Guild Wars 2

Guys i invite you to take a try of the build i posted HERE
Mesmer got the best buff since lauch imo (a part for dmg nerf but that’s for all classes)

Carighan.6758:

This patch feels bad?
This is the first patch where I feel really \o/ about. The whole skin thing alone is pretty kitten awesome.

Most people are talking bout the buggy parts not the skins etc. How would skins effect mesmer play? Besides the clones sometimes not taking the players skin.

Yeah but most of the bugs are fairly minor (yeah, I said that!).

The exception is the pathing stuff. I can sort-of understand why it cannot easily be remedied, I still wish it were though. The rest? Meh. I’d rate the box-shaped skirts on Asura second-most-important bug, that’s how serious I rate most bugs in this game. :P

I personally love my Mesmer! I have an 80 Warrior and a Thief alt that both have a full set of gear yet the Mesmer remains the most fun to play. Granted, I don’t use the typical build/gear but it works well for me and, in most cases, I can either defeat my target or go into stealth and disappear. I find it much more universal than either of my alts.

Carighan.6758:

This patch feels bad?
This is the first patch where I feel really \o/ about. The whole skin thing alone is pretty kitten awesome.

And these type of people, ladies and gentlemen, are the people that Anet caters to.

I uninstalled. Playing MOBAs right now. Much better balance.

The game is being maintained by a bunch of kids who don’t really know what they are doing.

Thedenofsin.7340:

The game is being maintained by a bunch of kids who don’t really know what they are doing.

Unfortunately true. “Hey lets swap the Mantra traits just… CUZ! Should we do some research on current Mesmer builds to see if we’re butchering anything? Nah. =D”

Elder Scrolls Online is calling my name, but this patch so far has given me nothing but new toys to play with and builds to explore so I’m quite happy. My current build (20/20/30 sword-focus/Staff lockdown) was relatively unscathed if not buffed with staff holding two sigils… Even Warden’s been working more effectively for me, though definitely not perfect.

Doesnt empowering mantras make more sense in the domination trait line though? Granted harminous mantras dont make much sense being in dueling.

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

Doesnt empowering mantras make more sense in the domination trait line though? Granted harminous mantras dont make much sense being in dueling.

Domination is a mostly shatter based line, which doesn’t help phant builds. There’s actually no good Master level trait to choose when doing a 6/x phantasm build, so it feels like a waste.

Why would I quit? I see that some builds got hit a bit, but if you want to play lockdown then times are better than they’ve ever been. I’m having a blast on my sword/sword + staff 6/2/6/0/0 Lockdown mesmer.

Powerlock + Chaotic Interruption + Bountiful Interruption + Halting Strike = king.

Marsares.2053:

Why would I quit? I see that some builds got hit a bit, but if you want to play lockdown then times are better than they’ve ever been. I’m having a blast on my sword/sword + staff 6/2/6/0/0 Lockdown mesmer.

Powerlock + Chaotic Interruption + Bountiful Interruption + Halting Strike = king.

Yeah this is one I wanted to give a go in pre-patch theory-crafting. Will get there, need a couple more days off work …

Well seeing we got no new meta builds or chances at all besides maybe a twist with power block I find this, as being the ‘’massive patch’’ really bad.
Most of the important bugs that should get fixed didnt get fixed and 3/5 grandmaster traits are only 1 step away from the trash can.
The switch of the mantra’s is probably more random than the crit damage nerf.
They, yet again, buffed us where we should be nerfed/ shouldnt be buffed in, which is 1v1.
They, yet again, nerfed us where we should be buffed in, which is teamplay and shatter builds.
They, yet again, buffed condition specs overall. Especially thief.

Like lol, thieves can apply 5 stacks without even trying. Imagine thief running perplexity and does steal + a daze? Hello 10 stacks confusion. And I thought we got nerfed because of things like this?

Ahwell, happy mesmer patch \o/

No new meta build? Tell me one reason to go 30 … i mean 6 into duelling anymore! I’ll miss you empowered mantras

The new grandmaster domination trait is busted as hell, incredibly fun to use and very reliant on twitch reflexes for PvE.

We were able to score actual interrupts on Lupicus and it was hilarious yet weird to play in since it meant breaking our traditional patterns. Apparently works on the imbued shaman, berserker abomination and subject alpha too, so having a mesmer to interrupt dangerous skills so that other players can perform their skill rotations seems pretty solid. Plus their traditional reflect utility is good for fractals.

We’re thinking 30/30/0/0/10, 30/10/0/20/10 or maybe 15/20/0/25/10 might be pretty legit builds, more so the 30/30.

So… yeah. Mesmer might still honestly have a place in the dungeon meta despite getting its reflect damage hit slightly.

hendo.1940:

The new grandmaster domination trait is busted as hell, incredibly fun to use and very reliant on twitch reflexes for PvE.

We were able to score actual interrupts on Lupicus and it was hilarious yet weird to play in since it meant breaking our traditional patterns. Apparently works on the imbued shaman, berserker abomination and subject alpha too, so having a mesmer to interrupt dangerous skills so that other players can perform their skill rotations seems pretty solid. Plus their traditional reflect utility is good for fractals.

We’re thinking 30/30/0/0/10, 30/10/0/20/10 or maybe 15/20/0/25/10 might be pretty legit builds, more so the 30/30.

So… yeah. Mesmer might still honestly have a place in the dungeon meta despite getting its reflect damage hit slightly.

