Guild Wars 2

Is focus #4 bugged?

Its meant to give 12s of swiftness when walking through it however it doesn’t always give you the swiftness.

I found that if I walk though it when I have no swiftness, I get the swiftness everytime without fail.

This gets annoying with zergs cause of the symbols, shouts and warhorns warriors / guards use meaning that I cannot use mine. If I get 6 seconds after I place the Focus #4 skill I won’t get the swiftness from it. It’ll end before the swiftness ends and I cannot gain swiftness from it while I already have swiftness.

Is it meant to be that way?
Any other forms of gaining swiftness doesn’t work that way so why does this one?

“Working as intended”, in the sense that they never bothered to fix it properly.

Use Traveler runes if you’re rich/lazy, otherwise Centaur runes with Mantra heal or a Tonic (#6 “end transformation” skills count for “on using a heal skill” procs)

Well it’s been like this since ages.
I think the point is that it give a “long” swiftness duration to as many player that can pass the veil. To avoid people stacking unlimited amount of swftness with it, they simply made the “veil” check if you already have swiftness. If you have, it doesn’t grant you any buff.
This is bothersome in many way but it’s also an intended inherent weakness of the mesmer. Like what they said about the upcoming revenant who will, by design, struggle with out of combat mobility. (Well this just mean that some runes mesmer use right now will be even more pricey)

Dadnir.5038:

Well it’s been like this since ages.
I think the point is that it give a “long” swiftness duration to as many player that can pass the veil. To avoid people stacking unlimited amount of swftness with it, they simply made the “veil” check if you already have swiftness. If you have, it doesn’t grant you any buff.
This is bothersome in many way but it’s also an intended inherent weakness of the mesmer. Like what they said about the upcoming revenant who will, by design, struggle with out of combat mobility. (Well this just mean that some runes mesmer use right now will be even more pricey)

I can get unlimited Swiftness with my Guard. Symbols ftw. If they don’t people using rapidly to gain swiftness why didn’t they just do the same thing with what they did with portal and give you a debuff that stops it? =S

Morte de Angelis.7986:

I can get unlimited Swiftness with my Guard. Symbols ftw. If they don’t people using rapidly to gain swiftness why didn’t they just do the same thing with what they did with portal and give you a debuff that stops it? =S

Because adding that buff, and ensuring it properly scales with swiftness duration, is a lot more work than adding an if bracket to the curtain.

Honestly, I feel the whole business of “weak OOC speed” as a weakness was bloody well ANNHILATED at the very second ANet changed all speed-booster Signets/Traits to be a uniform +25% bonus. It was at least an … “acceptable” argument back when most other professions were hoppin’ along at +10%. NOW, however? You’ve got to be kidding me; create a large, expansive world to wander around in … but make it a PITA to do so?
At the very least, just fix the darned Curtain already.

Morte de Angelis.7986:

I can get unlimited Swiftness with my Guard. Symbols ftw. If they don’t people using rapidly to gain swiftness why didn’t they just do the same thing with what they did with portal and give you a debuff that stops it? =S

Guard symbole work differently. It “pulse” swiftness every second to up to 5 allies. You may buff yourself for unlimited swiftness but you can’t do that for a whole zerg.

I know it’s some puny arguments but the difference lie here. Nobody (included me) like the way focus#4 work but, I think most of us came to live with it. And, no, playing without movement buff don’t kill your game experience, it just make you weak at fleeing ennemis and mesmer have other tools to use in this kind of situation.

The thing that annoys me is this …

At release, we could stack Swiftness from Temporal Curtain with other sources of Swiftness as well as zig-zag through it to stack Swiftness.

At release, Guardian’s symbol did not stack their swiftness duration, it just refreshed it to the Symbols swiftness duration.

Nowadays, Mesmer Temporal Curtain does not stack with any swiftness.

Nowadays, Guardian Symbol’s swiftness stacks in duration.

They went in two seemingly opposite directions :-/

Sebrent.3625:

The thing that annoys me is this …

At release, we could stack Swiftness from Temporal Curtain with other sources of Swiftness as well as zig-zag through it to stack Swiftness.

At release, Guardian’s symbol did not stack their swiftness duration, it just refreshed it to the Symbols swiftness duration.

Nowadays, Mesmer Temporal Curtain does not stack with any swiftness.

Nowadays, Guardian Symbol’s swiftness stacks in duration.

They went in two seemingly opposite directions :-/

Well, functional boon-pulsing fields are a dime a dozen, while “wall” type spells are rather rare. Are there any boon-giving walls besides Curtain and Necro Spectral Wall?

If you count stealth as a boon, then Veil … which you also used to be able to zig-zag through :-/

Make Signet of Midnight a 25% speed boost, problem solved. That 10% boon duration increase passive is worthless on a class who doesn’t have much access to boons outside PU grandmaster trait anyways.

Or let TC refresh swiftness to its max duration at least