I had taken a bit of a hiatus from GW2, and jumped into WvW to try out the new Symbol of Swiftness with my Guardian and I noticed something odd about swiftness yesterday. Whenever swiftness would put you at or over 40 seconds, it seems only about 50% of swiftness buffs actually get taken and applied.
This includes symbol of swiftness 4-second ticks (not that big of a deal) to Save Yourselves’ 11 seconds of swiftness not applying at all.
I’ve done it about a dozen times; it only happens once an application of swiftness would put you at or over 40s of swiftness. You’ll note in the video that if I’m at or above 37s, about half the ticks of SoS don’t apply. Last night, I thought there was a new hard cap on swiftness of 40s, but I looked around and couldn’t find anything.
Buffs can only stack 9 times total. This might be what you are seeing.
Okay thanks, that makes perfect sense actually.
Going off of Symbol of Swiftness – 9 stacks x 4s/ea. = 36s.
This is either completely undocumented or very poorly documented (I can’t find this documented anywhere.) The wiki still states that all affects except specific ones stack up to 25 times, and includes boons. I can find nothing in-game that suggests a 9 stack limit of most buffs.
Still I thank you for your answer, and this does then need to be indicated in-game/documented.
I think they are talking about stacking intensity boons and not duration boons. I’ll agree that we don’t really message out how duration stacking works.
in-game alias: Powerr
Skills and Balance/PvP Team Principal QA
Former active member of Team PZ
So to clarify: Intensity boons stack up to 25. Duration boons stack up to 9 times (except Retaliation, which is 5?)
The Wiki includes duration boons, like swiftness, in it’s list of boons with no indication that there is a 9-stack limit (which says nothing of the intensity of each stack, you could get 9, 20s duration stacks for 3 minutes of swiftness.)
Perhaps I will work to remedy the problem on the Wiki side with this information.
So to clarify: Intensity boons stack up to 25. Duration boons stack up to 9 times (except Retaliation, which is 5?)
The Wiki includes duration boons, like swiftness, in it’s list of boons with no indication that there is a 9-stack limit (which says nothing of the intensity of each stack, you could get 9, 20s duration stacks for 3 minutes of swiftness.)
What the heck is this? New rules nobody knows?!! A year after release?
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
What the heck is this? New rules nobody knows?!! A year after release?
haha, apparently these rules have been there the entire time, and no one really noticed or dug into it enough? I only happened to reveal it because of the new Symbol of Swiftness, which rather quickly provides a lot of short duration stacks, making the limitation much more apparent. I had no clue about this, and thought I was witnessing a strange bug.
I think there is also a hard-cap of 2 minutes on swiftness (or at least, the “9 stacks” thing soft-caps it there from maximum swiftness effect durations.) – In my 2.5k hours playing the game, with swiftness stacking on a regular basis, I’ve never seen over 2m duration.
Xandra – 80s in all classes – Ele/Guard mains – [TL] – NSP
I could see that being the case, though I’ve seen others claim to have much more than 2 minutes. This is most easily possible in WvWvW where most players take some form of swiftness and everyone tends to spam them as a zerg group moves around.
I think there is also a hard-cap of 2 minutes on swiftness (or at least, the “9 stacks” thing soft-caps it there from maximum swiftness effect durations.) – In my 2.5k hours playing the game, with swiftness stacking on a regular basis, I’ve never seen over 2m duration.
You can actually get quite a bit more, you just have to be wise about how you apply it. In Dredge Fractals, me and another Mesmer have stacked 4+ Minutes of swiftness for the party by stealing from Dredge and passing it back and forth a few times with Sig of Inspiration.
I’ve gotten several minutes of swiftness before, and have noticed the cap.
@Tyler: It would be helpful to know all of the quantity/duration caps and single cast caps so we can document them on the wiki. Especially for Stability, as I have noticed something different from what you’ve mentioned. And are "stacks" of duration removed and applied in a FIFO fashion or some other order?
To clarify: I’ve managed 3min+ of swiftness on my warrior but only 15 seconds of stability from a group of five guardians with "Stand Your Ground." Did I miscount (possibility)? Or is there a duration cap that can only be exceeded by a single skill, similar to movement speed caps?
I’ve gotten several minutes of swiftness before, and have noticed the cap.
@Tyler: It would be helpful to know all of the quantity/duration caps and single cast caps so we can document them on the wiki. Especially for Stability, as I have noticed something different from what you’ve mentioned. And are “stacks” of duration removed and applied in a FIFO fashion or some other order?
To clarify: I’ve managed 3min+ of swiftness on my warrior but only 15 seconds of stability from a group of five guardians with “Stand Your Ground.” Did I miscount (possibility)? Or is there a duration cap that can only be exceeded by a single skill, similar to movement speed caps?
The Wiki already indicates that Stability has a max of 3 stacks.