I’d be willing to bet when they hotfix it for thief skills/ressing/stomping/autoattacks they’ll hotfix out the pve bit too. I’ll keep my mouth shut where that’s concerned though, one can hope…

Curunen.8729:

Blimey – nothing worth quitting over. I just started playing again after a break and have no intention of quitting mesmer. Only reason I’d leave is if a better game came along (which it hasn’t).

Have a look at all if the profession forums – exactly the same complaints in each, as it always happens after a patch.

I’ll adapt and continue to enjoy playing, as I’m sure many others here will too. Doesn’t take a genius to work out new build/equipment choices…

This. Welcome to the forums op. You’ll find that most people here believe themselves to be more qualified than any of the Anet devs when it comes to balance. Anet can’t even breath without them getting flat out insulted by the majority of players here. Happens with everything anet does.

New Patch
Players on Every forum: "wtf anet? A baby can balance better you. insert another insult here followed by very emotional, and pessimistic whine

As always, the anger towards anet distorts peoples’ ability to objectively analyze things and like always, they completely blow things out of proportion. The more rational types will sit and wait (rational people don’t have a habit of getting emotional frequently, as it implies keeping a cool head) and test, and play, and then the bug fixes will come, and then so on and so forth.

Check out the Ele forums. It frequently contains accusations of favoritism. Engis? Same thing.

Mainly, I just want the promised fixes. Besides Disruptor’s, I can work with the new GM traits; hell, I’m running a 2/6/0/0/6 condishatter, and having some ridiculous amounts of fun.

Alasteir.7031:

Curunen.8729:

Blimey – nothing worth quitting over. I just started playing again after a break and have no intention of quitting mesmer. Only reason I’d leave is if a better game came along (which it hasn’t).

Have a look at all if the profession forums – exactly the same complaints in each, as it always happens after a patch.

I’ll adapt and continue to enjoy playing, as I’m sure many others here will too. Doesn’t take a genius to work out new build/equipment choices…

This. Welcome to the forums op. You’ll find that most people here believe themselves to be more qualified than any of the Anet devs when it comes to balance. Anet can’t even breath without them getting flat out insulted by the majority of players here. Happens with everything anet does.

New Patch
Players on Every forum: "wtf anet? A baby can balance better you. insert another insult here followed by very emotional, and pessimistic whine

As always, the anger towards anet distorts peoples’ ability to objectively analyze things and like always, they completely blow things out of proportion. The more rational types will sit and wait (rational people don’t have a habit of getting emotional frequently, as it implies keeping a cool head) and test, and play, and then the bug fixes will come, and then so on and so forth.

Check out the Ele forums. It frequently contains accusations of favoritism. Engis? Same thing.

There wouldn’t be any here, or less in extent, IF THEY ACTUALLY FIXED THE BUGS THEY SAID THEY WERE GONNA FIX.

Plain and simple. Do tell me how to analyze properly the fact that they themselves said iWarden is going to be fixed and post-patch they managed to break it even more. Do tell me how to analyze properly that the mesmer bug thread in the bugs forum have more things added to them than actually fixed.

P.S. Sorry if it seems I’m fuming on you but I’m not, just this kitten circumstance ~_~

The way this is going there are going to be three mesmers left running hiptserupt (hipster-interrupt) while getting owned by up level thieves.

It’s only been a bit over a day…

I don’t see how Mesmers were hit harder than any other class. If the movement of a gm trait is your biggest gripe then you’re a spoiled brat. It makes more SENSE for Empowering Mantras to be in the…wait for it…Power line. Additionally, not every Mantra is power based. Who would have guessed. They’ve been trying to make mantras more supporty/durable so it makes more sense for this gm trait to be in the same line as Mantra Mantra and the one that buffs toughness.

Outside of that, I’m happy? iWarden STILL needs work, but is better than before. Powerlock is probably one of the best new gm traits out of all the professions. Testing out new builds has been fun.

first thread I’m reading since patch. Not looking forward to the rest of the forum if we already have threads begging Mesmers to “not quit”

Caelus.7139:

There wouldn’t be any here, or less in extent, IF THEY ACTUALLY FIXED THE BUGS THEY SAID THEY WERE GONNA FIX.

Do people still believe this?

MMO-forums are always:

• Full of complaints.
• Hostile.
• Accusing the devs of being incompetent.
• Accusing the devs of playing personal favours.
• Talking about how much less of the above there would be if only the devs would for once listen to the obviously much-better-developers players.

Since this happens in any MMO, it’s probably safe to assume that this is an inherent “feature” of the community drawn to such games, and can be ~safely ignored.

Honestly the game is great, but I do believe if the devs are a little bit more competent, especially in the QA area, it’d be better. I still don’t see me playing any other MMO (other than FF14 cause I’m a fan of the franchise) than this. Barely interested in ESO and Wildstar.

Carighan.6758:

Caelus.7139:

There wouldn’t be any here, or less in extent, IF THEY ACTUALLY FIXED THE BUGS THEY SAID THEY WERE GONNA FIX.

Do people still believe this?

MMO-forums are always:

• Full of complaints.
• Hostile.
• Accusing the devs of being incompetent.
• Accusing the devs of playing personal favours.
• Talking about how much less of the above there would be if only the devs would for once listen to the obviously much-better-developers players.

Since this happens in any MMO, it’s probably safe to assume that this is an inherent “feature” of the community drawn to such games, and can be ~safely ignored.

I’ve played a good number of mmos, but I’ve honestly not ever seen a dev team as…special as the ones here.

