Guild Wars 2

bearshaman.3421:

After the update, I actually think I’ve done more damage with the staff and Dire (though I’m considering a different one) than I did with GS and Berserker. especially with the bouncing WoC auto attack and Mirror Image. I think I’m not entirely understanding exactly how the berserker build should work or be built… and the guides haven’t been updated since the 23rd.

Before the update, I was bouncing back and forth between staff and GS. Wanted to use staff, but knew it wasn’t doing damage as well. It feels like they’ve fixed that pretty well, and I’m getting gold easily on world bosses…

If you’re going to run condition damage, at least go Rampagers or Sinister gear. Defensive stats do almost nothing for you, and they significantly decrease your overall damage, which slows down fights for everyone. Again, use your active defense instead.

Compared to sword/x, both staff and greatsword put out significantly less damage in dungeons (unless things have significantly changed since patch). Since the meta still involves group stacking, you’ll generally be fighting melee, where sword shines. Get your phantasms up ASAP, and then just melee with sword while focusing on reflects.

Sure you can provide might, but other classes can do it so much better. And yes, signet of inspiration seems nice, but again, other classes can provide boons more easily. Instead, focus on what mesmer does well: reflect, boon strip, portal, and now condi cleanse as well.

Finally, however, you should play however you most enjoy, and with others who enjoy playing the same way. In this vein, almost all builds are viable. But if you want to aim for the “best” in terms of contributing most to team and finishing dungeons the fastest, I’d advise to stick to damage/reflect and get comfortable with sword phantasm builds.

Just to get in ahead of everyone else: Berserker. For PvE, that’s what you’ll be wanting to run nearly all the time. (Technically, Assassins can be better with high reflect uptime, but Zerker gear is fine all around.) Learn to use your dodges, evades, blinds, and distortions to mitigate damage, instead of relying on vitality and toughness. It will make you a much better player in the long run, and you’ll contribute a lot more to groups with your damage and reflects.

I know it’s hard to believe at first, but group healing and boon support is completely secondary to damage in dungeons and almost all group content. And while conditions have gotten a lot better, direct damage still generally trumps it. There just really isn’t a place for “support” in PvE content.

Finally, while staff is great for PvP, it doesn’t really have a place in dungeons at the moment, as it’s damage is quite low. Sword/Pistol and /Focus and sometimes /Sword are your best friends for dungeons.

Exciton.8942:

The more I play, the less powerful I feel mesmer is.

I’m starting to agree, and seeing the principal problem now as one of power creep.

In the current world of high damage, some of mesmers’ new skills are contributing to the problem. But if damage is toned down across the board, or if amulets get a little tough/vit, we’d seem less OP.

Caelus.7139:

It’s funny because pre-patch . . . we asked Anet for “balance”.

Yes, and these members of the community are again asking for balance. Except balance does not mean “now it’s time to make mesmers OP.” It means balance.

Ross Biddle.2367:

The actual problem is that the average Mesmer main, and the Mesmer forum, consists of articulate, coherent, intelligent people who tend to be active within their class community compared to other classes. Other classes don’t have the same level or degree of activity in their forums because, sad as it is, harsh as it may sound, they’re made up largely of uncouth barbarians who’re lucky to be able to string two sentences together

Warrior forum for example: “Ug, warrior smash gud. YAH!”

Agree. The mesmer forum tends to have some relatively constructive and considerate participants who above all want a balanced game in which mesmer is (a) an active part, and (b) fun to play. You can’t have an honest conversation about either without looking at strengths and weaknesses. And you can’t be honest about things without recognizing and discussing if/when something is underpowered and/or overpowered

Yeah, condi bunker doesn’t really work in PvP because (a) no dire amulet, (b) no food buffs, and © invis makes you lose points. Then again, no bunker really works right no, so whatever.

@RossBiddle: The existence of bunkers actually require more rotation, in my opinion, as they require you to rotate to get your mismatches, and put value on those with sustain to survive the mismatches until help arrives. Now, the massive dps spikes seem to counter-intuitively promote zerging. We’ll just have to see where things settle.

. . . damage is so kitten high! The corresponding across-the-board damage increases pretty much require you to go back to zerker or marauder.

