Guild Wars 2

fluxit.8247:

I was under the impression that the new PU 100% trait only affected the mesmer. I’m confused. I can’t wait for them to finish balancing everything and release the final traits for each class so we can get a better idea of what we’re working with.

Assuming it works the same way as now, only a mesmer with PU traited will gain boons. However, PU will affect all outgoing stealth durations, causing MI to apply increased duration stealth.

fluxit.8247:

So if everyone were to run sword/shield and the main focus of our strategy would be to cc the enemy to death we would really have to come together and train to sync and coordinate our CCs. This strategy won’t be as effective if everyone spams their cc’s whenever they feel like it or if we all just blow our cds at the same time.

Yeah, for sure. Since 20 people split nicely into 4 parties, a 4 party rotation of CC is probably the best way to accomplish it.

fluxit.8247:

If our coordination were really good, we could drop one portal at the beginning, charge and purposefully get caught in an initial static. Then the enemy commander calls “Yes! All damage here!” Necros drop their wells, eles drop their meteors and ice bows and just as the hammer train leaps in, we stun break and blink to their backline destroying all their squishy damage dealers, then portalling back to safety when the job is done. Perhaps this strategy might be too difficult to coordinate but wouldn’t it be grand.

You can easily adapt that in a slightly simpler way though. Just drop one portal every time you move to engage. If you do end up getting caught, you have a perfect escape route for everyone in the group, and then you can regroup and engage right after they’ve burnt a bunch of cooldowns.

fluxit.8247:

I think as a strategy, focusing too much on stealth is not good. The only effective use of stealth I think would be if we find ourselves too scattered or in need of a reset, 2 mass invisibilities would allow us breathing room to gather back onto the driver. Stealthing in for the element of surprise is sometimes useful but a group that has their whits about them will just back away until we unstealth. A group that blindly charges into the enemy without knowing where they are would be killed just as easily without stealth IMO.

Generally I agree with this, which is why my original plan calls for just 2 people running MI.

That being said, having the group literally be perma-stealthed until we pop out and engage on someone is quite appealing. It’s not that groups wouldn’t know exactly where we are, they wouldn’t even know that we’re on the map until they’re getting steamrolled. It might not work out quite as well in reality, but it sure sounds fun to try.

fluxit.8247:

But alas in group pvp it’s not always about individuals pumping out the best damage they can, but about coordinated damage spikes, focusing everyone’s damage in a single area so greatswords might not be needed. If we find our groups damage isn’t enough (although I doubt it) the previous paragraph might be something to think about.

Yeah, this is generally how I’ve been seeing it. At least for starting, everyone runs staff + sw/shield. As we go, it may turn out that we can drop a couple people into gs spiking builds because we don’t need quite that much CC, but that’s a decision that can be made later.

I will have to get an account on fa! Will try and be ready with my 4 account with a lvl 80 mesmer!

fluxit.8247:

For anyone who is inspired to join the mesmer cause but not confident in their ability to run around in a zerg as a mesmer, an amazing player “Caos Danzante” took the time to make a series of training videos. He goes through the basics, positioning, skill usage and enemy movement awareness mainly from the perspective of a mesmer but not always.

Even if you consider yourself able to hold your own and support your team members it’s still nice to refresh your memory of the basics every now and again.

How To Play WvW as a Group

• Lesson 1 – What the hell is going on?
• Lesson 2 – Why do people die? Positioning
• Lesson 3 – Like gods walking among mere mortals
• Lesson 4 – Hit ’em where it hurts

Bear in mind that this is pre-stability changes.

that would be me o/
and all my guild is behind the theorycrafting and work for those videos

we might have some more videos incoming, an update about stability would be nice, but I’m a bit short on time these days

I’m interested in a EU division if there are enough of us.

Fay.2357:

Tealots.6095:

Now I understand. My main theory is that when you have a group of people all playing the same build on the same class, whatever the weakness is of that group will become VERY apparent. Diversity is usually the remedy (even if a little bit).

