Guild Wars 2

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Mostly more reliable swiftness.

This made my day.

Passives stack with swiftness – 25%+33%=58%, mesmers are left behind! Let’s make swiftness more reliable, let’s buff focus (note, that nobody uses in combat)!

I use focus in combat for iWarden (PvE) and the pull (WvW). For non-combat I use it for swiftness although the uptime is too low (even when traited for focus which I’m not). It’s always has a loving spot in my second wep set.

Personally I’d be happy with Illusionary Leap being made into a more reliable gap closer. The range is much too short for a clone based leap.

At least if someone out ranges a normal leap you still get the leap forward aspect of it to get closer. If someone outranges our pitiful 600 range summon nothing happens. If they dodge or blind us as we cast it, nothing happens.

As a guardian, this makes me sad. Its already near impossible for a guardian to stop an enemy from running away now they will all be dancing around with perma 25% move speed.

fishergrip.4082:

As a guardian, this makes me sad. Its already near impossible for a guardian to stop an enemy from running away now they will all be dancing around with perma 25% move speed.

I have a lvl 80 guardian in addition to my lvl 80 mesmer, and I disagree with your opinion. Guardian has a lot of options for imparing a foe:

- scepter 3
- hammer 3
- GS 5 pull
- Bane Signet
- Signet of Wrath
- hammer 5 barrier
- staff 5 barrier

On top of that guardian has swiftness from staff 3 or “Retreat”. You need to QQ with a different class, or on a different topic.

Sorry juno, but the thread is sPvP focussed, there is no such thing as focus mesmer or staff guardian (oh well.. maybe rainbow guardians).

Giving more swiftness to mesmers because 4 classes get their passive speed buffs increased to +25% is not the right way of balancing.

Swiftness and Passive Speed Increase are two different things.

Jon didn’t say that we received this because others got a passive boost. From what he said it just appears that they identified an area where we were lacking, which I think most people who have played the Mesmer will agree that our ability to gain swiftness is unreliable.

If the former was the case then I’d expect we would have received a passive boost, something we currently have no profession based access to other than a very vaguely stated trait that relies on having Illusions up.

Its simple

if you going to have any speed buff for a mesmer you have to eq focus and the duration is low

end of discussion you can argue bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla and bla bla bla with your bla bla bla

guardian has enough swiftness – immobolize and things

+ Illusions mean combat mode and thus, reduced speed.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

+ Illusions mean combat mode and thus, reduced speed.

whats your point?

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Sorry juno, but the thread is sPvP focussed, there is no such thing as focus mesmer or staff guardian (oh well.. maybe rainbow guardians).

Giving more swiftness to mesmers because 4 classes get their passive speed buffs increased to +25% is not the right way of balancing.

Swiftness and Passive Speed Increase are two different things.

Agreed on all points (although I’m trying to figure out exactly what a rainbow guardian is lol).

Sounds great to have more reliable means of swiftness… as long as it is known that there is not a single utility skill I would willingly give up to run faster.

I also very much dislike the focus, and hate that my only means of moving faster is using a weapon set I dislike.

Edit: How about a new utility though… we already have a phantasmal defender and enchanter and such… how about a phantasmal runner? “summon a phantasmal sprinter who grants you swiftness for 20 seconds every 30 seconds out of combat and fury for 6 seconds every 12 seconds in combat” or something along those lines Or how about phantasmal meme? “summon a phantasmal meme that makes you run faster and cripples enemies by shooting them with an arrow in the knee”

I think blink should be turned into a signit with passive giving us swiftness and the active being the blink. It would make the most sense.

Beachead.4127:

I think blink should be turned into a signit with passive giving us swiftness and the active being the blink. It would make the most sense.

That’s pretty sweet — but a lot of power packed into that signet.

Doesn’t address “reliable form of swiftness” though. That’s just passive move speed.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Mostly more reliable swiftness.

This made my day.

Passives stack with swiftness – 25%+33%=58%, mesmers are left behind! Let’s make swiftness more reliable, let’s buff focus (note, that nobody uses in combat)!

Sword/focus is my main weapon set. With focus I can shut down all long range so their force to melee me.

Then it easy to immb them and warden them. Then well it becomes easy as hell to win because I counter all their skills.

Plus even on class’s like theif, it pull can counter all of theifs major invisible skills.

Like the shadow area thingie. I can pull them out and make it go on cooldown.

