Guild Wars 2

Indeed, that is the reason I asked because I didn’t feel it was made all that evident. I knew that the attack rating was made up of weapon damage (and power) but that wasn’t that helpful for what I was asking.

Thanks Zid, I’ll probably do my own testing to make sure but that is the kind of answer I was looking for – straight up what-affects-what.

Interesting that some people thought that the offhand weapon damage and mainhand weapon damage just went into a global attack rating that affected everything.

So does the weapon damage on the focus for example affect the warden? If it does not then… does the focus’ weapon damage do anything at all?

I know that power affects phantasms, don’t know how the weapon damage does. If I pick up a spare focus with different weapon damage I’ll test it out.

My question is about what weapon damage affects. I know that if for example I am using a sword in my main hand weapon damage will affect auto-attack and blurred frenzy, while iLeap has no damage component to be affected (right?).

What about if I have a focus in the offhand? The focus skills are temporal curtain (no damage component) and iWarden. Does the offhand weapon damage affect the iWarden’s damage?

Also, I noticed a main hand weapon’s damage is less than a 2-hand weapon’s damage. Does the offhand damage affect main hand skills as well then (and vice versa)? So, you add the main hand damage and the offhand damage together for that skill bar? So, iWarden would be affected by the sword’s damage too (if affected by weapon damage at all)?

Ruins of Surmia have the same issue. Not sure where you can see the server populations but there is never enough people to actually do the Grenth DE. Trying to get the karma vendor at Gates of Arah for a good few days now, logging in most of the day and evening to see that nothing has changed.

We also seem to have a fair bit less number of players compared to other servers when zerg meets zerg in WvW. I actually think more specialised small groups using guerilla warfare would be more fun and effective than the zerg but sadly there are no significant guilds on the server either so organising this is hopeless.

Really think they need to start merging servers to be honest.

Watched the youtube link. Most people farm DEs to get the money for exotics. You have, bar two pieces, full exotic so you aren’t exactly at the starting point of which is when it is most problematic. That said, maybe its only a minor point.

The major point of why I don’t think you have shown that there is not a problem is because you haven’t actually targeted the problem. You have shown a DE with a few people doing it; any one and any class would likely be able to do enough damage in that situation to most of the mobs to get loot.

The problem people are talking about is when a lot of people are doing DEs. Mobs don’t last longer than a heartbeat so running around whacking things with your sword isn’t going to do much. Similarly, chaos storm doesn’t do enough damage in that time to tag reliably (if at all), and is on a fairly long cooldown for how often the waves come.

Until you can sell products on the trading post for cost or even profit it is impossible. Right now, I believe the problem is in how many products are on the trading post, i.e. the supply massively outstrips the demand.

Why does the supply outstrip the demand? And why do people keep making things that are already in massive supply? Because they are forced to to level up the craft. They are forced to make so many of them that there is bound to be such a huge supply.

Make products give double or even triple crafting experience and watch that supply fall to reasonable levels – although it may take a while.

All I can say is, it led to situations where I found it difficult to do things with a friend of another class, or it caused him to have to wait around for me. Me and my friend could have had more fun.

I think it may have been mentioned before but I think there is a problem in how much stuff needs to be crafted to level up the crafts.

The way I see it, many people are producing lots and lots of crafting products because it requires lots and lots of crafting products to be made to level up the crafts. This makes the supply of products very high, even though most people actually aren’t making these items to sell. This makes prices on the trading post for crafting products no better than selling them to a vendor.

In addition, all those products need lots and lots of crafting materials (especially the fine materials), meaning the demand on the crafting materials is very high, which coupled with low drop rates makes the price very high.

The result is a situation where it is nearly always better to farm the crafting materials and sell them than it ever is to actually sell a product. This makes for a very sad crafting experience.

So, what if you didn’t need anywhere near the number of products crafted to level the craft up? Well, you would have far less products on the trading post – possibly enough to make the supply & demand reach a reasonable equilibrium.

The crafting materials demand will be much lower because less products are needed to be made. This means the price on them will fall to more reasonable levels.

The result should allow products to be made that are at least cost effective – hopefully even profitable. This would make for a much better crafting experience.

In both really. In PvE its obviously all about aggro whether or not the mob momentarily has to re-target you.

In PvP the question is far more important because without target dropping you can not use any form of deception. If we can make the enemy drop their target but it is on a long cooldown it similarly makes deception almost pointless.

Hopefully someone knows for sure which skills do. Tempted to ask a friend to try and experiment.

I think it has been mentioned but I think the problem can be traced back to how much stuff needs to be crafted to level up the professions.

The way I see it, many people are producing lots and lots of crafting products. This makes the supply stupidly large, even though people actually aren’t making these items to sell. This makes prices on the trading post no better than selling to a vendor.

In addition, all those products need lots and lots of crafting materials (especially the fine materials), meaning the demand on the crafting materials is very high, which coupled with low drop rates makes the price very high. The overall situation makes for a very sad crafting experience.