Normally I agree quite wholeheartedly with this statement. In this case though, I’ve been drawing a blank on what exactly the weakness is. The main weakness I’ve identified is if the group ends up getting steamrolled by a stability-laden hammertrain, and the solution to that would be more cc/boonstrip.

Tealots.6095:

Even if one or two, the AoE from Mental Torment, Master of Fragmentation and the fact that everyone has IP now could probably down some people very quickly.

You’re right about this though. When the majority of an enemy group is in the high-amped realm of the mental torment trait, shatter spike will be very potent. It may well be worth having a couple people running a more shatter focused traitset, even if they still bring staff for it.

I think that with the amount of chronomancers that we will have (and all that kittening alacrity), there will be a ton of “inactive” clustered enemies. Two team raid members running GS shatter can make excellent use of the Mirror Blade + Blink + Mindwrack combo (I can only imagine this with mental torment). From there, they can sword-swap to immobilize, torch4 out of the hotzone and wait a few seconds until they can do it all again.

I think lockdown mesmers cause the most havoc when a team is trying to stomp or rez. So we’re going to want to blow up some squishies to get those dominoes falling.

Count me in
Btw. why are you worried about Chaos line cooldowns?
Zerg with Tides of Time will recharge the Chaos Storm instantly.

Pyro – why don’t you create a regional list in the OP for those interested? Seems like there’s a fair few here interested in an EU initiative alongside an NA group.

I am thinking about server transfer, but trouble is playtime (I don’t usually go beyond 10pm gmt/bst during weekdays/working days, and weekends can be sporadic) and concerns with lag/ping.

Korusef.3714:

Count me in
Btw. why are you worried about Chaos line cooldowns?
Zerg with Tides of Time will recharge the Chaos Storm instantly.

Catching a tides of time that you threw will reduce the cooldown of that skill by 10 seconds. It doesn’t have an effect on other skills.

Tealots.6095:

I think that with the amount of chronomancers that we will have (and all that kittening alacrity), there will be a ton of “inactive” clustered enemies. Two team raid members running GS shatter can make excellent use of the Mirror Blade + Blink + Mindwrack combo (I can only imagine this with mental torment). From there, they can sword-swap to immobilize, torch4 out of the hotzone and wait a few seconds until they can do it all again.

Keep in mind that only mind wrack itself actually benefits from the lockdown in terms of damage though. I definitely agree that we should have a couple of people specced with mental torment for burst damage, but I’m not sure how much GS itself will actually add to that burst, since mirror blade is essentially a single target skill.

Curunen.8729:

Pyro – why don’t you create a regional list in the OP for those interested? Seems like there’s a fair few here interested in an EU initiative alongside an NA group.

I am thinking about server transfer, but trouble is playtime (I don’t usually go beyond 10pm gmt/bst during weekdays/working days, and weekends can be sporadic) and concerns with lag/ping.

I’ll definitely keep a list of folks who are looking to do it on the EU side. The main issue with EU is that I’m not going to be able to drive raids both on NA and EU, so the EU side will need another crazy person willing to drive this.

Fay.2357:

Tealots.6095:

I think that with the amount of chronomancers that we will have (and all that kittening alacrity), there will be a ton of “inactive” clustered enemies. Two team raid members running GS shatter can make excellent use of the Mirror Blade + Blink + Mindwrack combo (I can only imagine this with mental torment). From there, they can sword-swap to immobilize, torch4 out of the hotzone and wait a few seconds until they can do it all again.

Keep in mind that only mind wrack itself actually benefits from the lockdown in terms of damage though. I definitely agree that we should have a couple of people specced with mental torment for burst damage, but I’m not sure how much GS itself will actually add to that burst, since mirror blade is essentially a single target skill.