In the end in Pvp/Pve with my build at lest, sword/focus owns greatly

Worst aoe in the game, worst movement in the game (excluding portals/blink of course cuz u can’t spam those)… If so many classes get 25% boost and they already had nice swiftness skills, we should have a 1111% increase cuz we never had anything

Carighan.6758:

Oh, so you wouldn’t buff Focus, since well, no one uses it in combat. That ofc makes a lot of sense, why buff underpowered stuff?

Well then, you and I sir have drastically different views of underpowered. I consider the focus the strongest/most versatile weapon we have available.

Focus is a great utility device that enables excellent support or bunker builds in addition to providing swiftness to the player. Depending on the role I need to fill in both tPvP and WvW I often will throw on a focus and switch over to a more defensive amulet. The combination provides a very stable build with low burst and much less damage but huge amounts of survival skills. I would say never underestimate that pull from Into the Void. . . it’s excellent for winning the bunker war against a Guardian, especially when my build also strips boons from shatters. Strip boons, force them to use a channeled ability pull them off the point and watch them look for a way to get close without getting hurt while their heal is down (they will generally run at you and switch to X/shield for a knockback, just BF when they get close to ya). Focus is actually quite useful in almost any build, just need that Warden to be ground targeted and we’d be set.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Mostly more reliable swiftness.

This made my day.

Passives stack with swiftness – 25%+33%=58%, mesmers are left behind! Let’s make swiftness more reliable, let’s buff focus (note, that nobody uses in combat)!

The passive effect does not stack with swiftness. So it’ll be 25%+33%=33%

Swiftness is superior to passive +25%, except it can be stripped. And, well, it has a duration, but then again, the passive effects do not work once the signets are activated, so they either take the entire place of an utility, or they’re unavailable for as much as 25-30s straight.

More reliable swiftness is a good buff.

Please give us a way to zoom without a focus and out of combat. Losing signet of inspiration’s out of combat buffs was a huge decrease in quality of life for me; not allowing us multiple weapon sets like in GW1 is annoying, too, and runing armor just for speed— what?

I’m tired of always dragging behind everyone else.

Hmm, “swiftness for mesmer” sounds interesting. The class only has focus/4 right now. The “more reliable” phrase was odd. The way we have right now works fine; ie. it’s reliable. It’s just not all that useful. It’s paired with a phantasm that can’t chase. So, you can run faster, but with severely reduced damage.

Maybe he meant the compounding celerity trait, which I doubt anyone traits. Heh, maybe we’ll get 3% runspeed from every active signet. Oh yeah, now that would be be .. useless, too. Ah, well, if one of our utilities gets a 25% runspeed bonus as with other classes, I hope at least it’s one that works and does something useful in combat.

Thank gawd! Seriously, speed is one of the more terribly lacking areas of Mesmer. Being forced to carry a specific weapon with you for the class’ only reliable sprint skill is a really terrible. Not to mention that said skill grants swiftness for only 10 seconds. It may sound like a lot, but when you’re running through Orr or WvW, you will begin to feel that cooldown and slowness a lot. Moreover, another issue with swiftness with Mesmer while running through areas or moving through combat, is that you’ll get the ‘combat slowness’ effect on you. Where you slow down even while in swiftness and that 10 seconds will feel like nothing. You may as well be moving at normal speed for all effective it is.

I really would prefer that we get a utility swiftness skill. Even a new elite since we only really have Mass Invisibility (which not many use) and Time Warp. I rarely see people using Moa these days outside of perhaps sPvP. Relying on any specific weaponsets for swiftness is a poor design idea, imo. Now if swiftness was granted to several weaponsets as a byproduct of other skills, then maybe. Also, I rather not have it trait-related either… like casting a heal gives you swiftness for x amount of seconds. I don’t want to feel forced into making certain builds just for some swiftness either.

I hope for positive things…

I think giving all classes speed buffs is a step in the wrong direction. Trying to catch running thieves or eles or.. anything as a mesmer is frustrating.

I say just turn one of the existing signets (most of which are terrible anyway) into a speed boost. Problem solved.

The thing is that only two places really demand swiftness: WvW and outdoors PvE.

sPvP and dungeons swiftness is a luxury. Welcome, but not necessary.

Now in PvE it will be nice and we can use whatever we want as PvE is not challenging, but in WvW every utility skill is crucial. Tying one down for movement speed (AKA changing one of the useless signets) is not going to work.

