Guild Wars 2

I’m gonna pull some numbers from facts I do know so don’t get all cranky on me if some numbers aren’t the exact number Anet has used in Guild Wars 2. The outcome should still be as accurate as possible.

1. 1 second = 1000 milliseconds.
2. Pre-patch, during Quickening Zephyr, a Ranger would shoot 16 arrows using a shortbow.
3. Post-patch, during Quickening Zephyr, a Ranger shoots 12 arrows using a shortbow.
4. We know Quickening Zephyr lasts for 4 seconds.
5. We know Quickening Zephyr gives us Quickness.
6. We know Quickness is an effect that makes all skills and actions twice as fast.
7. We also know that the casting time for Crossfire was increased by 40 milliseconds between pre and post-patch.

Let’s calculate pre-patch first:

So 16 arrows during 4 seconds of quickness. Let’s calculate how much arrows we would shoot without quickness. We know Quickness makes all skills and actions TWICE as fast. So we gotta divide 16 by 2.

16/2 = 8.

Correct? I hope so.

Now we know how much arrows we shoot during 4 seconds without Quickness. That would be 8.

Next up we will calculate how long it takes to shoot one arrow.

So we know from the previous calculation that we shoot 8 arrows during 4 seconds, so how do we calculate how long it takes to shoot one arrow?

Well by dividing the amount of time it took to fire 8 arrows by the amount of arrows we have we should have the amount of time it takes to fire one arrow. So i’m just gonna do it and hope people understand basic math:

4/8 = 0.5

So pre-patch we were probably shooting 1 arrow every 0.5 second. That is the same as 500 milliseconds.

Now let’s apply the same calculations to post-patch:

12/2 = 6
4/6 = 0.6666666666666667

So post-patch we should be shooting 1 arrow every 0.6666666666666667 seconds. Which is approximately the same as 666 milliseconds.

Now let’s calculate the difference between pre and post patch:

666-500 = 166

166 milliseconds? What? But they said it was only increased by 40ms?!

It is increased by only 40 milliseconds. Well… maybe, I can’t tell you with 100% certainty since I don’t have the exact numbers.

I don’t know how close we were at shooting out the 17th arrow during Quickening Zephyr Pre-patch or how close we are at shooting out the 13th arrow during Quickening Zephyr Post-patch. But what my calculations show is that under Quickness you shoot EACH ARROW around 63 milliseconds slower with a shortbow then intended.

If this isn’t correct then show me where I am wrong.

[EDIT]
I left out the calculations to show how I got to 415% but here they are:
[(166/2)/(40/2)]*100 = 415

[EDIT2]
I changed 415% to 63 milliseconds.

Ranger Community – “We want the truth!”
Arena Net – “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!”*

*Taken from the up coming movie, “A few good rangers, left” . Release Date – A patch day coming to you soon

Prior to the nerf Shortbow shot every 0.48 seconds, after the nerf every 0.52 seconds.
With Quickness Shortbow should shot every 0.26 seconds but only shots every 0.32 seconds.
Source:
http://mmo-mechanics.com/forums/topic/1002-shortbow-vs-longbow/

If your Quickness numbers pre-nerf are correct the old Quickness attack speed was every 0.25 seconds which is very close to the theoretical value of 0.24.
However it appears that the recent patch broke Crossfire+Quickness. I’ve made a thread about this specific bug:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Quickness-doesn-t-affect-Crossfire-correctly/first#post402131

DesertRose.2031:

Prior to the nerf Shortbow shot every 0.48 seconds, after the nerf every 0.52 seconds.
With Quickness Shortbow should shot every 0.26 seconds but only shots every 0.32 seconds.
Source:
http://mmo-mechanics.com/forums/topic/1002-shortbow-vs-longbow/

If your Quickness numbers pre-nerf are correct the old Quickness attack speed was every 0.25 seconds which is very close to the theoretical value of 0.24.
However it appears that the recent patch broke Crossfire+Quickness. I’ve made a thread about this specific bug:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Quickness-doesn-t-affect-Crossfire-correctly/first#post402131

Actually that 10 milliseconds makes quite a big difference:

If I use the findings on that forum and calculate how many shots we should shoot while using Quickening Zephyr post-patch we should still shoot 15.38 arrows in those 4 seconds. Which you can round down to 15 arrows because theoretically you can not shoot a 16th arrow in 4 seconds under Quickness.

What’s the difference between 12 and 15? 3.

3 is how much percent of 15? 20%

That’s 20% less arrows, post-patch, then we should fire while under the effects of Quickness for 4 seconds.

Now if I use my personal calculations then we should shoot 14.81 arrows during 4 seconds of Quickness. So again i’ll round that down to 14 arrows.

What’s the difference between 12 and 14? 2
2 is how much percent of 14? 14.2%

Using my calculations we still shoot 14.2% less arrows then intended while under the effects of Quickness.

So you can see that the difference of 10 milliseconds under Quickness is 5.8%.