But it’s still quite the snipe. And probably also the safest option if whoever is our burst wants to hang behind the Chronomacer army looking for their opportunities.

Sign me up! This’ll give me an excuse to level another Mesmer.

Why not start now?! The most fun I’ve had in wvw, and quite possibly the entire game, was when my old wvw guild had a mesmer night. We had at least 20 mesmers, and I’m pretty sure we confused the heck out of the other servers.

I have an alt account that I would love to do this with, just have to delete my level one characters and transfer again, lol. (But I really think you should start doing this meow!)

garland.5193:

Sign me up! This’ll give me an excuse to level another Mesmer.

Gotcha, glad to have you on board.

rhapsody.3615:

Why not start now?! The most fun I’ve had in wvw, and quite possibly the entire game, was when my old wvw guild had a mesmer night. We had at least 20 mesmers, and I’m pretty sure we confused the heck out of the other servers.

I have an alt account that I would love to do this with, just have to delete my level one characters and transfer again, lol. (But I really think you should start doing this meow!)

Well, we really do lack an enormous amount of utility and abilities that we’ll be getting in the future that will really make the ideas here work, and work well. We’ll be getting tons more aoe, tons more lockdown abilities, lots of utility options that we don’t have now, and probably some others I don’t remember.

That being said, if there are enough crazy people willing to try right now, I’d be crazy enough to try and drive it.

I’m in. Let’s enjoy mes before our post HOT fun is nerfed back down.

Gav.1425:

I’m in. Let’s enjoy mes before our post HOT fun is nerfed back down.

Gotcha in, I’m looking forward to the fun as well. I’m banking on the fact that the devs appear to have been having fun making all the nifty stuff for chronomancer that they’ll be reluctant to turn around and nerf it into the ground.

Fay.2357:

Gav.1425:

I’m in. Let’s enjoy mes before our post HOT fun is nerfed back down.

Gotcha in, I’m looking forward to the fun as well. I’m banking on the fact that the devs appear to have been having fun making all the nifty stuff for chronomancer that they’ll be reluctant to turn around and nerf it into the ground.

I’m also banking on the fact that Robert Gee is an infinitely better mesmer skill designer than anyone else we’ve had thus far. He seems to have a decent mind for balance as well and I see our new toys staying around for a long time, albeit they will be tweaked here and there.

I’m not sure if the Mesmer issues over time have been a result of a lack of mind for balancing from our dev or a lack of mind for balancing from devs for other classes that are above the current power curve :-p

I tend to think it’s the latter given that our harder to use skills are generally our more powerful skills … then I look at the more powerful skills that are easier to use <_<

Curunen.8729:

Fay.2357:

Sebrent.3625:

Just saying … why even let them stack up stability when you can pop out of stealth fully loaded with boons and stunlock them with shields of death :-p

This is pretty much exactly what I have in mind, though more from a temporary stealth for engage perspective than a permastealthed mesmer zerg.

…that’s a scary thought.

Curunen.8729:

Did he/his guild quit gw2? Would have been the perfect guinea pigs for this kind of thing.

Yeah, he’s moved on to star citizen, and his guild has mostly scattered. That reminds me though, I should contact Selan, she’d be all over this idea.

Ah, now that you mention it I thought I recognised this org:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/orgs/AVTR

That’s a shame – I’m kind of playing both gw2 and SC arena commander side by side (well… the latter is on hold until I upgrade my machine), and even when the PU (persistent universe, not prismatic understanding!) goes live I don’t think I’ll be dropping gw2.

I mayyyy have contacted him last night and told him to get his kitten back to gw2 for this raid.

Tealots.6095:

Fay.2357:

Tealots.6095:

I think that with the amount of chronomancers that we will have (and all that kittening alacrity), there will be a ton of “inactive” clustered enemies. Two team raid members running GS shatter can make excellent use of the Mirror Blade + Blink + Mindwrack combo (I can only imagine this with mental torment). From there, they can sword-swap to immobilize, torch4 out of the hotzone and wait a few seconds until they can do it all again.