They quite literally fail to actually execute the fixes that they release in the patch notes themselves while at the same time introducing more bugs into the very skills they attempted to fix.

Honestly now, have you ever seen this before?

Pyroathiest.4168:

Carighan.6758:

Caelus.7139:

There wouldn’t be any here, or less in extent, IF THEY ACTUALLY FIXED THE BUGS THEY SAID THEY WERE GONNA FIX.

Do people still believe this?

MMO-forums are always:

• Full of complaints.
• Hostile.
• Accusing the devs of being incompetent.
• Accusing the devs of playing personal favours.
• Talking about how much less of the above there would be if only the devs would for once listen to the obviously much-better-developers players.

Since this happens in any MMO, it’s probably safe to assume that this is an inherent “feature” of the community drawn to such games, and can be ~safely ignored.

I’ve played a good number of mmos, but I’ve honestly not ever seen a dev team as…special as the ones here.

They quite literally fail to actually execute the fixes that they release in the patch notes themselves while at the same time introducing more bugs into the very skills they attempted to fix.

Honestly now, have you ever seen this before?

this exactly!i mean it feels like again the dev team worked on every other class first and we got the leftover 5 minutes. so many bugs still,then new bugs(worse ones) and nothing at all to improve our most needed things. the gm traits seem rushed and not well thought out, there is still no real wvw raid build out there, we still lack in groups, we are still veilbots and the bugs just seem never ending(i still cant hit unbuilt oil in wvw). i mean since release mesmer has seen nothing but nerfs, then they nerfed both viable wvw raid builds(immortal mesmer and glamour) into the ground of the grounds and since then nothing has been added to compensate for this big loss.
we dont have a clear role, cause every other class can do everything we can, but with less effort, apart from veil, tw and portal…so many things have to be reworked and changed and patch after patch nothing has been done for us. now i feel stuck with a class that is becoming more and more unviable in every single game mode.
i love wvw and back during glam times i loved raiding with my mesmer, now its just a stressful chore to veil the war/guard ele trains and portal golems around, while trying to tag at least something, which is hard as we lack aoe(which is terrible for a light armor class) and being squishy and having no stability(in a cc meta where u can be stunlocked to death)…

point is, anet doesnt put any effort into this class as we are always in every patch the last ones and always get everything rushed and unfinished. i mean no one ever asked about iwarden to be changed, they changed it and broke it and instead of reverting the change until it get fixed, they left it just sitting there for months! i mean if a dev would actually play this class in every game mode those bugs would have shown, they would know that staff and gs cant hit oilbuildside, they would notice that iwarden now only reflects a single targets projectile which is even worse. im just so fed up with this mess. i want my favorite class ive chosen since release to be bug free and viable in wvw again.

Pyroathiest.4168:

Carighan.6758:

Caelus.7139:

There wouldn’t be any here, or less in extent, IF THEY ACTUALLY FIXED THE BUGS THEY SAID THEY WERE GONNA FIX.

Do people still believe this?

MMO-forums are always:

• Full of complaints.
• Hostile.
• Accusing the devs of being incompetent.
• Accusing the devs of playing personal favours.
• Talking about how much less of the above there would be if only the devs would for once listen to the obviously much-better-developers players.

Since this happens in any MMO, it’s probably safe to assume that this is an inherent “feature” of the community drawn to such games, and can be ~safely ignored.

I’ve played a good number of mmos, but I’ve honestly not ever seen a dev team as…special as the ones here.

They quite literally fail to actually execute the fixes that they release in the patch notes themselves while at the same time introducing more bugs into the very skills they attempted to fix.

Honestly now, have you ever seen this before?

Nice unverifiable anecdote there Pyro. How about mine?

I’ve also played a good number of mmos. Let’s take WoW for an example. What happens after every patch release? Server maintenance as usual, but it gets extended for almost the entire day, lots of glitches and bugs, and generally unplayable. Class Balance? There was always accusations of class and faction favoritism thrown at Blizzard, and I still fondly remember how much Shamans complained about being UP for years.

Swtor? Samething. Every class forums feels UP in some circumstance. They criticize Bioware as either being shills for EA or sucking at balance as well, especially with the Galactic Starfighter thing and Gunships.

No, Pyro. You are just particularly upset, and due to how human memory works, fail to realize that Anet is not any better or worse than any other dev team when it comes to balance or running their game, and may even be better due to lack of server maintenance and frequency of patches.

I have yet to witness an mmo that didn’t add more problems initially after a major patch release how long it took to fix them naturally varies, but you’re naive if you think that Anet is the worst.

On the Human Memory thing. It’s a cognitive bias. It is common for people to remember past experiences as being better than they actually were. Vanilla WoW for example had crap for content aside from vast raids, and later expansions always added more, and the changes made a lot more people want to play, but people, especially the vets always thought Vanilla was the best.

Carighan.6758:

Caelus.7139:

There wouldn’t be any here, or less in extent, IF THEY ACTUALLY FIXED THE BUGS THEY SAID THEY WERE GONNA FIX.

Do people still believe this?

MMO-forums are always:

• Full of complaints.
• Hostile.
• Accusing the devs of being incompetent.
• Accusing the devs of playing personal favours.
• Talking about how much less of the above there would be if only the devs would for once listen to the obviously much-better-developers players.

Since this happens in any MMO, it’s probably safe to assume that this is an inherent “feature” of the community drawn to such games, and can be ~safely ignored.

