Guild Wars 2

someone at the higher level fractals guessing the mechanics of the game would help more?

for those who didn’t buy extra slots early on (before DR and when the gold-for-gems rate was literally 7-8x lower) its starting to be a real pain to get extra storage

the rate is now 2.3-2.5g per 100 gems and you need 600 gems for an extra 30 slots. Thats getting close to 15g.. i just spent 8g the other day adding a bag slot and this was the next goal. But 15g is a bit steep, i wish the gem rate would go down

its listed in the patch notes under Dungeon — Fractals
“A Pristine Fractal Relic has been added to the daily rewards for scale 10 and higher. 10 Pristine Fractal Relics can be turned in to Golem Merchant BUY-4373 for an Ascended Ring.”

In Fractal dungeon, you get a “daily” reward for doing the even # levels, ie 10,12,14 etc

has nothing to do with DE chains, only fractal dungeon runs

websites could never be misleading

Lordryux.9785:

Phantasms now initiate combat after .25 seconds instead of one second.

nbad

that’s kind of insane

mosspit.8936:

For Guardian, you can use Shield of the Avenger and Sanctuary. Both of these absorb the bolts and if you managed to get the bubble to overlap Old Tom, most of the bolts can be nullified. I believe Feedback and Wall of Reflection do not work as they reflect projectiles. You need to find skills that absorb them.

nice!

Kirbyprime.2645:

If you have an ele get them to swap to focus and use air 4 to create the projectile nullifying dome.

The CD is fairly long so you can only use it around once ever 2 spins but it’s fairly useful. Plus Ele’s elemental acts as another body to block hits.

also good to know

ill edit the OP tmmrw with the various tips so a future forum/google search might help some people

lol those are horrible reasons offered by Arenanet.

Some people find first person view more immersive (I would argue how could it not be the most immersive?) and thus have ‘more of a bond.. more of an attachment to your character’ as a result of that immersive feeling..

simple as that

Siliconhobbit.4361:

Take it as you will, but personally I feel that their reasoning for no first person view is a poor excuse. Of the majority of games that I have ever played, from first person shooters to action adventure to MMO’s, whether they were online or not, there was always a way to go into first person view. To NOT have that ability in GW2 is an insult to the player base and a slap in the face

I tend to agree. Why make up such a lame excuse and insult people with it. Better to just make the promise of “it will be included in the game eventually” and then keep prolonging the implementation of the feature by simply referring questioners to the “eventually” comment xD

Trollhammer.7439:

The poison doesn’t do much damage, so there is no point to bother with fans. The main damage source is the darts that boss is fanning around. They cannot be reflected, but they can be body blocked. Competent guardian can tank the entire fight (~3-4 cycles given group DPS is alright), while rest stand directly behind him and unload DPS.

Yeah the darts. A competent guardian uses aegis and/or something else? I don’t have a guardian so don’t know exactly what to encourage on a non-competent guardian xD
I thought those darts were poison darts that only shoot around when the gas is active, hence ‘same thing’

Krag.6210:

Notable skills for this boss from what I know:
Mesmer iWarden (Focus phantasm), he absorbs ALL the poison bolts for as long as he’s doing his animation
Guardian blue bubble thingy, absorbs all the bolts too, stay near him while it’s up

The mesmer’s Feedback bubble doesn’t work.

Awesome, that’s great to know. I wonder why iWarden works but feedback bubble doesn’t.. per the descrips on both they both operate against “projectiles”

Also, kudos on the ingenuity to power through tom even with the constant poison xD

Moriganis.9271:

Sorry it’s traited in inspiration (vitality line) – Warden’s Feedback http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Warden%27s_Feedback

gotcha. In theory that would work similar to feedback bubble (specific to projectiles) and the iwarden itself. So perhaps either they all work against some of Tom’s ranged attacks (he has a lightning thingy and the green poison bullets, not sure what else?) or they all work against none of them xD.

Moriganis.9271:

Mesmer traited in toughness I think to include temporal curtain to reflect projectiles also I think the focus phantom can block the projectiles.

