Guild Wars 2

Has anyone else experienced weirdness with being immobilized at any point while using Whirlwind Attack with the Mobile Strikes trait? It has happened multiple times now and led directly to my death, and each time makes me more and more angry. Not only should nothing be able to land during WA (evasion frames), Mobile Strikes should be clearing anything that does land off.

Was the implementation of immobilizations changed such that some of them do not apply damage and therefore cannot be “evaded”? If so, consider me wildly disappointed.

EDIT – Here’s a video snippet of what just happened. I accidentally snipped a part where I turned on the Thief to have a good laugh, but the last few seconds show the incident in question. Am I missing something?

http://www.twitch.tv/cogbyrn/c/1803881

Its annoying but it happens and is probably intended. The only thing they can do right now is make mobile strikes a little more responsive.

In the grand scheme of things, I understand apparent race conditions like this are trivial, really. Odds are this won’t make the priority list for bug-fixing for now, if ever.

It’s just unfortunate that, given Warriors don’t have the ability to face tank without gimping the hell out of ourselves, or blink, or stealth, or really evade in any other manner, mobility is survival if you want to even try to play an influential melee in a large-scale WvW fight. I mainly wanted to see if I was missing something, or if this is in fact semi-broken.

EDIT – It also only started happening recently, as far as I can tell. Unfortunately I can’t pinpoint a specific patch, since I haven’t had a lot of time to play the past few months.

It’s been around since launch at least. It’s probably intended or short sighted thinking from the devs as the moves check for a bind at the time of use. As a player it feels logical that the move(s) would also continue to breaks binds as you channel it or grant you immunity to binds for the duration. The worst is when you get snared by a rangers elite roots as it pulses the bind so you could either break them and go free or break them and get rebound instantly by the pulse if you’re unlucky.

Anon.1248:

It’s been around since launch at least. It’s probably intended or short sighted thinking from the devs as the moves check for a bind at the time of use. As a player it feels logical that the move(s) would also continue to breaks binds as you channel it or grant you immunity to binds for the duration. The worst is when you get snared by a rangers elite roots as it pulses the bind so you could either break them and go free or break them and get rebound instantly by the pulse if you’re unlucky.

That’s fine for every move except Whirlwind Attack. WA provides evasion frames, so if it checks the start of the ability for immobilize and doesn’t find it, the rest of the ability should evade any incoming immobilization. If it does find an immobilize, it should remove it, and the rest of the animation would evade any subsequent immobilize.

It has happened with Rush, and that’s fine. I don’t expect immobilization immunity throughout the entire ability. The trait states that they break immobilization, which implies removal upon initiation.

My problem is with an ability that should have no holes (breaking immobilization -> evasion frames) but apparently still has some sort of race condition that’s causing this weird boundary case.

EDIT – Which, in turn, made me wonder if some immobilizations can land through evasion. That just doesn’t make a lick of sense to me. Invulnerability, maybe. Evasion?

Cogbyrn.7283:

WA provides evasion frames, so if it checks the start of the ability for immobilize and doesn’t find it, the rest of the ability should evade any incoming immobilization. If it does find an immobilize, it should remove it, and the rest of the animation would evade any subsequent immobilize.

To my knowledge, it pretty much does this.The problem is that the skill has a delay before it’s used, and on good machines it becomes even more apparent.I feel like it’s close to 0.5 seconds before you swing for the evades, during which the immobilize check has passed, and in that period we’re vulnerable to CC’s.That delay has had me killed quite a few times…
Of course, this is me guessing with whatever knowledge I have, so I may very well be mistaken.

Ivanov.8914:

To my knowledge, it pretty much does this.The problem is that the skill has a delay before it’s used, and on good machines it becomes even more apparent.I feel like it’s close to 0.5 seconds before you swing for the evades, during which the immobilize check has passed, and in that period we’re vulnerable to CC’s.That delay has had me killed quite a few times…
Of course, this is me guessing with whatever knowledge I have, so I may very well be mistaken.

It’s possible that the trait removal is a client-side check while the ability execution is server side, providing a window of opportunity where the client does not sent “Remove Immobilize” before “Whirlwind Attack” and an Immobilize lands. I suppose it would save some packets, but at the cost of user experience.

It’s difficult to say without knowledge of their system. Once again, my curious mind wishes I had some insight into their implementation.

Some abilities are unblockable like ranger and thief traps. So its possible some other immobilization skills are also unblockable. Also, are you talking pvp or pve? Anet is great for giving monster only abilities unblockable unstoppable types of abilities.