Guild Wars 2

For elementalists, both the normal utility glyph (Glyph of Lesser Elementals) and elite glyph (Glyph of Elementals) incur two separate cooldowns:

1. When the glyph is used (glyph goes into ‘locked’ mode on the skillbar); this cooldown is not affected by the trait that reduces glyph cooldowns by 20%.

2.When the elemental dies, either due to its timer ending or its health running out (skill is no longer ‘locked’ on skillbar), cooldown is set to the glyph’s base cooldown instead of subtracting the time that the elemental was alive during. Curiously, this ‘true’ cooldown is affected by the cooldown-reducing trait.

This is evidently a bug, considering the fact that Warrior banners are similarly summoned by a long-cooldown utility and have a ‘lifespan’, but go on cooldown at the moment of placement rather than the moment when they disappear.

TL;DR: Elemental Glyphs have a bug in their ‘locked’ state that causes the skill to go on full cooldown when the elemental disappears.

Attached are examples of the initial ‘locked’ cooldown and the second trait-affected cooldown.

1) Pretty sure this part is not a bug, not for the Lesser elemental anyway. It is how much time you have left before it dies. That is a very useful thing to know. The elite uses the recharge time instead which is much less useful.

2) Pretty sure this is not a bug either. If it worked like how you described then the lesser elemental could be kept up permanently unless it gets killed, even without any traits.

Banners are not comparable. They don’t move, they can’t attack nor can they be attacked. Banners also have a bug where they are lasting 150% their stated duration. A better comparison would be Guardian spirit weapons and those behave the same way as the glyphs.

C Blair.7810:

1. When the glyph is used (glyph goes into ‘locked’ mode on the skillbar); this cooldown is not affected by the trait that reduces glyph cooldowns by 20%.

2.When the elemental dies, either due to its timer ending or its health running out (skill is no longer ‘locked’ on skillbar), cooldown is set to the glyph’s base cooldown instead of subtracting the time that the elemental was alive during. Curiously, this ‘true’ cooldown is affected by the cooldown-reducing trait.
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Tested this.

The lesser glyph worked fine, even with 20% recharge reduction.
When activated it counted down from 60 secs, wich is the duration the elemental is max active. Reaching zero, it started a second countdown, counting down from 36secs (45secs minus 20%).

The Elite glyph has somthing weird but it still counts not incorrect in the end.
The Elite glyph, when activated, started counting down from 96secs. When reaching 36secs it started counting down from 96secs again.

96-36=60secs the correct duration the elite should be max alive.
And the 96secs is the normal 120secs recharge minus 20%

So, works all fine.
EDIT:Well, i havent tested what the recharge timer does when the elemental dies sooner then the 60secs max duration.