Keep in mind that only mind wrack itself actually benefits from the lockdown in terms of damage though. I definitely agree that we should have a couple of people specced with mental torment for burst damage, but I’m not sure how much GS itself will actually add to that burst, since mirror blade is essentially a single target skill.

But it’s still quite the snipe. And probably also the safest option if whoever is our burst wants to hang behind the Chronomacer army looking for their opportunities.

Yeah, it’s certainly better damage, I just don’t know if a bit of single target damage is worth giving up staff. In any event, I definitely agree that we should running several glassier-geared people that are traited for shatter bursting.

This sounds like big fun. I was involved in one all-Mesmer WvW project already (the one that ran eight identical-looking female Charr Mesmers in purple gear) and it was a ton of fun. This sounds like even more fun.

My availability is a little odd: my bedtime shifts about an hour later each day, right around the clock. I’m available during all my waking hours except when a scheduled appointment or activity conflicts.

fluxit.8247:

For anyone who is inspired to join the mesmer cause but not confident in their ability to run around in a zerg as a mesmer, an amazing player “Caos Danzante” took the time to make a series of training videos. He goes through the basics, positioning, skill usage and enemy movement awareness mainly from the perspective of a mesmer but not always.

Even if you consider yourself able to hold your own and support your team members it’s still nice to refresh your memory of the basics every now and again.

How To Play WvW as a Group

• Lesson 1 – What the hell is going on?
• Lesson 2 – Why do people die? Positioning
• Lesson 3 – Like gods walking among mere mortals
• Lesson 4 – Hit ’em where it hurts

Bear in mind that this is pre-stability changes.

For what it’s worth, I’ve spent a good bit of time in some team-focused PVP guilds in other games. It’s perfectly possible to train a group of players to coordinate their moves in a group effort.

For example, I played with Shadowclan in a couple of different games. If you don’t know who they are, see the Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowclan

They’re very good at organized open-world PVP, and have shown a solid ability to compete in many games, even while maintaining a policy that no Shadowclan team is allowed to require voice chat for any players. The secret of their success—besides just having a lot of experience—is regular boot camps where they drill groups in tactics.

I saw the same approach used in a few other guild projects in several other games, and it worked well in those cases, too. The basic idea is to get your team together on a fairly regular basis and put them through a series of maneuvers. Come up with a standard set of commands that are short and recognizable, and practice having people respond to the commands. Have a few different field commanders practice running the team through the drills, and set up a chain of command. That way, if you lose your main commander, there’s a backup commander ready to go immediately.

You can keep the drills interesting by rotating through different ones and making a sort of minigame out of some of them. For example, in some games we had games like splitting the group into two and having one group try to get as close to the other as possible without being seen (using landscape cover and so forth).

With regular practice, some pretty slick maneuvers become possible. I’ll mention two from Shadowclan days:

In one, our leader ran us into a tower with a closable door, and stood outside the tower alone. We had seen an enemy group approaching, so we knew there was a good chance they would see him. Sure enough, they saw him and made a beeline for him. He told us to stay where we were until he gave the word. He was playing a very tough tank build, but still there were a handful of enemy players attacking him, so suspense was fairly high. When he got to about 30% health he ordered us to attack and we popped out of the tower and obliterated them I think they were dead before they even realized we were attacking, because they were so focused on killing him.

In another case, our leader had a group of us hide behind a couple of big trees with a lot of ground cover around them. A path led between them to a dead end. Then he sent a squishy healer character out to get the attention of an enemy group and run back to where we were. The squishy guy ran right past us into the dead end. The following enemy went right after us, never seeing us at all until, again, they were all dead.

A little regular practice makes many things possible.

mikelevins.4639:

For what it’s worth, I’ve spent a good bit of time in some team-focused PVP guilds in other games. It’s perfectly possible to train a group of players to coordinate their moves in a group effort.

