So, one of the first things I did after getting FG (serious thank you to you-know-who) was to experiment with rune of arcane displacement.
I’m absolutely certain that this bad boy is going to radically change the way builds work.
I’ve uploaded a video on youtube on crucible of the dead using landmarks to demonstrate what the maximum blinking distance is on Displacement.
As you’ll see why from the video, I call this distance ‘tip-to-tip’
What does this mean?
- It means that the maximum blink distance is slightly under an inch from the side of my screen
- It means that the maximum blink distance is about half an inch from the top of the screen
EDIT: Obviously these measurements are going to differ from screen to screen.
Why is this important?
This information is crucial when shit gets chaotic as you’ll always have fixed landmarks to know exactly how far you can escape from trouble.
Since you can blink behind walls for cover as demonstrated near the end of my video, you’ll also know how far you need to kite before actually using your blink to get to safety.
What obstacles can you actually blink behind?
It’s a bit finnicky as to what constitutes a ‘blink-passable’ obstacle. Generally speaking, ‘blink-passable’ obstacles are:
- Walls which have doors close to you to where you’re standing
- Around corners close to where you’re standing
- Any terrain-obstacle like a rock, tree, pillar, etc.
So you can actually use it to bait out grava’s null as I have on numerous occasion, or bait out aleksander’s meteor.
Is displacement actually instantaneous as described by the tooltip?
NO. There’s a slight cast animation before you actually teleport. I’d say it’s under half a second, but if you couple that with reaction time, you are looking at about a 1s delay.
So sometimes, it can be good to actively look out for tells.
E.g. when I’m fighting aleks, my eyes are actually looking at the top of the screen waiting for her meteor. So if you watch my crucible videos, it looks like I’m instantaneously dodging her meteors.
I used blink, it’s on CD, but I didn’t move??? WTF crate? Hax. Cheat.
Just like shadowstrike, you can essentially be trapped during this cast animation which will send displacement into cooldown. So keep this in mind when fighting trappers like benny.
Do not, I repeat, DO NOT try to blink if he’s not used his obsidian cage on you for some time.
Okay. Cool. But why would I even want displacement? It does no damage, etc.
Displacement, IMO, is going to be the BiS mobility augment in most builds for deep shard runs for several reasons:
- The ability to travel to a spot without needing a target unit - this by itself gives you incredible freedom
- You cannot be damaged as you’re teleporting. Leap/charge abilities still render you vulnerable to enemy attacks. If you’re cornered with low health, and you try to charge past reaper in the middle of his attack animation, you may just be running to your death. However, with displacement, you can bait out reaper’s attacks and use the time in between to attack him, or to get into a better position.
^Just for the record, I died like 5 seconds after that beautiful dodge because my computer started getting super choppy with the recording software running 
Displacement on melee builds
A strong argument can be made for Displacement being BiS for casters, however I believe that many might view it as unnecessary on melee autoattackers. This is false.
To demonstrate why, I took one of the squishiest glass cannons I could find (courtesy of mad_lee) and went at 150-170 naked (i.e. unbuffed/unbannered). Obviously I don’t make it to the end, as this is a build not designed to handle the rigors of naked runs. (That being said, I do think that with sufficient luck, it might actually be possible to beat 170 naked on his toon).
As you’ll see in the video, displacement lets me reposition near-instantaenously, thereby allowing me to both avoid taking damage entirely, as well as maintaining my damage output (i.e. I am now attacking a less dangerous group of enemies while I recuperate).
Abusing blink on ranged specs (RS)
Abbreviations:
- RS: Ranged Spec
- MS: Melee spec (Note: These refer to NON-S&B characters. I think it’s only fair if we limit our discussion to glass cannons)
Quick word - These tricks I use pertain mostly to the crucible and the SR. That being said, MC is generally easier than both the crucible and the SR, so I think that there would be a fairly large overlap.
Ranged characters are generally viewed as ‘weaker’ than their melee counterparts, and understandably so. In a PvE game where monsters come loaded with gap-closers, and CC-skills (e.g. stuns), one can only agree that GD is not a friendly game for RS.
That is, however, not to say that playing a RS does not come without its advantages.
I believe that the frustration players feel when piloting a RS ultimately rests upon 2 reasons:
(1) The failure to realize that the playstyle for a RS is the opposite to that of a MS; and (2) The level of active piloting needed to play a RS well.
- Why the RS playstyle is opposite to that of MS
By their very nature, melee specs NEED to get up close and person in order to kill. This means that they get surrounded extremely easily. The solution to this is to keep monsters as dispersed as possible. Since monsters move at different speeds, pulling faster enemies away from slower ones will allow the MS to minimize the risk of getting overwhelmed and overrunned.
