Guild Wars 2

So, I’ve been meaning to ask but we hadn’t had enough information until now to speculate, but what are ideas or opinions on Stronghold and Mesmers? Given the NPC system, do you think our utility with Veil and Mass Invisibility stealth will make us valuable shepherds, or maybe our ability to use portal will allow us to do some mass-supply runs with our team and thus send out a wave of Archers/Doorbreakers?

What are the possibilities, problems, or beliefs you have about our place in Stronghold?

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/stronghold-the-battle-of-champions-dusk/

I’ve been thinking up a lot of was in which Mesmer can fit into rolls. But it will be hard to say exactly where we’ll fit in and how well until Stronghold drops. This is partly because its hard to see what other classes/team comps will be present. Never the less portal will be a huge player I think, as well as reflects, and CC/interrupt. I can see stealth being very important for channeling supply because without it, a single mesmer with things like MoD and MoP (assuming damage breaks the channel) could freely chain interrupt/lockdown an enemy teams ability to access supply, all by himself.

Ross Biddle.2367:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/stronghold-the-battle-of-champions-dusk/

I’ve been thinking up a lot of was in which Mesmer can fit into rolls. But it will be hard to say exactly where we’ll fit in and how well until Stronghold drops. This is partly because its hard to see what other classes/team comps will be present. Never the less portal will be a huge player I think, as well as reflects, and CC/interrupt. I can see stealth being very important for channeling supply because without it, a single mesmer with things like MoD and MoP (assuming damage breaks the channel) could freely chain interrupt/lockdown an enemy teams ability to access supply, all by himself.

No damage interrupts, it’s stated only Hard CC will interrupt these channels. I think this is ANet creating a niche for control-oriented specs, especially mesmers given our vast amount of dazes, to fill.

I don’t know how well their idea will work, but I’m imagining a possible 6/6/x build with CS with either or both Harmonic Mantras and traited pistol for range. With the 1200 range of the pistol and GS , it’d be possible to strip stability and deny channels from afar, and since the main point isn’t to outright kill we could probably use something like sentinel or soldier stats for survivability.

Hard to say people will choose CC over damage really. Mesmer certainly fits into the control role but killing opponents with supply also steal their supply, it’ll be a double win if you manage to bring someone down.

Provided that you can get a stronghold map out of match making rng..

I think Mesmers will fair better than they do in conquest but we will have serious completion against thieves who will be covering all the same roles.. I’m not sure how portal or the new specializations will come to play yet but I don’t feel safe to assume Mesmers will find a new strong slot in the meta.

Thieves have easier access to interrupts on shorter or no CD.. also boon ripping and with no nodes they can excel at lone target tanking.

Neither profession is ideal for a minion support or Shepard

And we both lack aoe to defend lanes against huge waves

If you don’t like reading, here’s the Ready Up episode explaining Stronghold
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b_Gjb80djE

Right off the bat, I see PU support builds being a thing, which is kind of exciting actually.

CI Mesmer wandering about the supply area could be devastating if the opposing team doesn’t have stab. CC to damage and immobilize them, if coordinated with an AOE bomb, it could be a game winner.

Swish.2463:

Provided that you can get a stronghold map out of match making rng..

I think Mesmers will fair better than they do in conquest but we will have serious completion against thieves who will be covering all the same roles.. I’m not sure how portal or the new specializations will come to play yet but I don’t feel safe to assume Mesmers will find a new strong slot in the meta.

Thieves have easier access to interrupts on shorter or no CD.. also boon ripping and with no nodes they can excel at lone target tanking.

Neither profession is ideal for a minion support or Shepard

And we both lack aoe to defend lanes against huge waves

agree , also for portal due to map size i think we will see teams take more s/x war than mesmer portal . Mesmer really deserve a serious buff or rework before we talk about our role (again not a tiny balance patch for 6 months that dressed nothing)

Map isn’t that big so in an organised situation you’ll come down to many team fights and a few big pushes to break down the game. I highly doubt it will be effective to spawn 1 mob at a time to break down a gate.

This is very favored for the mesmer due portal plays. You can easily force out a 5v5 at the commune of a boss, leaving a portal at the supply depot. If you think you’re gonna lose the fight you just portal back to supply depot and still profit with 5-10 supplies being able to set up a big attack on their gate.

You also want to have the highest speed between supply and spawning the npcs. So asume you have a portal down at base and you run to supply depot. You win team fight, get supplies, take portal, spawn npc, take portal back and get supplies again.

Or if you have both enemy gates down but you can’t quite finish their lord you can just leave a portal on a spot behind a house let the enemy team push your side, take the portal and rush their lord. And even if they see the portal, they’re forced to keep an eye on it meaning forcing 4v5’s across the map objectives.

I think Mesmer’s success in Stronghold depends entirely on how the Chronomancer will work and whether it makes good use of the quickness buff. Its safe to say that Chronomancers will have at least one skill that either slows down opponents or speeds up allies with quickness. Assuming its the later—and also assuming that quickness will work on NPCs in the same way that Time Warp speeds up building siege in WvW—I could really see Mesmers/Chronomancers having a very unique and important role of getting the doorbreakers to the enemy gate as well as portal-hopping too and from the supply depot for teammates.

We don’t know enough about Stronghold or Chronomancers to really state any facts, but I have this suspicion that Chronomancers were designed with Stronghold in mind