Real talk: Roller Beetle

[Oglaf.1074]

What's the verdict on it? Is it a proper, generally useful mount worth bothering with or is it just another Skimmer/Bunny that you just bust out when you absolutely have to bypass a mount-specific obstacle?

[FrizzFreston.5290]

Great for long distances, not so much for short distances.

Definitely a land griffon feeling. If you like the griffon flying, just becausr, then racing around on a rollerbeetle is equal to that. At least imo.

[Endless Soul.5178]

So far, I've really only found it useful for fast travel across a map (As in, from one side to the other), and the occasional race circuit. Other than that, I'm still using my other five mounts as needed.

That 15 second spool-up is really far too long to make the beetle mount useful for anything else other than a quick smash through mobs.

[Vavume.8065]

It's even less useful than the skimmer or bunny... I think it's great they are trying to create new mount types, it's just I don't find the beetle at all useful, it's either to fast or to slow for standard everyday riding.

[Danikat.8537]

I haven't unlocked the beetle yet but I did do a bounty train with lots of people who had it and really noticed I was lagging behind on my raptor. It didn't help that the commander had a beetle so he was probably choosing routes that were better for the beetle than the raptor, but the difference was huge. (Luckily it didn't matter because the commander was very strict that only he took the bounty contract and then he'd hang back from activating it until everyone was there.)

But as someone who doesn't actually like to zoom across a map as fast as possible most of the time, because I'd rather take my time and look around as I'm going along, I can see myself using it sparingly. I already use the jackal or even the skimmer more than the raptor - for the slight increase in speed and the novelty without going so fast I worry I might miss something.

[Zephyr.5382]

Barring Kourna, you don't currently need to use the beetle to overcome obstacles in any map. In my opinion, it's just a novelty--albeit, a super fun one! I don't regret unlocking it.

[Curunen.8729]

lol, Skimmer and bunny are my favourite mounts together with the Beetle.

One for casual floating over everything (effortless), one for going fast over land (fun), one to get up obstacles (useful).

[JDub.1530]

Beetle is useful. It's scope may be narrower than most mounts, but it does excel in some areas. Long distances, as already stated. Say you've just auto-leveled a new character to 80 and you need to unlock waypoints. Also remember that beetles will accelerate down hill. So if you mount at the top on an incline, it can help overcome the windup time of the boost.

I also feel it has the highest skillcap of all mounts. You need to not only know its capabilities and limitations, but also be able to assess the terrain at a moment's notice and how to exploit it. It's kind of fun just taking it around to various maps and see how it performs in each one.

[Biff.5312]

Skimmer and bunny are the most useful, after the raptor. It's the coyote that is only needed to get past a mount-specific obstacle.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

First, the Roller Beetle is super fun... and I'm not even able to do make use of more than 4% of its potential.

Second, it's also a bit too soon for most people to evaluate it. I remember feeling that the Jackal was a novelty, too, until I learned how to use the shadow-stepping abilities to do my bidding. That was even more true for the Griffon. I loved flying from great heights, but had trouble landing and aiming (heck, still have some trouble with that). Now, I love both of these mounts, too, and use them regularly.

Finally, without being able to do much on the Beetle, I have used it successfully to traverse long maps (even ones with obstacles). I was able to go from Div Reach to Shadow Behemoth on a fogged map nearly as fast as it took a friend to waypoint (mostly because they forgot where to go at first). It's amazingly fast, even if I have trouble maintaining its speed.

The main thing I'll need to figure out (besides just how to drive like Vin Diesel's character) is to anticipate wanting to use it 10 seconds beforehand. The special features of the other mounts are available on-demand, so I'll need more time to adjust to it.

Short story: love it; might need another 3-4 months before I'll know if it will be relegated to tiny niche use or something more substantive.

[GDchiaScrub.3241]

Breaks my immersion.

D:

[Knighthonor.4061]

@FrizzFreston.5290 said:Great for long distances, not so much for short distances.

Definitely a land griffon feeling. If you like the griffon flying, just becausr, then racing around on a rollerbeetle is equal to that. At least imo.

I disagree. Raptor is still better

[Klipso.8653]

Not useful

[Palador.2170]

The Beetle's spot isn't with your level 80, "I've been everywhere" character. It's with alts.

You enter a new map, and zoom around for a while grabbing some waypoints here and there. Or get to that event on the far side of the map that you have no local waypoint for. Once you've done that, you can use the other mounts to help fill in the details.

Of course, there's also riding it for fun. It can be fun.

Finally, the attack is the worst of all of the mount attacks. It's hard to target, and will often leave you well out of melee range of whatever you were attacking. But not so far away that you can fight safely at range.

[Hyper Cutter.9376]

It's incredibly niche. It's really good at traversing long stretches of relatively flat land... and not much else. The massive wait for the endurance bar to fill really hurts it (also the god-awful turning radius).

Also for some reason doing tricks always seems to reduce your endurance bar instead of filling it, I'm not sure if that's a bug or what.

