Guild Wars 2

The patch notes said that Phase Retreat will no longer be putting us into geography, but did not mention the skill is working differently now. It is now doing what the tooltip says, not what it did in the past.

It has always teleported you backwards from the direction you are facing. For instance, I’ll drop Chaos Storm, run to the edge, and Phase Retreat to get the clone, the Chaos Armor, and still end up in the Chaos Storm for the buffs.

Now it is actually teleporting you away from your target, as advertised. So trying the trick above will put you outside the field. I can still manage to make it work, it just takes different tactics. Like dropping the storm where the edge is on the enemy, running up facing him, and then Phase Retreat.

Its a bit disorienting because I always used Phase Retreat as a sort of Blink – facing a different direction would result in you moving back a different direction. Now you always move away from your target, so sometimes switching targets first will put you in a more advantageous position.

Thanks for the feedback on this change i’m at work at the moment so I cannot test out new builds and the skills. How is staff feeling after the slight tweaks?

I always used the staff as defensive/ supportive weapon. So the phase retreat has the meaning to … retreat and not to spawn clones or move faster. The point was to teleport out of an AoE, even when downed.
I wonder if something changes for me (when I equip the staff again).

It simply states that it does not teleport you in to places that it shouldn’t. The only other change is the to the warlock’s attack speed, which is supposedly been lengthened by a small amount.

There is also a change in animation, phase retreat now has a long pink line to where you teleport to.

EDIT: From the looks of it, there is a lot of animation changes to mesmer. Mostly just particle effects and smoothing animations out though.

I like the direction change if that is correct. I always found it annoying / not effective to use Phase Retreat to run away from an enemy in WvW.

something was wrong last night

Personally, I’m finding it really aggravating. The range of it seems to have doubled, which means it always places me in an unpredictable location. I used to use Phase Retreat to trigger the Leap Combo while staying inside the Chaos Storm, but now it takes half of Chaos Storm’s duration to run back into the circle after hitting it and popping up like 30 yards away.

Oh, and thanks for adding a bright pink trail to the jump. It really wasn’t easy enough to tell the difference between clones.

I’m not too happy about it. No longer can I swing the screen and confuse anyone, it’s so predictable. Plus I cant land on people for shatters. I keep getting shoved into corners and losing camera angle. Staff’s my favorite weapon

Agreed. New Phase Retreat very annoying, unreliable and disorienting.

I made a post in the Game Bugs section too — https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Phase-Retreat-broken-after-Halloween-update/first#post519765

It has the upside of porting you up on ledges behind you, though.

I am really not liking the new mechanic. Due to the distance increase, it more often than not puts you off the point in PvP when you are fighting someone on it, allowing them to neutralize. For me, this skill was primarily used to activate chaos armor through Chaos Storm or Null Field, and it puts you too far away now. In a large group fight, it becomes very hard to tell where you are going to port to, whereas before, you always knew you were going to go straight back. I am trying to get used to it, but so far I don’t like it.

i dont really know if this belongs here but id like to add that ive landed beneath/inside the landscape twice yesterday; one time was the stairs at the dwayna statue event, and the other time i landed inside the walls surrounding the wren waypoint camp during a defensive event, both in malchors leap…
so yeah the only thing that changed for me is i have to run back into chaos storm and im easier to spot after using the skill due to this new trail.

Learn how to use it and enjoy another WERY annoying defensive ability we have. Ledge jump with phase retreat, jump down whne enemy come up, they jump down and blink up. Its a perfect trolling tool

I actually like the new mechanic…can be used as a “mini blink” when running away. Also has great synergy with blink as you can Phase Regreat-> Blink to get a good deal of distance between you and your opponent(s) when kiting. I do agree about the added difficulty when using it with a combo field, but hardly ability breaking…just depends on the situation.

It seems to teleport you more reliably now compared to the number of times I was left standing in the same spot after using the skill. As fate would have it, I got a good laugh last night when—for the first time in weeks—I phase retreated under them map while fighting at the quarry on Foefire.

