Thoughts on Skimmer Diving

[Ayrilana.1396]

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@LucianDK.8615 said:Move forward and hold space.

Are you certain that's a speed boost? It feels like the same function as above water, and

that

isn't a speed boost but a way to hop over obstacles, no? I don't feel a difference in speed when using it.

It’s not a speed boost; they’re mistaken.

[Curunen.8729]

I like how underwater weapons are still shown stowed when moving from water onto land.

Helps to imagine how they could be if we get eg spear or something on land...

[Donari.5237]

@jungsowon.2074 said:

I just use Q for Mount Ability 1 and E for Mount Ability 2. That way it's close to the movement keys! But this is a great setup too!

Ah, but I have mapped my movement to the arrow keys which in turn are mapped to the side of my mouse :) And Q is my Special Action key so I can hit it in the fraction of a second I get while my fingers are on the weapon keys. But indeed, everyone has their own preferences and intuitive reflexes.

There's a note that they've fixed the adventure, so it's time for me to head in game and try to complete the unlock, hurray!

[Vision.7265]

@Ashantara.8731 said:I like it, but I am not utterly impressed by it. The animations are exactly the same as above water, which is fine, but I am diving just as fast with my +20 Swim Infusion as I do with the Skimmer now, so hmm.

I think I'll stick to swimming, it is more fun and you are always ready to fight or harvest while you're exploring.

I totally agree on this point. If you can pass the last step with just swim infusions (which require no mount), then what was the point of this feature? Although I am thankful for them adding it to skimmer and got it only a few hours after release, I am underwhelmed that the swim infusions match mounted speed. It needs a beetle turbo underwater or something to separate it from regular swim infusions.

One thing I appreciate about it is the sounds of diving into water and rising above water. It's as if you really are swimming and it matches the same sound exactly. Really great job simulating the sound. I also like the camera splash drops. Well done.

[Vision.7265]

@LucianDK.8615 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@LucianDK.8615 said:Did you hold down the boost?

I can't find a Boost option. :/ Space just lifts me up towards the surface. What am I missing?

Move forward and hold space. Sure it goes upwards a bit, but its still fast ahead and you can course correct for a moment by ceasing to boost and going down.

Is it like a beetle boost? Or is it more like the skyscale 'dive' with 1?

[Witch of Doom.5739]

@Zaraki.5784 said:What are the best ways to farm those 2 million exp required?

It sure isn't by doing the PoF story on another character. I dug up a toon that hadn't done it, and after one complete story chapter, my mastery skill bar went up one whole percent. 1%. One. Don't waste your time on that!

[Teratus.2859]

It's a simply QOL update but I love that we finally have an underwater mount.

I didn't waste my time or money on those swim speed infusions since they can barely give you much more over a general movespeed buff anyway and they can get stupidly expensive, not to mention the chests are bugged for me and I havent been able to open them in months so.. yea underwater skimmer is very welcome.

[Curunen.8729]

@XYLO.7031 said:[snip]One thing I appreciate about it is the sounds of diving into water and rising above water. It's as if you really are swimming and it matches the same sound exactly. Really great job simulating the sound. I also like the camera splash drops. Well done.

Yeah the audio team nailed this one.

The diving/resurfacing and other sound effects are amazing!

[Vision.7265]

@Zaraki.5784 said:What are the best ways to farm those 2 million exp required?

Dragonfall easy. Add XP boosts and it goes quicker: guild exp pot from tavern, ascended food, exp banners, and the xp item you get free from logins and BAM... easy 2 mil. Just under an hour with all that going on at Dragonfall meta.

Without boosts, my buddy said two full DF metas with chest event chain and lazy leeching (he said he mostly got bronze chests for event completion at dragonfall, lol).

[Ayrilana.1396]

Adventures give quick XP. You can also do some of the metas that have a lot of enemies which you can kill. Istan and Sandswept Isle are good options.

LS4 dailies award 12.5K XP per chest as well. This was actually the route that I went with but I started farming them weeks ago so I could instantly have the mastery complete once unlocked.

[Ashantara.8731]

@XYLO.7031 said:Is it like a beetle boost? Or is it more like the skyscale 'dive' with 1?

It's a myth. The following is fact:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:

Are you certain that's a speed boost?

It feels like the same function as above water, and

that

isn't a speed boost but a way to hop over obstacles, no? I don't feel a difference in speed when using it.