I’ve been trying to make a shoutbow-like bunker-ish mesmer work, mostly through dueling and inspiration. The blind and heal on shatter traits combined with glamours and reasonable condi removal really give us some sustain, and I like going Chaos as well for CI and some solid protection and might stacking (and staff trait, before nerf). With strength runes you can even make celestial work as you stack might via sigils and interupts.

But anyway, this is all a bit moot, because with damage now so high, bunkering is almost impossible on any class. Sure, you can survive 1v1s, but you can do that on Zerk and provide more utility to team. And this is all a shame, because we have some really fun sustain skills now, more sources of healing, boons, and blind, and more useful glamours to help control point.

tl/dr: I love our new sustain skills, but the massive damage creep totally undermines then forces you to run burst.

I’m totally on board with the next weeks being an evolutionary process as we all adapt to new meta, but my two cents anyway: There is now too much going on to manage properly in PvP. Too many condis. Too much burst and dps. Too many boons and new buffs that crowd the UI.

I’m not trying to kvetch and be grumpy, but one of the great features of gw2 PvP was its relative simplicity. Limited skills. Limited buffs/debuffs. Active combat w/ dodges, etc. At present, however, the massive amount of damage and condi spam deemphasizes all this, and instead promotes button mashing and luck as opposed to movement and rotations.

I know all the condition and damage increases were instituted primarily for PvE, where dps creep is less of an issue. But at present it seems to have removed much of the fun and strategy from PvP, and replaced it with screen and action clutter.

Again, just my 2 cents while the meta settles.

Fay.2357:

I think the increased stealth duration is fantastic and interesting.

However, I feel that it should come with some sort of additional drawback. Specializing into some sort of particularly powerful utility, like stealth access, should be possible, but it should also come packaged with some sort of specific drawback.

Not entirely sure what sort of drawback would be appropriate. Perhaps some sort of damage de-modifier?

What about something like weakness in stealth?

So, as the title asks, what is the highest (solo) damage anyone has seen on a mind wrack? So far my record is 5250 on a single wrack (light golem in HOTM).

Zera.8907:

OP……. Delete this kitten!

Nah. Let’s face it. It’s way too much stealth (which promotes cheap and sloppy gameplay).

jax.5679:

what build you using?

Any build with PU and traited torch. Throw in desperate decoy and you can easily get 30+ sec of stealth.

All I have to say is … Wow! Cannot believe stealth uptime. Can only imagine an eventual nerf, but still.

Keep in mind that mesmer will have to give up another trait line to spec in chrono, so burst mes won’t be as bursty. This will be the same for other classes — likely increased utility at the other expense of dps.

Yeah, I could even see some sort of non-zerk phantasm/interrupt build able to scare away thieves.

The easy solution is to just have a common F5 skill for all of the racials.

It does bug me too that even if I make some amazingly placed blink after their burst, they can just mindlessly mash F1 and be right back on me (with minimal penalty if the steal fails). Buy anyway, I don’t want to turn this into a complaint about thieves, as I really am just looking for some constructive help.

I know that thieves are more or less a direct counter to shatter Mesmers in sPvP, bit I was wondering what people do to best deal with them. Outside of Moa (which I now always run and save for thieves), what other tricks do we have to mitigate their burst and, more importantly, their followup after their burst?

Besetment.9187:

DE can never be innate because it would make all phantasm based builds unworkable in principle.

IP can be innate and arguably should have been from the beginning.

Not really. It’s pretty hard to maintain 3 phantasms without overwriting one with a clone, given that so many weapon skills produce them. (Not that it isn’t possible, just difficult.)

And that also being said, there’s not a ton of use for 3-phantasm builds these days.

However, maybe they could code it so DE doesn’t activate if 3 phantasms are up. Would solve all issues.

Seeing as it appears some traits will be combined, I’m wondering where we thing this will hit mesmers.

Manipulations: merging far-reaching and cooldowns. Hope this stays in Dueling or else shatter builds can’t take it.

Glamour’s: would be nice to see cool down and long-lasting combined. No problems here.

Mantras: lots of potential reworks here. Thoughts?

Anyway, I’m sure there are others. Hopefully this will provide QoL changes and keep the traits in appropriate lines.

