Guild Wars 2

I was playing around a bit with my Warrior traits, and decided to go with Quick Breathing for my warhorn. This changes the Charge skill to have a 12 second cooldown instead of 15, and puts +20% into boon duration. The skill has an activation time of 0.5 seconds. Therefore, when activating the skill, I should see 12 seconds of swiftness after 0.5 seconds, and when the CD is up, I should be able to maintain 100% swiftness uptime by activating the skill again.

However, this is not the case. Based on the assumption that the cooldown begins after the activation time, the following should occur:

Skill is triggered.
0.5 seconds pass, the skill activates.
I get 12 seconds of swiftness.
12 seconds later, the cooldown has finished, and I can activate the skill again.

Based on the assumption that the cooldown begins BEFORE the activation time:

Skill is triggered.
0.5 seconds pass, the skill activates.
I get 12 seconds of swiftness.
11.5 seconds later, I can trigger the skill again, with 0.5 seconds of swiftness still left — activating another 12 seconds of swiftness after 0.5 seconds activation time.

This results in essentially the same behavior if I’m repeatedly using the skill over and over: 12 seconds of swiftness every 12 seconds, because even in the second case the activation time of 0.5 seconds would overlap with the remaining 0.5 seconds of swiftness, allowing me to put swiftness back up again immediately.

However, this is not the case. When the swiftness boon has worn off, the cooldown timer is at 1.3 seconds. Every time. This leaves me without swiftness for 1.8 seconds.

Something is very, very wrong here, and I can only assume that this affects the boon durations/cooldowns of other skills, it’s just very easy to see here. I’ve attached screenshots and video to illustrate the behavior.

Video of the behavior

This is a pretty big discrepancy, bumping so a dev gets a look at it. How does one have a skill with a 12 second cooldown that gives 12 seconds of swiftness lose 1.8 seconds?

That is a HUGE number.

According to the wiki, Quick Breathing doesn’t affect boon duration:

Reduces recharge on warhorn skills. Warhorn skills convert conditions into boons.

• Conditions converted to boons: 1
• Recharge reduced: 20%

This would explain why you are seeing a 1.8s gap between the end of swiftness and the ability to recast Warhorn-4.

BTW: you should be able to confirm how much swiftness you are getting by mousing over the Swiftness icon as soon as it appears (takes a bit of practice to see it properly when you cast, especially for skills with short activation times).

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

According to the wiki, Quick Breathing doesn’t affect boon duration:

Reduces recharge on warhorn skills. Warhorn skills convert conditions into boons.

• Conditions converted to boons: 1
• Recharge reduced: 20%

This would explain why you are seeing a 1.8s gap between the end of swiftness and the ability to recast Warhorn-4.

BTW: you should be able to confirm how much swiftness you are getting by mousing over the Swiftness icon as soon as it appears (takes a bit of practice to see it properly when you cast, especially for skills with short activation times).

However, putting 4 points into the Tactics trait line increases boon duration by 20% (5% for every point). Please watch the video and look at the screenshots.

I haven’t pinned down exactly which is wrong (the duration of swiftness seems correct; it does appear to be 12 seconds as in the video you can see me mouseover the swiftness after activation and it jumps down to 11 seconds immediately after), but the numbers are off by a very wide margin. Perhaps the boon is ticking too quickly, and the amount of seconds of swiftness it displays are incorrect. Perhaps the cooldown reduction is not being properly observed. Again, I’m not sure, but something is most definitely wrong.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, have a dev take a look at my video, screenshots, and evaluate my results. This is a pretty kitten critical bug, and while perhaps not must-fix or gamebreaking, I would say it qualifies as a priority A issue.

Bumped. There is video and picture evidence in my original post, numerical evidence and observations, even easy steps on how to reproduce. I’m doing your QA team a favor by doing their job. This is still bugged, and it still needs to be fixed.

Is the boon duration only bugged for this specific skill? Or doesn’t it apply to all the other boons either?

I’ll do some more research today. It’ll be easy to tell if I’m scrubbing through a video. I’m willing to bet I end up with the same results.

if boon duration is bugged, it’s probably because quick breathing modifies the effects of wh skills.

probably similar to the way the old longbow trait made all projectiles 100% finishers.

Lately i have noticed too on my ranger, i;ve got 30% boon duration and for some reason , rampage as one and warhorn 5 is showing a extra 4secs, 22 1/2 on horn and 30secs instead fo 26 for rampage as one.

it comes and goes but i’ve seen it often enough this week to know its bugged.
15secs stock boons +30%, should only be 19 and half secs.

though it may just be a Client to server miscommunication , or the skill facts arn’t correct i need to check it.

Recorded a video and checked timings.

Without traits:
Cast time 0.5 s: Swiftness applied (10 s)
After cast 1.35 s: Cooldown starts (15 s)

Total recharge time= 0.5 s + 1.35 s + 15 s = 16.85 s.
Time remaining when Swiftness ends: ~ 6 s (6.35 s)

With traits:
Cast time 0.5 s: Swiftness applied (12 s)
After cast 1.35 s: Cooldown starts (12 s)

Total recharge time= 0.5 s + 1.35 s + 12 s = 13.85 s.
Time remaining when Swiftness ends: ~ 1.3 s (1.35 s)

Seems consistent for me. Actual trait reduction ended up being 17.8%.

Curious, but where does that 1.35s (After cast) come from? Is there some data I’m missing here, where cooldown does not begin until 1.35s after cast? If so, that is terribly misleading; nowhere in the game do I see any indication that if I have a skill with a 12 second cooldown, and it applies a 12 second boon, that there will be a gap of 1.35s where that boon cannot be activated again.

The wiki on this doesn’t offer any help, checking both the casting time and recharge pages. Where does the 1.35s come from?

It comes from the game. You can easily see even without recording that there is a noticeable difference between getting the boon and cooldown starting.

Never rely on tool tips

“It comes from the game” is perhaps the worst answer I’ve ever heard. There isn’t even any data regarding this, and any searches I’ve done for “after cast” or “after casting” take me to the Guild Wars 1 wiki. If this is intended, then I’d like to know. I’m sure a lot of players would. If it’s not, then it should be fixed.

Dropping my ticket # into the post-3 day review thread.

I’m sorry but I can’t change how the game works. Also I don’t know what developers have intended.

All I can say is that the game is animation based and cooldowns don’t start until the animation is fully finished.

After scrubbing through the video, you’re correct — the warhorn animation takes exactly 1.35s. There are numbers like these that make things like activation time and cooldown time seem meaningless — and if it’s the case that all skills begin their cooldown after the animation (and not the activation time, which is what it should be), that is an incredibly bad design choice.

I’m still leaving my ticket in review, but updating the information. It’s absolutely unbelievable that the cooldown doesn’t start until my character has blown the horn, and finished moving his arm away from his mouth and back to the ready position again.

Again, the bad design behind this is astounding. I wonder if anyone actually knows how long their skills are taking to fully cool down vs. any time benefit they’re getting?

I think it would make the most sense if cooldowns started when skill was used so a skill with 12 s CD and 12 s Swiftness would result in 100% uptime. This would also make CD reductions and Chill have a full effect.