It’s not a speed boost; they’re mistaken.

:+1:

@XYLO.7031 said:One thing I appreciate about it is the sounds of diving into water and rising above water. It's as if you really are swimming and it matches the same sound exactly. Really great job simulating the sound. I also like the camera splash drops. Well done.

I agree. That was indeed extremely well done :)

re: Farming XP

I finished it in a very short time last night (using a XP boost). I started out by farming mobs at the Crystal Desert (while also farming tons materials along the way), doing Hero Challenges and Hearts there (which gave a lot of XP) as well as smaller events. It was fun. The remaining ~30% I got by collecting Volatile Magic across Thunderhead Peaks. Easy peasy. :)

[Sir Alric.5078]

@XYLO.7031 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:I like it, but I am not utterly impressed by it. The animations are exactly the same as above water, which is fine,

but

I am diving

just as fast

with my +20 Swim Infusion as I do with the Skimmer now, so hmm.

I think I'll stick to swimming, it is more fun and you are always ready to fight or harvest while you're exploring.

I totally agree on this point. If you can pass the last step with just swim infusions (which require no mount), then

what was the point of this feature

? Although I am thankful for them adding it to skimmer and got it only a few hours after release, I am underwhelmed that the swim infusions match mounted speed. It needs a beetle turbo underwater or something to separate it from regular swim infusions.

One thing I appreciate about it is the sounds of diving into water and rising above water. It's as if you really are swimming and it matches the same sound exactly. Really great job simulating the sound. I also like the camera splash drops. Well done.

Please don't just assume that everyone bothered to get those swim infusions. I didn't, and i'm sure i'm not the only one. ;)

[LucianDK.8615]

Do remember that silver has barely been achievable with movement speed boosts for when swimming. Gold is clearly needing the working mount.

[Mewcifer.5198]

@Sir Alric.5078 said:

@XYLO.7031 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:I like it, but I am not utterly impressed by it. The animations are exactly the same as above water, which is fine,

but

I am diving

just as fast

with my +20 Swim Infusion as I do with the Skimmer now, so hmm.

I think I'll stick to swimming, it is more fun and you are always ready to fight or harvest while you're exploring.

I totally agree on this point. If you can pass the last step with just swim infusions (which require no mount), then

what was the point of this feature

? Although I am thankful for them adding it to skimmer and got it only a few hours after release, I am underwhelmed that the swim infusions match mounted speed. It needs a beetle turbo underwater or something to separate it from regular swim infusions.

One thing I appreciate about it is the sounds of diving into water and rising above water. It's as if you really are swimming and it matches the same sound exactly. Really great job simulating the sound. I also like the camera splash drops. Well done.

Please don't just assume that everyone bothered to get those swim infusions. I didn't, and i'm sure i'm not the only one. ;)

Yeah, the infusions were a pain to get and, last I checked, expensive to buy. Plus they require a slot in ascended gear to use.

[Ashantara.8731]

@Teratus.2859 said:I didn't waste my time or money on those swim speed infusions since they can barely give you much more over a general movespeed buff anyway

You are wrong. +20 is what I am using and it is as fast as the mount. +30 (which is crazy expensive to acquire) is insanely fast, I saw it on a player in WvW.

[Witch of Doom.5739]

@Ashantara.8731 said:

I finished it in a very short time last night (using a XP boost). I started out by farming mobs at the Crystal Desert (while also farming tons materials along the way), doing Hero Challenges and Hearts there (which gave a lot of XP) as well as smaller events. It was fun. The remaining ~30% I got by collecting Volatile Magic across Thunderhead Peaks. Easy peasy. :)

Thank you for the reminder about collecting the Magic motes across Thunderhead Peaks. With a few alts, boom, it's done in a fraction of the time I was spending doing bounties.

[Teratus.2859]

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:I didn't waste my time or money on those swim speed infusions since they can barely give you much more over a general movespeed buff anyway

You are wrong. +20 is what I am using and it is as fast as the mount. +30 (which is crazy expensive to acquire) is insanely fast, I saw it on a player in WvW.

I meant in terms of cost vs speed.The +20 you have is easily +300g.. that's a lot of gold for basically the same speed boost a mount can give you for nothing but a time investment and a few mastery points.Add to that some of the lower level infusions can be mostly replicated using 25% move speed signets or traits.