[MetalGirl.2370]

I find it useless....by the time your bar fills to use the speed, I'll be there already with my raptor or jackal.

[FrizzFreston.5290]

@Hyper Cutter.9376 said:It's incredibly niche. It's really good at traversing long stretches of relatively flat land... and not much else. The massive wait for the endurance bar to fill really hurts it (also the god-awful turning radius).

Also for some reason doing tricks always seems to reduce your endurance bar instead of filling it, I'm not sure if that's a bug or what.

Maybe you need to do tricks while in the air, otherwise when youre still doing a trick as you land you lose endurance.

[maddoctor.2738]

I use the beetle when I want to run from point A to point B fast, it's much faster than the Raptor or Jackal if no jumps are required. So it's amazing in most Core Tyria maps and most Path of Fire maps. Of course it's not as useful in Heart of Thorns (too many obstacles).If you can find a slope, the beetle will accelerate super fast without the need to use the special skill, saving you the need for endurance. Another good ability of the beetle is that it can glide on water like the skimmer, provided it reaches a high enough speed, perfect to traverse lakes and rivers without changing to another mount, plus it's much faster at that point than the skimmer.

[Steve The Cynic.3217]

@"Hyper Cutter.9376" said:(also the god-awful turning radius).

Drifting is your friend. You need a little lead time, but the basic procedure is:

• Start the turn using mouse-2 and drag so that you are looking in the direction you want to go afterwards.
• Briefly hold the second-mount-skill button (mine is set to "S" but I believe the default is "C")
• RELEASE the button. Do not hold it for more than a second or so.

@FrizzFreston.5290 said:Maybe you need to do tricks while in the air, otherwise when youre still doing a trick as you land you lose endurance.

The other point on tricks is that you cannot activate tricks if the boost phase is still active. Again, you need a little lead time, since you want the boost phase to still be active right up until the moment you leave the ground, but not a moment later.

[Remus Darkblight.1673]

@Hyper Cutter.9376 said:It's incredibly niche. It's really good at traversing long stretches of relatively flat land... and not much else. The massive wait for the endurance bar to fill really hurts it (also the god-awful turning radius).

Also for some reason doing tricks always seems to reduce your endurance bar instead of filling it, I'm not sure if that's a bug or what.

You have to complete the trick to gain endurance. If you land before completing the trick you take an endurance penalty.The turning circle can be overcome somewhat if you get good at the drifting mechanic.

[Manpag.6421]

I use a lot of alts. I do a lot of map completion. The beetle may take a while to get going, but I can almost always find enough of a gentle gradient to get the speed higher than a raptor's in seconds, without having to boost. I'm no expert at drifting, but it really is a godsend for completing maps quickly. I've started completing maps in two stages: using a combination of beetle and griffon to get the waypoints and PoIs as efficiently as possible, then going back for hearts and hero points.

If you're hopping on and off it's not that useful, but for any extended travel I actually find it more useful than the griffon. At least you can get full speed in more than just a handful of maps with enough elevation.

[Brother.1504]

@Oglaf.1074 said:What's the verdict on it? Is it a proper, generally useful mount worth bothering with or is it just another Skimmer/Bunny that you just bust out when you absolutely have to bypass a mount-specific obstacle?

The Roller Beetle mount is great. Btw I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the Skimmer and Springer, those mounts are extremely useful.

[AliamRationem.5172]

It's definitely faster over distances. The problem is that if you want to stop for any reason (e.g. harvesting, chests, etc.) - or even if you don't and simply get dismounted by enemies (no evade) or slowed by terrain (uphill physics are terrible and the beetle can't jump) - you have to wait 15 seconds every time. Between overlap with other mounts (raptor/jackal over shorter distances, griffon where high speed flight is applicable), waypoints, and terrain limitations the beetle is impractical to use in most situations and just feels bad while you're waiting forever to boost your speed.

It's worth getting, but I find it the most limited mount and the one I enjoy the least. They should really do something about that ridiculously long wait. Either make it shorter or change it so that you don't start with 0 endurance and can use a partial speed boost in some way.

[Carighan.6758]

I actually like how it doesn't truly have a niche (it only excels on super-long-distance travel over flat ground, which waypoints do a lot better and faster).

Because, this way, the "proper" mounts don't get superceded by further additions which are - frankly - a pain to get now that interest in the new map has tapered off significantly. Rightfully so, considering how unfinished it is. Give it a few months, and it'll be ~impossible to get the meta step of this for most players without way-early organization, it's better if this mount is quite unnecessary for functionality.

[Felipe.1807]

Is just a fun mount, not really usefull at all...like the griffon you need to much preperation(right terrain) to get its full potential...so yeah, Raptor is much better...also Bettle is more like High Risk/Reward kind of mount...need to learn how it works(drift) or else you wont be able to make to much use of super speed and gonna end up hitting wall 100% of the time lol. And if your machine have low settings(like mine) Bettle is gonna be so fast that the game will have trouble loading...so yeah in the end even being faster I end up having FPS problems and I get slowed down, something that wouldnt happen with Raptor or Jackal.