Having used Phase Retreat a few hundred times last night I think it can be said that it almost never teleports you under the map. The exceptions seem to be if you are in the middle of a knockback when you Retreat.

As to it’s new functionality and working as it reads, teleports me away from my target, I love this change. When I originally started using the ability back in beta, it didn’t do what it does now and didn’t make sense to me as to why. Now that it functions as it reads it’s much easier to reliably use it to do what I want provided I’m positioning correctly. A straight blink backwards is far less helpful then blinking directly away from a target in my opinion.

If you didn’t know how to use it before, the change will seem like a plus. Really limits the skill a lot. I’m not complaining, it is a bug fix and I’m already adapting to the difference in how it works. The most annoying aspects of it are it dropping me out of chaos storm more often than not, vs the old way that never did, it being perfectly predictable about where it puts you, and the fact that it still put me in walls twice last night.

I dislike it, but it isn’t going to make me rage quit either.

It no longer just tele you backward, it actually poofs you away randomly wow. Though I miss the old one, but this new one is not bad either. It actually gets you away from melee mob. I’m getting used to this.

I’m just looking at this one as a distance increase… which is a welcome buff imo.

My main gripe is that my opponent has an influence over where I will end up if I use this skill. I of course try to position myself appropriately, but I don’t like the fact that part of the power is taken out of my hands.

You could say “adapt to the new build” but as long as your trying to contest a point in a close game all you opponent needs to do is be in the point and no matter where you are you will always phase retreat off of the point. You cannot have a game as an E-sport if your own skills (specifically a clone generating one, on a clone generating class) work in a way that directly helps the opposing team.

Also very disorienting.

Well the tooltip has always said Teleport away from your target.

It was kinda bugged before. :P

That being said, I’m not sure which I prefer. I like that the new one always puts distance between me and the target instantly.
OTOH I like that I can use the old one to teleport around inside a combo field.

Carighan.6758:

Well the tooltip has always said Teleport away from your target.

It was kinda bugged before. :P

That being said, I’m not sure which I prefer. I like that the new one always puts distance between me and the target instantly.
OTOH I like that I can use the old one to teleport around inside a combo field.

Teleport away from your target is a vague description then, no? Old behavior also teleported you away from the target, but it was consistent that it did so always backwards, now it’s unpredictable, varying distances, backwards or forward, zoomed in on your character, which can reverse your direction. In my mind, the skills has been definitely made worse. It is a nightmare now if you are trying to defend a point. I want my old PR back.

I would REALLY love to hear some developer input on this, whether it was intended or not. Phase Retreat is not “retreat” anymore, it’s Phase Goodluck.

No it’s always away from your target now, barring the odd terrain bug.
Before it could actually teleport you closer to your target (assuming the target was behind you).

It’s a defensive skill, not a clone generator. Like Scepter’s #2. For a defensive skill it’s not meant to teleport towards your target by facing in the opposite direction. Imo the skill is mean to be an emergency escape (or retreat). Perfect for stunned, rooted or other situations where you just can’t walk. At the same time it’s a stun breaker.

I like it how it is now, the only problem is that since the direction is directly away from the enemy, it’s kinda predicable and you can’t teleport sideways relative to the enemy using a charge skill.

I had more time to play with this last night, and it’s borderline game-breaking for me. It has completely changed the staff for me. If someone in sitting in the middle of a point in tPvP, I can’t use it and stay on the point. That is a HUGE problem. I constantly used it to keep up 12 seconds of chaos armor using it in conjunction with Chaos Storm and Null Field. At this point, I can’t use it while fighting on a point. That is terrible in my opinion.

This makes me very sad. Unfortunately, I don’t expect it to be changed back, but it’s made the staff much less enjoyable to use. I normally don’t QQ about stuff like this, but it really does have serious negative ramifications in tournament play. I don’t know why they had to change the distance/direction….