You forgot to mention that when pointing this out to the people who are guilty of the things you mentioned, they swear that the devs in question are the worst they’ve experienced, and would use unverifiable stories on past experiences. Remember EQ and EQ2 when compared to WoW?

Caelus.7139:

Honestly the game is great, but I do believe if the devs are a little bit more competent, especially in the QA area, it’d be better. I still don’t see me playing any other MMO (other than FF14 cause I’m a fan of the franchise) than this. Barely interested in ESO and Wildstar.

The devs would be more “competent” if the players would provide actual constructive criticism instead of whining. They have to gather data, analyze it, and do testing. If the players don’t provide anything but a story of an experience that can’t even be verified as true beyond their word, then it’s utterly worthless. Anet is trying with the collaborative development, to involve the community but I feel the forums are too hostile for that. And too many people here think that anecdotes = data. No testing, no sources to verify said testing, no alternative hypothesis consideration, no disclaimers mentioning the lack of testing of hard to analyze variables like player behavior, etc etc. No, just anecdotes followed by complaining.

Caelus.7139:

Alasteir.7031:

Curunen.8729:

Blimey – nothing worth quitting over. I just started playing again after a break and have no intention of quitting mesmer. Only reason I’d leave is if a better game came along (which it hasn’t).

Have a look at all if the profession forums – exactly the same complaints in each, as it always happens after a patch.

I’ll adapt and continue to enjoy playing, as I’m sure many others here will too. Doesn’t take a genius to work out new build/equipment choices…

This. Welcome to the forums op. You’ll find that most people here believe themselves to be more qualified than any of the Anet devs when it comes to balance. Anet can’t even breath without them getting flat out insulted by the majority of players here. Happens with everything anet does.

New Patch
Players on Every forum: "wtf anet? A baby can balance better you. insert another insult here followed by very emotional, and pessimistic whine

As always, the anger towards anet distorts peoples’ ability to objectively analyze things and like always, they completely blow things out of proportion. The more rational types will sit and wait (rational people don’t have a habit of getting emotional frequently, as it implies keeping a cool head) and test, and play, and then the bug fixes will come, and then so on and so forth.

Check out the Ele forums. It frequently contains accusations of favoritism. Engis? Same thing.

There wouldn’t be any here, or less in extent, IF THEY ACTUALLY FIXED THE BUGS THEY SAID THEY WERE GONNA FIX.

Plain and simple. Do tell me how to analyze properly the fact that they themselves said iWarden is going to be fixed and post-patch they managed to break it even more. Do tell me how to analyze properly that the mesmer bug thread in the bugs forum have more things added to them than actually fixed.

P.S. Sorry if it seems I’m fuming on you but I’m not, just this kitten circumstance ~_~

It isn’t plain and simple. Unless you have direct experience in game development, and more specifically class balance, you do NOT have any experience to fall back on to destructively criticize anet. Most players here have never worked for a game company doing class balance so they have literally no idea how difficult it is, or can be, and the many variables associated with it. Analyzing isn’t magic. It is an intensive methodology that requires constant observations, self-criticism, alternative hypothesis testing, data gather, variable consideration and testing, acknowledgements of unaccountable variables, etc. It is not easy.

And no need to apologize. Just relax, and enjoy the game, and just try and remember that Anet are people too, and programming takes time, and issues CAN come up. It’ll make your experience playing gw2 a lot less stressful.

Carighan.6758:

Caelus.7139:

There wouldn’t be any here, or less in extent, IF THEY ACTUALLY FIXED THE BUGS THEY SAID THEY WERE GONNA FIX.

Do people still believe this?

MMO-forums are always:

• Full of complaints.
• Hostile.
• Accusing the devs of being incompetent.
• Accusing the devs of playing personal favours.
• Talking about how much less of the above there would be if only the devs would for once listen to the obviously much-better-developers players.

Since this happens in any MMO, it’s probably safe to assume that this is an inherent “feature” of the community drawn to such games, and can be ~safely ignored.

One million cookies for you sir, this is exactly the case.
It’s the usual ‘blame game’ you see gamers across the board partake in.
And it goes beyond MMOs, most online games draw this kind of crowd.

It’s so easy to think “oh if they make XYZ changes it’ll all be great!”, but there’s always other factors that are going to throw that off.
I love to sit around thinking up ideas on new systems/balance for games, but it almost always ends with “ah kitten … nvm X would mess this up”. And the times it doesn’t end that way and I post the idea on a forum? someone else is sure to find a flaw.

Pyroathiest.4168:

Honestly now, have you ever seen this before?

Yeah. DAoC was pretty bad in this regard. They wizened up after about 1 year and just kept to a “Working as intended, won’t fix”-policy, mind you, even for stuff which quite obviously was just bugged but touching parts of the game (like tick-timing) they didn’t know how to fix.

And true, QA is really ANet’s biggest issue right now. It sometimes feels as if they got no QA department. They really need a PTR. It’d do so much more for them than any other thing they could do…

Alasteir.7031:

Caelus.7139:

Honestly the game is great, but I do believe if the devs are a little bit more competent, especially in the QA area, it’d be better. I still don’t see me playing any other MMO (other than FF14 cause I’m a fan of the franchise) than this. Barely interested in ESO and Wildstar.

The devs would be more “competent” if the players would provide actual constructive criticism instead of whining. They have to gather data, analyze it, and do testing. If the players don’t provide anything but a story of an experience that can’t even be verified as true beyond their word, then it’s utterly worthless. Anet is trying with the collaborative development, to involve the community but I feel the forums are too hostile for that. And too many people here think that anecdotes = data. No testing, no sources to verify said testing, no alternative hypothesis consideration, no disclaimers mentioning the lack of testing of hard to analyze variables like player behavior, etc etc. No, just anecdotes followed by complaining.