The Time Warp usually just place to the side that has most players that can move into it

temporal curtain (focus 4) is just a speed boost (and cripples enemies and or can pull certain enemies into it), shouldnt affect attacks. Don’t see anything related to troughness trait that shields group. iWarden is focus 5 and a nice skill but also specifically works against projectiles, so in theory should have the same effect as feedback which is specific to projectiles as well

I was thinking something very similar to this. right now it can take awhile to find “fotm 17” / “fotm 23” etc, especially the odd numbered ones.

It would fracture the lfg’ers less if grouping was taken into account. I was thinking 5 levels but your idea of 3 level ranges probably makes more sense.

So yeah:
a) 3 level 21s, a lvl 22, and a 23 can group up (difficulty set to 23)
b) everyone moves up 1 level
c) somehow only the 22 gets her/his daily xD

I guess it could only work within a tier. Ie a range of 29/30/31 wouldn’t work because of loot drop tables / agony jump?

Moriganis.9271:

Stay range and strafe left and right to try and dodge them unless the boss’s is not using projectiles or melee can shield from the boss’s projectiles (thief, ]b]mesmer curtain (not feedback bubble – doesnt work[/b])

A mesmer Time Warp helps (Huge pink bubble) quickens all skills to those in it.

which ‘curtain’ skill are you referring to? (I play as a mesmer usually). Good to know feedback doesn’t work, though for some reason i thought it did on at least some of his attacks..

Time warp for sure, though even with a huge radius it prob wont include the 3 corner stationed dps’ers, but only the 2 melee guys near tom. I guess i could type “time warp inc, get in radius pls” so everyone can burst in for a bit after one of the fans are run

Black Wolf.7348:

Most people dont use the tactic shown in the youtube video you have linked.

Good, because that seemed p cheesy if it was “the trick” to do Tom at higher fotm levels.

A couple PUGs ago we had a guy who would just leeroy straight into the room before anyone had the chance to run the crystals. Another time a guy insisted we didnt need to run the crystals first because the boss was easy, etc. A lot can go wrong in PUGs xD. definitely makes sense to run them first so the ranged can concentrate on DPSing rather than running crystals during the fight

ok good to know about 3 dedicated ranged dps’ers at the stations, and that there are precisely 8 crystals

looking for specific tactical advice on this miniboss. At sub-10/15 fotm levels it seemed any random PUG could keyboard smash its way through this guy, but lately (upper teens) it’s caused a couple problems. Ive tried watching a few youtube vids on it, including http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zje6b2jJYA (where the fans dont even work evidently), but none of them actually explain anything, and/or for lower level fotms where little group coordination is required.

Please correct me where I’m wrong as this is my limited understanding on Old Tom:
1) as of Nov 17/18, you can power up the fan on the first try without using the crystals
2) subsequent fan use depends on using a ’poisoned ’crystal in each of the two other power stations
3) Crystals are limited (only 6 to 8?) such that you need to be strategic on using them and not just jam them in constantly
4) Major DPS is key, since once the crystals run out you will be subjected to poison and need to kill the boss before he gets you

So my question to you is, if you found yourself in the role of having to take lead on Tom in a PUG where others aren’t exactly sure what to do, how would you (politely) give direction?

ie is there a scenario where all melee sit on Old Tom and get the heal benefit from a guardian, where 1-2 ranged run the crystals and fan? Does a guardian’s wall of reflection protect against the poison bullets and if so, should he place the wall between Tom and the poison panel. What does the group do if there isn’t a guardian?

Should only 1-2 people be doing the fans/crystals while the other 3-4 focus solely on dps? Should the group gather crystals to the power stations before getting aggro from old tom and then have a) one ranged char in charge of both crystal stations and b) another ranged in charge of fan, while the other 3 just concentrate on DPS?

Thanks! And sorry for the wall of text

HawkMeister.4758:

The local.dat file seems to grow quite a bit over time.
Rename it for safekeeping and see if that will again speed up things.

Interesting idea

Kind of funny, have been thinking lately how the the loading times arent unlike the old floppy disk games – ie waiting 60 secs to move onto a new area, and how the more things change the more they stay the same

at least when going to LA (constant overflow) consisitently

commanders are not “needed” in PvE. If a commander chooses to leave the tag on and get bossy, I suppose the worst thing that could happen is they get a few mean whispers and blocked by certain users

Best advice is if you are wearing a commander tag, do something with it — ie provide a tray of food.. something. Offer curt advice without sounding like a sophomoric egotist. Do something other than bark orders in all caps or you’ll just reinforce why many players dislike 50% of the commanders. Respect has to be earned, whether in WvW or not.. having a commander tag by itself does not command respect

Aberrant.6749:

Just having a single geared 80 of any class will allow you to fund your other alts.

this

to the OP, it depends on what you mean by “farming” for a lgendary. DEs? Dungeons? WvW? Open world single mobs? All classes have strengths and weaknesses in various aspects of the game.

