter and missing if the enemy dodges. Yeah, giving up runes is a bigger investment, but not so bad for power builds, and it gives more.

EDIT: Oops, forgot my major point:
Now if Compounding Celerity were cumulative with other speed buffs or granted speed comparable to buffs with similar restrictions, say +10-12% speed increase per illusion then we might have something worth considering for more than just a small handful of builds.

I have to agree about the bugg value. 5% is to low and it can do with an increase. Other classes get various speed buffs from things like traits, weapons, and sigils. None of them despawn due to range limits or can be killed. The offset should be a higher value.

That aside it’s not nothing now.

i think they should change it to 5% per unspent shatter or reverse it to having no clones=faster.. that way it can be used as an escape after distortion and would actually be useful outside combat