Guild Wars 2

Tseison.4659:

OriOri.8724:

I think you misunderstand ProtoGunner. A lot of mesmer mains are critical because they care a lot about the class. They see problems with the class, and they see that mirage doesn’t address those problems, and it is upsetting.

I mean, look at chrono. 3 major traits were designed around reducing problems with shatters. 1 of them was designed to help the shatters land, since it was so easy to outrun them. And the other 2 were designed around trying to (in a very OP manner at first) reduce the negative impact that shattering had on our illusion mechanic. That’s 3 out of 9 major traits, 33% of them. Imagine how much more that class could have been if instead Anet had fixed those issues at the core mesmer level, and let chrono be a standalone spec that didn’t just bandaid mesmer problems? It would have had 3 more, very interesting, traits to play with. People, in general, stopped caring because Chrono was made overpowered at first, like every gen1 elite spec.

Now we get to mirage, that actually has the opposite problem. Nothing in mirage tries to fix problems with core mesmer, so these problems come glaring back at us. And now people are upset, because we really deserve to have these problems looked at and fixed. And mirage neither fixes them nor bandaids them.

What I think that you, and a lot of other mirage supporters, are missing is that a class CAN be fun to play without it being designed well. A lot of the complaints about mirage are coming from the fact that it was not designed well at all. And ANet admitted that to us when they admitted they designed it around the name instead of around the mechanic.

Thank-you so much for being a voice! Exactly what I wanted to say to but then when it was mentioned above about the “XX amount of experience” which a lot of us have to – it seems some people still love to live inside the box and not outside of it.

Again, we have one week left so let’s hope the final product will bring the Mirage on par to that of the Chronomancer or even more.

crosses fingers

While I am very sceptical of Mirage (and quite vocal on the forums about how it needs fixing), you really do not want to get your hopes up that high as to hope Mirage even comes close to chrono. The chance for that is just about 0 (or would require chrono to eat some massive nerfs too).

The most we can hope for now I think (being realistic) is that:

- Mirage gets some rework to its clunkiness (increased time on ambushes, increased duration on Mirrors, some type of temporary clone protection, etc.)
- some rework of utilities/traits to better harmonise with the elite specialisation and be on par with other elite specialisations (Jaunt range increased to 600, guarteed mirrors from shatters, etc.)
- some way of making the dodge always superior to base dodge (much like Daredevil pre HoT) be it blink or 360 degrees superspeed
- chrono doesn’t get massive nerfs only to make the new toy more interesting

What I doubt we can expect is:
- any major reworks to our base class (though I don’t see why say Mind Wrack and Cry of Frustration can’t be merged allowing for a baseline retarget class skill for example.)
- any major rework to Mirages design. Arenanet love their idea for Mirage and I doubt they will move away from it

In 10 days we’ll all know more, and I’m sure there will be major balance patches post release where a couple of elite specialisations get reworks and changes.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

Every organized group I have ever been in, subbed in, or tried to join had a strict 3 hour schedule. PUGs are a different matter; that’s more about how long until people leave than any type of scheduling.

The effort it takes to organize 10 people, have them commit to a schedule, weekly and given that you can clear all 4 wings in 3 hours with a lot of spare time is likely where this time comes from.

If you are a raid/guild lead you don’t want to have to reorganize multiple times a week. If you have a very good run you might be able to complete all 4 wings in 2 hours, but that’s is not a realistic time for a majority of the playerbase.

Archaeopteryx.7409:

Thank you very much for the feedback, really helpful.

I decided to buy it – kitten it, why not I’m enjoying reliving Season 2 so it’s the ideal thing to do while I wait 2 weeks or so

Wait, you’re telling me someone on the forums made a rational and fun gameplay decision? Gosh, miracles do happen.

That being said, yes I do believe you will get quite a bit of enjoyment from HoT before PoF launches and even with HoT’s “limited content” you very likely will be returning a lot even after PoF launches and get even more enjoyment out of it.

Have fun in HoT, PoF is right around the corner, lots of gameplay goodness for the next few weeks for you, cheers.

Sifu.9745:

No more hardcopies? So i won’t be able to buy PoF that way?
Ok i am done with this game then, going back to WoW. I hope this game will die with such an ignorant treatment to their customers.

Wow, you seem like a very well adjusted, healthy and rational person.

It’s 2017, the digital age started a while back.

Good luck and have fun in WoW.

thaliathemuse.8095:

I see these vids from qtfy running berserker gear, is that the stats for a support mesmer? Yet when you’re tanking/playing support other vids recommend ministrels/magi. I’m kinda confused what to pick now. I might reroll to mesmer but I’m so stuck on the stats :c

Tanking is not a thing outside of raids. Minstrel has no room in a 5 man composition with a heal druid.

Logical deduction:

- run berserker or commander for fractals

eldrjth.7384:

How does logging in 1 day in the month or however long it was to get the LS free constitute loyalty? Maybe have the areas unlock after playtime or login days at least if youre going to make that argument. I dont really understand the that logic anyway. Why not offer PoF for free for loyal players too? I dont count gold-> gem as free.

The fraction of people who loged in 1nce only to unlock the living world content is very likely quite low. Most will have been playing the game actively. Even if some people were only loging in to get the living world content, it ment they were actively following the game and the barrier for reentry is lower.

As to why PoF and living world not getting offered free of charge, simple, developers need to get payed.

eldrjth.7384:

Why should newcomers be charged for what was offered as a free gift earlier if they pay for the expansion thinking that it would give them access to all playable content?

You’ve got that backward, the living world content is not free of charge. Areanet incetivises people to stick with the game and gifts the content to players who are active (and likely spending money on the game while playing). Having a limited time gift offer by the developer does not equal content being free.

You want free content? Play the core game in the free to play version for which most veteran players had to pay a full price amount.

eldrjth.7384:

Since thats how it works in almost every game with an expansion.

Except that it’s not. Most MMOs on the market make you buy old content seperately, this is even more true for free to play or non subscription MMOs.

eldrjth.7384:

Maybe they should package Living World as a stand alone expansion too for clarity sake.

Living World content is packaged and you can get season 2 as a package with a small discount. I’m sure this will get added for LW3 eventually.

eldrjth.7384:

All I asked for is to have the areas which were previously given out for free accessible without purchasing living world. It is the maps that are the most important part of it. Those who buy HoT+PoF should have access to all map areas end of story.

Except that they should not. Dry Top and Silverwastes were gated behind buying the original game before it went free-to-play (and are now accessible with the free to play version). Living World 3 maps are gated behind HoT and loging in as to not overvalue the free-to-play core game.