Mesmer is a great solo class, especially levelling to 80, simply because there are few if any situations he can’t escape. Especially when you get to Orr and/or going for map completions on the orr lands. Mesmers can cruise around any map without getting cornered, and get every skill point easily.

Do you mean farming DEs in Orr, ie playing whack-a-mole against groups of mobs, trying to get some damage in before 900 other people do, and fighting against Diminishing Returns? Well, if that’s your idea of fun “farming”, then just get your engi to 80 and use grenades.

If you are going to do dungeons, then any class you like playing will do just fine. To “farm” a legendary requires so much ridiculous miscellaneous stuff that you will need to do all sorts of stuff to get them – dungeon tokens, wvw badges, etc. Having multiple alts will help both keep things fun and allow you to make the most of various arenas depending on class.

10/30/0/0/30

I’d posted a similar question about this a couple weeks ago, with the goal of long-term fotm planning in mind. On another fansite I ran across a guy whose philosophy is:
a) a mesmer is not built to take damage but to avoid damage
b) best defense (other than avoiding stuff via dodging/confusion/etc) is max offense, ie full-on dps to kill stuff as fast as possible to decrease the number of attacks against your group
c) toughness only benefits “you”, not the party (since you are not DPSing max)*
d) eventually fotm difficulty will get so insane that almost everything will one hit a mesmer regardless of defensive traits, so may as well get used to avoiding damage early and practice

*His theory being with “c” above that toughness doesn’t even benefit “you” either, but rather only helps a ‘lazy’ mesmer —- ie one that is taking hits that he could/should have avoided via mesmer-specific skills and enemy-anticipation skills. Now.. add onto this that vitality doesn’t help much, at least with respect to agony (since it’s a percentage of HP hit) and the diminishing dps you get from investing in it, and there is an argument for full dps fotm mesmer IF one can pull it off.

Which he did. I saw a vid of him with only 5% agony res in a 28 and he did it no problem. Saw another one with him doing a 36 without issues. After that, i was sold on his philosophy and am feebly trying to emulate it. It just rang true for some reason. So far i’m not even close to his ‘skill’ level but I still believe in his philosophy and will keep at it.

Here’s where i came across him: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/75587-12-fractals-build/page__st__30

I’m still in my teens and usually only die from ignorance/slow reflex. The only time i felt glass cannon mesmer was a liability was in a PUG against the grawl boss on 15 (or something) and we were all glass cannons of various non-guardian/non-warrior professions, and we just couldn’t survive. A few other spots in fractals give a hard time, but (hopefully) that’s where practice comes in with respect to anticipation. Perhaps recent vids of people soloing certain bosses lend credence to the ‘avoid with practice’ type mentality.

I like the idea of there being a DE that results in the downing of the champ karka, with perhaps a chest for the champ karka as well. There could be a gate/wall protecting the rich ori treasure that is only open for a small time window once the champ is down. That would at least get some interested in grouping to ‘move the chains’.

As it stands now, there is zero incentive to take the champ karka down. The only people who go for the ori are the ones who can avoid it.. and it sure must be nice to be able to tank with a ranger pet….

So yeah, putting a champ karka down was a good step 1. But there seems to be a lot of room for improvement here to make southsun fun / worth going to

Quick Mouse.7635:

I do. I usually get a couple rares and maybe a lodestone or exotic from jormag event. Here’s a dragon timer for you.

http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/

haven’t for awhile, but will again now some due to the above tool xD

DarksunG.9537:

I often wonder what would happen to people like this if you lived in a situation that actually deserved real criticisms… like you were put under a dictator or police state or something & you didn’t have basic rights & were imprisoned for talking or reading books etc… I think your head would literally implode..

depends if they had internet access in the gulag or not

Ualtar.5047:

One of my favorite little things with this game is that the cannon fodder attacks each other. To many other games have wolves and meat side by side and they never fight.