The opposite is true for the RS. By shepherding monsters into a single, huge mob, you leave the battlefield clear of danger, thereby allowing you to stutterstep/retreat with maximal safety.
This is VITALLY important especially when you NEED to facetank in order to quickly take out a priority target, or to do significant damage (i.e. while under the effects of something like blastshield, or ghoul).
And it’s VITALLY important because you will usually blink out of those situations with next to no health.
If the battlefield is clear, you can kite with safety until a heal comes off cooldown.
- The level of active piloting needed by ranged specs
This largely pertains to HOW one accomplishes the things listed above.
For example, the best way to shepherd enemies is to corner yourself and to allow yourself to get surrounded before blinking out and stutterstepping to maintain distance.
Good locations to pause to attack for longer durations of time are at chokepoints where everything is clumped together, thereby allowing you to make full use of your AoE.
How long one should facetank in these situations is dependent on yet another VITAL set of variables:
- The kill potential of your character
- The level of danger you are in
If your kill potential outweighs the danger you deem yourself to be in, stay longer. Try to eliminate as many enemies as possible.
If the opposite is true, blink out a little earlier so that you have some buffer just in case you take unforeseen damage.
Note: Knowing how much longer before my next circuit breaker comes off cooldown is probably the biggest factor I use in evaluating the amount of danger I’m in. Another red flag for me is the presence of enemies with CC - of note is Moosie and his god damn crystals.
To illustrate what I mean, here are some examples:
@5:23 - 5:33: I facetank long enough to kill kuba, and immediately blink out the moment moos starts getting close despite having 2s left to both blastshield and ghoul.
@5:38 - 5:48: I facetank reaper despite there being ~6s left to BS cooldown because I have a heal + potion ready for sustain and I know reaper can’t one-shot me. I also have aeon’s ready and waiting to reset the cooldown of my heal, thus I know I can safely go Heal --> Pot --> Heal which will buy me more than enough time for BS to come off CD. Mous is also pretty far away, so my threat level is low, and I’ve got a great kill opportunity here.
@7:16 - 7:24: I made a mistake. I failed to notice that the keystroke for displacement didn’t register, and I ended up eating Aleks’ meteor. I panicked here as I was completely blindsided by this so I ran. This segment demonstrates 3 things - 1) The value of keeping the arena clear of enemies by sheepherding them into a single mass (i.e. If anything had attacked me, I would’ve died); 2) The need to pay attention to procs. The best play for me here would’ve been to turn and fight no matter how low I got because ghoul was active. This was something I failed to notice in my panic. 3) Running in a SMART direction - I chose to run north because I always leave that vital essence untouched for such situations. The only reason why I didn’t take it was because I thought blood of dreeg would provide sufficient sustain. I again was not anticipating the damage from Aleksander’s PRM and could not react quick enough to change the mental route I had already planned on taking.
These are but some examples of my thought process.
Given the complexity and uncertainty of things like mutators and enemy spawns, it’s really quite impossible for me to lay out a universal rule for piloting RS. If I had to summarize everything I’ve just written into a single sentence, it would be this - anticipate what’s going to happen, DON’T react.
You can do this by taking the time to look at mutators. You can do this by dragging out the fight a little longer so your circuit breakers come off cooldown before you start the next wave <— I cannot emphasize how helpful this is. This is actually the reason why it took my Pyro such a long time to clear naked crucible.
I was ALWAYS waiting for the right conditions before starting the next wave.
A great example: I intentionally made wave 169 last from 14:20 to 15:34. The reason for this was because I did not want to run the risk of leaving theodin Marcell’s second form alive for wave 170. Thus, I would not attack unless I had a clear shot at him (i.e. I was afraid my AoE would trigger the start of 170).
I also positioned myself right next to where I wanted to start 170 (i.e. I wanted to kill the nemesis spawn there as quickly as possible to turn a 4v1 into a 3v1). I also let Fleshweaver Krieg (who was the last enemy left in 169) live long enough for my potion/heal/blastshield to come off cooldown before finally killing him and starting 170. This would allow me to facetank that nem for as long as possible, to maximize the probability of me killing it. Last but not least, I had taken care to lay down mines and BWC in preparation for that enemy’s spawn so I could squeeze in that 1 additional second of autoattacks.
You can do this too in SR during bosschunks. Run as far back as you can to distance yourself from enemies, and mouse over the skull icon in your minimap to see who you’ll be fighting. Try to aggro the fastest ones first (they will sprint away from the group thereby allowing you to fight them 1v1).
On an irrelevant note, this is actually the reason why I don’t normally record my SR runs, as my recording UI blocks the minimap.