You mean this? lol.

If a dev SPECIFICALLY STATES that they were gonna fix something, I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to believe that they will. And I repeat: Instead they break it even more. All I can say is their QA is terrible.

Not only that, I feel like their communication here is also lacking since we don’t even have any idea if they know what we’re whining about right now or if they’re doing something about it. A simple, “Oh, we’re sorry we weren’t able to fix this and that like we said we would but rest assure it will be.” would’ve somewhat sufficed. I may be mistaken on this one but eh, that’s what I feel.

Carighan.6758:

Caelus.7139:

There wouldn’t be any here, or less in extent, IF THEY ACTUALLY FIXED THE BUGS THEY SAID THEY WERE GONNA FIX.

Do people still believe this?

MMO-forums are always:

• Full of complaints.
• Hostile.
• Accusing the devs of being incompetent.
• Accusing the devs of playing personal favours.
• Talking about how much less of the above there would be if only the devs would for once listen to the obviously much-better-developers players.

Since this happens in any MMO, it’s probably safe to assume that this is an inherent “feature” of the community drawn to such games, and can be ~safely ignored.

I worked in console games for 10 years. It was fun and I was convinced I was a good programmer. It was only after leaving games I realized how little I knew about testing and large scale software design.

There will always be bugs, but the frequent regressions seen in many MMOs simply arnt necessary. This is entirely due to the development culture in most games studios. The main anti-patterns I’ve seen are:

1. No code reviews
2. No (or inadiquate) unit or integration testing, even if you wanted it there would be no management buy in.
3. No Presubmit checks
4. No proper planning (every major feature ought to have a design doc and a design review)
5. Massive overreliance on minimum wage manual testers
6. In some studios the engineering department can’t push back on obviously bad design decisions.
7. Low status job with bad hours and poor pay in comparison to what you can get elsewhere for doing an easier programming job

I wouldn’t characterise game devs as incompetent, rather over worked and naieve. This includes my younger self and many friends who were in the industry at the time.

Neurophen.9738:

Carighan.6758:

Caelus.7139:

There wouldn’t be any here, or less in extent, IF THEY ACTUALLY FIXED THE BUGS THEY SAID THEY WERE GONNA FIX.

Do people still believe this?

MMO-forums are always:

• Full of complaints.
• Hostile.
• Accusing the devs of being incompetent.
• Accusing the devs of playing personal favours.
• Talking about how much less of the above there would be if only the devs would for once listen to the obviously much-better-developers players.

Since this happens in any MMO, it’s probably safe to assume that this is an inherent “feature” of the community drawn to such games, and can be ~safely ignored.

I worked in console games for 10 years. It was fun and I was convinced I was a good programmer. It was only after leaving games I realized how little I knew about testing and large scale software design.

There will always be bugs, but the frequent regressions seen in many MMOs simply arnt necessary. This is entirely due to the development culture in most games studios. The main anti-patterns I’ve seen are:

1. No code reviews
2. No (or inadiquate) unit or integration testing, even if you wanted it there would be no management buy in.
3. No Presubmit checks
4. No proper planning (every major feature ought to have a design doc and a design review)
5. Massive overreliance on minimum wage manual testers
6. In some studios the engineering department can’t push back on obviously bad design decisions.
7. Low status job with bad hours and poor pay in comparison to what you can get elsewhere for doing an easier programming job

I wouldn’t characterise game devs as incompetent, rather over worked and naieve. This includes my younger self and many friends who were in the industry at the time.

One thing you forgot to mention: typically the talent accociated with creating and coding the game are all gone on to other projects shortly after GA. This game has been in the hands of software sustaining for a couple of years now. These are definitely second stringers in general and especially in this game. Whomever has been coding the Mesmer fixes is in my professional opinion is incompetent.

Well, I didn’t intend to create a thread where people would be arguing back and forth… then again, I posted words on the internet (in a forum no less), so I should have known better

Anyway, I was just shocked by the initial reactions I was seeing (some justified, some not so much IMHO) and I was afraid this was like a “last straw”, or something out of the ordinary. Seems like this is pretty standard, and some people have accepted that, and others rage against it. It’s all okay by my book. The whole idea of a public forum is to to give people a forum to publicly express their ideas and view points…

So, in a way I apologize to the community for possibly accidentally causing more emotional inflammation than I intended. I just wanted to try and remind people to stick around, see how things shake out.

I was playing last night with my gf, and I brought up WoW. She said she’d played it for about 2mo a while ago and hated it. She liked the game mechanics, but was constantly anxious or upset because the players were so mean and aggressive. I pointed out that GW2 seems to me a more “casual” MMO, aimed at more cooperative play. She said that the thing she loves most about GW2, what keeps her playing, is the people. The people are so nice. As she was saying this, someone helped me find the entrance to a dungeon and was just super cool about it and offered to help run it and everything. I know there are TONS of cool and nice people playing WoW, and there are 4895034580234234 reasons that she may have kept running into kittens, but still, the GW2 players and community are just so great/helpful/positive/nice, I really hated the idea of some people rage-quitting over a patch. My fears were probably unfounded, I guess it was just a gut reaction.

TL;DR: Much love for all of you!

For the record, so I’m not misunderstood – I never said the patch was all good, simply that whatever happened is not worth quitting over.