For example, I played with Shadowclan in a couple of different games. If you don’t know who they are, see the Wikipedia page:

-snip-

Thanks for your thoughts on this. I very much agree with that sort of combat mentality; creating more complex possibilities from a basic set of simple maneuvers that can be executed smoothly. Once we actually get organized and start working on actual combat, I’d absolutely appreciate any feedback and input that you and any other folks have on ways to do this, or refinements on what we’re already doing.

Fay.2357:

mikelevins.4639:

For what it’s worth, I’ve spent a good bit of time in some team-focused PVP guilds in other games. It’s perfectly possible to train a group of players to coordinate their moves in a group effort.

For example, I played with Shadowclan in a couple of different games. If you don’t know who they are, see the Wikipedia page:

-snip-

Thanks for your thoughts on this. I very much agree with that sort of combat mentality; creating more complex possibilities from a basic set of simple maneuvers that can be executed smoothly. Once we actually get organized and start working on actual combat, I’d absolutely appreciate any feedback and input that you and any other folks have on ways to do this, or refinements on what we’re already doing.

Glad to offer any help I can. I’m on Sea of Sorrows at the moment, but would love to join the Mesmer team when it’s time to do that, and will happily transfer if needed. One of my comrades is interested as well.

I thought I would just add a couple of notes on commands and maneuvers that have worked well.

In each of these cases, we’ve used a formal vocabulary of roughly eight commands, give or take a few. The exact set depends on the game, because different games offer different sets of things you can do. For example, WoW teams had FLY and LAND commands, but other games didn’t.

Text commands were always issued in uppercase to make them more recognizable, and keyboard macros were used to make them very fast to issue. I don;t know whether OMFG will want to do that, given the prominence of voice chat in GW2, but I will say two things about it: first, both Shadowclan and our other PVP teams have done fine without voice chat using the command system. In fact, Shadowclan commanders are forbidden by guild rules from requiring voice chat in any PVP action. Second, clear commands that are fast to type can actually work faster and better than voice commands in a trained group.

A typical command set would include things like:

- a command to form up on the commander
- a command to form up on a specified person, position, or target
- a command to scatter and hide
- a command to hold ground and take no action
- a command to perform an orderly retreat
- a command to charge and engage the enemy

In addition, there would usually be a short list of commonly-used maneuvers. Examples would be things like:

- activate stealth and charge
- hide in the landscape and send out bait
- split the group into hammer and anvil and engage with the anvil while the hammer flanks
- use landscape as cover to take up an ambush position
- scatter and regroup on a designated rally point

Probably the hardest single maneuver to train is the command to hold ground and take no action. It’s essential for certain applications, like ambushes and pincer maneuvers, but it’s next to impossible with an untrained group.

We used to practice by sending teams into the middle of big groups of PVE mobs and having them do nothing until ordered to respond. When you can send a group into mobs like this and they will die before breaking discipline, you know they are trained.

mikelevins.4639:

Text commands were always issued in uppercase to make them more recognizable, and keyboard macros were used to make them very fast to issue. I don;t know whether OMFG will want to do that, given the prominence of voice chat in GW2,

So there’s a couple problems with typed commands in GW2.

The biggest problem is lack of macros. I could…finagle something….but I’d rather not. The other main issue is that there’s no effective way to talk just to your group with chat. Squad chat sorta works, but has a cap on the number of players in it. You can also do some pretty creative things with multiple teamspeak windows, allowing you to listen to multiple channels while only talking to one, or vice versa. It allows for nice segregation of command structure.

Generally, people balk at voip if they’re forced to talk. In this case, voip will only be necessary to listen, not talk. In my experience, I haven’t seen anyone have an objection with that implementation.

mikelevins.4639:

In addition, there would usually be a short list of commonly-used maneuvers. Examples would be things like:

Yeah, the specific commands/maneuvers are going to depend a decent amount on what the group comp actually ends up being.