I’m thinking they will just increase the swiftness time/lower the CD on the focus.

JonPeters.5630:

Got some movement improvements coming for Mesmer also. Mostly more reliable swiftness.

Doesn’t matter.

Other classes get swiftness + 25% speed buff. Mesmer’s snares are horrible and useless. It will still be impossible to catch people or to get away from them.
In order to have any ability to chase or get away from people, mesmer needs to waste a weapon slot on focus (and it’s still way worse than mobility options of some other classes).

If you actually want to help this class in any real way, make 25% speed buff passives not stack with swiftness. This is the only meaningful change you can make.

give dual wield GS for mesmers and call it a day

lighterthief.4631:

give dual wield GS for mesmers and call it a day

While this would be so many kinds of amazing, I want dual-wielding pistols first.

Still… Dual Wield GS Skill: Phantasmal Cyclone

-Attach the hilts of your Greatswords together and rotate them while they shoot lasers, creating a flying buzzsaw of purple death

I’m going to expand this topic a bit and bring up an idea I suggested in beta.

The GW2 class are woefully undeveloped for general/exploratory/RP/etc scenarios that do not involve fighting. Each class should have 2-3 out of combat only abilities that they can slot ONE at a time. These abilities would only be available when not in combat and all effects end when combat starts. Some of these would affect movement and allow each class to at least keep up when traveling. Now obviously something like this probably won’t show up, and certainly not until an expansion, but it’s fun to dream some times.

Here are a few ideas (I’ll start with mesmer since we are here):

Mesmer:
Teleport: TP up to 1200 range (CD: 15s).
Illusionary Disguise: You transform into a neutral animal present in the current map while active with no skills. (Mesmer Mind Trick)

Warrior:
Marching Orders: All nearby allies receive +15% passive movement while active.
Field Repair: You repair one piece of damaged equipment (CD: 10 min).

Ranger:
Tracking: Reveal enemies on the mini map and reduce your aggro range by 50% for 10s (CD:30s). (Yes, this was a beta ability, too, but slightly modified.)
Animal Rapport: Control your pet while active up to 3000 range.
Pathfinder: +25% movement for you and your pet.

That’s all I have time for now. Don’t get me started on what the engineer could do.

Ayanavi.1904:

-Attach the hilts of your Greatswords together and rotate them while they shoot lasers, creating a flying buzzsaw of purple death

You mean like this?

Gaiawolf.8261:

Ayanavi.1904:

-Attach the hilts of your Greatswords together and rotate them while they shoot lasers, creating a flying buzzsaw of purple death

You mean like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnj7eMtTSzI

Yes. But with more purple lasers and less creepy rock men.

Also – Dualwielding twilight/sunrise. PARTICLE EFFECT BUZZSAW.

ManCaptain.3154:

JonPeters.5630:

Got some movement improvements coming for Mesmer also. Mostly more reliable swiftness.

Doesn’t matter.

Other classes get swiftness + 25% speed buff. Mesmer’s snares are horrible and useless. It will still be impossible to catch people or to get away from them.
In order to have any ability to chase or get away from people, mesmer needs to waste a weapon slot on focus (and it’s still way worse than mobility options of some other classes).

If you actually want to help this class in any real way, make 25% speed buff passives not stack with swiftness. This is the only meaningful change you can make.

Swiftness doesn’t stack with passive speed buffs from signets.

Just trait for clones that apply cripple when destroyed, and auto-win against melee builds that aren’t thieves.

Shadowstep is slightly OP and should be next on the chopping block for skills that ignore game mechanics such as chill and cripple (kinda like mesmers not needing LoS for illusionary skills being fixed).

Hm…. I don’t have a problem with swiftness at all… yeah mesmer is kinda slow but not every class can (or should be able to) do everything. Mesmer is my first 80, I discussed the class a number of times with my friends as I was lvling saying if I were just faster I would be really OP. I think being slower balances out some of the other stuff. But anyway, I run a power build with Rune of the Centaur, I don’t have any trouble keeping swiftness up pretty much 24/7 for PvE and WvW without ever using a focus. I use GS and Staff. Yeah might have a little more killing capability with different runes but I’m content to give that up for swiftness to move around the map. In my opinion you can’t have everything, you should have to give up something to get something else.