I do agree arenanet should offer a HoT+PoF+Living World package for a slightly higher price, but that’s what the gem discount in the delux edition is for.

eldrjth.7384:

This is a deal breaker imo for returning players looking to get back into the game but missed out on the free living world content. I mean, it wouldnt of mattered much if you could atleast access the maps, but creating exclusive areas only accessible at this time if you pay for it is not right.

Those who logged in earlier will have them for FREE while returning players who purchase PoF will not? They would easily fall into the trap thinking theyll be up to speed content wise if they bought both HoT/PoF only to be gouged extra.

Also the LW isnt even included in any premium editions of the expansion wtf? They shouldnt have offered Living story for free to begin with or make it come with the latest expansion to avoid infuriating players who taken a break from the game. It would also incentivise sales of PoF too (barring the fact it would seem intuitive to do it that way in the first place).

Drama much?

LW episodes are free for players loyal to the game and are not so expensive as to be a huge burden for returning or new players.

It does incentivise sales of PoF, get the delux edition with extra gems and use part of those gems to get the living world content which you are locked out of, done.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Astralporing.1957:

So, they are going to indroduce the traditional expansion gear grind, just camouflaged a bit.
Laaameeeee….

It’s not anything close to the same thing. Traditional gear grind means you literally cannot play certain content until you grind to get the new gear. In this case, the very worst that happens is that you aren’t as efficient as QT while you’re using your old gear.

It’s a choice to grind in this game, not a prerequisite. It might be a very hard-to-forgo choice, but it’s still a choice.

I, too, would prefer just spending my hoarded mats & currencies, without having to play, but I can respect the design choice that ANet is making to ensure that everyone starts on a less-unequal footing.

tl;dr traditional gear grind prevents you from playing new content; in this case, the worst case if playing less efficiently for a short time

Let’s also not forget that changing stats on existing ascended gear means that for a very small fraction of the total cost people will be able to regear to new stats if need be.

It’s a healthy medium ground between absolutely no upgrades and adding a complete new tier making everything else obsolete.

While at the same time creating more of an incentive for people to actually work towards ascended or legendary items longterm.

waldo.4581:

Gw2 is an amazing looking world but players never leave a city unless they’re going to a dungeon or world event.

- or a farm map (DT,SW, all of the Season 3 maps)
- or do world completion
- or play a new twink
- or go gather materials
- or do guild missions
- or help a friend
- or do dailies
- play the personal story

Me thinks you missed a few reasons as to why people leave the cities. Maybe it’s just you that doesn’t enjoy leaving cities to actually play the game.

Definately not a good idea to change change stats on current equipment with the next expansion not even 4 weeks away.

If grieving or any other new stat combo will outperform viper for pve golem test will have to decide. Still, unless you absolute have to change stats (which you don’t since you want to play condi in PoF) I would wait for after the expansion releases.

If you want to mess around as condi now, get some cheap exotic rabid/dire gear and condi away. Unless you are swimming in gold and don’t care.

Valky.2574:

POF should just include HOT any way they will have to do this sooner or later unless you want ppl to spend 120$ worth of expansions i think most would just find a new game
than spend that much just to catch up

Or they let people try out the game without forcing them to buy all the expansions and they get to decide if the game is worth it to them to buy all the older expansions.

Unless ofcorse you ment PoF should just include HoT at the same price you can buy it right now without HoT. Highly unlikely a gamecompany can pay their employees off of 30 bucks every 2 years.

Also the comment about people moving away: as long as people are willing to pay monthly subscription fees for MMOs I doubt the total cost of GW2 will be an issue. It remains the cheapest buy to play high quality MMO on the market without pay-to-win cashshop.

zealex.9410:

Cyninja.2954:

Justine.6351:

Cyninja.2954:

zealex.9410:

Cyninja.2954:

zealex.9410:

Refia Montes.3205:

It is good. But is it good enough to merit the ‘Elite’ status? nope.

Why wouldnt it? It give you a insurance that every channel every burst every part of your rotation can be pulled off without getting killed cced interupted.

Aside from mantras which have their very own issues, how many actually non instant spells do you run on your mesmer?

Exactly, nearly none.

Mirage dodge would be amazing on a class like elementalist. Less so on mesmer.

Well gs in general, sword ambush? moa and mass invis, mantras as you mentioned any heal really.

GS? Let;s go through the GS skills shall we:

GS1 – useless at close range, no reason to cover or protect the cast at long range
GS2 – instant (well 3/4 of a cast but that’s nothing someone will ever interupt)
GS3 – instant (1/4 cast, absolutely unintertuptable)
GS4 – 1 second cast (almost instant) which is far more important to be used when the enemy can’t dodge or interupt it.
GS5 – 1/2 cast, uninteruptable basically

Moa – far more important for the enemy not to dodge or evade it thus needs to get used strategically. How often were you interupted on a Moa cast? Oh yes, It’s also a 1 second cast, sooo hard to not get countered on

Mass Invis – when exactly are you using MI that any protection would be required? When you are engaging trying to get a jump on the enemy when they haven’t spoted you yet? Very useful.

What about when you are trying to get away? In that case you F4 and MI, done.

You are making yourself look even foolisher than usuall. Mesmer has no need of the Mirage protection mechanic.

So play chronomancer.

I am (and I even play core power mesmer), I just don’t take to bs arguments about things being useful when they are not.

Unare just salty that mirage isnt chrono lvls of strong. Like it could ever rival one of the most if not the strongest elite spec.

Hahahahahahahaha, right….. that’s what got most oldschool mesmer going atm, we are salty because Mirage is not on par with Chrono. Man you really do live in your own world.

Justine.6351:

Cyninja.2954:

Justine.6351:

Cyninja.2954:

zealex.9410:

Cyninja.2954:

zealex.9410:

Refia Montes.3205:

It is good. But is it good enough to merit the ‘Elite’ status? nope.

Why wouldnt it? It give you a insurance that every channel every burst every part of your rotation can be pulled off without getting killed cced interupted.

Aside from mantras which have their very own issues, how many actually non instant spells do you run on your mesmer?

Exactly, nearly none.

Mirage dodge would be amazing on a class like elementalist. Less so on mesmer.

Well gs in general, sword ambush? moa and mass invis, mantras as you mentioned any heal really.

GS? Let;s go through the GS skills shall we:

GS1 – useless at close range, no reason to cover or protect the cast at long range
GS2 – instant (well 3/4 of a cast but that’s nothing someone will ever interupt)
GS3 – instant (1/4 cast, absolutely unintertuptable)
GS4 – 1 second cast (almost instant) which is far more important to be used when the enemy can’t dodge or interupt it.
GS5 – 1/2 cast, uninteruptable basically

Moa – far more important for the enemy not to dodge or evade it thus needs to get used strategically. How often were you interupted on a Moa cast? Oh yes, It’s also a 1 second cast, sooo hard to not get countered on

Mass Invis – when exactly are you using MI that any protection would be required? When you are engaging trying to get a jump on the enemy when they haven’t spoted you yet? Very useful.

