Guild Wars 2

I was wondering if the Blink ability allows you to cross gaps and whether it works going up or down from your starting location?

My guardian’s jump abilities seem limited to where I can run and I’m not great at jumping puzzles, so I was wondering whether it would be useful to level my mesmer alt a bit more and use that char for JPs.

Portal seems attractive too, but mostly as a waypoint you make to skip a difficult part after you made it once. How long does an open portal last?

It’s been my experience with blink that it won’t cross gaps, and it doesn’t let you ascend upwards to higher platforms.

Portal is nice, especially if you feel you may miss a jump, in that it lets you go back to a previous position. You could use it as a waypoint of sorts, I suppose, too. When you drop the one part of the portal, it will linger for 60 seconds; the other side will only last 20 seconds.

Neither of these are needed for the jumping puzzles, if you don’t enjoy playing the mesmer or want to stick with the norn for them.

Blink doesn’t cross gaps.

Open portals last just 10 seconds, the tooltip is off. Some falls will kill you anyways, which makes portals useless, and with the cooldown increase, using it can require a wait. It’s a nice checkpoint sometimes.

If you want an easy way to bridge gaps in a JP, go with an engineer and use the rifle’s jump shot. You don’t need any skills to do the JPs though, if you intend to do a lot you’re best off using your guardian and taking the time to learn how far a normal jump without swiftness can take you.

Thanks for the answers.

I’ll be staying with my (Sylvari) guardian. I do have an engineer, but he’s a Charr, which seems to make some of the puzzles more annoying. I’m sure I’ll get better with practice, but I thought it was worth checking whether changing class would make things a lot simpler.

Engineer is probably the best for puzzles, there is an exlir that grants stability (Which makes you immune to most knockdown/blow out traps), several ways to obtain swiftness and the delightfully precise and long ranged jump shot on rifle.

Mesmer has a stability mantra, but only a single speed buff, no (gap crossing) teleport. It does however have portal which is fantastic for helping friends or working as a checkpoint in case of a mistake, but you will have to do the puzzles themselves with skill

There are some puzzles, such as Loreclaw Expanse, that have traps that can be avoided using Blink.

The hard mushroom jump in dreamdark enclave can be done with ‘Blink’. Tried it today after many attempts and was pleasantly surprised… Afterwards I felt like I had cheated…

Cyrus.8261:

I was wondering if the Blink ability allows you to cross gaps and whether it works going up or down from your starting location?

My guardian’s jump abilities seem limited to where I can run and I’m not great at jumping puzzles, so I was wondering whether it would be useful to level my mesmer alt a bit more and use that char for JPs.

Portal seems attractive too, but mostly as a waypoint you make to skip a difficult part after you made it once. How long does an open portal last?

Mesmer does very well at jumping puzzles, but not just because of blink. It’s not, but limited. It does help you get past some traps/obstacles easy, and you can use it to jump to some platforms (usually wooden platforms or bridges if you target the bottom side you appear on the top. Try it on the scaffolding near the clocktower in sPvP to see what i mean).

Portal is more of a ‘save point’ for when you’re making a difficult jump. If you fall you can just portal back up. it’s also helpful for helping allies up. Necros can do the same thing for themselves with one of their skills (Spirit Walk??). Mantra of Concentration is good for the times you have to walk across an area with a knockback effect (the Dark Room in sPvP where the faces spew fire at you or the windy areas in the titan fractal).

In the end, reliable availability of swiftness is the most useful thing in jumping puzzles.

OriginalSki.3908:

The hard mushroom jump in dreamdark enclave can be done with ‘Blink’. Tried it today after many attempts and was pleasantly surprised… Afterwards I felt like I had cheated…

It’s actually not hard as you shouldn’t aim for the mushroom cap in the first place. After so many failed attempts (and deaths) myself I saw 2 little Asura jumping on the stem of the mushroom and then hop onto the mushroom cap from there.

Actually blink did cross gaps and etc during the original beta events. Ever since they added Vista, Anet nerfed blink to oblivion. As a consequence, it feels more buggy too.

No offense but that’s just wrong. Blink never got nerfed, it is still as of BWE1. If Anything, the targetting reticle is now a bit better at showing you were you can’t blink, but that’s about the only change Blink received, ever.