Same. I loved it at lower levels with hearts/waypoints/map completions… trying to instigate a fight between reds and yellows xD. Had to get in quick before the yellows took ’em down

gogoapoxy.1425:

A mesmer themed area, full of randomized invis walls and traps…kind of like Cube

That sounds awesome xD. As does

… pirate style fractal would be good fun specially a boarding action along with it or maybe a floating castle

A karka hive infiltration, ala Aliens, could be fun

It’s going to be tough to beat anyone falling from jade maw or other fotm. What was the damage from falling from the airship in Arah story? Not sure if it was quite the fall as jade maw, but perhaps close

Ravenmoon.5318:

I won’t use a website built by a 3rd party in 15 minutes.

occam’s razor

the site is a very good temp alternative until Anet does their own. gw2lfg doesnt require a login or anything, just simple text fields for name and dungeon/level

Heliox.8632:

One of my findings is as you reach higher level fractals, the number of yellows that you get seems to drastically drop. I get more yellows doing my 20 dailies on 2 toons than i do doing 30+ progression.

which makes me wonder why people bother to run high-level fractals if that is the case. Just to stock up on frac pieces and/or for the challenge?

Seems like loot should be higher at the higher levels. Why do a loop of:
A) do higher level frac to get ascended gear to run higher level frac
B) goto A

I find the idea of illusions using pistols abhorrent/aesthetically unpleasing and refuse to partake, despite effectiveness

there needs to be someone who understands/plays/actually actively enjoys mesmers in the QA process.

Perhaps QA is comprised of warrior and thief players? GW2 sets itself apart from other rpgs by its revolutionary warrior and thief classes, not sure where else but GW2 a gamer could get a chance to play those classes. Its good to see GW2s focus is on them

just had this happen for the first time ever last night… stuck loading LA. Had to ctl-alt-delete

Bite the bullet and just rollback. Anytime a patch introduces more (substantial/playerbase maddening) problems than it fixes, you are doing a disservice by letting the problems persist. Rollback, have someone in QA actually test the mesmer, fix, retest, then redeploy. How did QA miss this one?

Okuza.5210:

IMHO, abilities that help you avoid hits completely are far superior to anything that helps you take a hit. This is mostly because unless it’s a relatively weak target, the hits are going to still really hurt. This includes your own skill at avoiding damage through dodging and just plain moving around away from things that want to hurt you.

For me, that’s just moving and using Decoy. Others also use blink and even portals as well, which I thought was pretty clever when I heard about using portal defensively..

That seems to be a recurring theme upon more research. Was planning on weaning myself into glass cannon bit by bit, starting with a little vit/healing. Had respec’d to 20/10/10/20/10 yesterday to get some vit/healing along with GS and Focus 20% recharge bonus/phantasm reflect and spent 42k karma on grenth power/toughness/vit robe. Then i came across this thread re fotm and vit: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Why-does-agony-punish-vitality-builds. lol xD

So need to re-evaluate. I like the idea of complete damage avoidance / feedback stuff (kind of why i like the iwarden buff and projectile reflection with Inspiration) but yeah, may instead just ditch Inspiration altogether or drop to 10 and keep purity or medic’s feedback (the latter which can be p huge against some bosses in fotm) ..especially now with the note on vitality in fotm.

Mimic/decoy/stealth/blink/feedback/distortion, portal, dodge… perhaps ill look for a max ‘complete avoidance’ /dps hybrid build, lols. Unfortunately, my laptop gets sub-10 fps and my reflexes are slowing down with age, which makes for a bad combo, espesh in fotm. I saw this video and even with only 5 agony resist at lvl 36., he makes glass cannon look so easy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZgS1-4npAKU. me jealous

@bob, hey now that’s an interesting build. Do you use it fotm and if so, what level?

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I will do more research based on your steeerings. And apologies again for the shotgun approach OP.

Adenos.3018:

Centaur runes make no sense in fractals, since most of your time will be spent fighting, not running, and you don’t want to waste your heals for a swiftness buff that won’t be done when you reach the next point.