What about when you are trying to get away? In that case you F4 and MI, done.

You are making yourself look even foolisher than usuall. Mesmer has no need of the Mirage protection mechanic.

So play chronomancer.

I am (and I even play core power mesmer), I just don’t take to bs arguments about things being useful when they are not.

People will find ways to utilize Mirage dodge. Ask any ele, ranger or rev how good it feels to get warded in aoe with their only option as dodge, burning retreat, lightning reflexes or phase retreat. It’s going to be wierd at first but I think it will be appreciated.

Did you see me mention elementalist and how great Mirage dodge would be on that class? Apply this knowledge to any other class which actually has cast times.

zealex.9410:

Cyninja.2954:

zealex.9410:

Cyninja.2954:

zealex.9410:

Cyninja.2954:

zealex.9410:

Zenith.7301:

zealex.9410:

Zenith.7301:

zealex.9410:

musu.9205:

i said it times already
it is harder but its not really that hard to do rotation in raid boss and get higher dps .
you kept skipping this point . anyway .
gw2 in general isnt that hard , DH is one of easier dps . come on

No one said gw2 is hard i just said that this build is prob 1 step from world boss aaing whereas guard is a semi proper class with a rotation.

Guard has a rotation because it has utilities worth a kitten . Mesmer autoattacks because nothing outside blurred frenzy and auto do kitten for DPS.

Mesmer utilities suck outside chrono wells.

Torch 4 and mantra of pain. Base mesmer has some neat utils for a variety of game modes but ye only mantra of pain can comfortaably be considered a rotation skill.

Torch 4 is not even used in PvE, nor is it really utility.

Mantra of pain is utter garbage, it does the damage of a single autoattack and occupies a utility slot. We just take it for lack of an actual utility.

Phantasm utilities are garbage. The signets are garbage for power builds since not a single one of them has a power relevant passive and their active effects suck (only good one is moa for breakbars, but has a humongous 180 sec cd while a revenant can do same breakbar damage on a 15 sec cd with staff).

The glamours outside feedback are bad. The mantras are pretty mediocre.

Really, the reason chrono is so dominant is because it actually gave mesmer something useful as opposed to the large list of useless crap core mesmer has.

Ahem regardless of what you think torch 4 and mantra of pain are both used and its a dps increase. Phantasmal disenchanter is insanely good. Soi has been a staple for chrono since launch? Portal has be useful since always etc.

Torch 4 is no dps increase in pve unless you are running a condition build which was very uncommon (and still is) for mesmers in general because our class lends itsself the most to be run as power.

MoP is trash and gets only run because we literally have no better damage utility skill (which actually says a lot about what state our utility skills are in).

Phantasmal disenchanter is the only useful utility phantasm and is so niche that it rarely gets used since our autoattack and shatters already provides enough boon strip for most situations.

SoI only became good once quickness was turned into a boon, so basically shortly before HoT was released.

Portal is basically used to skip most pve content or pressure/defend points in spvp is indeed very powerful and one of the only reasons mesmer stays in certain metas.

you didnt really prove me wrong that we dont have any usefull utils. Sure not jeraly enough but we have some. And torch 4 is a dps increase it havw no cast time and the only downside isnthat you need to press aa right after u cast because it interupts it

I never tried to prove mesmer has no useful utilities. I stated that mesmer has no useful power damage utilities. More proof? Our power damage build uses 2 signets which increase condition damage.

Torch requires you to drop another offhand and as such is useless. Any other offhand we have provides more utility and situational advantage over the minor dps increase that is Torch 4.

If another mesmer in the group runs focus then why should youdo as well? The raid dont have near enough adds spawning all the time to justify it.

Nor adds are so importand that you would sacrifice dps on boss for the promise that this will cleave well.

Even tho any other class can passively cleave down the adds without sacrificing their numbers.

Torch isnt useless because it requires a slot u have the afk slot being your sword off hand for the phantams and the the other off hand being torch for the extra dmg as soon as you are dine with the phantasms.

Since you got chronos why not have them use it?

First off, yes IF:

- you are running power mesmer and you have 2 chronos already in group (which is already no optimal setup and happens in like 1% of raids if at all)

- and you don’t want to help your chronos so they have an easier time doing their rotation to provide 100% buff uptime (which they also need good enough to actually do)

- and you never have to shatter or resummon phantasms (otherwise focus 5 into sword would be better)

- with long enough damage phases to take advantage of Torch 4s minor damage increase

Then yes, Torch 4 might be useful. What a completely bullkitten scenario to only run Torch. You got me there.

1% of the groups run 2 chronos now days? Oh wow, didnt know that.

That’s not what I wrote, read again.

EDITE: because some people are just not worth the infraction.

Justine.6351:

Cyninja.2954:

zealex.9410:

Cyninja.2954:

zealex.9410:

Refia Montes.3205:

It is good. But is it good enough to merit the ‘Elite’ status? nope.

Why wouldnt it? It give you a insurance that every channel every burst every part of your rotation can be pulled off without getting killed cced interupted.

Aside from mantras which have their very own issues, how many actually non instant spells do you run on your mesmer?

Exactly, nearly none.

Mirage dodge would be amazing on a class like elementalist. Less so on mesmer.

Well gs in general, sword ambush? moa and mass invis, mantras as you mentioned any heal really.

GS? Let;s go through the GS skills shall we:

GS1 – useless at close range, no reason to cover or protect the cast at long range
GS2 – instant (well 3/4 of a cast but that’s nothing someone will ever interupt)
GS3 – instant (1/4 cast, absolutely unintertuptable)
GS4 – 1 second cast (almost instant) which is far more important to be used when the enemy can’t dodge or interupt it.
GS5 – 1/2 cast, uninteruptable basically

Moa – far more important for the enemy not to dodge or evade it thus needs to get used strategically. How often were you interupted on a Moa cast? Oh yes, It’s also a 1 second cast, sooo hard to not get countered on

Mass Invis – when exactly are you using MI that any protection would be required? When you are engaging trying to get a jump on the enemy when they haven’t spoted you yet? Very useful.

What about when you are trying to get away? In that case you F4 and MI, done.

You are making yourself look even foolisher than usuall. Mesmer has no need of the Mirage protection mechanic.

So play chronomancer.