Additionally, it’s looking like we may end up with a bit more than 20 people. Obviously this number will come down to some extent based on time availabilities, but the possibility exists that we’ll have significantly more than 20 people who would like to join for this. Depending on how many more want to join, I’ll try to implement a couple things.

If we only have ~10 extras, then they can be organized into an auxiliary roaming group that sticks nearby the main raid, but can pursue independent objectives as fights happen.

If we actually end up with enough for another full raid…I need to find another driver, and so I’ll bug Kylia more to get back here and drive it.

EU mesmers!! REVOLT! RISE! let our voice be heard! cause we want to raid too!

Sandrox.9524:

EU mesmers!! REVOLT! RISE! let our voice be heard! cause we want to raid too!

If enough of you over on EU want a raid, then I promise I can figure something out for you all. At this point though, there’s only 4ish people that have wanted to raid from EU.

Fay.2357:

mikelevins.4639:

Text commands were always issued in uppercase to make them more recognizable, and keyboard macros were used to make them very fast to issue. I don;t know whether OMFG will want to do that, given the prominence of voice chat in GW2,

So there’s a couple problems with typed commands in GW2.

The biggest problem is lack of macros. I could…finagle something….but I’d rather not. The other main issue is that there’s no effective way to talk just to your group with chat. Squad chat sorta works, but has a cap on the number of players in it. You can also do some pretty creative things with multiple teamspeak windows, allowing you to listen to multiple channels while only talking to one, or vice versa. It allows for nice segregation of command structure.

Generally, people balk at voip if they’re forced to talk. In this case, voip will only be necessary to listen, not talk. In my experience, I haven’t seen anyone have an objection with that implementation.

mikelevins.4639:

In addition, there would usually be a short list of commonly-used maneuvers. Examples would be things like:

Yeah, the specific commands/maneuvers are going to depend a decent amount on what the group comp actually ends up being.

Additionally, it’s looking like we may end up with a bit more than 20 people. Obviously this number will come down to some extent based on time availabilities, but the possibility exists that we’ll have significantly more than 20 people who would like to join for this. Depending on how many more want to join, I’ll try to implement a couple things.

If we only have ~10 extras, then they can be organized into an auxiliary roaming group that sticks nearby the main raid, but can pursue independent objectives as fights happen.

If we actually end up with enough for another full raid…I need to find another driver, and so I’ll bug Kylia more to get back here and drive it.

If typed commands don’t work, they don’t work. For what it’s worth, Shadowclan played on Jade Quarry for a while and did well, as usual, and used their usual rules. But that just means it can be done, not that it should be done. The practices of the team should be what works for the team. I more or less assumed voip would be the standard.

I agree with you that for most people listening to voice chat will not be a problem. Most of my comrades would prefer it. Just as a point of reference I’m an exception: listening to voice chat distracts me and makes my play worse—but I’m the exception, and I certainly expect to have to adapt to what works for the group as a whole.

Either two raids or a raid plus a roaming group sound like a good problem to have.

Sounds cool.

It would be great if you’d make a similar raid on EU

I would love to join you, as I am very supportive of the chrono traits; they’re excellent! However, I am on Gandara (EU) ;( I’d love to see how it goes for you! Be sure to record

Fay.2357:

Generally, people balk at voip if they’re forced to talk. In this case, voip will only be necessary to listen and obey, not talk.

Fixed it for you

Also worth noting is that FA is pretty active and if we get more than 20 people it might be difficult to load us all on the same map at certain times.

Korusef.3714:

Fay.2357:

Generally, people balk at voip if they’re forced to talk. In this case, voip will only be necessary to listen and obey, not talk.

Fixed it for you

Also worth noting is that FA is pretty active and if we get more than 20 people it might be difficult to load us all on the same map at certain times.

This is assuming the keep map caps at the same amount with those new massive BL maps.