for WVW i strongly DISCOURAGe adding more swiftness to mesmer. They already have never ending clones, each time you think you kill the mesmer, it’s a phantasm. Secondly when they are almost dead, they just decoy, with means stealth + culling (wich is long in a lot of cases). I rarley have been able to catch and defeat a good mesmer in wvw. Now you giving then more escapabilty? No thanks. If mesmer gets this, then necro needs more spammable minions (like clones), and a blink skill. See no reason why mesmer can have reliable summon, blink, everlasting swiftness vs necro with only reliable swiftness (if you sac utility slot of it, and warhorn). We have no cloack either.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

for WVW i strongly DISCOURAGe adding more swiftness to mesmer. They already have never ending clones, each time you think you kill the mesmer, it’s a phantasm. Secondly when they are almost dead, they just decoy, with means stealth + culling (wich is long in a lot of cases). I rarley have been able to catch and defeat a good mesmer in wvw. Now you giving then more escapabilty? No thanks. If mesmer gets this, then necro needs more spammable minions (like clones), and a blink skill. See no reason why mesmer can have reliable summon, blink, everlasting swiftness vs necro with only reliable swiftness (if you sac utility slot of it, and warhorn). We have no cloack either.

reliable summons? You mean like dodge-clones that chase random targets and phantasms that have at least half a dozen ways to be prevented from even summoning? All of these summons also die with 1-2 hits from an auto attack or an AoE and any time a target dies…

This complaint coming from a class that has none of those problems (though necro pets are pretty much useless)

also decoy, which almost NEVER causes a target to be dropped, all channeled attacks keep going right to the mesmer, etc. and everlasting swiftness? unless using a full set of centaur runes, I’m not sure how that happens.

Signet of Inspiration: Increased swiftness duration from five to ten seconds. This passive effect now works outside of combat.

Temporal Curtain: Increased swiftness duration to 12 seconds.

There ya go!

Yay! <3 (Signet of inspiration.. I told you so xD)

Navi.7142:

Yay! <3 (Signet of inspiration.. I told you so xD)

Yeah, you did tell us to listen…don’t worry, you screeched it every 4 seconds for hours on end.

Oh, well. -.-

However.

ManCaptain.3154:

JonPeters.5630:

Got some movement improvements coming for Mesmer also. Mostly more reliable swiftness.

Doesn’t matter.

Other classes get swiftness + 25% speed buff. Mesmer’s snares are horrible and useless. It will still be impossible to catch people or to get away from them.
In order to have any ability to chase or get away from people, mesmer needs to waste a weapon slot on focus (and it’s still way worse than mobility options of some other classes).

If you actually want to help this class in any real way, make 25% speed buff passives not stack with swiftness. This is the only meaningful change you can make.

Aaaaand there we go…. 0 meaningful change. Have fun roaming with mesmer in wvwvw when you can’t catch anyone and everyone can catch you.

Acidicore.3264:

Signet of Inspiration: Increased swiftness duration from five to ten seconds. This passive effect now works outside of combat.

Temporal Curtain: Increased swiftness duration to 12 seconds.

There ya go!

So utterly worthless and irrelevant. And signet of inspiration is still kitten in general.

Kuruptz.4782:

Miku Lawrence.6329:

+ Illusions mean combat mode and thus, reduced speed.

whats your point?

His point is that that illusion summoning must have a hostile target, thus get you in combat. Speed is reduced in combat so any benefit is instantly negated for a null or negative gain. The trait is rubbish anyways as doesn’t even give the weak 9% bonus with three illusions out.

Oh and I’m a sword/focus mesmer as well. I tried it based solely on the speed wall and now has become a potent burst tool. The patch last night to the sword 1 coupled with the warden’s lowered start time makes it worth everyone’s time to try out this weekend.

ManCaptain.3154:

Acidicore.3264:

Signet of Inspiration: Increased swiftness duration from five to ten seconds. This passive effect now works outside of combat.

Temporal Curtain: Increased swiftness duration to 12 seconds.

There ya go!

So utterly worthless and irrelevant. And signet of inspiration is still kitten in general.

Agreed. I tried the signet last night and noticed no significant change short of an aegis here or there in fights I didn’t need it in.

Acidicore.3264:

Signet of Inspiration: Increased swiftness duration from five to ten seconds. This passive effect now works outside of combat.

Temporal Curtain: Increased swiftness duration to 12 seconds.