I am (and I even play core power mesmer), I just don’t take to bs arguments about things being useful when they are not.

zealex.9410:

Cyninja.2954:

zealex.9410:

Cyninja.2954:

zealex.9410:

Zenith.7301:

zealex.9410:

Zenith.7301:

zealex.9410:

musu.9205:

i said it times already
it is harder but its not really that hard to do rotation in raid boss and get higher dps .
you kept skipping this point . anyway .
gw2 in general isnt that hard , DH is one of easier dps . come on

No one said gw2 is hard i just said that this build is prob 1 step from world boss aaing whereas guard is a semi proper class with a rotation.

Guard has a rotation because it has utilities worth a kitten . Mesmer autoattacks because nothing outside blurred frenzy and auto do kitten for DPS.

Mesmer utilities suck outside chrono wells.

Torch 4 and mantra of pain. Base mesmer has some neat utils for a variety of game modes but ye only mantra of pain can comfortaably be considered a rotation skill.

Torch 4 is not even used in PvE, nor is it really utility.

Mantra of pain is utter garbage, it does the damage of a single autoattack and occupies a utility slot. We just take it for lack of an actual utility.

Phantasm utilities are garbage. The signets are garbage for power builds since not a single one of them has a power relevant passive and their active effects suck (only good one is moa for breakbars, but has a humongous 180 sec cd while a revenant can do same breakbar damage on a 15 sec cd with staff).

The glamours outside feedback are bad. The mantras are pretty mediocre.

Really, the reason chrono is so dominant is because it actually gave mesmer something useful as opposed to the large list of useless crap core mesmer has.

Ahem regardless of what you think torch 4 and mantra of pain are both used and its a dps increase. Phantasmal disenchanter is insanely good. Soi has been a staple for chrono since launch? Portal has be useful since always etc.

Torch 4 is no dps increase in pve unless you are running a condition build which was very uncommon (and still is) for mesmers in general because our class lends itsself the most to be run as power.

MoP is trash and gets only run because we literally have no better damage utility skill (which actually says a lot about what state our utility skills are in).

Phantasmal disenchanter is the only useful utility phantasm and is so niche that it rarely gets used since our autoattack and shatters already provides enough boon strip for most situations.

SoI only became good once quickness was turned into a boon, so basically shortly before HoT was released.

Portal is basically used to skip most pve content or pressure/defend points in spvp is indeed very powerful and one of the only reasons mesmer stays in certain metas.

you didnt really prove me wrong that we dont have any usefull utils. Sure not jeraly enough but we have some. And torch 4 is a dps increase it havw no cast time and the only downside isnthat you need to press aa right after u cast because it interupts it

I never tried to prove mesmer has no useful utilities. I stated that mesmer has no useful power damage utilities. More proof? Our power damage build uses 2 signets which increase condition damage.

Torch requires you to drop another offhand and as such is useless. Any other offhand we have provides more utility and situational advantage over the minor dps increase that is Torch 4.

If another mesmer in the group runs focus then why should youdo as well? The raid dont have near enough adds spawning all the time to justify it.

Nor adds are so importand that you would sacrifice dps on boss for the promise that this will cleave well.

Even tho any other class can passively cleave down the adds without sacrificing their numbers.

Torch isnt useless because it requires a slot u have the afk slot being your sword off hand for the phantams and the the other off hand being torch for the extra dmg as soon as you are dine with the phantasms.

Since you got chronos why not have them use it?

First off, yes IF:

- you are running power mesmer and you have 2 chronos already in group (which is already no optimal setup and happens in like 1% of raids if at all)

- and you don’t want to help your chronos so they have an easier time doing their rotation to provide 100% buff uptime (which they also need good enough to actually do) This part alone would eat up any damage bonus your raid sees from you using Torch 4 unless your mesmers are that good (which I doubt they will be if they are running in a raid with a power mesmer).

- and you never have to shatter or resummon phantasms (otherwise focus 5 into sword would be better)

- with long enough damage phases to take advantage of Torch 4s minor damage increase

Then yes, Torch 4 might be useful. What a completely bullkitten scenario to only run Torch. You got me there.

zealex.9410:

Cyninja.2954:

zealex.9410:

Refia Montes.3205:

It is good. But is it good enough to merit the ‘Elite’ status? nope.

Why wouldnt it? It give you a insurance that every channel every burst every part of your rotation can be pulled off without getting killed cced interupted.

Aside from mantras which have their very own issues, how many actually non instant spells do you run on your mesmer?

Exactly, nearly none.

Mirage dodge would be amazing on a class like elementalist. Less so on mesmer.

Well gs in general, sword ambush? moa and mass invis, mantras as you mentioned any heal really.

GS? Let;s go through the GS skills shall we:

GS1 – useless at close range, no reason to cover or protect the cast at long range
GS2 – instant (well 3/4 of a cast but that’s nothing someone will ever interupt)
GS3 – instant (1/4 cast, absolutely unintertuptable)
GS4 – 1 second cast (almost instant) which is far more important to be used when the enemy can’t dodge or interupt it.
GS5 – 1/2 cast, uninteruptable basically

Moa – far more important for the enemy not to dodge or evade it thus needs to get used strategically. How often were you interupted on a Moa cast? Oh yes, It’s also a 1 second cast, sooo hard to not get countered on

Mass Invis – when exactly are you using MI that any protection would be required? When you are engaging trying to get a jump on the enemy when they haven’t spoted you yet? Very useful.

What about when you are trying to get away? In that case you F4 and MI, done.

You are making yourself look even foolisher than usuall. Mesmer has no need of the Mirage protection mechanic.

zealex.9410:

Cyninja.2954:

zealex.9410:

Zenith.7301:

zealex.9410:

Zenith.7301:

zealex.9410:

musu.9205:

i said it times already
it is harder but its not really that hard to do rotation in raid boss and get higher dps .
you kept skipping this point . anyway .
gw2 in general isnt that hard , DH is one of easier dps . come on

No one said gw2 is hard i just said that this build is prob 1 step from world boss aaing whereas guard is a semi proper class with a rotation.

Guard has a rotation because it has utilities worth a kitten . Mesmer autoattacks because nothing outside blurred frenzy and auto do kitten for DPS.

Mesmer utilities suck outside chrono wells.

Torch 4 and mantra of pain. Base mesmer has some neat utils for a variety of game modes but ye only mantra of pain can comfortaably be considered a rotation skill.

Torch 4 is not even used in PvE, nor is it really utility.

Mantra of pain is utter garbage, it does the damage of a single autoattack and occupies a utility slot. We just take it for lack of an actual utility.