So, what if you didn’t need anywhere near the number of products crafted to level the profession up? Well, you would have far less products on the trading post – possibly enough to make the supply & demand reach a reasonable equilibrium.

The crafting materials demand will be much lower because less products are needed to be made. This means the price on them will fall to more reasonable levels.

The result should be a much better crafting experience.

Bump for hopeful reply!

What skills can drop the enemies’ targeting? Does any clone creation? All kinds of clone creation?

I assume because of the stealth component Decoy, Mass Invisibility, and Veil drops target, does anything else at all? What if they have target lock via the hotkey (or automatically in the preferences)? Does Call Target drop at the same time?

My ranger friend had a permanent boost while also having a cooldown speed burst. Even using the weapon and utility specific skills I would not have been able to match his speed, although it would have helped. Means changing utility skills and weapon each time you get to where you want to be though which is a quality of life issue I don’t want to even think about – that is if they are even off cooldown yet.

A passive trinket with speed increase would help a lot to be honest.

Go warrior, heh. Mesmers can work in pve but it is generally slower than warriors and requires more work. Since that is the opposite of what you want…

Our survivability can be pretty good, although there is always that one mob that ignores every illusion you throw at it resulting in a non-so-hilarious benny hill impression (you running around frantically hoping the mob stops following you, hoping it dies before you do!). Otherwise, its pretty decent.

Because our survivability depends on illusions and they are killable multiple mobs are a problem. It is difficult to spawns illusions faster than they can be killed and our aoe is poor. We do however have a few ways of dealing specifically with ranged mobs, ranging from the warden (deflects, or reflects if traited, projectiles) to the feedback utility skill (reflects projectiles).

Vyl, I think that is why the build is quite popular indeed. Nice to see some tips for other players too!

Xhieron, you’re right, I’ve forgotten to examine how shatter may affect the issue. My initial feelings are however that in the heavy aoe style fights (both pve and pvp) that result in the low uptime it will be quite difficult to get shatters off anyway (it is a common problem that people report). Also, building up 3 illusions for a good shatter will similarly be difficult in such high aoe conditions, although mirror image and shatter straight away might work.

Another issue is that in a phantasm build shatters are usually quite weak. Coupled with the long cooldown I don’t see it bridging the gap all that much between low uptime phantasm damage and high uptime phantasm damage.

So there is the question of how likely the shatter is actually to go off and the question of how much of a difference it would actually make if it did.

A lower cooldown on the shatters would definitely help, and possibly some extra damage. As would some form of protection for the shattering illusions (again the aoe resistance comes to mind). Otherwise, it might indeed help bridge the gap, especially since high uptime phantasm fights would still suffer from using shatters.

But, parts of your spec are fighting other parts. Other classes can do a hybrid-like spec and all of it will work together.

I leveled with a ranger friend, and let me tell you, I was often cursing the lack of a movement speed out of combat. It would end up with him completing the zone with me still having a quest or two to finish. Or, he would end up having to wait around for me getting annoyed. Or, he would go do some farming while waiting for me to catch up (which has resulted in him able to craft far more than me to level up quicker).

Note: I originally posted this in another thread (which ended up being about what a pet is for what ever reason), so this post might not make entirely sense without this fore-note.

Mesmers can be a pet class, although they don’t play as one by default. Think about all the phantasm traits (and utilities) designed around keep them alive – the health ones, the recharges ones, and arguably the damage increasing ones (it at leasts makes you want to keep them alive).

The only issue I see with this in particular is the disparity in different fights – it causes a problem of balance. If for example you go as a phantasm build (which are quite popular)-

Fight A you are against a walking wastelands of a boss, spewing aoe and cleaves – this type of boss is fairly common. How long do you think your phantasms are going to last? With only being able to get one attack off per phantasm, and with 60-80% of your damage coming from phantasms, you would expect phantasm damage to be balanced around only getting one attack off per phantasm cooldown – so you would expect quite high damage from one attack.

Fight B you are against a boss that can be controlled and does little or moderate aoe damage/cleave – this type of boss is fairly common. How long do you think your phantasms are going to last? I would say that it is fairly easy to get three phantasms up and replace them on cooldowns for extra attacks (replaced phantasms attack immediately). I can expect each cooldown to get off many attacks and I would expect phantasm damage to be balanced around this – so I would expect medium-low damage from one attack.

Do you see the problem?

A way of simplifying the problem is to describe the problem as an uptime problem. In fight A the uptime of the phantasms is very low. In fight B the uptime of the phantasms is very high.

One way to solve this is make the uptimes more reliably equal. You could for example make phantasms resistant to aoe so that uptime is likely to be high, and then balance around this. Since we do have traits that seem to suggest that phantasms are meant to be around for a little while it seems this might be a good idea. Perhaps make it a trait so only certain builds can get it, specialising them for high uptime, like the phantasm build.

