Guild Wars 2

When stepping into a symbol of swiftness, you gain roughly 8 seconds of swiftness, if you use something else to grant swiftness after that, it stacks, but it doesn’t work the other way around. For example, I would step into a symbol for 8s of swiftness, and then use Retreat! (which normally grants 22s of swiftness) for a total of 30s of happily stacked swiftness.

However, because the game probably doesn’t maintain an internal stack of sources for each boon (for performance reasons I guess), and the fundamental way symbols work, the symbol of swiftness doesn’t stack with any swiftness if you already have some. For example, I use Retreat! for 22s of swiftness, then step into a symbol of swiftness, expecting to gain another 8s, but it only tops up my swiftness by 1s per pulse, effectively not giving me any swiftness at all.

I feel as though this should be classed as a bug, because the symbol should give you the proper amount of swiftness if you haven’t already stepped into it. Just like some of the consecrations that apply burning to foes should extend any burning they might already have.

I’m sure there is an elegant solution for this, such as an internal First-In-Last-Out stack of sources tagged to a boon, operating on First-In-Last-Out timer stacks equivalent to their boon lengths, which are easily cleared when boons are stripped by enemies.

This way, if the symbol’s ‘boon length’ was already over, and it’s tag was out of the stack, you could cast it again and receive the boon properly, but avoids exploitable situations to artificially extend boon uptime.

TL:DR Symbol of Swiftness doesn’t stack with existing swiftness, and if it is a bug, it could be fixed with a (fairly) simple boon source FILO stack system.

I’m suprised this thread is 9 months old and the problem is still there

I don’t think it’s a bug, but I’m not 100% sure of it. If it did stack 7-8s of swiftness on each pulse, one symbol would give you perma-swiftness. I think it refreshes swiftness to a max of 7-8s. Kind of like the swiftness banners. If you were allowed to repeatedly interact with the banner you could have near-infinite swiftness.
Other skills do this too, like hallowed ground. Although I think it’s different for ones that only give 1 second of a boon (eg. the retal ones and regen ones).

It’s not particular of this Symbol. Happens also with mesmer’s focus #4. Someone said it might be related to ground targetted skills, but I think mesmer’s staff #5 adds swiftness duration and it’s ground targetted.
Anyway, since it has been pointed out easily a hundred of times and I’ve never seen it adressed (as bug), some of us guess that is a mechanism to avoid multiple swiftness stacks added from the same skill (re-entering the skill area several times). Better not expect a response at this stage of the game, even less a fix.

In beta, it was noticed that you could move in and out of the symbol and gain a huge duration of swiftness. This situation is basically a ‘fix’ that they have not revisited yet and there is not a major need to do so. I suspected mesmer focus 4 may do the same thing and be a ‘fix’ for the same reason. I just knew of the symbol’s situation from back then.

It’s not an issue with being “groundtargeted”, it’s a matter with “can be used multiple times”. Mesmers Chaos Storm is different since it applies random buffs.

Imagine Guardians Symbol would actually stack 8s swiftness duration. It lasts 4s and triggers swiftness on its initial cast, meaning 5 ticks. So you’d cast it on yourself and wait the 4s and you’d have (5×8s =) 40s swiftness. Seems fair.

Now the same with mesmer’s temporal curtain. lasts 4s, you can run through it like 4 times, granting (4×12s =) 48s swiftness. Seems fair.

Boons do note their source (player), but not their skill source. Right now developers can’t make the skill check if part of the swiftness was applied from the skill already, so instead they disabled stacking if there’s swiftness present.

A short, implement-able and acceptable (for now) fix would be to check the current swiftness duration and set it to the skills value, it it was below. Meaning 40s + TC = 40s swiftness; 10s swiftness + TC = 12s swiftness; 1s swiftness + TC = 12s swiftness. (same with guardian’s symbol).