Also, there is nothing sweeter in the entire game than landing a 3-clone F3 into a 3-clone F1 burst (talking PvP here, BTW).

Been out of the loop for a while, but it seems as if there’s not a lot of love for phantasm builds these days. Is there a reason no one generally talks about them much? Have they dropped out of the meta? Or were they never really vaible in PvP and WvW to begin with? What gives?

MailMail.6534:

Truly beg to differ here. Zerker classes DON’T do well on Courtyard in the least bit. Also, you mention autoattacks/sigils doing a lot of dmg on condition builds as if air/fire runes aren’t OP at all with autoattacks. lol

Agree that this is a big problem for Mesmer. Zerk shatter is manageable on courtyard, but imo very suboptimal. I hate having to furiously change build to a reflect-orriented tankier variant or something with a tad more survivability.

Re: general condi builds, I agree with much of what has been said above, but get a bit frustrated that you have to go condi if you want to try to hold a point for any real time. I do like, however, that condi gives a lot of build flexibility, with pretty much the only requirements being 0/4/0/0/4, leaving 6 points to play around with.

Q: what are people’s thoughts on torch vs. pistol offhand for pvp condi?

I’m at best a mid-level sPvP player, and while I usually run (and have the most fun with) zerk shatter, I recently changed it up a bit and started playing around running (non-PU) condition. I noticed that my survivability has gone through the roof and I’m still able to take down most classes, and I can even last an additional 10 sec or so on point, but I’m wondering if this is mostly a result of the mid-level competition I’m facing.

So my question is: Is condition memser viable in mid-upper level sPvP, and why or why not?

Chaos Archangel.5071:

The people saying L2P aren’t trying to just be jerks, what they’re saying is that what you’re experiencing is actually rather common at first but becomes a non-issue as you improve. The fastest way to do that is to change your perspective on the class:

To build on this:

When I first started playing PvP, I got wrecked by longbow Rangers every time. Shoot, I still get wrecked by them. But as you play more you realize how to start dealing with them (in this case, stay on top of them, or else use line-of-sight against them). Do I get annoyed when I get hit for a 10k rapid fire? Of course. But much like mesmer, thief, or medi-guard, it’s all part of the risk-reward continuum that makes this game fun.

In short, I understand the frustration. But like anything, you’ll get better the more you play.

Drakortha.6974:

I might argue they are broken, simply because of the untargeting issue.. I always thought that was a very cheap mechanic to go up against. Same with Rangers or Thieves, if they abuse invisibility too much but at least they don’t have clones on top of that, making a simple touch of my “tab” button all I need to get them in my sights again. Invisibility on Thief should have had some better balancing.. such as not being able to deal damage while in stealth.

Every class has a different set of defense tools. Guardians have aegis and blind; Necros have fear and health; Warriors have speed and resilience.; and so forth.

Mesmers basically have zero passive defense and two forms of active defense: clones and invisibility. Forcing opponents to manually re-target is part of this defense, and it separates those players who rely on tab targeting from those who can predict/pick out the real mesmer and immediate reapply pressure.

alanis.6094:

Bunda.2691:

Great write-up.

I’m having success with a condition lockdown, which I think has a lower skill cap (and thus better suited to my less-than-stellar skill level) and higher cheese factor. Wondering if anyone else has been trying something like this as well?

Using staff, scepter/pistol with -/4/6/-/4 and rabid trinket w/ undead runes. It’s a little cheesy, in that I’m just interrupting to death while conditions overwhelm them. Throw in signet of domination for condi damage and another interrupt (for a total of 5 plus f3), and you can easily keep might stacks high for major condi damage. Weakness of course is no condi removal, but I’ll sometimes swap the offensiveness of signet of dom for null field if I see a necro approaching.

Anyone else tried condi lockdown?

Tried it and found it OK enough. Didn’t love having to spend a utility slot on Power Lock, since I always want to have some condi removal.

Ultimately just felt like replacing Power Lock with MI, and CI with Maim did a lot more.

I think you’re right in that the damage output is a bit of a wash compared to condition shatter. But people have become good at predicting shatters, and thus I think the condi-lockdown catches them off guard.

Great write-up.