Phantasm utilities are garbage. The signets are garbage for power builds since not a single one of them has a power relevant passive and their active effects suck (only good one is moa for breakbars, but has a humongous 180 sec cd while a revenant can do same breakbar damage on a 15 sec cd with staff).

The glamours outside feedback are bad. The mantras are pretty mediocre.

Really, the reason chrono is so dominant is because it actually gave mesmer something useful as opposed to the large list of useless crap core mesmer has.

Ahem regardless of what you think torch 4 and mantra of pain are both used and its a dps increase. Phantasmal disenchanter is insanely good. Soi has been a staple for chrono since launch? Portal has be useful since always etc.

Torch 4 is no dps increase in pve unless you are running a condition build which was very uncommon (and still is) for mesmers in general because our class lends itsself the most to be run as power.

MoP is trash and gets only run because we literally have no better damage utility skill (which actually says a lot about what state our utility skills are in).

Phantasmal disenchanter is the only useful utility phantasm and is so niche that it rarely gets used since our autoattack and shatters already provides enough boon strip for most situations.

SoI only became good once quickness was turned into a boon, so basically shortly before HoT was released.

Portal is basically used to skip most pve content or pressure/defend points in spvp is indeed very powerful and one of the only reasons mesmer stays in certain metas.

you didnt really prove me wrong that we dont have any usefull utils. Sure not jeraly enough but we have some. And torch 4 is a dps increase it havw no cast time and the only downside isnthat you need to press aa right after u cast because it interupts it

I never tried to prove mesmer has no useful utilities. I stated that mesmer has no useful power damage utilities. More proof? Our power damage build uses 2 signets which increase condition damage.

Torch requires you to drop another offhand and as such is useless. Any other offhand we have provides more utility and situational advantage over the minor dps increase that is Torch 4.

zealex.9410:

Refia Montes.3205:

It is good. But is it good enough to merit the ‘Elite’ status? nope.

Why wouldnt it? It give you a insurance that every channel every burst every part of your rotation can be pulled off without getting killed cced interupted.

Aside from mantras which have their very own issues, how many actually non instant spells do you run on your mesmer?

Exactly, nearly none.

Mirage dodge would be amazing on a class like elementalist. Less so on mesmer.

Refia Montes.3205:

The Prestige is a DPS increase due to having a small power scaling and direct damage while also not having a cast time. However it is important to note that The Prestige interrupts your auto chain, which means Mesmers should be using it at the start of the chain to optimize its usage. It is however a really small DPS increase, only about 1k.

You are comparing Torch to an empty offhand, in reality though you give up either using focus, sword, pistol or shield (in case of chrono). Sword is a far higher dps increase than Torch for power, focus brings a ton of more utility and the phantasm does more damage if positioned correctly (while the focus pull arguably allows for all the other attacks hit multiple enemys better). Not even going to compare Torch to shield, shield deletes Torch as far as utility and offhand uses goes for any game mode.

Everything else I can agree with.

To answer the question you first need to understand what the site you linked is.

It’s a marketplace for game keys.

Meaning you don;t actually buy from the site but from some merchant who offers their key via the site for sale. You have no way of verifying how authentic and serious said merchant is or how he aquired the keys he is selling.

If the key you buy ends up getting banned (maybe because it got purchased with fraudulent credit cards) your entire account will get banned too. The website might send you a replacement key, which will do you little good if your main account got banned (and we are talking mostly permabans in this case, not those soft temporary bans).

Archaeopteryx.7409:

Will I be held back purely on the basis of not owning HoT?

No, PoF and HoT are completely seperate expansions and do not require one another.

You will lack access to everything which HoT added to the game including but not limited to:

- gliding (meaning also no gliding in wvw or core Tyria or PoF)
- HoT elite specialisations
- HoT masteries and the equivelent level gainable from leveling HoT masteries (ie your new max level)
- HoT raids
- HoT legendaries (basically the entire generation 2 legendaries)
- stat combinations on gear which were added with HoT (namely Viper, Trailblazer, Marauder which are all currently best in slot in different game modes)

Archaeopteryx.7409:

Will I be able to ‘catch up’ with mastery points given I do not own (and do not want to own) HoT?

Yes as far as maximising all PoF and core masteries. No if you want to reach maximum level since you will be missing all the levels gained from HoT masteries.

Archaeopteryx.7409:

Will I be outclassed by people who own specializations from both HoT and PoF? As an example, will I be fighting Reaper Necromancers who have access to Scourge abilities?

It’s only 1 elite per build (you can’t mix 2 elite specialisations) so no as far as hybrid builds are concerned. You will lack access to HoT elite specialisations though and might not be able to adapt to new spvp,wvw or pve metas if those are required for your class.

Archaeopteryx.7409:

Can the PoF expansion features be used in all aspects of the game, or are some features taken out in some areas? e.g. are mounts disabled in WvW?

Mounts will likely be implemented the same way as HoT gliding has been retroactively added to core Tyria and wvw. You will be able to use them once arenanet allows their use. If this will be the case right at the launch of PoF only arenanet knows.

Archaeopteryx.7409:

As to whether the expansion specializations put vanilla builds to shame in certain aspects, (e.g. “Reaper puts vanilla condi mancer to shame in WvW” – as an example), would I be limited for owning one expansion and not the other?

Yes, obviously since you will not have access to any HoT content which includes elite specialisations.

Simply put, HoT is not required to play PoF same as HoT is not required to play core GW2. You are giving up a lot of additional features and your account will remain 2nd class unless you get both expansions. That’s about as short and honest an answer you can expect.

Durzlla.6295:

I don’t know why so many of you seem to think that me saying the elite specs shouldn’t be upgrades means that I don’t realize they currently are upgrades, whether intentional or not by abets part.

It’s not that you are saying that elite specs should not be upgrades but more that you are using this line of thought as an argument to justify shortcoming in Mirage.

It’s fine to have a disscussion about if elite specs should or should not be more powerful, but until one or the other is implemented (and currently they clearly are upgrades) you can’t go off arguing that single elite specs should not be upgrades.

Elite specs are upgrades, period. Every argument that stuff is okay based around elite specs not being upgrades is currently invalid until the time when arenanet either:

- declare their goal will be to tone down elite specs
- they actively tone down all elite specs to be sidegrades to core builds.

zealex.9410:

Zenith.7301:

zealex.9410:

Zenith.7301:

zealex.9410:

musu.9205:

i said it times already
it is harder but its not really that hard to do rotation in raid boss and get higher dps .
you kept skipping this point . anyway .
gw2 in general isnt that hard , DH is one of easier dps . come on

No one said gw2 is hard i just said that this build is prob 1 step from world boss aaing whereas guard is a semi proper class with a rotation.