Nretep.2564:

It’s a defensive skill, not a clone generator. Like Scepter’s #2. For a defensive skill it’s not meant to teleport towards your target by facing in the opposite direction. Imo the skill is mean to be an emergency escape (or retreat). Perfect for stunned, rooted or other situations where you just can’t walk. At the same time it’s a stun breaker.

It’s actually not a stun breaker. You can use it while stunned, etc., but the effect still lingers after you teleport. The problem was that this skill was useful in multiple ways. It was predictable, and if you WANTED to escape, you could use it and dodge roll back, or if you were playing more aggressively, it would still allow you to stay within the fight, ie. on the point. Now it just launches you a mile away from your opponent, and it’s dependent on THEIR position which in effect gives them some control over you. Not cool.

Westibone.3985:

Nretep.2564:

At the same time it’s a stun breaker.

It’s actually not a stun breaker. You can use it while stunned, etc., but the effect still lingers after you teleport.

Right, wiki says it’s not even flagged as stunbreaker. But it behaves like Blink or Mirror images (which are flagged so). You can successfully cast it, but are still 1+s unable to move or use non-instant spells.

I consider the direction change an improvement, since when I use it I actually want to run consistently away from the target. Previously it only moved you away when you were directly attacking them, which is less effective for the GTFO sequence.

The distance change is mixed; I think it’s a minor improvement overall but requires re-learning.

All I know is that it makes point defense a hell of a lot harder. in a 1v1, they will likely neutralize the point if you use it more than once. I guess maybe I play more aggressively, and it’s not often that I am running away.

I tend to have running far away as a specific strategy to maintain for WvW.

That’s a good point., for WvW I could see this being very good. Certainly player preference factors in here. It might be great for dungeons, too. I don’t know, as I spend most of my time in sPvP/tPvP where I believe it is a serious problem. I admit I have a narrow focus sometimes. Now that I think about it, Phase Retreat was probably my favorite ability in the game. Now I am just sad, as when you get chaos armor from the combo field, you have to spend half it’s duration running back to your target. You will see a lot more greatswords in tPvP now, I can tell you that.

Yeah sPvP is different with the focus on standing in the circle. I wonder how high you teleport up the z-axis though. You could really abuse it hilariously if you have a teammate doing the circle, or tag-teamed it.

Nretep.2564:

Westibone.3985:

Nretep.2564:

At the same time it’s a stun breaker.

It’s actually not a stun breaker. You can use it while stunned, etc., but the effect still lingers after you teleport.

Right, wiki says it’s not even flagged as stunbreaker. But it behaves like Blink or Mirror images (which are flagged so). You can successfully cast it, but are still 1+s unable to move or use non-instant spells.

It’s just because it’s instant cast. All instant cast spells can be used while stunned.

I’m adapting but will miss the old skill for a long time. It was more useful. Now it’s a get out skill, nothing more. It had more utility before. Oh well. I they would fix the fact it sometimes turns you around and makes you stop attacking I would feel better about it. As it is in many situations I would rather not use it.

I would much rather have the old skill back, if you’re trying to hold a point in sPvP the distance it teleports you now is almost a point length which makes it really hard to keep it from neutralizing, and its pretty hard to tell exactly which direction you’re going in big team fights. You can’t use it to close distance anymore unless you detarget/kittenget. No more fancy shatters =(.

I like that it’s less buggy wrt teleporting into the ground, but I hate, hate, hate the loss of utility in not knowing where you’re going to be facing at the end of the teleport any more. They should have just changed the tooltip.

Lol rather than falling under, I’ve actually been ending up inside terrain with this now. The pink line is a huge nerf imo, it makes the skill useless for trying to confuse anyone with clones anymore. The only two positive uses I’ve seen is that when I don’t want to fight, it’s easy to evade past then use it to create big distance fast , saves me from turning, and it’s also a much better escape since it always moves you away. But you lose almost all ways to use this to confuse an enemy, and sometimes going up/down ledges isn’t always a good thing.