I’m having success with a condition lockdown, which I think has a lower skill cap (and thus better suited to my less-than-stellar skill level) and higher cheese factor. Wondering if anyone else has been trying something like this as well?

Using staff, scepter/pistol with -/4/6/-/4 and rabid trinket w/ undead runes. It’s a little cheesy, in that I’m just interrupting to death while conditions overwhelm them. Throw in signet of domination for condi damage and another interrupt (for a total of 5 plus f3), and you can easily keep might stacks high for major condi damage. Weakness of course is no condi removal, but I’ll sometimes swap the offensiveness of signet of dom for null field if I see a necro approaching.

Anyone else tried condi lockdown?

To the OP: Yes, fairly easily. Once you’ve geared up your characters to where you want them, all additional gold is extraneous, and can easily be converted to gems, even with poor exchange rates. It’s relatively easy to make 100 – 200 gold on the TP in a week without much time commitment plus whatever you make playing the game, which is certainly enough for normal gem-store purchases.

This is obviously much harder if you don’t play the TP.

Condi shatter. Something like 2/6/0/0/6 (condi shatter + mantras).

And screw PU. With all of the condi pressure we can now put out, PU is almost extraneous.

From the Release Notes (WvW section):

• Area-of-effect revive skills no longer revive NPCs from dead.

Does this mean no more bannering the Lord? Apologies if this has already been discussed.

Esplen.3940:

Tl;dr: Casuals are casual and that won’t change the market unless the market stops being player controlled.

Not necessarily—because much of the gold that is made by serious traders is made on the backs of the casual player’s general unawareness (or apathy) to prices, trends, or the general workings of the TP. Flipping only works (for the most part) because casual players don’t fully realize the benefits of listing items instead of selling to highest bidder; patch-day flipping is so profitable because causal players want their rewards on the first day post patch; and long-term investing in skins, recipes, etc. only works because casual players choose not to see their long-term value of their drops.

In other words, making gold on the TP is often (though not always, by any means) accomplished because of the causal player’s casual approach to the game. Now there is nothing wrong with this, but anything that increases the casual player’s understanding of markets will likely make it harder (albeit probably not to serious degree) to profit off of the TP.

And to be honest, this is probably a good thing.

So what do we think are some of the market implications of the (awesome) trading post improvements?

Here are a few of my initial thoughts:

1. More BLTP participants. This, fortunately/unfortunately is double edged. On the one hand, we may see more players flipping and investing, which would presumably lower the spreads. But on the other hand, we could just as easily see more inexperienced players dabble with the TP, which means more players selling their goods without doing proper research (and leaving an opening for skilled TP players to take advantage of this). Personally, I think we’re more likely to see the latter.

2. More sales of items close to vendor value. Since the TP will likely be faster and easier to use, we’ll likely see more sales of items that net just a few copper above vendor value, but that were previously not worth selling on the TP for inconvenience sake.

3. Increase in price of rare mats. This is just speculation, but as the the TP becomes easier to use, I can see more people making more gold off it, which in turn leads to less farming and more buying of rare materiels (e.g. T6 mats, ectos, etc.).

Anyway, these are just a few initial thoughts. I’m also curious how the new delivery system will affect things, especially if it in any way restricts the use of the TP as an unlimited storage vessel.

What else might we expect?

Yeah, I was thinking that I’d want both Harmonious Mantras and the new Triumphant Distortion in a zerg build . . . but of course that isn’t really possible.

And on a separate note, the change to Triumphant Distortion (temporarily invulnerable phantasms) should in no way be in a Grandmaster trait (especially in a skill line that isn’t really the most zerg-skill friendly).

But anyway, I was just wondering what their thinking was. Have any other classes undergone a trait-line swap such as this?

Did we ever get an explanation for why these were swapped? I still haven’t heard a valid reason.

The scepter AA should proc a short chill, providing the weapon with a soft cc. It would be relatively weak on its own, but having multiple scepter clones out would beginto present opponents with a bit of a problem.

Add: Some kind of light/dark paradigmed fighter. Weapon and utility skills each have a lite and dark component, and light/dark stance swapping is profession skill (with various effects and cooldowns) that changes the skill to light or dark version. Each has advantages and disadvantages, and the fun of playing the profession is to know when to use each stance.