Another way to solve it is to make the cooldown much lower – again, maybe trait it (more than it does currently, but deeper in). With a low cooldown you can make it so that you can get phantasms up as much as they would be able to attack anyway, meaning you can once again balance around a high uptime. You are limited by only 3 phantasms so being able to get them out any faster doesn’t increase damage by much in longer fights, but still allows a more consistent form of damage. Would also help with burst for phantasm builds in solo pve.

We should also look at pvp. At first this seems much harder because of the sheer range of different “personalities” of your opponents. Some might kill your phantasms the moment they even glimpse those transparent glowing figures. Others may make a beeline for you and go for broke. In actual fact in really just comes down to uptime again and the sheer range difference that make it harder to balance.

The real difficult with the pvp is that you almost have to assume low uptime, because our opponents are intelligent enough to kill anything that is a threat very quickly if they can (and they can kill phantasms just by blinking, so that’s a certainty).
That said, most of the time they do this by offchance or large aoe, relying on the stupidity and low health of our phantasms to make it impossible to keep phantasms alive for anything more than one attack. So perhaps the same aoe resistance as stated in the above paragraphs would help here too. Also, the fast cooldown phantasms would solve the problem again by allowing for a high uptime even though you assume only one attack per cooldown.

So in fact, both of those solutions would, as I see it, work to make balancing phantasm damage. This can then mean we are not underpowered or overpowered in different situations, which is the real issue.

Note, that I am entirely happy to have phantasm only get one attack off or many, to either play it more like a disposable attack or more like a pet – as long as it is balanced. The traits could allow such choice and thus I see it as a good platform for choosing low or high uptime phantasms.

Hmm, I get the feeling my post will be lost in the semantic arguments about what a pet is, so I’ll post it in its own thread.

I think making phantasms worth more than clones on shatter/death would help make the mechanics synergise, as I’ve seen mentioned a few times.

Phantasms builds would want to shatter because they can get max phantasms up before doing so and then get something out of shattering worth doing so. Shatter builds would care about keeping the phantasm alive in particular over clones until ready to shatter. Clone builds would want to get some phantasms in at convenient times due to the greater worth they will have on death than the clones.

Moved to its own thread

Regarding the shattering 3 phantasms and replacing with 2 more pretty quickly, taking advantage of the fact that newly summoned phantasms attack immediately to replace just-attacked phantasms. Can you not do that -without- shattering anyway? In that case the equation is basically:

3 phantasms attacking over [illusion cooldown time] vs. 2 phantasm attacking over [illusion cooldown time] + shatter(3).

Simplified it is:

1 phantasm attacking over [illusion cooldown time] vs. shatter(3).

Is the shatter(3) actually more damage than a phantasm for a phantasm build over the period of the cooldown (which is variable but around 16 seconds)?

I’ve thought about that too (the whole “why can other things see the illusions?”). My best answer is mass hysteria, or shared hysteria. As such, I don’t see why they -should- disappear on one target’s death – the other targets are still sharing the illusion.

If you want another lore reason just consider them as contagious illusions – target dies, his ailments pass on to another target.

On the other hand, I don’t see why such a long cooldown is in place for them. In most situations they can be killed instantly by aoe, by cleaves, by random projectiles hitting them, etc. On other occasions they are fine because they don’t get targeted. It seems difficult to balance to me like that. If they were on a much shorter cooldown then their uptime is far more likely to less varied, meaning their damage is more reliable, and thus easier to balance. It would also help with the problem of having to wait a good while after a target has died to then start being able to fight again, as well as help in multi-target fights.

Not necessarily – the phantasm would just be more important to kill in pvp, which can be done pretty ridiculously fast and is one of the problems phantasm players have in pvp.

In pve it would give us the burst we are lacking while helping to keep max sustained dps on harder fights (champions, dungeons, etc) where aoe is at play.

I’m with Nretep; I think they shouldn’t necessarily persist when you are out of combat but I think they should acquire new targets if they are still alive when their target dies and you are still in combat. We can’t summon three illusions per mob because we are limited to three max. even if we have say four targets – at least let those three illusions help with the other targets once done with the one they are on. You can’t just summon three more illusions because they are then on cooldown, possibly for another ten seconds or so depending on how fast the first target went down.

We also have little aoe abilities so we are very reliant on having those illusions out. Fairly irritating to have the mob die, they all just disappear and you are hightailing it out of there because the remaining mobs all turn on you.

Link seems a fake with that dot in the middle of youtube. I’m not risking it.

I agree phantasm builds and shatters being incompatible feels just wrong, and maybe Carighan’s one phantasm only (with the power of three) could be a solution. Might help solve the large ramp up time problems we have too, especially in farming/leveling.

That said, I do like phantasm builds not requiring shatters because I feel we have far too little ways of dropping aggro (from mobs or players) once we do shatter – decoy seems the only real one. However, that is for another thread.