Guard has a rotation because it has utilities worth a kitten . Mesmer autoattacks because nothing outside blurred frenzy and auto do kitten for DPS.

Mesmer utilities suck outside chrono wells.

Torch 4 and mantra of pain. Base mesmer has some neat utils for a variety of game modes but ye only mantra of pain can comfortaably be considered a rotation skill.

Torch 4 is not even used in PvE, nor is it really utility.

Mantra of pain is utter garbage, it does the damage of a single autoattack and occupies a utility slot. We just take it for lack of an actual utility.

Phantasm utilities are garbage. The signets are garbage for power builds since not a single one of them has a power relevant passive and their active effects suck (only good one is moa for breakbars, but has a humongous 180 sec cd while a revenant can do same breakbar damage on a 15 sec cd with staff).

The glamours outside feedback are bad. The mantras are pretty mediocre.

Really, the reason chrono is so dominant is because it actually gave mesmer something useful as opposed to the large list of useless crap core mesmer has.

Ahem regardless of what you think torch 4 and mantra of pain are both used and its a dps increase. Phantasmal disenchanter is insanely good. Soi has been a staple for chrono since launch? Portal has be useful since always etc.

Torch 4 is no dps increase in pve unless you are running a condition build which was very uncommon (and still is) for mesmers in general because our class lends itsself the most to be run as power.

MoP is trash and gets only run because we literally have no better damage utility skill (which actually says a lot about what state our utility skills are in).

Phantasmal disenchanter is the only useful utility phantasm and is so niche that it rarely gets used since our autoattack and shatters already provides enough boon strip for most situations.

SoI only became good once quickness was turned into a boon, so basically shortly before HoT was released.

Portal is basically used to skip most pve content or pressure/defend points in spvp is indeed very powerful and one of the only reasons mesmer stays in certain metas.

zealex.9410:

Cyninja.2954:

Which you clearly have 0 experience with in endgame content by your own admission…

Nah i have experience with mesmer in endgame content. Prob not huge exp on the later raids but yeah.

The point I was trying to make, and one you might want to adapt and listen to for real life too:

- maybe gain some experience with the subject matter at hand before valiantly joining in disscussions or conversations
- or alternatively let people know that you lack experience so people know how serious to take your comments

It’s basically your choice, be a know-it-all know-nothing or actually backup what you talk about with some experience.

Durzlla.6295:

Cyninja.2954:

Durzlla.6295:

Imperadordf.2687:

Durzlla.6295:

Imperadordf.2687:

Durzlla.6295:

It does give you super speed as the 3rd GM (which is stupid that it takes up a GM slot), and it’s not actually distortion, if Mirage cloak gave us distortion Mirage would be absolutely kittening fantastic and I guarantee no one here would be complaining about it as much as they are.

Mirage cloak essentially sacs your mobility for a better pure defense evade since you can activate it at any point in time, including while you’re airborne or CCed, unlike dodge. Whether that’s worth the mobility trade off is debatable though.

Since they said specializations were upgrades to the classes, I think they should add a little blink to the cloak to make it useful. Otherwise I’m not getting into this spec which uses the weapon I hate most.

Have they said that elite specs are supposed to be upgraded? Because last I saw they said they were supposed to be side grades IE no overall improvement, just variation. But that was back when HoT was announced so their stance could’ve changed.

If it did change, yes, a blink would be fantastic, if not they better make superspeed work in all directions, but if they do it’d be alright.

They have changed. And yes, I don’t know the normal evade’s range but I’ll take it as 500, and I expect them to make a blink with 250 range.

You have a link to where they said they changed their mind? Because until then it’s just them kittening up on numbers.

And normal dodge roll is 300 units

Yeah, they kittened up numbers for over 2 years now and by a very high margin.

Man I wish I had the amount of delusions some people bring to these arguments.

Have you not seen Mesmers damage for the last 2 years? Or Ventari rev healing? Or Power reaper? Anet hasn’t been known for getting the numbers right

Have you seen Mesmer damage for oh I don’t know, since launch?

Ventari Revenant healing is actually quite powerful and received multiple buffs over the HoT lifespan (like alacrity upgrade). It’s just still inferior to druid and as such less desired.

Power repear also received multiple buffs and greatsword even received a rework to bring th numbers and the build up.

I’m not sure what those 3 build are supposed to show besides elites being more powerful than core (except for mesmer for which the community had some hilarious facepalms on some of the balance and upgrade decisions over the last 2 years like might for phantasms proving that arenanet does not understand the class).

You are deluded and are either so inexperienced with the classes and elite builds in this game, or are to dense to accept that every single elite spec from generation 1 was a tremendous upgrade and still remains a tremendous upgrade to this day.

Durzlla.6295:

Levetty.1279:

Durzlla has got to be the only person who still believes that elite specs aren’t upgrades to the core class.

Notice how he doesn’t go around to other class forums and ask for other elite specs to be brought down, he just sits here and insists that the one elite spec weaker then the core spec is fine.

I don’t go around to other class forums period, and regardless I’ve said the tier 1 elite specs have been too strong since they came out.

So you agree then that elite specs have been power upgrades for the last 2 years? So what makes you come back to your ridiculous notion that they should not be or aren’t designed as such?

No matter what arenanet intended, they either failed miserably for over 2 years, or they designed elite specialisation with them being upgrades in mind. Both possibilities mean that elite specs will remain upgrades and the generation 2 ones do not break that trend, some of the coming up ones are very far off the power scale compared to core builds.

Durzlla.6295:

Imperadordf.2687:

Durzlla.6295:

Imperadordf.2687:

Durzlla.6295:

It does give you super speed as the 3rd GM (which is stupid that it takes up a GM slot), and it’s not actually distortion, if Mirage cloak gave us distortion Mirage would be absolutely kittening fantastic and I guarantee no one here would be complaining about it as much as they are.

Mirage cloak essentially sacs your mobility for a better pure defense evade since you can activate it at any point in time, including while you’re airborne or CCed, unlike dodge. Whether that’s worth the mobility trade off is debatable though.

Since they said specializations were upgrades to the classes, I think they should add a little blink to the cloak to make it useful. Otherwise I’m not getting into this spec which uses the weapon I hate most.

Have they said that elite specs are supposed to be upgraded? Because last I saw they said they were supposed to be side grades IE no overall improvement, just variation. But that was back when HoT was announced so their stance could’ve changed.

If it did change, yes, a blink would be fantastic, if not they better make superspeed work in all directions, but if they do it’d be alright.

They have changed. And yes, I don’t know the normal evade’s range but I’ll take it as 500, and I expect them to make a blink with 250 range.

You have a link to where they said they changed their mind? Because until then it’s just them kittening up on numbers.