Eliminate: mesmer, unfortunately, even though it is the coolest and most unique profession anet has created. It’s just too buggy, lacks a real focus, and has the only profession skill that is useful only in a very limited number of engagements.

I used nearly the same setup . . . for open-world PvE when I was trying to get world completion. But in PvP it lacks the CC needed to set up Mind Wracks. That is why most shatters use Sword/X along with staff or greatsword, because they all offer the much-needed CC.

Character creation screen —> roll thief.

WvW. DPS+AOE+utility+range. I’d argue it’s mesmers’ best overall wvw weapon.

Yeah, definitely keep the small reticle. In fact, more skills should require the skills of aiming like this to anticipate moving. But yes, given that the reticle is so small on this skill, a second boon strip would be nice. I like option 4 as well. And keep the root; again, I like skills with tradeoffs like this—root in exchange for offense.

Celtic Lady.3729:

What items can you possibly buy for 3-4 s and instantly sell for 50-60 s? Is this a troll thread?

No troll. The items I was initially referring to have narrowed a little bit, but there are still many with buy orders ~10s and asks at between 45 and 90s. Seriously, spend 15 min looking through the different BLTP categories at various rarities (mahor hint) and you’ll find them soon enough.

If you want a bigger hint, think about the changes from the recent patch. I’m trying to be pretty thick here without giving out exact items/categories. But spend time looking and you’ll find flippable items everywhere.

tolunart.2095:

You should feel bad. Think of all the fake families who will lose their fake homes and the fake children who go to their fake beds hungry every night because you stole the fake money from the fake people buying and selling fake goods for fake money.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

Great response. I am of course quite ashamed. Perhaps I’ll buy myself a legendary or some aetherblade skins to cheer up.

I was of course being melodramatic in the initial post, but my point was just that most flipping profits are made off of uninformed players. I mean, so be it, but it just kind of sucks that the best way to make gold is through the uninformed actions of other players.

Suffice to say, this past week has been a paradise for flippers. The spreads in certain markets have reached 600, 700, even 2500% on items that still move with good velocorty. In fact, at the moment my earnings are limited solely by the number of bids I can put in, before I either get bored or tired. Now, this will likely slow down over the coming weeks, but it may not, given changes to the game post-patch.

So I ask, why am I beginning to feel guilty?

I think it is because I’m making gold off of people who a) don’t understand the TP; b) are new to the game; c) are confused about game mexhanics; or d) simply dont care. Because really, why would someone fill my (many) 3s buy orders when the lowest sell orders are at 50s, 60s, or even 1g unless they are unaware or ambivalent?

I’m assuming that this is one of the major issues people have with the TP. Speculating is a bit different, but in terms of flipping, especially on slower moving items, we are really just taking advantage of others’ inattentiveness (at best), or misunderstanding and obliviousness (at worst).

Now, will I stop flipping (especially in such a lucrative climate)? Not sure. But I do see a bit of a moral quandry in this activity.

4/6/0/0/4. GS-Staff. Zerker gear, hoelbrak runes, lemongrass poultry. In groups/zergs you are ranged dps; in smaller fights you are a hybrid phantasm/shatter. I find I get a lot more bags and do a lot more damage than running condition zerg tank (ie zergmower), not that that isn’t fun to play sometimes too.

What are people using on various weapon sets? Right now I’m going battle/fire on direct damage weapons, torment/hydro on condition sets, but I’ve yet to really play around with them post patch. Any real thoughts?

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/23is7n/need_sigil_of_force_here_is_a_way_to_get_it_cheap/

They look great in theory, but they’re only good so long as you’re running with teammates who can give you swiftness. Otherwise, you remain slow as kitten and suffer the same drawbacks of all roaming condition mesmers.

I’d like to nominate this as the post of the patch. Really excellent analysis. Thanks so much.

I feel like sigils of benevolence needs an additional effect, like x% of self heals affect allies, in order to be competitive.

“Buy the rumor, sell the news,” they say. That is what everyone did here, and so no one made any real gold. The real money, however, was to be made doing the opposite: sell on the rumor (i.e. to the speculators.). In fact, selling to speculators is perhaps my most garaunteed income stream. It’s never amazing, but it’s consistent.