Without centaur runes (which i am happy to avoid for dungeons), how does/can a mesmer get speed in addition to switching to the focus? I dislike being the last one to get though the woods in snowblind (for example)*

Does the superior sigil of water do any good? That’s probably been discussed in other posts though.. I like the idea of helping people rez/heal quicker to keep party upright

Adenos.3018:

This link talks about several different builds that mesmers run in higher level fractals:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/75587-12-fractals-build/

ooh nice link, thanks. Funny how some say toughness is “useless” on a mesmer and some love it xD, for fotm.

*I’m watching the “frac 36: DPS mesmer” vid from that thread right now, and i notice the narrator seems to be doing just fine with only the intermittent speed bonus from focus

hah thanks for this, spent a half hour or so in lost shores today as a result. Had stopped coming until read this post.

First time using mimic too.. like above poster I’m not sure what exactly it does or if it overlaps with feedback / iwarden

I’ve been avoiding dungeons as much as possible, but now end up in fotm a fair bit. The mesmer only goes into wvw as a portal/siege kill monkey (I use a different char for wvw 95% of the time)

So could use some advice on build/armor, with the main goal of survivability I suppose. I do like to keep a little mf on him in places where he can get away with it

Should he use the karma power/toughness/vit sets, with maybe some power/toughness/condition pieces as well? Tbh i dont know how toughness and condition interrelate (other than something in a trait line that gives 5% bonus from toughness to condition or something?), but that’s a separate matter.

His biggest help in fotm seems to be Feedback/portal/iwarden, so I’d like to trait him for supportish role (is signet of inspiration the only useful party signet?) with survivability. I’m also trying to get some speed on him.. relying on the focus speed burst just isn’t enough

right now he’s got pirate runes and im wondering if he can keep those until fotm 20 or so, or if i need to switch to centaur or something.. I do want to keep some mf on him somewhere in addition to food, if possible, otherwise not sure how much sense it makes to hit fotm dailies.

yeah i know this post is all over the place.. sorry about that. My mesmer is fun as hell, but I’m still p nub in terms of build, despite research (which ends up glamour builds/ shatter builds/ etc). Not sure if what I’m looking for fits into a nice neat category

why are some people saying the drop rate for orr events have jumped way up while others are saying it’s way down?

Nhalx.9735:

50G from farming 3 days straight.
MF gear with Food —- 161%

Best bet is, to farm the events in orr, or other possible locations.

Aside of that dungeons can lift quite a remarkable amount aswell if you get decent groups.

There’s plenty of other alternatives, just wouln’t know of them right now.

how can u make that much from farming orr events and still avoid the anti-bot loot nerf mechanisms?

I fell down there too. Seems like you can jump down there from the last few floating stones on the last ‘bridge’ to the jade maw platform.

I “do wish” there was a way to die down there, ie even a puddle of lava / water lake / anything so that you don’t waste your fractal run.

Its a big area down there, but not much to see. Would be better if you could die if choose to once down there so fotm party can choose to wipe to checkpoint

In WvW, if you occassionally happen to get an annoying commander you prefer not to hear bark orders in all caps (or whatever), can you not right-click on them and block them? When i try, I only get the ‘report’ option… Perhaps this is just chat function/limitation specific to WvW chat and not just commanders?

Can you still manually add them to your block list?

Mayam.8976:

Somewhere, right now on the continent of Africa there is an ant hill with a bunch of ants probably living in it – I care more about those ants than I do anyone having a commander’s pin active outside of the WvW maps, a LOT more relatively. If by some mystic circumstance I was offered a choice to have the ability to turn every commander’s pin in the entire GW2 playing universe on or off at my whim, or to extend the life of just one of those ants by 5 mins – that’s a lucky ant with 5 more minutes of being an ant to enjoy

What if it was a commander ant that forgot to stop spraying pheromones whilst back inside the hive/anthill?

MithranArkanere.8957:

I’m drafting a suggestion about commanders an Honor that should address the issue satisfactorily. And I’ll post it when I like what I have.

Awesome idea. There needs to be a ranking system so the good commanders can shine and the bad ones can be made to disappear (or at least be blocked)

I fell down there last night and since didn’t die upon landing.. ran around the whole area looking for a way to die.

It ‘seemed’ like some of the rendered areas were somewhat familiar/already present in game – ie the bottom level of a dredge cave and the bottom level of a major city (divinity reach?).

