Guild Wars 2

And yet again someone gets stuck in a rock structure when using the Oakheart Essence’s skill on it. My poor little Asura.

Please fix!

And it happened again, this time at another spot, on my way to Zinn’s Recording #9.

I aimed at the cave where the recording is located, and during the catapulting into it with the Oakheart skill, I got stuck in the rock texture once more.

Please fix that skill, this is the third time in four days this has happened to me! (And others have complained in map chat as well, in different locations…)

P.S. Is just made a Wasp miraculously vanish into thin air by accidentally hitting it with the Oakheart skill. Looks like this skill requires a lot of repairs.

Edit: Oh, just got stuck again in the wall by the entrance to said cave. I am considering giving up.

Edit #2: Just now, I died, because of the bug where you can’t enter fly/glide mode after using the Oakheart skill, thus doing an endless salto downwards, vertically, until you hit the groud.

Happened too but I don’t have a screenshot to prove it, quite annoying bug.

I hope there will be a patch soon. It makes the map somewhat unplayable, or at least very inconvenient to play.

I also got stuck using the Oakheart Skill with my max lvl Sylvari Necro (soloing) in Draconis Mons – Mariner Landing.

I got stuck a few times. This one in the guild hall is the only one I have a shot of.

After several days of using this skill, I can provide some specific points to look into. Firstly, this concept is fantastic and I have enjoyed it greatly – when it works. It just needs some tweaks to iron out some kinks and bring out it’s full spooder-man potential:

1. First and foremost, the cast delay is a double-punshiment. There’s already a delay when it fires and extends to the target spot, which makes sense (thought it could be a little faster). Having the delay before it even casts complicates using this skill, especially while flying. By the time it fires, you’re no longer where you were when you started it. If nothing else, just removing the cast delay would make this skill immensely more enjoyable, at least for me.

2. The leap it does as it pulls you towards the target is a double-edged sword. If you’re on the ground, using the vine to accelerate forward, it’s great for getting over uneven terrain. But if you’re trying to navigate in tight spaces, like the jp or trying to collect the fire-stones, it throws you up to the ceiling, stops you in mid-air and drops you to the ground far from your intended target. I’d personally prefer if it just dragged you straight towards the target. This could be implemented as skill 2 on the vine (i.e. skill 1 stays as-is, skill 2 is a direct pull). You could even have us buy skill 2 like we did with the flying skills in BF.

3. It fails intermittently – sometimes even if there’s no obstacles to impede you, it aborts in mid-pull and drops you. Maybe this is something to do with lag. Here is Australia we tend to get lag-related issues. Maybe it thinks it’s reached its destination. I don’t know. It’s just annoying. This would be an acceptable risk of using it if only the other bugs didn’t happen.

4. Replacing our weapon skills is also frustrating. The joy of using this mechanic is undeniably in feeling like the web-slinger, moving through the environment smoothly. That feeling of flow is interrupted whenever you have to stop, drop the vine, fight something then go-and-find-another-vine! This doesn’t help the game-play experience. Here’s a small change that allow you to keep the weapon-replacement method but make it a little less tedious: make the vine an item that appears in your inventory with three charges. After you drop it and fight, you can double-click it in inventory to use it again with whatever charges are left.

5. The limit of three charges is frustrating. If the other bugs didn’t exist, this may be an acceptable limitation but as it stands, it’s just another straw on the camel’s back. It would have been brilliant to have this skill permanently once the mastery is done, but for obvious reasons that isn’t possible with this design. Making the charges cumulative is clearly not possible for similar reasons. Increasing the number of charges, even if just to 5 or 7, would be awesome. Often I don’t use this skill with any particular destination in mind. I just like the flying through the air.

6. More seriously, there’s an odd glitch where it sometimes ignores where you’ve targeted (even though the target was green and looked like it worked) and pulls you straight down to the ground. It’s as if it decides that for some reason the target is invalid and instead targets the closest reachable ground. This is a difficult one as it cannot be reproduced reliably, as least not that I’ve been able to yet. I’ll keep an eye on it until some kind of pattern becomes clear.

In summary, thank you Anet. Very nice concept. Hope you consider some of these.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

This could be implemented as skill 2 on the vine (i.e. skill 1 stays as-is, skill 2 is a direct pull). You could even have us buy skill 2 like we did with the flying skills in BF.

4. Replacing our weapon skills is also frustrating.

Agreed – would like to see two vine skills; one that pulls you straight along the vine, and another than gives the yank upward like it currently does. The two skills would have strategic uses in various places.