Yes many of the changes are lackluster, bugfixes have not actually happened, and new traits are mostly useless.

But I do like the global changes to the wardrobe and stuff. Ferocity will just take some getting used to – and maybe they can buff individual skills in the future to compensate for this.

To be honest… there are many things I really hate about the patch – like the fact that it destroyed my brilliant build. Things are definitely a lot harder for the mesmer outside of spvp.

I have managed to make some compensations but I’ve had to trade off a lot in order to make them. I now have three viable builds…. the first is a tank which relies on condition and retaliation for damage which makes it very difficult to work out how much damage you are doing in the game. Judging from my loot when I am in or out of a party… I would say that I am not doing enough damage to get any loot when I am out of a party but in a zerg and a party – the build works lovely in terms of survivability and would make commanding as a mesmer a lot more viable than in the past.

My second build is a mantra build – keep 6 stacks at the start of an attack – which gives an added 24% to damage… using two signets of superior intelligence – first weapon switch giving 3x 100% crit hit and then switch back weapons for another 3×100% crit hit. – the damage is insane but then there is 9 second cool down on the crit. and you have to get used to how mantras work in terms of healing which is a pain. Plus you are really glass canon and you’ve had to trade off PU and some of your escape skills for the additional damage. One hit from a warrior and you are toast… two hits from a thief and you are down – so you really need to be on your toes with this build. Not sure whether it is practical or not for WvW – certainly not practical for pve and spvp. Basically, there are better professions out there for roaming and small party skirmishes than the mesmer.

My third build is the basic shatter torment which just owns spvp atm – so much so that I can see the nerf coming soon. The build does not really work in wvw but I’ve yet to test it with proper armor, runes and sigs – because basically we are looking at close to 100g to re-equip and I don’t have that cash just now. Perhaps properly equipped then it might work in wvw small group skirmishes.

What this means… is my game play has been narrowed to zerg fighting in wvw and spvp. A patch that was supposed to widen the range of builds has actually narrowed them and has basically left the mesmer in a very poor state outside of spvp. Sure we can survive but we can’t do much in the way of damage. The only viable build I can see for a pve mesmer is inspiration support – which is something Anet said at the very start it did not want (support only professions). For a wvw mesmer it is a tank with veil, portal and nullfield (the Sacrx definition of a mesmer) – great for karma train and scouting. As I said though, I have yet to try the proper spvp torment build in wvw and have only been able to use an estimation with different runes and sigils.

The biggest pain though is that each of these 3 different builds require their own set of armor, runes, sigils and weapons. It is a complete outfit, trait, and skill change. There is no in between… each is very specific in its function and requires very specific armor and weapon sets to function – in other words sigils and runes are what make the build viable not skills and player skill. Plus you have to remember what the build was each time you switch functionality.

@Nymph: Empowering Mantras gives you bonus per Mantra, not per Mantra charge. The maximum damage you can get is +16% if you’re using all Mantras.

@sirrealist: I think I’m partly to blame for the negativity in those first few hours, so I apologize for alarming you I think as the dust is settling now we’ve more or less found the builds which recreate the old playstyle, while adapting to the new situation as best as possible. Random build killing and unfixed bugs is always a downer, especially since hopes were so high, so our initial reaction was definitely strong. There’s definitely no reason to abandon mesmer though, and the community’s discussions and collaborations on builds has been a lot of fun to watch.

maxinion.8396:

@Nymph: Empowering Mantras gives you bonus per Mantra, not per Mantra charge. The maximum damage you can get is +16% if you’re using all Mantras.

That’s very confusing then because it says ‘Gain increased damage for each readied mantra’

I took the concept of ‘readied’ as meaning charge not equipped mantra. But looking it up on wiki – you are correct. Makes it a pointless addition to my build then… PU would work better for me than an additional 8% damage… I could then place my traits elsewhere to support my build better rather than supporting 2 mantras that take a bit of management.

Carighan.6758:

Caelus.7139:

There wouldn’t be any here, or less in extent, IF THEY ACTUALLY FIXED THE BUGS THEY SAID THEY WERE GONNA FIX.

Do people still believe this?

MMO-forums are always:

• Full of complaints.
• Hostile.
• Accusing the devs of being incompetent.
• Accusing the devs of playing personal favours.
• Talking about how much less of the above there would be if only the devs would for once listen to the obviously much-better-developers players.

Since this happens in any MMO, it’s probably safe to assume that this is an inherent “feature” of the community drawn to such games, and can be ~safely ignored.

Sigh, just sigh. If everyone complains about something, then logically it is not a problem.

My only question is how can we pretend that build diversity changed in WVW. I like when people say “but Memser is a duelist class” despite the fact that running in a zerg is not a duel. Portal veil feedback null field. It is almost impossible to create a successful zerg build without relying on those 4 utility skills in some form. Sure you can make one that survives but you dont fulfill a role that some other class could do better. It seems we exist as a utility class, and once that utility can be replaced we aren’t needed anymore. I know everything is uncertain and the patch is new, but the real testament wont be to how many mesmers quit. It will be how many mesmers join. And now that deceptive evasion is pushed to level 60, my feeling is not that many will.

Pyroathiest.4168:

Carighan.6758:

Caelus.7139:

There wouldn’t be any here, or less in extent, IF THEY ACTUALLY FIXED THE BUGS THEY SAID THEY WERE GONNA FIX.

Do people still believe this?

