Guild Wars 2

With the tons of changes we’ll see on tuesday, I was thinking I might need a proper checklist to go through to test everything.

Some things I will test for sure:

General

• how effective the new condition meta will be in WvW group fights
• how good will Signet of Inspiration be in WvW group play and the synergy with Inspiration and Domination traitlines
• how does it feels to play a power shatter build without Illusions (losing some CD reduction, might on shatter, etc)
• how does traited Mirror (12s CD) feels for roaming and group play
• scepter in a power build…?
• the new Timewarp in group fights (especially with Temporal Enchanter)

Domination

• how does the new Confounding Suggestions stack with Runes of the Mesmer and/or Sigil of Paralyzation
• if Blurred Inscriptions makes the case for taking Signet of Ether over MoR/Ether Feast in my WvW build (whatever that build will be after the patch… not sure yet)
• how many might stacks I can keep up in a wvw fight with Imagined Burden and how annoying it’ll be cripple on the other skills (if at all)
• how does Mental Anguish “feel” for shatter burst
• how much damage on interrupt you get from Power Block

Dueling

• if the cooldown reduction from Duelist’s Discipline applies to all interrupts or only pistol-generated interrupts
• how much does Blinding Dissipation helps against thieves
• how does Evasive Mirror feel against rangers, shortbow thieves, necros spamming life blast
• how much uptime we can keep on Fencer’s Finesse in WvW (playing either a sort of midline mesmer or straight frontline)
• how good Confusing Combatants is in WvW roaming and group fights
• how many stacks from Harmonious Mantras I can keep up during a WvW fight
• how does Mistrust fare in big WvW fights

Chaos

• how the Mirror effect on manips works (when it procs, how reliable it is, etc)
• the new Staff trait: if I proc Chaos Armor back to back, will Protection stack or overwrite? How much CD reduction can I get in a normal WvW fight?
• how good the new PU will be for WvW groups (4s veil/10s Mass Invis)
• bountiful disillusionment

Inspiration

• if it’ll be worth considering Restorative Illusions in a group WvW build over Protected Phantasms (probably not given the current Pirateship, but conditions will be killers after the patch)
• how much of the self-heal is shared with Healing Prism
• how good Illusionary Inspiration will be in WvW groups (double the stab for melee parties? sounds nice)
• how exactly does Temporal Enchanter work on Portal/Veil/TW and if it has a target limit

Illusions

• how much does Persistence of Memory influence Shatter play for power and hybrid
• how it feels to play without Shattered Strength (taking MtD)
• how exactly does Ineptitude work: does the ICD apply on the confusion application, on the blind application, or both? If I blind an attacker, I apply confusion on him. If I evade an attack from the same attacker during the next 10s, does he get blind? Does he get confusion too?
• if Master of Fragmentation is worth anything at all (love the idea of cripple on Cry of Frustration and Diversion AoE, but is that enough?)
• how it feels to play scepter with the trait

Nice list.

A few key traits I’m interested in seeing how they work:
- just how good is RI and how to use it properly if using shatters offensively. Might have to have a playstyle revolving around counterattacking to gain the benefit of this trait.
- how good is Ineptitude in outnumbered fights. Is it a better choice than MoF.
- will reflect causing reveal and messing with stealth be a big problem.
- how often does confusing combatants proc in practice.
- is the vigour nerf going to hurt. :o

To answer your question partially about the staff trait, I tested to see how much chaos armor i could get in a duel against multiple classes today and if properly done, i can get about 10 seconds of chaos armor (Use chaos armor and then chaos storm phase retreat combo when the first chaos armor has 1 second left) which will equal 50% cdr on staff. If i use staff i will 100% take this trait, it is crazy lol.

lol – then take sword/torch with staff – prestige into chaos storm immediately, wait till end to phase retreat out, extend even longer with chaos armour – nevermind also being able to ileap/swap through chaos storm in another situation for even more chaos armour. Take a single ethereal field utility (ie null field) and oh kitten that will be insane.

