Infiltrator arrow bug

With IA costing 8 ini, leaving thief with no space for mistakes ( already a high skill cap class ) makes this even more annoying than before. After i use IA in certain situation, it wont teleport me. 8 ini gone for nothing is a death sentece for thief. This bug has been here since game release and it looks like it only affects thieves because of the unique mechanic (projectile-teleport) . Maybe fix your bugs before butchering its ini cost.

They don't care. They also can't fix it. They probably would need to change game engine for it which won't happen. What they should have done is maybe to look at DrD and DE but instead they slapped lazy nerf that also affected core builds the most (same goes for engi) and called it a day. This is nothing new, this has been like this for years.

@Scykosix.7836 said:With IA costing 8 ini, leaving thief with no space for mistakes ( already a high skill cap class ) makes this even more annoying than before. After i use IA in certain situation, it wont teleport me. 8 ini gone for nothing is a death sentece for thief. This bug has been here since game release and it looks like it only affects thieves because of the unique mechanic (projectile-teleport) . Maybe fix your bugs before butchering its ini cost.

You sure it's a bug? Projectiles can be blocked and destroyed. In that case the teleport simply won't happen.

@Cynz.9437 said:They don't care. They also can't fix it. They probably would need to change game engine for it which won't happen. What they should have done is maybe to look at DrD and DE but instead they slapped lazy nerf that also affected core builds the most (same goes for engi) and called it a day. This is nothing new, this has been like this for years.

I guess rewriting 6 to 8 in a code is easier than fixing a bug, or come up with something smart that actually makes sense. Instead of trying extra hard because of the Shadowlands expansion stealing GW2 playerbase, they just give up and dont even communicate. They better have a miracle prepared for EOD exp...

@Bazsi.2734 said:You sure it's a bug? Projectiles can be blocked and destroyed. In that case the teleport simply won't happen.

Pretty sure its not a projectile block. The projectile will land, ini wasted, even the animation of the teleport happens but the teleport itself wont happen at all. Also happens quite often on the wooden edge around clocktower in Kyhlo.

@Bazsi.2734 said:

@Scykosix.7836 said:With IA costing 8 ini, leaving thief with no space for mistakes ( already a high skill cap class ) makes this even more annoying than before. After i use IA in certain situation, it wont teleport me. 8 ini gone for nothing is a death sentece for thief. This bug has been here since game release and it looks like it only affects thieves because of the unique mechanic (projectile-teleport) . Maybe fix your bugs before butchering its ini cost.

Even when there are no enemies around? Interesting. I can show you plenty of places on pvp map where sb5 simply doesn't work and eats ini. Blink from mesmers suffers from same issue and it is not projectile.

It's a complex pathing issue. A while back they tried to get community to document the teleport issues in sPvP to get fixes for the sPvP maps, but not a lot of people helped. Originally, they did implement a "fix" that kept your initiative when a skill failed to find a valid path. But that didn't address cases where the path that was found ended up traveling less than 50-100 distance, despite the spot aimed for originally being 900 away. I don't think the game engine can easily test for intended distance versus actual distance otherwise the fix would be pretty easy and implemented long ago.

In WvW the size of the maps makes any kind of testing more onerous and many of us who play that mode are used to memorizing the spots that work and the spots that don't. Same applies to sPvP of course at least as far as memorizing spots is concerned.

Projectile obstruction is another issue, but no less annoying. I can't tell you why the game designers thought hitting someone in melee through a wall makes sense but an invisible obstruction in mid air blocking projectiles is normal.

@Cynz.9437 said:

@Bazsi.2734 said:

@"Scykosix.7836" said:With IA costing 8 ini, leaving thief with no space for mistakes ( already a high skill cap class ) makes this even more annoying than before. After i use IA in certain situation, it wont teleport me. 8 ini gone for nothing is a death sentece for thief. This bug has been here since game release and it looks like it only affects thieves because of the unique mechanic (projectile-teleport) . Maybe fix your bugs before butchering its ini cost.

He said "8 initiative gone is a death sentence", that assumes a scenario where enemies are around. Also I haven't noticed anything like this after playing 25K+ pvp matches and countless hours or zooming around on PvE/WvW maps as thief, which means I'm either suffering from a very selective case of amnesia, or the bug is rare/hard to come by.

However if you can reliably reproduce it, record it and send it to a-net. They oughta fix it, just because I'm not aware of something it doesn't mean it's not real.

@"Cynz.9437" said:They also can't fix it.

They may not be able to "fix it" properly, but they can easily improve the consequence.

All they need to do is refund the initiative spent if the arrow shoots, but the shadowstep fails.

A better solution is to check for an initial valid path before the arrow shoots, and if one is found, then the skill will use a true teleport instead of a shadowstep (which seems to require a second pathfinding operation). Sure, it may allow a Thief a little more flexibility in some situations, but they are rare and limited (shooting an arrow along a cliffside, jumping off the cliff, then transporting back onto the same cliff... again, the arrow would only shoot if there was an initial valid path).

@"Bazsi.2734" said:He said "8 initiative gone is a death sentence", that assumes a scenario where enemies are around.

I can attest that it happens at the most inopportune times, enemies or no. I don't ever remember it happening from a projectile being destroyed, though. It can happen on any given cliff-face/wall/etc. There are no guarantees it will work.

However, there are definitely places where it reliably fails including the following...

1. On Legacy of the Foefire, on the "ramp" going from the Blue base toward the Quarry. You can see different colors on the ground (maybe rocks or dirt). If you hit one of those whIle on the move, the skill fails, and you lose initiative. It happens so much, I learned to just not even try IA there. It was better for me to be a bit slower, but have my initiative still intact.
2. On Eternal Coliseum, going from a spawn point to the side node. If you shoot the circular bricks around the columns, you will most likely lose your initiative there.
3. On Forest of Niflhel, on the section between the two bases, you can easily lose initiative if you shoot certain places. I believe it's usually the path or other off-color sections there.

It's annoying as can be. I'm sure there are many other places that I've had issues with, but those are the main three that have stuck out so much. And yes, randomly hitting spots like that happens too many times with enemies in pursuit, so I know what he means when he says it's a death sentence.

@Bazsi.2734 said:

@Cynz.9437 said:

@Bazsi.2734 said:

@"Scykosix.7836" said:With IA costing 8 ini, leaving thief with no space for mistakes ( already a high skill cap class ) makes this even more annoying than before. After i use IA in certain situation, it wont teleport me. 8 ini gone for nothing is a death sentece for thief. This bug has been here since game release and it looks like it only affects thieves because of the unique mechanic (projectile-teleport) . Maybe fix your bugs before butchering its ini cost.

I did. Plenty of times in the past. There was even thread for that. Guess what. The culprit spots are still there. 3-4 years later.

They did try to change it by making the skill check if it could port before firing the arrow, but it is still possible to fire the arrow, have the game check to see that it can, then move into a space that the port cannot work while the arrow is in flight. Not common, but yeah, it usually results in death when it does happen.

My pain is fighting in Towers/keeps with open wall and not being able to use Steal/Shadowstep/IA through a wall hole. 8 ini for IA is painful but still can live with it.