MMO-forums are always:

• Full of complaints.
• Hostile.
• Accusing the devs of being incompetent.
• Accusing the devs of playing personal favours.
• Talking about how much less of the above there would be if only the devs would for once listen to the obviously much-better-developers players.

Since this happens in any MMO, it’s probably safe to assume that this is an inherent “feature” of the community drawn to such games, and can be ~safely ignored.

I’ve played a good number of mmos, but I’ve honestly not ever seen a dev team as…special as the ones here.

They quite literally fail to actually execute the fixes that they release in the patch notes themselves while at the same time introducing more bugs into the very skills they attempted to fix.

Honestly now, have you ever seen this before?

I’ve never seen this level of gross incompetence in an MMO before. I’m not saying the balance team should be fired.

However, if they worked for me, I would have kitten-canned them a year ago.

I’ve seen better product developed from outsourced Indian software companies than I have seen here. And the Indians are cheaper too.

I agree I don’t think many will join… I wouldn’t if I was starting again with my current knowledge… I only stick with it because of the investment I have made into the character and I don’t have the time nor inclination to start a new character atm.

On a more brighter note… with a couple of tweaks… my old build is back in business again – So now I am perfectly happy once more. I have a build that works for solo roaming, a new build for zergs, and a new build plus my old one for spvp.

I will still moan about things not doing what they are supposed to and for traits and skills that don’t work properly – I will also continue to moan that the mesmer needs some love. But for the meanwhile I am happy to be doing my favourite part of the game once more – I had horrible visions of perma karma train.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Carighan.6758:

Caelus.7139:

There wouldn’t be any here, or less in extent, IF THEY ACTUALLY FIXED THE BUGS THEY SAID THEY WERE GONNA FIX.

Do people still believe this?

MMO-forums are always:

• Full of complaints.
• Hostile.
• Accusing the devs of being incompetent.
• Accusing the devs of playing personal favours.
• Talking about how much less of the above there would be if only the devs would for once listen to the obviously much-better-developers players.

Since this happens in any MMO, it’s probably safe to assume that this is an inherent “feature” of the community drawn to such games, and can be ~safely ignored.

I’ve played a good number of mmos, but I’ve honestly not ever seen a dev team as…special as the ones here.

They quite literally fail to actually execute the fixes that they release in the patch notes themselves while at the same time introducing more bugs into the very skills they attempted to fix.

Honestly now, have you ever seen this before?

I’ve never seen this level of gross incompetence in an MMO before. I’m not saying the balance team should be fired.

However, if they worked for me, I would have kitten-canned them a year ago.

I’ve seen better product developed from outsourced Indian software companies than I have seen here. And the Indians are cheaper too.

Diablo 3 release says high. Not an mmo, but considering it is far less complex and requires much less work than an mmo, you are probably not looking very far nor being very objective if Anet is the worst you’ve seen. Hate to break it to you, but if anet was as incompetent as many whiners do, then they’d have flopped badly like swtor and the secret world did soon after they launched, but somehow, Anet is managing to balance no server downtime (rarely) very frequent patches, no sub fee, and yet still able to make a decent profit.

I hope that had they worked for you, that you’d have the qualifications to be leading a large team of programmers and artists of varying credentials. Statistically speaking, most people who play and complain about gw2 no nothing about programming, the difficulties of it, nor do they have any semblance of an idea when it comes to bug fixing.

Now, I for one, hope for a meta analysis of every mmo company and their history with bugs, bug fixes and balancing issues to determine if what you said is true, or just nonsense. Oh, that’s right! I forgot! You can’t possibly determine the worst mmo company without actual data! Anecdotes are worthless, and so is experience! You need to objectively analyse as efficiently as possible, with as much data as possible (which most people are just not going to do, and do not do) to actually be able to say “This is the worst level of incompetence that I’ve seen.”

Alasteir.7031:

Diablo release says high. Not an mmo, but considering it is far less complex and requires much less work than an mmo, you are probably not looking very far nor being very objective if Anet is the worst you’ve seen. Hate to break it to you, but if anet was as incompetent as many whiners do, then they’d have flopped badly like swtor and the secret world did soon after they launched, but somehow, Anet is managing to balance no server downtime (rarely) very frequent patches, no sub fee, and yet still able to make a decent profit.

Different teams. The Anet server programmers are absolute wizards. The balance team, not so much.

Pyroathiest.4168:

Alasteir.7031:

Diablo release says high. Not an mmo, but considering it is far less complex and requires much less work than an mmo, you are probably not looking very far nor being very objective if Anet is the worst you’ve seen. Hate to break it to you, but if anet was as incompetent as many whiners do, then they’d have flopped badly like swtor and the secret world did soon after they launched, but somehow, Anet is managing to balance no server downtime (rarely) very frequent patches, no sub fee, and yet still able to make a decent profit.

Different teams. The Anet server programmers are absolute wizards. The balance team, not so much.

Acknowledged on the different teams bit, however I’m skeptical that the balance team are the village idiots when every profession complains after every balance patch. In fact that seems pretty balanced. I don’t know, I guess I’m the type of person to realize the many complex variables that go into the gw2 combat considering things like active dodge, telegraphs, human cognitive load (there’s only so much you can pay attention to at once) biases, and the like that I’d blame my own lack of skill or a mistake on my part before blaming it on someone else (self-serving bias)

On the issues of bugs and broken promises, which is more in line with the topic of discussion. The bugs are to be expected. Something breaking after a major patch is very common in mmos, and broken promises “They said they’d fix it, and they haven’t!” is just a non-evidenced based accusation, since I highly doubt, Anet deliberately messed up. I’m pretty sure, like most bugs, there was an unforeseen issue, and they are trying to fix it, while trying to deal with every other bug from every other profession that may have popped up, alongside other balance issues.