I also don’t want the vine skill to replace weapon skills, but rather than an inventory item I’d prefer it to be a skill above the weapon skills. Like an F1/F2 skill maybe.

Here’s some more information on #6 – it seems that if you aim somewhere that’s out of range, and the indicator is red, the vine still fires into the ground nearby, pulling you somewhere unexpected and wasting a charge. Could this be changed to not fire at all if it’s out of range?

(Especially since it sometimes seems to decide that it’s out of range when you fire even if the indicator shows green – maybe related to #3)

I’m pretty sure that “fires on the ground when out of range” is actually caused by “lock ranged indicator at max range” option, exactly like every other ranged attack skill in the game is.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

1. [… ] Having the delay before it even casts complicates using this skill, especially while flying. By the time it fires, you’re no longer where you were when you started it.

I wholeheartedly agree with this! I often bump into a ledge and then fall simply because of this delay (and no longer having a straight line of target by the time it fires).

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

2. The leap it does as it pulls you towards the target is a double-edged sword. If you’re on the ground, using the vine to accelerate forward, it’s great for getting over uneven terrain. But if you’re trying to navigate in tight spaces, like the jp or trying to collect the fire-stones, it throws you up to the ceiling, stops you in mid-air and drops you to the ground far from your intended target […]

+1 to this part, but I am not a fan of the idea of having a second skill, as I have #1 shortcut to MB 5 so I can use it quickly. Having a second skill would slow things down for me.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

3. It fails intermittently – sometimes even if there’s no obstacles to impede you, it aborts in mid-pull and drops you. […] This would be an acceptable risk of using it if only the other bugs didn’t happen.

+1

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

4. Replacing our weapon skills is also frustrating. The joy of using this mechanic is undeniably in feeling like the web-slinger, moving through the environment smoothly. That feeling of flow is interrupted whenever you have to stop, drop the vine, fight something then go-and-find-another-vine!

+1. It would also solve this issue if they made it the Special Action Key.

I tried Searing Ascent yesterday and couldn’t make any progress at the vine sections. Apart from the cast-delay and firing-delay, there was also lag before it even started to cast. Together, these three delays made any section where you’re flying and using the vine impossible. I remember gliding used to have a lag problem too in the early days, but that seemed to be fixed. Perhaps the vine needs a similar review so it’s not affected so much by lag? At the very least, remove the casting delay. This is a great mechanic. It shouldn’t be so awkward to use.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

I’m pretty sure that “fires on the ground when out of range” is actually caused by “lock ranged indicator at max range” option, exactly like every other ranged attack skill in the game is.

Could be, but I don’t know. The vine’s indicator already goes red when a target is too far. I would presume that was max range. But if max range is shorter then that, then there’s something wrong with the indicator. Unlike ranged attack skills, the vine’s sole purpose is movement and firing at the wrong spot leads to frustrating, if not detrimental, consequences. We need the indicator to be accurate. In any case, it even fires when it’s red. I know this happens with weapons too, but again – it’s especially detrimental with the vine with it’s limited charges.

Has anyone noticed any progress with this skill yet?

Another bug I noticed with the Oakheart’s Essence skill (submitted an in-game bug report, too).

There is an existing bug with the Item Booster where after harvesting something your weapon skill bar flips as though you just weapon swapped. You weapons don’t actually get swapped though.

However, now the OE reacts to this bug as though you did weapon swap. If you have any charges of OE left after you harvest something under the effect of a bugged Item Booster, the remaining charges disappear and your normal skillbar returns.

Anet, please seriously consider at the very least removing the cast delay. Between (i) the cast delay, (ii) the delay while the vine projectile flies to its target and (iii) the lag sometimes here in Australia before skills even start casting this is a nightmare to use while flying. I want to love this gadget but it’s so awkward.

And yet another Oakheart Essence related bug!

Sometimes, when you land after using the essence, your character remains in the “Throwing out my Spiderman web” posture, as shown in the screenshots below.

You remain stuck in that stiff posture even when fighting and using skills. Only initiating gliding fixes the issue.

And the same thing as in my OP happened again — any estimated time of fixing this skill? Or has it completely been abandoned, dear devs?

I have to admit I’ve stopped using this skill, preferring to just WP to the highest WP and fly down to wherever I want to go. The pre-cast/cast/firing delays (especially while flying), shooting in a random direction when it doesn’t like where I’m pointing and the limit of three charges killed it for me. If spiderman had these limitations he would have quit the superhero business.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

If spiderman had these limitations he would have quit the superhero business.

LOL! This is very true.