Curunen.8729:

lol – then take sword/torch with staff – prestige into chaos storm immediately, wait till end to phase retreat out, extend even longer with chaos armour – nevermind also being able to ileap/swap through chaos storm in another situation for even more chaos armour. Take a single ethereal field utility (ie null field) and oh kitten that will be insane.

Yea, that staff trait is godly lol. I just wanted to show what combos you could do just through staff. If you include sword i am sure you could get almost 100% uptime hehe.

IMO the staff trait should be a staple in any build taking a staff. The other traits it competes with aren’t competition to say the least.

OP, thanks for the list, good reference material. In addition (all PvP related):

I’ll be checking if RI/SC was really nerfed as it sounds in the tooltip.

I’ll be playing heavily with any illusion generating or enhanced weapon recharge trait in order to gauge effectiveness of a shatter build without DE (Chaotic Dampening, Mental Defense, Persistence of Memory and Malicious Sorcery).

I’ll be seeing how all our damage traits work together in blowing things up (Harmonious Mantras, Fencer’s Finesse, Mental Anguish).

What I’m concerned about with the Staff trait is… let’s say I drop Chaos Storm on the spike, the melee blast over it and I get Chaos Armor, so the source is another player: from what they said during the stream this should not proc the trait, so I would need to overwrite Chaos Armor with a leap to apply protection and cooldown reduction. This need proper testing (and sucks a bit: I’m providing the field to blast!).

One thing we can probably work out is the best rotation for each weapon combination.

I don’t think with only Phase Retreat it’ll be possible to leap twice on Chaos Storm, even using Illusion’s CD reduction, but that could be supplemented with leaps/blasts in other ethereal fields… and traiting glamours both Feedback and Null Field should provide the field long enough for leaping twice.

General

• Signet of Inspiration + Trait (in Domination) + Inspiration traitline: awesomeness.
• New Timewarp: amazing

Domination

• The signet trait is really nice, but I need more data to see if Signet of Ether will be my main heal over MoR/Ether Feast
• Mental Anguish feels “ok” but not mandatory, with 2 strong traits in competition

Dueling

• Blinding Dissipation seems really helpful
• Seems quite easy to have 10 stacks of Fencer’s Finesse when you need them most (for burst)

Chaos

• If you proc Chaos Armor back-to-back, Protection stacks in duration.

Inspiration

• Healing Prism felt amazing with the Necromancer Vampiric Aura

Illusions

• Master of Fragmentation felt… meh. AoE Diversion is nice, but still…
• Scepter after the changes and traited almost feels like a decent weapon, I’ll need more time testing it

After another round of testing:

Conditions

• as predicted, the WvW meta is still Power. Even if the conditions got a lot stronger, condition cleansing got even stronger (all the changes to Guardians…)
• Mistrust feels useless in big groups and very weak – even with Perplexity runes – in roaming
• Ineptitude feels weak damage-wise in a group setting: the glamour meta will never come back

General

• At the moment I find Power/Interrupt/PU stronger than any other mesmer build for backline focusing. The Illusion spec doesn’t feel mandatory unless you go for condi shatter.
• Traited Mirror is very fun for roaming, didn’t test for group play yet

Domination

• as I reported in our official bug thread, Confounding Suggestions at the moment is broken with both Runes of the Mesmer and Sigil of Paralyzation.
• I like Blurred Inscriptions, but the invulnerability applies only AFTER you cast the signet, so it can be easily interrupted… also, I really dislike Signet of Ether for a group build. The cooldown is just way too long even if traited.

Dueling

• Evasive Mirror seems nice if somewhat situational, but the alternatives are nice as well: Dueling Master is a hard pick!

Chaos

• The Mirror effect on Manipulations is applied after the cast (doesn’t really help with casting Mass Invis for example)
• PU is really nice for big groups (on veil) and small roaming parties (Mass Invis)

Inspiration

• Restorative Illusions works for a frontline build, but for a backline build Protected Phantasms is a must-have
• Illusionary Inspiration is very nice on paper, but quite hard to use properly during a WvW fight
• Temporal Enchanter has a 5 targets limit and works horribly with everything but Timewarp and Null Field. They should really consider reworking this on the other glamours.

Illusions

• Persistence of Memory should be buffed to have anyone take it over Compunding Power