And normal dodge roll is 300 units

Yeah, they kittened up numbers for over 2 years now and by a very high margin.

Man I wish I had the amount of delusions some people bring to these arguments.

zealex.9410:

Cyninja.2954:

zealex.9410:

Cyninja.2954:

zealex.9410:

Cyninja.2954:

zealex.9410:

Levetty.1279:

Infact can we get into this great delusion that Anet are going to buff the numbers? It took 5 years for them to give us a decent damage % trait and we are still dead last in DPS builds, even without taking into account how our mechanics don’t mesh with PvE. We are still waiting for CD reductions, buffs to weak auto attacks and the laughable damage of the weak attacks slapped on to Phantasm summoning skills.

Dead last in dps on a golem and dead last on an actual raid isnt really the same.

True, but banking on the fact that realistic damage scenarios being in your favor versus a static and always similar test scenario is very foolish. Especially when the class you are playing has contradictory mechanics and a long windup time due to having to summon part of its damage. What’s your point?

zealex.9410:

Esplen.3940:

Levetty.1279:

Infact can we get into this great delusion that Anet are going to buff the numbers? It took 5 years for them to give us a decent damage % trait and we are still dead last in DPS builds, even without taking into account how our mechanics don’t mesh with PvE. We are still waiting for CD reductions, buffs to weak auto attacks and the laughable damage of the weak attacks slapped on to Phantasm summoning skills.

But something that took you 3 hours to cook you can finish in 10 minutes if you keep at it.

/s

I suppose you missed the meaning of that What im saying is that practice makes better.

No, he didn’t miss your meaning. You never talked about practice but instead are assuming arenanet are going to bring us some magical buffs which will improve the class. Guess what, if everything is fine and people are content with the crapfest of mirage as it is now, those buffs will never come.

Actually those buffs might never come regardless since arenanet are happy with mirages current state. That alone would have every semi-intelligent persons alarmbells go off.

Statement that anet is fine with current mirage? The community ahs been quite vocal about mirage’s underwhelming performance. What i dissagree with the general community on is that mirage needs tweaks and polish rather tha fundemental reworks. Also implied that its a matter of practice.

As for dps my dps isnt comming from me doing complex rotations. It comes from me summoning my phantasms at the start then aa my way to 30k. A 30k thats way easier to achieve than with power engi power thief guard ele condi dps/ps warr etc. Thats my point.

Everything is a matter of practice, that is valid for every class thus every class can be expected to improve.

Your 30k dps are clearly dps golem values and it becomes clear you’ve never actually played power mesmer in a raid, I have.

Guess what, even with a simple rotation which takes about 10 seconds to reach peak damage (which is insanely long compared to classes like elementalist or guardian who peak at the start of their rotation) we are dead last on just about every boss unless your dps are terrible players.

Sure engi has a very tough rotation, that’s bound to change with Holo. Necromancer isn’t meta for many fights too, might change with scourge. No mesmer will take damage placements from any semi decent warrior, elementalist, guardian, thief or even ranger.

Maybe actually play the classes you are commenting on first. You clearly have not played guardian, condi warrior or thief in raids.

The opener doesnt hold insane value in a raid where a boss kill can take anywhere from 2 mins to 4-5.

I have played thief and giard in raids and i have played power mesmer in fractals ( a little).

Its much easier to stay on a respectable number during stressful phases since alot of your dmg doesnt need you to be the one constandly attacking or landing ground targets.

Your dps also moves with the boss an upsaude for the lack of good aoe.

Right, so let me get this straight:

- power mesmer is a thing since august 8th
- guardian is a thing in raids mostly since august 8th (I did run mine 1nce or twice before that but doubt that pugs ran a lot of guardians)
- thief while having decent damage even before August 8th were usually not meta or didn’t get taken along, at least not for all 4 wings

You have been very vocal about mesmer pve on the forums for someone who basically has 0 clue of what he is talking about (even about chronomancer nerfs)… Don’t you think it might be time to first gather some experience on mesmer and other classes in an endgame enviroment before explaining to others how the class works or should be balanced?

Fyi I’m maining mesmer and warrior in raids (full clears of all wings multiple times 10+ each), have run guardian and revenant through multiple raids (guardian 3+ full clears of all wings, revenant back when wing1 was only available 10+ clears). You don’t see me harping around on the elementalist or druid boards about how their classes should get balanced do you?

Neither u see me talk about other classes than mesmer.

Which you clearly have 0 experience with in endgame content by your own admission…

zealex.9410:

Cyninja.2954:

zealex.9410:

Cyninja.2954:

zealex.9410:

Levetty.1279:

Infact can we get into this great delusion that Anet are going to buff the numbers? It took 5 years for them to give us a decent damage % trait and we are still dead last in DPS builds, even without taking into account how our mechanics don’t mesh with PvE. We are still waiting for CD reductions, buffs to weak auto attacks and the laughable damage of the weak attacks slapped on to Phantasm summoning skills.

Dead last in dps on a golem and dead last on an actual raid isnt really the same.

True, but banking on the fact that realistic damage scenarios being in your favor versus a static and always similar test scenario is very foolish. Especially when the class you are playing has contradictory mechanics and a long windup time due to having to summon part of its damage. What’s your point?

zealex.9410:

Esplen.3940:

Levetty.1279:

Infact can we get into this great delusion that Anet are going to buff the numbers? It took 5 years for them to give us a decent damage % trait and we are still dead last in DPS builds, even without taking into account how our mechanics don’t mesh with PvE. We are still waiting for CD reductions, buffs to weak auto attacks and the laughable damage of the weak attacks slapped on to Phantasm summoning skills.

But something that took you 3 hours to cook you can finish in 10 minutes if you keep at it.

/s

I suppose you missed the meaning of that What im saying is that practice makes better.

No, he didn’t miss your meaning. You never talked about practice but instead are assuming arenanet are going to bring us some magical buffs which will improve the class. Guess what, if everything is fine and people are content with the crapfest of mirage as it is now, those buffs will never come.

Actually those buffs might never come regardless since arenanet are happy with mirages current state. That alone would have every semi-intelligent persons alarmbells go off.

Statement that anet is fine with current mirage? The community ahs been quite vocal about mirage’s underwhelming performance. What i dissagree with the general community on is that mirage needs tweaks and polish rather tha fundemental reworks. Also implied that its a matter of practice.

As for dps my dps isnt comming from me doing complex rotations. It comes from me summoning my phantasms at the start then aa my way to 30k. A 30k thats way easier to achieve than with power engi power thief guard ele condi dps/ps warr etc. Thats my point.