We’ve got about 6 EU people that would like to raid now.

Curunen.8729:

Fay.2357:

Loboling.5293:

Like a lot of people, I still haven’t settled on a class for HoT.

However I want to make a suggestion on a funny strategy. Call it “Gopher Up”. Have everyone scatter and drop portals, the zerg then moves from portal to portal that are scattered everywhere. Looking like the old game of whack a mole. It would be funny to hear, and funny to watch. Good luck with your group, and I hope I get to see it. (I’m on FA too)

Sebrent.3625:

Apparently Team Legacy did that during WvW against a very organized guild group at one time as a counter to their deathball tactic as the deathball could never run over the Team Legacy zerg as it kept porting around … back when there wasn’t a limit.

I actually believe that the first group to do this was Kylia’s guild Avatar. I’m trying to remember the deathball zerg guild, but I can’t quite remember it. They were always rather suspected of using a botting program due to the compactness of the deathball.

Did he/his guild quit gw2? Would have been the perfect guinea pigs for this kind of thing.

yes kylia did quit gw2. if u want guinea pigs…well some of us AVTR people are still around plus i can ask him about his input on things.

Hey Pyro, I’m interested in joining this, I could run some support build.

I’m thinking of the synergy between PU and Illusionary Inspiration for boonshare before engage.

Just wondering if F5 works without any illusion out (since IP is basline) so that PU mes can double cast MI for a total 20s of stealth (before engage, out of combat) and with so many boons gained, it might be nice to share them out to the group before the big clash.

Well, why not on Eu side.
It can be funny.
(but it depend of the server too)

Does anyone know if catching another mesmer’s tide of time will cut cd on his own tide of time? Heck, if it did it might not even be changed right away due to how rare an all chronomancer team would be, despite being majorly op.

Kury.8210:

Does anyone know if catching another mesmer’s tide of time will cut cd on his own tide of time? Heck, if it did it might not even be changed right away due to how rare an all chronomancer team would be, despite being majorly op.

It shouldn’t. If it does, it will absolutely be the single most broken mechanic they’ve ever released, and should be hotfixed. It would mean the entire group could literally spam ToT nonstop.

Also, I feel like the movement of the skill wouldn’t allow you to also catch their ToT. It would require you to be like 50 units in front of your Mesmer buddy the whole time. And I think that would make many of us pretty mad who were trying to set up some kind of play.

I’m not all that familiar with WvW but its something I’’m interested in.

Im currently on Yak’s bend but can transfer to FA when this gets up and running.

My mesmer is Nick the Magician

@Fay: I agree. However, you would need about 4 or so chronomancers to spam it effectively. It would only be practical in wvw and honestly easy enough to dodge, at least once it gets going. Strange… kind of reminds me of ice climbers “wobbling” in SB Melee. Anyways, if it worked this way I think we could expect to see it stay this way unless the tactic/exploit becomes a common practice.

Tealots.6095:

Also, I feel like the movement of the skill wouldn’t allow you to also catch their ToT.

You would just need to catch the wall on the return, which comes back all the way to the caster at least.

Kury.8210:

@Fay: I agree. However, you would need about 4 or so chronomancers to spam it effectively. It would only be practical in wvw and honestly easy enough to dodge, at least once it gets going.

You could dodge only the first two Waves only to be hit by the remaining two and if there was instant recharge they would just keep coming over your stunned soon to be corpse

My suggestions for stability share support build:
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgMGWAT4A-w~
I don’t know whether the “on shatter” buffs depend on the number of clones you shatter or are per activating the shatter skill.

Also Inspiration 1,4,9 look like a good speed support build, does anybody know what is the coef for super speed?

How can i get invited to the guild? pretty pretty please ? Im on full Ascended Berserker armor, running mantras in zerg. i also pvp all the time

Immensus.9732:

How can i get invited to the guild? pretty pretty please ? Im on full Ascended Berserker armor, running mantras in zerg. i also pvp all the time

Right here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/OMFG-Official-Mesmer-Forum-Guild

How many gems does it cost for a server transfer? I’m ready to make the jump!

