Guild Wars 2

Latest stream has footage of this skill in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhBf1Q6gTnY#t=37m

• The skill has a targeting reticule like any AoE skill, and seems to automatically zap the scourge who cast it to the targeted location (since even when slowing the footage I don’t see the “F” prompt appearing when the portals are being cast).
• The stream talks about the skill having a much shorter range than the mesmer one, and the footage shows it has a very short duration.
• The barrier applies when the necro starts teleporting (i.e. only after the skill finishes channelling) and applies again when the necro teleports back. It’s not clear from the footage what the cap is for the number of times a necro could warp per Sand Swell cast.
• Not 100% clear if you need a valid path in order to teleport – there’s one clip of a scourge teleporting from a bridge to an area down below and I don’t know GW pathing systems well enough to know if a shadowstep could do that.
• The footage seems to confirm a theory regarding barrier decay: that applying new barrier to a target refreshes the amount of time before any preexisting barrier goes into decay. For instance in the first teleport the necro does they arrive at their destination with 1.6k barrier; they then wait until the barrier has around 200 points left before teleporting back; they arrive back at their destination with 1.8k barrier; and they stay at 1.8k barrier for 2 seconds before their barrier goes into decay again.
• When you cast the skill an icon of hands with then number “10” appears in the necros buff list. Seems to be the max number of times the portal can be used.
• Not sure why, but this aforementioned icon does not disappear immediately when the portal disappeared in the footage. It seems to be on a timer and disappeared quite a few seconds afterwards. Maybe the portal auto-closes regardless of remaining duration if the necro teleports back? But for some reason this auto-disappear hasn’t been programmed into the HUD buff icon?

Thoughts on the skill? Anyone else able to glean anything from this footage?

I think it has a 2-3 second period before you can use the portal for the “first time”, or at least so it seems from the “press f to interact interact” popup. Also i think the duration is around 6 seconds, before it disappears.

The skill sounds amazing, and has a ton of uses. I just wish that it had a cap of 20 players instead of 10 to match mesmer portal. It’s like it is almost top tier for wvw, but not quite there

Sand Swell looked almost like a way faster Ride the Lightning when I first saw that jump off the bridge.

After re-watching it I think that it’s just a shadowstep with a neat camera effect.
Like some Revenant skills.

I, too, am surprised that it worked off that bridge if it uses Shadowstep mechanics.

Haven’t tried Shadowstep off it on my Thief, so I dunno if it works.

Probably not a leap as there was no fall damage.

I bet that people will also come up with all kinds of ridiculous shenanigans in various forms of PvE.

Shadowsteps and Mesmer portals allow people to “cheat” so much in Dungeons and Fractals, having a skill that does a bit of both (even with a cast time) is bound to have it’s uses.
It should help carry people through floor trap sections etc.

In WvW you can teleport 20 people forward, AND give them barriers.
I’m very surprised if it doesn’t see use, given how often people stack up before a push.

I don’t play much sPvP, so take this with a grain of salt:
I feel like Sand Swell might work as a tool to “poke in” or juke people.

It gives movement both forwards and back, whereas Spectral Walk and Bone Wyrm don’t.
(Unless you count the Swiftness as forwards movement…)

Might also be funny to run Sand Swell + Spectral Walk + Flesh Wurm in unranked and pretend that you are a Thief.
Everyone targets Necros first, just get people chasing you and run! See how long you last.

LastDay.3524:

Sand Swell looked almost like a way faster Ride the Lightning when I first saw that jump off the bridge.

After re-watching it I think that it’s just a shadowstep with a neat camera effect.
Like some Revenant skills.

I, too, am surprised that it worked off that bridge if it uses Shadowstep mechanics.

Haven’t tried Shadowstep off it on my Thief, so I dunno if it works.

Probably not a leap as there was no fall damage.

I bet that people will also come up with all kinds of ridiculous shenanigans in various forms of PvE.

Shadowsteps and Mesmer portals allow people to “cheat” so much in Dungeons and Fractals, having a skill that does a bit of both (even with a cast time) is bound to have it’s uses.
It should help carry people through floor trap sections etc.

In WvW you can teleport 20 people forward, AND give them barriers.
I’m very surprised if it doesn’t see use, given how often people stack up before a push.

I don’t play much sPvP, so take this with a grain of salt:
I feel like Sand Swell might work as a tool to “poke in” or juke people.

It gives movement both forwards and back, whereas Spectral Walk and Bone Wyrm don’t.
(Unless you count the Swiftness as forwards movement…)

Might also be funny to run Sand Swell + Spectral Walk + Flesh Wurm in unranked and pretend that you are a Thief.
Everyone targets Necros first, just get people chasing you and run! See how long you last.

It’s like a real shadowstep. He can reach that same bridge spot with any blink as well, so yeah, we can basicly use all the shortcuts within 900 range that mesmer and thieves can.

kittening terrible is what i think.

cast time feels bad for a blinl , no pseudo stunbreak

Nice, it works exactly like I was hoping it would.

But unfortunately you can’t use it multiple times – but this would be broken as it’s a team shadowstep on a low CD.

Nevertheless the skill is mandatory for every PvP scourge in terms of mobility and team support (team disengage and even team blink to high ground – this has huge “deny a team wipe and regroup” potencial).

Seems like we can use it multiple times, i ported forward, back, and then forward again.

But it doesn’t seem to last 20 seconds as the duration seems to imply.

It lasted only about…6 seconds…regardless of whether I ported back or not…

Tested the Sand Swell portal in the Heart of the Mists jumping puzzle. You need a valid path to target. This will make it very hard for the necro portal to pull off the same tricks as the mesmer one. Disappointing.

Also it has like 1/2 sec animation delay. Its not like blink.

Looks like anywhere you can’t put a Flesh Wurm, you can’t use Sand Swell.

Huge cooldown and slow cast time for a short range, short duration, geometry-dependent teleport that doesn’t even stun break? No thank you.

I tried Sand Swell with Wurm and Spectral walk.
You can actually do an ultra far range Sand Swell portal by:

Precast Wurm > Move forward about 1200 range > Cast Spectral Walk > Run forward until the Return timer is almost up > Cast Sand Swell > Immediately Return with Spectral walk first then Wurm > The portal will appear at your feet when the Sand Swell cast ends, meaning it appears back at the Wurm location, not at the initial targeted location.

Gave me a portal range of about…2400+ range?

What will this be useful for though…I’m not sure…

Did a video showing here: