Guild Wars 2

I’m hoping (just blindly hoping) that this utility gets improved a bit in the next balance patch (shorter cooldown and/or figure out the cases where it fails mysteriously and fix them).

In any case, I’m wondering if anyone has done any testing to see if anything affects the duration of the boons stolen. My guess is that you get exactly the duration remaining as cast by the original creator of the boons.

But there are two specific cases I’m curious about:
- Does the Chaos line Chaotic Persistence trait affect duration of the boons once stolen (e.g. you steal a stack of might with 10 seconds remainin, but you also have two other boons, so you have 9% boon duration – does that stack effectively last 11 seconds?)
- Does the Sigil of Concentration have any effect on stolen boon duration? (the description reads “boons you apply” – are you applying the boon to yourself if you steal it with Arcane Thievery?)

Thx!

Boon duration only increases the duration of boons applied by the character. Chaotic Persistence and superior sigil of concentration just increases your boon duration. For arcane thievery since you did not apply the boons yourself, it would not benefit from boon duration. Signet of inspiration does not directly benefit from boon duration either. For example, if you had 10 seconds of might given to you by another character, you had 100% boon duration, and you cast signet of inspiration at the exact same time you got might, then you would give 10 sec of might to your allies, not 20 sec. However, if you would have given 10 sec of might to yourself with 0% boon duration. With 100% boon duration you would give yourself 20 sec of might instead. Then when you cast signet of inspiration you would give 20 sec of might to allies.

Thx much!

Here’s one more question that relates: Is boon duration only calculated at the moment a boon is applied?

In other words, if you had 40% boon duration at the moment you gave yourself a 10 second might stack. Is that boon going to last 14 seconds regardless of whether your boon duration dropped to 10% or increased to 50% immediately after you got the boon?

You are correct, it would start at 14 seconds and start ticking away. During that ticking, it would not change if your food ran out during those 14 second or for whatever other reason. Likewise, it would not increase if you gave yourself boon duration food after you gave yourself might.

Note: It actually works based on when you cast the spell. For example, lets say you swap weapons to get the 33% boon duration buff from sigil of concentration for 7 seconds. You then cast well of action. Well of action doesn’t grant the 3 seconds of quickness until the last pulse. Lets say when 6 seconds pass on sigil of concentration you cast well of action. Therefore, you cast the well when you had 33% boon duration. However, the resulting skill didn’t actually provide quickness until after the 7 seconds. In this case you would still get 4 seconds of quickness instead of 3. Same thing with time warp. If you would cast time warp while you had 33% boon duration then all pulses of time warp would get that 33% duration, even if your boon duration wore off before time warp ended. So, really, your boon duration only matters at the time you cast the skill.

I wish they would change it so that your next 3 attacks are unblockable, steal a boon and transfer a condition. I would love an utility like that.

I was surprised to see the cd reduction in the patch notes. I thought ANet had forgotten about AT. If they made some big fixes with the cooldown then I’d be more excited.

If any one wants to give AT a go, here’s some advice. Pretend it’s pistol’ s Magic Bullet. Keep your target in front of you. If you turn too much or the target moves too far left or right, AT fails. You almost need to stand completely still during the cast.

And of course dodges also negate it. So yeah. The cd reduction is nice but it still needs more love.

EDIT: Nevermind.. it sucks… played a couple matches with it.. failed 4 out of 5 times… don’t bother.