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Behavior of Soothing Mist from multiple sources


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So I was in a squad with another tempest and I couldn’t help but notice that when I scroll over the Soothing Mist buff, that the source kept “Changing” and going back and forth between mine and theirs.

Has anyone tested how The Soothing Mist buff stacks when there’s more than one tempest?

My hypothesis is that I’m pretty sure that it seems to stack but not in the traditional sense of stacking. I think it applies your soothing mist to everyone and it trades soothing mist pulses per tempest so that everyone receives healing from both tempests without losing any healing

Anyone have insight into this behavior?

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@juno.1840 said:Does not stack -- that's a fact. I believe the highest soothing mist ticks will win out of two sources of SM are available.

How it's targeted to your 5 players vs. another ele's 5 players may be described on the wiki.

We're you able to test it? I read the wiki and looked up pretty much every thread that talks about soothing mist and i couldn't find anyone that's talked about how it stacks.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@juno.1840 said:Does not stack -- that's a fact. I believe the highest soothing mist ticks will win out of two sources of SM are available.

How it's targeted to your 5 players vs. another ele's 5 players may be described on the wiki.

We're you able to test it? I read the wiki and looked up pretty much every thread that talks about soothing mist and i couldn't find anyone that's talked about how it stacks.

I guarantee it doesn't stack -- it's been tested many times.

You don't see any player effects stack. This includes the precision buff from Rangers, the vampiric buff from Necros, the toughness buff from Guardian, etc. -- they're all the same mechanic (identical to soothing mist). None of these effects stack (all have been tested multiple times). It makes no sense for the them to stack and it would be bad game design if they did stack.

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@juno.1840 said:

@juno.1840 said:Does not stack -- that's a fact. I believe the highest soothing mist ticks will win out of two sources of SM are available.

How it's targeted to your 5 players vs. another ele's 5 players may be described on the wiki.

We're you able to test it? I read the wiki and looked up pretty much every thread that talks about soothing mist and i couldn't find anyone that's talked about how it stacks.

I guarantee it doesn't stack -- it's been tested many times.

You don't see any player effects stack. This includes the precision buff from Rangers, the vampiric buff from Necros, the toughness buff from Guardian, etc. -- they're all the same mechanic (identical to soothing mist). None of these effects stack (all have been tested multiple times). It makes no sense for the them to stack and it would be bad game design if they did stack.

Ya, but like i said in the OP, the soothing mist source seems to alternate between myself and another ele in a squad. That's why i'm wondering about this behaviour. You're right in that it wouldn't make SENSE for it to stack based on other abilities, but i've never seen my sources switch from one to the other with other buffs. Usually buffs overrite the previous buff, but if soothmists overwrites another's soothing mist, when it's a healing ability, how can that possibly work? you cant overwrite a heal that's already happened.

That's why i insist on it being tested. Again it's likely that the effect doesn't stack, but it really isn't a certainty that it doesn't.

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Okay, a definitive answer.

I went and tested out this behavior.

  • 1) Soothing mist buff will alternate between one source and the other every second! (rather than every 3 seconds). In my test, Soothing mist favored the other ele's buff over my own buff. So once Soothing mist refreshes, i heal myself for X amount of healing from soothing mist, and then the next two ticks is healing from the other ele's soothing mist ticks before the buff refreshes again. This behavior was very consistent on choosing the other ele's healing over my own.

  • 2) Soothing mist does not stack. Instead, when more than one ele is present, and the soothing mist buff is maintained on a group, receiving soothing mist healing from multiple sources, it will indeed cut the effectiveness of that healing (If you are not the "favored" ele, you will do 2/3's(-66%) less healing while the other ele will do 1/3 less healing (-33%)

Now, how does the game determine who is the favored ele? I have absolutely no idea.

  • 3) Another odd behavior is that even though the other ele had 0 healing power, he was healing more per packet than i was at 1800 healing power... this was an unexpected result, and so this result should specifically be tested for in a controlled environment.

My hypothesis on this is that the opposing ele was using MY healing power stats rather than his own, when soothing mist ticked on his healing packets. As for my own healing packets i healed significantly less (about -50%) of his, and sometimes about -20%. In all cases mine was lower than his. Extremely odd, but this test was conducted in a upleveled zone outside of lions arch (The other ele was level 61, and i was max level 80)

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GW2 prioritization for targeting is based upon a few things (which have been stated previously by Devs):

  • Who is in your party
  • Who provides the greatest effect (in this case, who's SM ticks highest)
  • Who doesn't have the effect already

Soothing Mist ticks every 3 seconds instead of every 1 second -- this means a player might not register as having Soothing Mist except on those 3 second ticks points. This might explain your test results as follows:

  1. At 1s: You apply SM to a target because the target has no SM effect and you have the highest SM healing. Your SM ticks right away
  2. At 2s: another ELE applies SM because your SM is not ticking -- so the target appears to not have the effect
  3. At 3s: nobody's SM is ticking so target does not receive a new SM
  4. At 4s: Repeat at step 1 because your SM is ready to tick

The targeting you are seeing is definitely weird, but keep in mind the bullet points at the beginning of this post.

If you're in a squad, this shouldn't be an issue because you'll target your party, and another ele will target their party (assuming everyone is within range). If you're in a single party, then consider having only one ele run water. It's similar to those other effects I mentioned for guardian, necro, ranger, etc. Those effects are up all the time and team players will switch up traits so only one player is applying the buff in the party.

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