This basically adds up to infusions not really being worth the investment unless you are willing to put hundreds of gold into them to make yourself only a little faster than a mount.. or thousands of gold to make yourself a lot faster.The prices on these infusions jump massively as well.Your +20 infusion has a 338g price tag on the tp..A +21 infusion has a 769g price tag on the tp..Above that there arn't even any listings according to Wiki but you're probably talking a good few thousand for a +25 speed infusion and a +30 I don't even wanna know how many Legendaries i'd have to sell to buy one of those..

This is pretty much why I consider them a waste of time/money to go after, specially now that we have the Skimmers new ability which can rival the benefits of a 338g infusion >.<I'm glad you don't regret that investment though, more power to you there and also kudo's for all that effort or gold you put in, can't have been easy.Im sure it'll come in handy for WvW at least so there is that.. but in PvE they pretty much made everything +20 or less pretty much useless...Who knows, maybe that'll drag the prices down on them or something..

[choon.6308]

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:I didn't waste my time or money on those swim speed infusions since they can barely give you much more over a general movespeed buff anyway

You are wrong. +20 is what I am using and it is as fast as the mount. +30 (which is crazy expensive to acquire) is insanely fast, I saw it on a player in WvW.

I meant in terms of cost vs speed.The +20 you have is easily +300g.. that's a lot of gold for basically the same speed boost a mount can give you for nothing but a time investment and a few mastery points.Add to that some of the lower level infusions can be mostly replicated using 25% move speed signets or traits.

This basically adds up to infusions not really being worth the investment unless you are willing to put hundreds of gold into them to make yourself only a little faster than a mount.. or thousands of gold to make yourself a lot faster.The prices on these infusions jump massively as well.Your +20 infusion has a 338g price tag on the tp..A +21 infusion has a 769g price tag on the tp..Above that there arn't even any listings according to Wiki but you're probably talking a good few thousand for a +25 speed infusion and a +30 I don't even wanna know how many Legendaries i'd have to sell to buy one of those..

This is pretty much why I consider them a waste of time/money to go after, specially now that we have the Skimmers new ability which can rival the benefits of a 338g infusion >.<I'm glad you don't regret that investment though, more power to you there and also kudo's for all that effort or gold you put in, can't have been easy.Im sure it'll come in handy for WvW at least so there is that.. but in PvE they pretty much made everything +20 or less pretty much useless...Who knows, maybe that'll drag the prices down on them or something..

+15 infusion is all you need in most cases since run/swim speed is capped at 40%. You can get free ascended breather with berry picking and +15 infusion costs like 10 ish gold. I don't see this "hundreds and thousands of gold" thing happening. Just goes to show people who say negative things about an ascended item are the ones who don't know how to get one by playing

[Teratus.2859]

@choon.6308 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:I didn't waste my time or money on those swim speed infusions since they can barely give you much more over a general movespeed buff anyway

You are wrong. +20 is what I am using and it is as fast as the mount. +30 (which is crazy expensive to acquire) is insanely fast, I saw it on a player in WvW.

I meant in terms of cost vs speed.The +20 you have is easily +300g.. that's a lot of gold for basically the same speed boost a mount can give you for nothing but a time investment and a few mastery points.Add to that some of the lower level infusions can be mostly replicated using 25% move speed signets or traits.

This basically adds up to infusions not really being worth the investment unless you are willing to put hundreds of gold into them to make yourself only a little faster than a mount.. or thousands of gold to make yourself a lot faster.The prices on these infusions jump massively as well.Your +20 infusion has a 338g price tag on the tp..A +21 infusion has a 769g price tag on the tp..Above that there arn't even any listings according to Wiki but you're probably talking a good few thousand for a +25 speed infusion and a +30 I don't even wanna know how many Legendaries i'd have to sell to buy one of those..

This is pretty much why I consider them a waste of time/money to go after, specially now that we have the Skimmers new ability which can rival the benefits of a 338g infusion >.<I'm glad you don't regret that investment though, more power to you there and also kudo's for all that effort or gold you put in, can't have been easy.Im sure it'll come in handy for WvW at least so there is that.. but in PvE they pretty much made everything +20 or less pretty much useless...Who knows, maybe that'll drag the prices down on them or something..

+15 infusion is all you need in most cases since run/swim speed is capped at 40%. You can get free ascended breather with berry picking and +15 infusion costs like 10 ish gold. I don't see this "hundreds and thousands of gold" thing happening. Just goes to show people who say negative things about an ascended item are the ones who don't know how to get one by playing

Not talking about ascended gear, talking about an infusion speed vs price specifically.

