Guild Wars 2

For all of you guys that are trying to maximize the quickness uptime to your groups, here is smthg to make you stop and think about it before you adapt or use without any care SoI in your rotations.

Quickness becoming a boon made it possible to be shareable via SoI, but also gained few important and neglected properties – as a time stacking effect, you can only have a max of 9 stacks at a time. Any “incoming” quickness stack will not apply unless any stack currently active expires. Doesn’t matter if you are trying to apply a longer stack than any of the currently applied.

It becomes even more concerning when SoI itself seems to share all that quickness time maintaining it original pile or tree of stacks. This means if you use tw, woa and then tot also affecting your party and then you pop your signet, and assuming you have boon duration, the moment before signet each of you will have at least 4 stacks of quickness and after your party members will be at 8 stacks at least! So let’s say you use 2x signet ( in and right after) each CS and just using the 3 skills listed above, you are already wasting a lot of quickness stacks because your target is already capped in quickness stacks. Everything snowballs with chronomancer runes…

So what we know (tl:dr):

1- we can only have 9 quickness stacks at max currently applied
2- any stack of quickness won’t apply if target capped even if you are trying to apply a longer/bigger stack than any of those currently applied
3- Soi seems to copy all stacks in its current times to allies making it easy to overflow, and by the order they were applied on caster.

Conclusion: it’s better to prioritize longer stacks first in order to have a better chance to copy at least the longer quickness stacks resulting in a longer quickness timers on your group. In its current form, we will always waste a lot of quickness due to this mechanic.
Would be great if Robert or any other Dev could confirm 3. or explain how Soi really works.

Ps: careful with those timewarps at the start of your rotations, it gives the smaller stacks (1s to 2s depending on your boon duration) and they pulse every second.
Did you find the optimal quickness rotation? The optimal rune set?

Share/discuss.

if you have enough time to see and measure how many stacks you have before sharing than GG

for me at the beginning of the fight i try to buff my might, protection, regen, fury stability and share them. when using TW i wait for it to finished and than share to prolong the duration on my team mates

i dont try to use woe/tw/tot all together rather one after the another to prolong its duration

FJSAMA.2867:

2- any stack of quickness won’t apply if target capped even if you are trying to apply a longer/bigger stack than any of those currently applied

This is not true.

When target is capped the newest stack subscrive the older ones who totally change what your saying here.

aelfwe.4239:

FJSAMA.2867:

2- any stack of quickness won’t apply if target capped even if you are trying to apply a longer/bigger stack than any of those currently applied

This is not true.

When target is capped the newest stack subscrive the older ones who totally change what your saying here.

Actually, it is true. Once a duration based boons hits its capped (9 stacks) all other sources to stack onto that boon are ignored until you drop back down to 8 stacks.

The interesting part of duration based boons is how the timer is consumed. Regardless of what order the boon stacks were a applied the ones with the strongest effects are consumed/prioritized over those with less potent effects. The big question though is how does Quickness fall under that rule. Are all sources of Quickness treated as equal potential since they all cause the identical effect, or are stacks of Quickness with longer durations seen as “more potent” by the game? The other issue being how does SoI compare stacks when potentially going over cap? Does it copy stacks chronologically, or does it prioritize those with longer durations if they’re seen as more potent versions of the boon?

Ultimately though, I don’t know how much value there would be in looking into this stacking oddity. In a 5 man team (dungeons, fractals, Story, etc) the fights don’t last too terribly long to worry about maximizing your stacks; most of the mobs/bosses are usually dead seconds into the fight or during burst opportunities (E.G. Bosses in Dredge fractal). The biggest aspect of the game I can see benefiting from this discussion would be Raids….except you there’s are a few variables in a 10 man situation. Who’s in your subsquad? Are players within buffing distance? Are they getting Quickness from somewhere else? Etc.

savacli.8172:

Actually, it is true. Once a duration based boons hits its capped (9 stacks) all other sources to stack onto that boon are ignored until you drop back down to 8 stacks.

Is there any updated reference about this one outside gw2wiki?

Because i dont feel stack cap is something who is actually reliable on soi rotation.

From my own test in 5 men party with 50% boon duration when i use common pyro build without soi\chronomancer runes i have nearly 100% (a bit less) quickness uptime on my mates from when i cast cs to when cs is rdy again (with illusion line).

When i do the same test in 5 men party with 50% boon duration + chrono runes and soi (and illusion line) when cs is rdy again my mates have still around 30 sec (average, sometimes a bit more sometimes a bit less) of quickness up which is nearly as much as you should expect from soi.

Test it out on your own in game and you will see.

In general btw you are goin using soi for a raid share build who suppose you arent in a full party to catch as much different people as possible so that is kinda impossible to reach the stack.

Using a raid share build on a 5 men party isnt the smartest thing ever xD

Ah and do not forget that the stack critical point is during the cs well bomb rotation who take up to around 7 sec to be totally done.

During the 1st part (before cs expires) when you cast soi with 100% (94%) boon duration people will have

2 stack from tw
1 stack from tot (the 1st expires if you start with it)
1 stack from woa

Total 4 stack (not 8 )

In the while you will have
2 stack from tw
1 stack from tot (the 1st expires if you start with it)
1 stack from woa
2 stack from chrono runes

Total 6 stack

When you cast 1st soi you can burn up max 1 stack of quickness if what you stated is true, but i suggest you to give a test in game and check it

aelfwe.4239:

-Snip-

That all sounds about right with extended boon duration. In the case of 50% boon duration (Herald’s buff alone) your stacks look something like:

TW 1.5s→13.5 capped
ToT 2.25s→20.25 capped
Chrono Runes 3s→27s capped
WoA kitten →40.5s capped

Obviously, there’s time lost in skill activation and aftercasts. That, and there’s also the case of some skills applying Quickness in quantity vs quality (TW vs WoA).

In the example you gave, my teammates would indeed hit cap. though the big question is what stack got dropped? Would it be from WoA since it was the last thing applied to me and would therefore be considered the “10th” stack, or would one of the TW stacks be lost due to the game code seeing it as having less intensity?

The cap is indeed there as seen with other boons ignoring further applications until the 9th stack burns off, the question is just in how SoI “copies” its caster’s boon and in what priority.

As far as testing this idea, that’d be difficult without having some form of data output since it’s dealing with multiple small quantities in small time intervals. In other words if the timing were off just a little I would be guessing between an extra 3 seconds of Quickness coming from Chrono Rune Well casting or two TW stacks (the 9th stack on my ally could have just burnt off as I went to cast SoI).