There ya go!

yeah…too bad that Signet of Inspiration doesn’t seem to be working like that.
I don’t know if with “This passive effect now works outside of combat” they meant swiftness only. Sadly they just changed the entire signet passive to work out of combat.

It could take entire minutes before the random boon you get every 10 seconds rolls out as swiftness. I hope it is a bug, because it isn’t reliable at all.

The closest I can get to perma-swiftness is with full chaos trait line (+30% boon duration) + signet of midnight (passive +10% boon duration) and 20 points in the Inspiration line to reduce Temporal Curtain’s cd to 20 seconds.
And even that nets me 16 3/4 seconds of swiftness every 20 (plus forcing me to use a Focus off-hand).

That’s a lot of effort compared to “take one signet as utility skill”, even if we consider that swiftness is a 33% increase vs the 25% from signets, and does not leave much space for customization (20 points)

sad quaggan

I think I’m just going to forge my focus after this. It doesn’t work with my playstyle, and I don’t like how the devs are forcing me to kitten off my friends by lagging behind them for everything— exploration, running to various stuff, running after them in PvE, or be stuck with a weapon that does very little for me in most contexts. I shouldn’t have to pay to waypoint while they get to save money by running, either.

I understand that we are very mobile in combat but it shouldn’t come at the cost of being a bother for the people I’m with.

If they even just doubled or tripled the length of the speed boost you get from SoI, it would be much better.

So kitten focus. I refuse to use the weapon at all. That skill was not on focus to begin with!

The only two changes I wanted were reliable damage from Iberserker and better options for swiftness. The devs did not deliver as iberserker only works for the 1st attack and I have to equip a signet to give me a 1/8 chance for 10 seconds of swiftness.

Screw this, guess i’m investing in the runes of the centaur set and changing my heal skill to the 15 second one.

Truth is that mesmer is supposed to be a very versatile class, yet all the changes in the last few patches work to pigeonhole you into one build.

Not happy. Everyone has swiftness. Everyone else has passive speed buffs. I already run centaur runes, and all this patch means is that now I can’t chase anyone or get away from anyone in WvW because everyone else is that much faster.

Why not bring the thief’s signet of shadows down to be in line with everyone else, instead of the opposite?

everyone has several ways to get swiftness buff and many proffs has 25% passive speed option

They should nerf mesmer in something and give us this Reliable Swiftness

i laugh everytime i see his reply on working on making swiftness more reliabe

by making it Random? RANDOM? by 10% chance? each 10 sec?

your still forced to use Focus if you want swiftness on Demand

though now i use Blink plus the signet of insparation to have a chance to catch people rather than equip the lame Focus i dont like

JonPeters.5630:

Got some movement improvements coming for Mesmer also. Mostly more reliable swiftness.

I really hope so. It is a pain to get no loot in WvW becaus you are either A) not there or have your AoE dmg not up besieds F1

JonPeters.5630:

Got some movement improvements coming for Mesmer also. Mostly more reliable swiftness.

I’m not a big fan of passive speed buffs or perma-swiftness on all classes (otherwise what’s the point of having a default run speed), but I do think that with the ability of other classes to get the passive buffs or perma-swiftness mesmers need some help. More reliable swiftness would be my preference, but this last patch did not really help our situation. The buff to temporal curtain (10 to 12) seconds does not do much to improve our mobility, especially since it does not stack with other forms of swiftness and requires a specific weaponset. Signet of Inspiration applying buffs out of combat is ok, but cannot be considered a ‘reliable’ way to get swiftness.

Just for fun, I tallied the boons applied by Signet of Inspiration over a 13 minute 20 second period (80 occurrences – while in Lion’s Arch) which means I should have gotten around 10 of each boon available if the averages played out exactly. Granted, since we are dealing with random numbers this is not a large enough sample size to actually draw conclusions, but I think it does quite well at illustrating that Signet of Inspiration can in no way be considered ‘reliable’ swiftness:
Regen – 8 occurrences
Aegis – 16 occurrences
Retaliation – 20 occurrences
Protection – 20 occurrences
Swiftness – 6 occurrences
Might – 6 occurrences
Fury – 4 occurrences
Vigor – 0 occurrences

If the goal is to give mesmers more reliable swiftness, especially outside of combat, I would recommend fixing/changing the swiftness granted by temporal curtain to stack with other applications of swiftness and/or modify Signet of Inspiration so that it gives preferential treatment to swiftness when out of combat (such as a 50% chance to get swiftness instead of the current 12.5%).