Guild Wars 2

Sometimes I’ll use Plague Signet and nothing will happen – all conditions stay on me, nothing gets transferred to the target. I understand that this is normal, as PS needs to hit, so maybe it got blocked/evaded/obstructed by LOS etc. I get it: if the attack misses for any reason, nothing gets transferred.

HOWEVER…

Sometimes I’ll use Plague Signet, all conditions will be cleansed off me, BUT WILL NOT GET COPIED TO THE TARGET! So why does that happen?

I know what you’re thinking: I used it against a warrior in Berserker Stance or something. Well I probably did at some point, but it happens to me very often, once or twice a match, and against various different classes – it just now happened to me when I used it on a mesmer, and afaik they have no condition invulnerability skills.

I think there’s 2 possibilities to explain this:

1. It’s bugged. This is the most likely explanation to my mind (Occam’s Razor).

2. It is working as intended, and cleanse without transfer happens because the skill functions in two stages: if the skill does not make contact with the target (blocked by line of sight, dodged, caster is blinded), then nothing happens. If OTOH the skill makes contact with the target, but the target either blocks it or is under an invulnerability (eg.Renewed Focus, Mist Form, Distortion), then conditions are cleansed off you, but not applied to the enemy. I consider this an unlikely explanation as it assumes the game treats dodges, blocks, and invulnerable effects differently, and it also seems a convoluted way to design a skill.

I’d appreciate any other possible explanations for why this is happening, or a clarification from a developer.

There was a thread about this recently, and someone suggested it was due to skill priority/something to do with the cleanses (so not working as intended). I’m not sure of the details of the thread so I won’t attempt to explain, but if you’re really interested I’d search within the last 10 pages.

Good luck.

Its a projectile, anything that blocks projectiles will block it too (used to be same with Corrupt boon till it got turned unblockable, but it can still be stopped by a medium sized barren that doesnt obstruct you seeing the enemy in any real way).
Also no matter how funny it is, blinds did work against it (not sure if they still do).

Don’t think you got what I was saying Andele: if the conditions are cleansing off me, then it must have hit, right? I’m just wondering why they don’t always properly transfer despite being cleansed!

Transfer skills do work in multiple stages. It cleanses you of the conditions, and then applies them to your target. It isn’t a singular “transfer” function.

For example, if you were to give your $1 to someone through this system, what actually would happen is you would magically create a second dollar bill, give that one to them, then violently (for comedic effect) tear yours up. So its possible that the tearing stage is working just fine, but the dollar-giving is somehow failing.

manveruppd.7601:

Don’t think you got what I was saying Andele: if the conditions are cleansing off me, then it must have hit, right? I’m just wondering why they don’t always properly transfer despite being cleansed!

Think of it the same as how putrid marks blast finisher works, if you drop it in a fire field, but noone procs it, its still charged with the fire field and the combo will proc if a enemy blocks/invuls the actual explosion. So if you manage to send the “plague signet projectile” off to a enemy and it “connects” (isnt evaded or LOSed) and not into the ground, you got cleansed, now if it actually hits the enemy is another question.

Ah I see, thanks. I suspected that might be the case but it sounded far too convoluted to be real, I thought maybe it was simply bugged instead! :p

Can’t complain I guess, at least I get the cleanse even if they block…