No offense, but if your starting data is “16 shots over 4 seconds”, then that doesn’t provide enough precision to then distinguish between a difference of 10ms in your final results.

If you use the methodology of rounding down to the nearest whole number of shots, then the base attack period of Crossfire pre-patch could have been anywhere from 471ms to 500ms and you would have arrived at the same results.

Tibbel.3450:

No offense, but if your starting data is “16 shots over 4 seconds”, then that doesn’t provide enough precision to then distinguish between a difference of 10ms in your final results.

If you use the methodology of rounding down to the nearest whole number of shots, then the base attack period of Crossfire pre-patch could have been anywhere from 471ms to 500ms and you would have arrived at the same results.

Again since Anet has not given use the exact numbers pre-patch then we cannot do a precise enough calculation and have to start with numbers we do have, which I have clearly stated in the first post of this topic.

And the 10ms difference you are talking about is the difference between my personal tests and the numbers I got here:
http://mmo-mechanics.com/forums/topic/1002-shortbow-vs-longbow/

And the reason I round down is because during the 4 seconds of quickness Quickening Zephyr gives, doesn’t matter if Crossfire attack speed is 471ms or 500ms, you cannot shoot more then 16 arrows.

And 4 seconds of quickness is, as far as I know, the longest amount of time a ranger can be under the effect of quickness using a single ranger skill.

Now if I would include chains such as, swap pet (Zephyr’s Speed)+QZ it would change, but the precision needed to get a full 6 seconds of quickness is almost impossible due to certain variables.

And if I bring even more into this such as the mesmer skill Time Warp or the Guardian’s Zealot’s Fervor then you get even more variables, which I personally don’t have the time/will for to calculate those numbers.

Also those would require me to have the exact numbers Anet has used in the programming for those skills, which I don’t have.

During QZ you got in ~16.67 arrows, pre-patch. While that 17th shot didn’t go off during the actual QZ duration, it still partially benefitted from the quickness and would have a shorter than normal time to fire, as ~67% of the “cast time” was halved.

Just throwing that out there.

Should factor that into your maths, maybe. If you like that “accuracy” thing.

Ravnodaus.5130:

During QZ you got in ~16.67 arrows, pre-patch. While that 17th shot didn’t go off during the actual QZ duration, it still partially benefitted from the quickness and would have a shorter than normal time to fire, as ~67% of the “cast time” was halved.

Just throwing that out there.

Should factor that into your maths, maybe. If you like that “accuracy” thing.

I’m skeptical about that.

Let’s take 480ms as a starting point.

480/2 = 240

Now 67% out of 240 is 160.8 milliseconds.

Then we need 33% out of 480 which is 158.4 milliseconds.

Next step would be to add those together:

160.8 + 158.4 = 319.2

So 319.2 milliseconds would be the “cast time” for the 17th arrow?

I doubt the engine is programmed like this because that would mean that the 17th arrow changes speed mid-air

Qaletaqa Hania.2598:

Ravnodaus.5130:

During QZ you got in ~16.67 arrows, pre-patch. While that 17th shot didn’t go off during the actual QZ duration, it still partially benefitted from the quickness and would have a shorter than normal time to fire, as ~67% of the “cast time” was halved.

Just throwing that out there.

Should factor that into your maths, maybe. If you like that “accuracy” thing.

I’m skeptical about that.

Let’s take 480ms as a starting point.

480/2 = 240

Now 67% out of 240 is 160.8 milliseconds.

Then we need 33% out of 480 which is 158.4 milliseconds.

Next step would be to add those together:

160.8 + 158.4 = 319.2

So 319.2 milliseconds would be the “cast time” for the 17th arrow?

I doubt the engine is programmed like this because that would mean that the 17th arrow changes speed mid-air

It doesn’t have to change it’s flight speed. In fact the arrows don’t ever change flight speed…

It’s the “going through the motions” speed.

For the game to not apply that last few MS of quickness would be the peculiar thing. It’d have to forcast that the buff was going to wear off before it finished a full cycle of firing an arrow.

Well there are three possibilities:

1. The 17th arrow benefits from quickness.
2. The 17th arrow doesn’t benefit from quickness.
3. The 17th arrow partially benefits from quickness.

All we know is that #1 doesn’t happen. I’d love to get a response from a dev on this.

Oh the Devs wont respond to this, haha. Best you can hope for is to say something out of line and a moderator will lock/delete your post. That’s the only attention we receive.

I’m nearly 100% certain that the 17th arrow partially benefits, that’s why I said it. I haven’t frame by frame proved it by any means, but I do know it is happening… correction, was happening.

The 13th arrow in current seemed to get a very small bit as well, but again, I didn’t frame by frame it. And honestly don’t care enough about exactly how not effective quickness is. It is so far past subpar on shortbow that it is trivial to pinpoint exactly how bad it is.

Besides, to test it I’d have to log onto my ranger again… /shudder