As for teams. Does Anet even have a site or something in which we can verify their teams and the people working in said teams? Or are we just assuming?

We always could go back to the “Lowest Common Denominator,” folks. Namely that, we’d all agree that ANet seriously needs a PTR.

Advent.6193:

We always could go back to the “Lowest Common Denominator,” folks. Namely that, we’d all agree that ANet seriously needs a PTR.

Well that would be lovely. If not for anything else than to see progress on exciting new releases. That, and it’ll definitely help Anet gather data at a much faster rate. Less work for them on that part.

Alasteir.7031:

Caelus.7139:

Honestly the game is great, but I do believe if the devs are a little bit more competent, especially in the QA area, it’d be better. I still don’t see me playing any other MMO (other than FF14 cause I’m a fan of the franchise) than this. Barely interested in ESO and Wildstar.

The devs would be more “competent” if the players would provide actual constructive criticism instead of whining. They have to gather data, analyze it, and do testing. If the players don’t provide anything but a story of an experience that can’t even be verified as true beyond their word, then it’s utterly worthless. Anet is trying with the collaborative development, to involve the community but I feel the forums are too hostile for that. And too many people here think that anecdotes = data. No testing, no sources to verify said testing, no alternative hypothesis consideration, no disclaimers mentioning the lack of testing of hard to analyze variables like player behavior, etc etc. No, just anecdotes followed by complaining.

we HAVE provided a ton of stuff especially in this forum. lots of mesmers sat together tested and tried out thing, soo many suggestions, somany great ideas. ideas to help the wvw mesmers, ideas how to fix certain things, trait ideas… etc. check this forum! since the glamour and immortal mesmer nerf, we have been trying to stay positive, we have been coming up with new builds, we tried everything out and shared it, we had ideas for new weapons and maybe trait rearranging, etc..
but what does anet do? bugs still not fixed, new bugs(some of them pretty bad,like clones not atackinf, iwarden not reflecting multiple projectiles, etc) and the gm traits…?i mean 1k healing power?!?!? i mean have u ever seen a mesmer being like omg i really want to have healing power in my build as it makes me super strong….
so no, even the mesmers that were always positive and constructive are fed up. lets face it, anet has not spent any time nor made an effort with this class at all. we told them over and over what we need and lack, we made a long thread with screenshots and detailed description of our bugs!all other classes got more attention over this entire year and now we gotta wait for anothe 6 month to maaaaayyyybe bet 1 bugfix, 13 new bugs and maybe another crappy change while still being a kitten veilbot in wvw?
im fed up and so are others. seriously lets just boykott mesmers untill bugs are fixed at least and anet promises to put effort in this class and we get group and wvw raid builds! just reroll…

I can’t say much about the devs, but I think we can all agree of how much the QA of this game is bad (and is getting even worse) and how little attention we get in those forums.

I mean, we have some bugs since beta, like Illusionary Leap. Is not a bug hard to reproduce. It’s not a bug that the chance of bugging is low. It doesn’t work how it was supposed half of the time. In some situations, you have 100% chance that it will not work. It’s a bug that seriously affect the quality of the game for sword mesmer players. We never got any change about it on live servers. This skill clearly doesn’t work how it was supposed to work, and they never tried to change it with something else on live servers, since they can’t fix the skill in a way to work how it was supposed to. They just let it the way it is. Almost two years, just letting it go.

This is disheartening as a player. Even more when it’s about the mesmer community. When a new bug shows up in the game, it just take some minutes to show up here. People does a lot of tests. Take prints. Videos. Compile every information about the bug that a player is possible to and post it here. We get no answer. Not even a “we are aware of the bug” from Anet.

So yeah, our community seems to take the game and the ways to communicate with the devs a lot more serious than the devs itself. And of course, I don’t know if this is true because I can’t see the other side of the situation, but what I know is that not even about it they are worried.

Alasteir.7031:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Alasteir.7031:

Diablo release says high. Not an mmo, but considering it is far less complex and requires much less work than an mmo, you are probably not looking very far nor being very objective if Anet is the worst you’ve seen. Hate to break it to you, but if anet was as incompetent as many whiners do, then they’d have flopped badly like swtor and the secret world did soon after they launched, but somehow, Anet is managing to balance no server downtime (rarely) very frequent patches, no sub fee, and yet still able to make a decent profit.

Different teams. The Anet server programmers are absolute wizards. The balance team, not so much.

Acknowledged on the different teams bit, however I’m skeptical that the balance team are the village idiots when every profession complains after every balance patch. In fact that seems pretty balanced. I don’t know, I guess I’m the type of person to realize the many complex variables that go into the gw2 combat considering things like active dodge, telegraphs, human cognitive load (there’s only so much you can pay attention to at once) biases, and the like that I’d blame my own lack of skill or a mistake on my part before blaming it on someone else (self-serving bias)

I understand your points about overall balance. I use a simpler metric.

In the patch notes, they said that the warden is now fixed. It’s not. It’s broken even worse.

This isn’t something that happens rarely. They regularly break skills that they didn’t intend to break, and they regularly completely fail to actually execute the fixes listed within their own patch notes.

These are the sort of things that aren’t subjective, that aren’t an opinion based matter of good or bad. They simply completely failed at doing what they said they did.