Unfortunately those levels were inaccessible, as were a few mobs i could see but not get aggro from. Nor were the water borders available to drown in. Such a tease.

This happened when we purposely wiped because someone had legitimately fell. When i suicide jumped, it was on the last couple cube bridge stone to jade maw. It was a long fall.. about the same as when jumping from an airship during the Arah story/dragon fight

LordByron.8369:

Is that supposed to be another future fractal wip?
Did anyone read what is written? (the writing is huge so you have to screen it before you land).

ooh i didnt notice the letters

MyGWAccount.7325:

my group is at fotm 46 and 3 of our members are using mf gear to my knowledge minus rings and back piece for final bosses.

armour doesnt do anything to reduce agony damage so i am fine with everyone running w/e they want. if u get hit with agony u will experience the full extent of it.

at fotm 4x with 30 resist getting hit by agony will down you and at maw it will be a guaranteed death, we however kept one of our guardians alive with two spirits rezzes and everyone else on rez duty.

im sure with fully infused mf rings and backpiece option the full mf gear would be a viable option for any level.

nice!

Tulisin.6945:

tl;dr – Full MF gear is sort of insane, but not using MF gear is kind of insane in the opposite way, might as well get the cheap MF and leave the expensive MF.

I see what u mean and that does indeed make sense

There are plenty of horrible commanders out there.. as if spending 100g gives people the “right” to type horrible advice in ALL CAPS on wvw maps and expect respect in return.

Even so, arbitrary random commander hatred is pointless. Specific commander hatred much more on point xD. There are some good commanders out there, for sure. But there are plenty of them who are useless at best

I’m not sure why people would hate the icon itself, unless they think a commander is specifically leaving it on in cities to show off?

Perhaps some of the “hate” is backlash from many who already have bosses in RL and don’t like being bossed around in game either

Aldred.9345:

.. whatever number we post here someone else will come along and LOL at us and then add +20 to it..

haha so true xP. fotm 20+ sounds reasonable, thanks for the feedback xD

Dahkeus.8243:

Until MF starts making a real significant difference, I don’t think this can be justified.

One of my chars (MF + omnom) consistently gets 3-5 yellows per run whereas other char (no mf but some omnom) consistently gets 0-2. Personally I find mf justified, at least from limited sample size on fotm runs. Have yet to run any 20+ fotms though..

Dependent on both group-and-individual expertise, certainly, but… have people found a threshold of fotm level where full mf gear becomes untenable, assuming a solid group?

I wonder if there are people running fotm 40+ still in mf gear?

Jericho.5940:

1 ] Ascalon: ….. If you’re lucky to know a good mesmer will save you 5 min at the gate.

2] Dredge: ….. We always go back and forth to better utilize the banner and also with shorter run distance.

3] Jade maw: Crystal has unlimited range once charged. You don’t have to use it when u get the charge so that it buys you time to stock up. …… Try to stock up some crystals before u end the fight.

Thanks for the tips. Questions re:
1] How does a mesmer get you through the gate/ save you 5 mins? It can portal you through a closed gate?

2] which banner are you referring to? The warrior one you previously mentioned? (dont think ive been in an fotm that used banner at dredge yet). Is that banner placed right in the middle between the two cauldrons?

3] I still dont understand the crystal respawn/despawn times. I swear the game despawns crystals just as soon as i get the red death icon xD. What causes crystals to spawn (the vet adds?). Once a crystal is on the ground, how long does it stay there before despawning? If u pick one up and carry it for a bit and then drop it… does that fully reset the despawn timer or instead just where the timer was before you had picked the crystal up?

ty ty ty

This part didn’t used to seem hard, but lately its become a little more interesting.

I’m assuming its best if only 1 or 2 members are on “bomb detail” while the other 3-4 take all the aggro?

If so, does it make sense to have one or 2 aggro-takers up by the wall mob group and the other 1-2 aggro-takers down by the stair mob group? It seems like there are two distinct sets of mobs.. do they both respawn at the same rate?

Thanks in advance. Once one or two party members die, all hell seems to break loose xD

these are just fancy cartoons, not real life. That’s the kicker

awesome, thanks for the feedback

I did not know one could hold onto the crystal “indefinitely” after it being charged by the beam