If you look at the prices I shared from +20 to +21 prices more than double, it's just logical to expect the same would occur for every level beyond that and that can be worked out with simple math.According to another thread on here you need something like 1,048,576 Swim Speed infusion + 10 to make a +30 infusionIf you bought that many from the TP at thier current price of 45 silver that would still put the price of a +30 well into the thousands of gold margin even without counting the copper.Do the math yourself if you don't believe me, Google has a calculator lol.

[LucianDK.8615]

I use a +20 myself. I do not see any reason in going higher.

[Perisemiotics.4579]

@Witch of Doom.5739 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:I finished it in a very short time last night (using a XP boost). I started out by farming mobs at the Crystal Desert (while also farming tons materials along the way), doing Hero Challenges and Hearts there (which gave a lot of XP) as well as smaller events. It was fun. The remaining ~30% I got by collecting Volatile Magic across Thunderhead Peaks. Easy peasy. :)Thank you for the reminder about collecting the Magic motes across Thunderhead Peaks. With a few alts, boom, it's done in a fraction of the time I was spending doing bounties....and Bloodstone Fen, with the dive and all the other globs all over the crater.edit: that actually wouldn't work, would it... HoT mastery... my bad!

[Ashantara.8731]

Okay, so the Skimmer is faster than any swim infusion - I just tested it with a stop watch after reading that_shaman's notes on this: :o

• Link on Skimmer
• Link on Swim Infusion

So, why can't the infusion bonus add to the Skimmer's speed as well? Otherwise, people wasted time and resources to get those and now they are practically useless (except for WvW).

[LucianDK.8615]

@"Ashantara.8731" said:Okay, so the Skimmer is faster than any swim infusion - I just tested it with a stop watch after reading that_shaman's notes on this: :o

• Link on Skimmer
• Link on Swim Infusion

So, why can't the infusion bonus add to the Skimmer's speed as well? Otherwise, people wasted time and resources to get those and now they are practically useless (except for WvW).

Swimming infusions -IS- useful for when you cant mount underwater. Consider the underwater fractals.

[Astralporing.1957]

@XYLO.7031 said:

@LucianDK.8615 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@LucianDK.8615 said:Did you hold down the boost?

I can't find a Boost option. :/ Space just lifts me up towards the surface. What am I missing?

Move forward and hold space. Sure it goes upwards a bit, but its still fast ahead and you can course correct for a moment by ceasing to boost and going down.

Is it like a beetle boost? Or is it more like the skyscale 'dive' with 1?It is not really a boost. It "floats" the skimmer higher above the ground/water surface (and underwater it just "floats" skimmer up to the surface). The reason why people think it's a boost is because while floating the skimmer uses the normal speed (the one it uses over water, and under water), and not the reduced speed it uses over ground.

So, it is a speed boost, but only over land. Underwater and over water it does not improve your speed at all.

[Aru.4156]

@Sir Alric.5078 said:

@XYLO.7031 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:I like it, but I am not utterly impressed by it. The animations are exactly the same as above water, which is fine,

but

I am diving

just as fast

with my +20 Swim Infusion as I do with the Skimmer now, so hmm.

I think I'll stick to swimming, it is more fun and you are always ready to fight or harvest while you're exploring.

I totally agree on this point. If you can pass the last step with just swim infusions (which require no mount), then

what was the point of this feature

? Although I am thankful for them adding it to skimmer and got it only a few hours after release, I am underwhelmed that the swim infusions match mounted speed. It needs a beetle turbo underwater or something to separate it from regular swim infusions.

One thing I appreciate about it is the sounds of diving into water and rising above water. It's as if you really are swimming and it matches the same sound exactly. Really great job simulating the sound. I also like the camera splash drops. Well done.

Please don't just assume that everyone bothered to get those swim infusions. I didn't, and i'm sure i'm not the only one. ;)

Agreed! I don't have a single swimming infusion on any of my toons so the skimmer underwater is a massive speed boost for me. I actually quite love this new feature as it lets me traverse underwater speedily and avoid combat for the most part in favor of admiring the environment. I can now take a proper look at what's underwater without getting horribly bored and frankly fearful of getting into combat. Has definitely made my underwater experience more enjoyable and satisfying for my curiosity. :)