I was thinking about to start a new thread about this but I thought about commenting here too when I saw this thread… By chance is it me or there is a bug with stack duration from swiftness gained from Temporal Curtain? I’m used to use that skill from a focus on my mesmer while exploring so I can do that quickly, but I have noted if I’m already under effect of swiftness and I trigger that skill again I won’t get that boon again neither would it stack its duration. Have someone else noted it too? Should I start a new thread to report it as a bug?
I was thinking about to start a new thread about this but I thought about commenting here too when I saw this thread… By chance is it me or there is a bug with stack duration from swiftness gained from Temporal Curtain? I’m used to use that skill from a focus on my mesmer while exploring so I can do that quickly, but I have noted if I’m already under effect of swiftness and I trigger that skill again I won’t get that boon again neither would it stack its duration. Have someone else noted it too? Should I start a new thread to report it as a bug?
That’s normal behavior for Temporal Curtain, it only applies swiftness to yourself/allies if you/they didn’t already have it. The Guardian skill Symbol of Swiftness used to apply 1 extra second of swiftness to anyone that already had it, or 8 seconds to anyone that did not. It was updated to add 4 seconds per tick regardless, and Temporal Curtain has remained as-is. I see no reason why Temporal Curtain should not have gotten the same treatment considering there is a cap on boon stacks now, seems like an oversight.
I have gotten up to 4+ minutes of swfitness on my engineer juggling low-duration skills over and over again several months ago, and probably could’ve gone higher but got bored. After testing the same rotation of skills I can’t break more than 1.5 minutes, so this is definitely a post-release ninja change.
That’s normal behavior for Temporal Curtain, it only applies swiftness to yourself/allies if you/they didn’t already have it.
Oh really? That’s weird because the hovertext for the Swiftness applied, that icon above your skill bar, says “stacks duration” but it never stacked even if I get swiftness from another source when already having it given from Temporal Curtain. It’s annoying because for my mesmer it’s the only manner I can get swiftness whenever I want/need. The other ways are hard to achieve (like it may come randomly from a Signet too) and has very short duration. And, in this case, the description should tell it’s only applied if you don’t have it yet.
I have gotten up to 4+ minutes of swfitness on my engineer juggling low-duration skills over and over again several months ago, and probably could’ve gone higher but got bored. After testing the same rotation of skills I can’t break more than 1.5 minutes, so this is definitely a post-release ninja change.
Not to be mean about it, but that’s not a valid or even provable (or falsifiable) claim without you having documented exactly what you did before. The post here seems to indicate it’s always been there.
Oh really? That’s weird because the hovertext for the Swiftness applied, that icon above your skill bar, says “stacks duration” but it never stacked even if I get swiftness from another source when already having it given from Temporal Curtain.
Assuming this is true, they may have basically cheated with Temporal Curtain, and to make sure you can’t stack TC on itself, made TC set your swiftness stacks to 9, preventing all swiftness stacking until it expires.
would of been easier to just have TC give swiftness once and you can’t get it again from that cast. it’s mechanics are totally different from all other aoe buffs – even other buffs where you gain swiftness from running over a spot on the ground (I believe Symbol of Swiftness is what I’m referring to?)
TC is even worse than just not being stackable. let’s say you get swiftness from TC, then run over SoS 5 seconds later. the swiftness duration meter will reset to 100%, indicating you got more swiftness. but when hovering over it, it only shows 5s remaining.
I see no reason why TC is so special and requires special treatment. except, of course, because I love to yoink people with it.
TC isn’t a pulsing field, so it probably checks if you have swiftness before it would grant you swiftness. You can theoretically receive swiftness twice from the same TC if you lose swiftness (from a boon strip) and run through it again before it expires. This would be the same mechanic as Veil, which has no ally cap because it’s not technically an attack or AoE. I have seen plenty of Mesmers use the same Veil for a second stealth, so I see no reason it wouldn’t be this way with TC.
TC is even worse than just not being stackable. let’s say you get swiftness from TC, then run over SoS 5 seconds later. the swiftness duration meter will reset to 100%, indicating you got more swiftness. but when hovering over it, it only shows 5s remaining.
I don’t know if you are just supposing or stating a fact, but I have tried something like that once (being affected by another boon source while already having swiftness from TC) and no, it didn’t show only a wrong duration on hovertext, the boon really ended when that countdown ended. Another example is when exploring with a friend, at times we both buff swiftness at once (me using TC, they something else) and I usually end with the boon from TC only (as seen by the duration).
I have gotten up to 4+ minutes of swfitness on my engineer juggling low-duration skills over and over again several months ago, and probably could’ve gone higher but got bored. After testing the same rotation of skills I can’t break more than 1.5 minutes, so this is definitely a post-release ninja change.
Not to be mean about it, but that’s not a valid or even provable (or falsifiable) claim without you having documented exactly what you did before. The post here seems to indicate it’s always been there.
You’re right, I made the whole thing up just to mess with you. The dev post clearly stated that this has always been the case, but I thought I could sneak one past you.
