Guild Wars 2

This is a general question regarding all teleport-like skills for all professions, but since I’m almost exclusively playing my Thief now (level 40-ish) and the Thief has several teleports, I’ll ask here.

What are the limitations of the various teleport skills/traits?

For example, Shadowstep doesn’t let me jump across a gap, but it will let me recall across a gap or with large height differences. (This makes sense to avoid exploits: it “breaks the rules” on return, but you’ve already been there somehow.)

People love Infiltrator’s Arrow, but I’ve found it to be meh: there’s an in-flight time and a short range, so it I’m firing in the direction I’m running it’s not a very large jump. It doesn’t fire across gaps or height differentials. What am I missing?

I’ve read somewhere that at least one of our teleports can jump through walls if someone else targets an enemy on the other side and we adopt their target.

What about other teleporting skills: what can they do on initial use, what can they do on recall (if any)?

Any class invited to reply.

It doesn’t fire across gaps or height differentials.

It does, but it’s a bit tricky and not everywhere.

You can shadowstep somewhere only if there is a smooth path somewhere leading directly from where you’re standing to where you’re targeting, that would not require you to either swim, jump or fall to cross. No matter how long that path would actually be.
I’ve never found Infiltrator’s Arrow useful for simply moving for the reasons you’ve stated, but it can be ridiculously useful for avoiding minutes of round-about pathing over to certain ledges and such.
It also becomes much more useful inside a fight, where everyone moves much slower.

@Grimwolf: But I believe you can return from a shadow step to anywhere, right? I used it once on a very long jumping puzzle where there was a tricky jump about 80% through it. If you missed the jump you fell a survivable distance, so a Shadow Step to your current location allowed several seconds to try to make the actual jump, with a recall if you missed.

I don’t think all shadow steps are equal here. Seems to me that Shadowstep can recall across most anything, while Infiltrator’s Strike will not. Or maybe I’m remembering incorrectly.

Yeah return ignores pathing roles, it warps you to a set of coordinate marked by the initial teleport rather than the initial teleports that tend to teleport you along valid pathing.

Exception to that would be targetted teleports as they again don’t teleport you along a path but rather teleport you directly to the entity you have targetted.

@Dasorine: Hmmm, gotta explore the targeted teleport idea. As an example, you mean something like Infiltrator’s Strike, correct?

Another thing to mention in this thread is that leaps are not teleports, so they can have terrain issues, but they don’t have to be targeted. Seems to me that Heartseeker is a nice tool for moving fast if you don’t have a target. The only complication is that it will strike things near your path so you can’t use it to go too close to creatures.

Things like infiltrators strike and steal SHOULD yes.

And for the heartseeker attacking things as your using it for mobility, you can turn off autotargetting that should stop it deciding what you really want to do is leap into that camp of angry mobs.

I’m pretty sure they don’t. I can recall times when I’ve tried to Steal toward a target on a ledge only to stop at the wall beneath and have it go on recharge without getting the item skill.
Are you sure that any teleport works that way? Because in WvW it’d allow you to just pop right inside a keep, or at least up onto the wall simply because an enemy is there.

they’ll warp you through certain things but not up walls or gaps which is probably coded in to prevent jumping puzzle skipping and WvW exploitation.

So you got the targeted projectile teleport (infiltrator’s arrow) which will only teleport along pathing and only where the projectile stops (blocked by walls even if you can path around them)

Ground target instant warps like shadowstep which allow teleporting through pathing but are not blocked by walls as long as you can target past them.

Target teleports that allow for teleporting along pathing and through walls to targets even if you couldn’t target past them normally (too high to camera over but still path aroundable)

And recalls which teleport you right back to the position regardless of pathing.

You will never be able to teleport across gaps in say jumping puzzles or up walls in WvW with out having been there in the first place.

“People love Infiltrator’s Arrow, but I’ve found it to be meh: there’s an in-flight time and a short range, so it I’m firing in the direction I’m running it’s not a very large jump. It doesn’t fire across gaps or height differentials. What am I missing?”

I don’t love it but it is useful. A small boost to movement can mean the difference between life and death. It provides the 900m movement even when crippled. It can cross traps and red circles. I suspect it can also break the tracking of some enemy skill inductions, perhaps by going directly out of range, when a dodge roll leaves you vulnerable once the evade component elapses.

Druitt.7629:

People love Infiltrator’s Arrow, but I’ve found it to be meh: there’s an in-flight time and a short range, so it I’m firing in the direction I’m running it’s not a very large jump. It doesn’t fire across gaps or height differentials. What am I missing?

It’s a spammable location shadowstep on a weapon set that also provides more utility (Poison combo field, AoE damage, spammable Blast Finisher etc)

For travelling the options are; Heartseeker and Infiltrator’s Arrow. Heartseeker is good, but also has it’s downsides (It being on Dagger mainhand so not much other utility for Pistol or Sword mainhand users, it initiating combat with nearby targets, it only goes forwards, it occasionally bugs out when used on an incline, it’s affected by movement impairing effects etc)

That’s why people love it, or at least like it. Not because it’s super awesome teleport wherever ability, but because it’s a nice ability on what most people use as a backup/utility weapon set.

Great comments all! Especially thanks @Dasorine for the full explanation. I’m going to do some experiments to see what kind of limitations Infiltrator’s Arrow has.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Teleport

:D

I know for a fact that Judge’s intervention and one of the Necro’s skills allow them to completely bypass fall damage.

I also know that JI, Blink from mesmer, and Lightning flash from Ele does not interrupt channeling skills.

Teamkiller.4315:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Teleport

:D

I know for a fact that Judge’s intervention and one of the Necro’s skills allow them to completely bypass fall damage.

I also know that JI, Blink from mesmer, and Lightning flash from Ele does not interrupt channeling skills.

Just thought I’d add: Neither does Thief’s Steal, Infiltrator’s Signet, or Shadowstep.