Chaos Archangel.5071:

How many gems does it cost for a server transfer? I’m ready to make the jump!

Depends on the server, I believe FA is 1800. You can go into the server menu and check though.

keenlam.4753:

Hey Pyro, I’m interested in joining this, I could run some support build.

I’m thinking of the synergy between PU and Illusionary Inspiration for boonshare before engage.

Just wondering if F5 works without any illusion out (since IP is basline) so that PU mes can double cast MI for a total 20s of stealth (before engage, out of combat) and with so many boons gained, it might be nice to share them out to the group before the big clash.

Well, everyone will have a mixture of support and offense, though some will be more support and some more offense.

The thought is that 2 people will run PU, since mass invis has a target cap of 10, allowing just 2 people to stealth the entire zerg. If we want to do something wonky like the permastealth mentioned earlier, could certainly switch to more people running PU/MI.

While sharing the PU boons could be nifty, I don’t know if it’ll be worth taking the signet on your bar just for that. We’ll need some support folks clearing condies and particularly providing stab though, at least 1 per group in that stab role.

Fay.2357:

The thought is that 2 people will run PU, since mass invis has a target cap of 10, allowing just 2 people to stealth the entire zerg.

unless they’ll change something, the stealth application is random, so you’ll likely end up with some people with 10s stealth and some people without any stealth at all

Menaka.5092:

Fay.2357:

The thought is that 2 people will run PU, since mass invis has a target cap of 10, allowing just 2 people to stealth the entire zerg.

unless they’ll change something, the stealth application is random, so you’ll likely end up with some people with 10s stealth and some people without any stealth at all

Priority is generally based first on party and then on proximity. Doing a quick split into two nearby groups for the MI cast should solve that problem.

Based on the new changes in our traits, I’d like to throw out Ineptitude Mesmers as a possibility, or possibly a hybrid of Inept Chronomancers… Ah, that doesn’t sound so cool. Inept Mesmers… naming can do with some work.

But my thoughts are thus: Ineptitude has no hard target cap, it has an ICD per foe, so one mesmer can throw a couple seconds of confusion on to an entire zerg with dodges, blocks[not that we have many], and Blurred Frenzy. Could be potentially strong addition to break zergs without solid stability and cleansing via hard and soft lockdown, mimicking Glamour Bombing in its potential usage. Plus, lots of blind for overall survivability of the squad.

Dondagora.9645:

Based on the new changes in our traits, I’d like to throw out Ineptitude Mesmers as a possibility, or possibly a hybrid of Inept Chronomancers… Ah, that doesn’t sound so cool. Inept Mesmers… naming can do with some work.

But my thoughts are thus: Ineptitude has no hard target cap, it has an ICD per foe, so one mesmer can throw a couple seconds of confusion on to an entire zerg with dodges, blocks[not that we have many], and Blurred Frenzy. Could be potentially strong addition to break zergs without solid stability and cleansing via hard and soft lockdown, mimicking Glamour Bombing in its potential usage. Plus, lots of blind for overall survivability of the squad.

Well, the issue with ineptitude with the function of the raid here is that the idea is to have a very solid lockdown on an enemy group, so in an ideal case ineptitude won’t be getting used as much.

That being said, I’m also thinking running 1 or 2 maim shatter mesmers, potentially with ineptitude or something else, and with the blind on shatter trait and such. It would be a nice injection of some solid tanky skirmishing potential (full dire) into the frontline with the blinds.

Also, something to note:

With the upcoming changes, I’d like to try and put together a 10 man group for some small raids, to test things out and get some experience running as a coordinated party. If you’d like to be part of this group, just toss me a forum PM, and I’ll start figuring out possible raiding times.