Everything is a matter of practice, that is valid for every class thus every class can be expected to improve.

Your 30k dps are clearly dps golem values and it becomes clear you’ve never actually played power mesmer in a raid, I have.

Guess what, even with a simple rotation which takes about 10 seconds to reach peak damage (which is insanely long compared to classes like elementalist or guardian who peak at the start of their rotation) we are dead last on just about every boss unless your dps are terrible players.

Sure engi has a very tough rotation, that’s bound to change with Holo. Necromancer isn’t meta for many fights too, might change with scourge. No mesmer will take damage placements from any semi decent warrior, elementalist, guardian, thief or even ranger.

Maybe actually play the classes you are commenting on first. You clearly have not played guardian, condi warrior or thief in raids.

The opener doesnt hold insane value in a raid where a boss kill can take anywhere from 2 mins to 4-5.

I have played thief and giard in raids and i have played power mesmer in fractals ( a little).

Its much easier to stay on a respectable number during stressful phases since alot of your dmg doesnt need you to be the one constandly attacking or landing ground targets.

Your dps also moves with the boss an upsaude for the lack of good aoe.

Right, so let me get this straight:

- power mesmer is a thing since august 8th
- guardian is a thing in raids mostly since august 8th (I did run mine 1nce or twice before that but doubt that pugs ran a lot of guardians)
- thief while having decent damage even before August 8th were usually not meta or didn’t get taken along, at least not for all 4 wings

You have been very vocal about mesmer pve on the forums for someone who basically has 0 clue of what he is talking about (even about chronomancer nerfs)… Don’t you think it might be time to first gather some experience on mesmer and other classes in an endgame enviroment before explaining to others how the class works or should be balanced?

Fyi I’m maining mesmer and warrior in raids (full clears of all wings multiple times 10+ each), have run guardian and revenant through multiple raids (guardian 3+ full clears of all wings, revenant back when wing1 was only available 10+ clears). You don’t see me harping around on the elementalist or druid boards about how their classes should get balanced do you?

Ohoni.6057:

Will do, but I play a lot of classes, and of the nine available, the Mirage is one of the few new specs that I plan to be playing around launch. I’m still on the fence about running Deadeye instead of Daredevil, but Mirage I like.

Funny you should mention Guardian and Thief. I enjoyed Firebrand and was looking forward to how a 1 button perma quickness class with high condition damage might fit into raiding. I’d definately give the elite a 7/10 since guardian gets mantras on steroids compared to mesmer, so I wasn’t as turned off by this mechanic as most guardians go on about (I do play guardian quit a bit, have 4 actually at this point in time, 2 of them raid geared and played).

Same goes for thief, was looking forward playing deadeye in wvw and sniping away at targets. That said I’ve never played thief much so deadeye seemed like it might be an interesting niche I might enjoy.

Funny how one is always more critical of ones own class which ones knows in and out isn’t it?

green plum.7514:

Cyninja.2954:

Since no matter what they do to Mirage it will work in open world pve, who cares?

That’s aproximately what your statement comes down to.

Now since you obviously don’t care about the balance state of Mirage, what do you care if arenanet addresses some of the issues so the build actually works in enviroments where it matters? It won’t affect your gameplay in anyway and at best might make things a little more harmonious and easy.

Its strange what you read into my post. I certainly have nothing agains Mirage being viable in higher tiers of gameplay. I was merely commenting on the original post.

What I am saying is that mechanic-wise, at least from my perspective (melee power playstyle), Mirage is a lot of fun and makes sense. They should definitely improve the damage though, it is a bit lacklustre given the supposed role.

I read exactly into your post what you wrote:

- you are playing power mesmer (mirage) in open world
- you are enjoying the way the build plays
- going by the build you use you have 0 idea of what you are doing (which is fine for open world pve)
- you don’t care about endgame balance and quite frankly are not participating in it (how else does one interpret the comment:“and frankly, I don’t care about it a bit”?)

Did I miss something? Those are all things which were easily deduced by either comments from you or by build links you provided.

So my question stands: What do you care? No matter what is done, mirage will remain viable for open world content. It already is just like most builds and classes which have an autoattack.

green plum.7514:

After playing a power Mirage in open world yesterday for a bit, I couldn’t disagree with the original post more. First of all, nobody is taking blurred frenzy away. Yes, the sword ambush attack is a bit lacklustre in terms of damage (they should buff it), but it provides steady clone generation and allows you to stick to your target like crazy. Clone generation means that you can basically shatter on cooldown, which gives you new mirrors, which equals more dodge and more clones. I have no idea how or if this would work in a high-end PVE environment (and frankly, I don’t care about it a bit), but as someone who plays base Mesmer for fun, Mirage with sword is a Mesmer on steroids.

Since no matter what they do to Mirage it will work in open world pve, who cares?

That’s aproximately what your statement comes down to.

Now since you obviously don’t care about the balance state of Mirage, what do you care if arenanet addresses some of the issues so the build actually works in enviroments where it matters? It won’t affect your gameplay in anyway and at best might make things a little more harmonious and easy.

Esplen.3940:

Cyninja.2954:

Your 30k dps are clearly dps golem values and it becomes clear you’ve never actually played power mesmer in a raid, I have.

Guess what, even with a simple rotation which takes about 10 seconds to reach peak damage (which is insanely long compared to classes like elementalist or guardian who peak at the start of their rotation) we are dead last on just about every boss unless your dps are terrible players.

That’s not entirely true. In almost every raid fight there are mechanics you have to deal with. As a Power Mesmer (and Condi Mesmer) you can focus on the mechanics and still have DPS. Additionally, for fights like Sabetha, you don’t lose ramp time for each boss because your Phants stay (Condi still needs to ramp condis, though).

I would say that Power Mes is best run vs: VG and Sab, while doing decently at KC, Sloth, Cairn, MO, and being decent at best against Matthias.

For KC, you shouldn’t be top DPS, because if you are then you need better squadmates.

For VG and Sab, it’s “acceptable” because of the mechanics. VG has constant movement and requires CC, both of which Power Mesmer laughs at. For Sabetha, you can res, kick bombs, throw bombs, and avoid flame walls without hurting your DPS. Additionally, your Phants will retarget onto the new bosses when they come in, and then back onto Sabetha when she returns.

Sloth is nice because you have a lot of utilities available to you, and if you need to dodge/res/poison/etc, you’ll still have DPS. If you eat a Mushroom, however, you have to restart your ramp. It’s notable that it’s easy to hit higher relative DPS on Sloth because you have constant DPS while focusing on surviving. However, a selfish build on a fight like Sloth is not always great, and Power Mesmer lacks self-sufficiency, so you’ll need to be on good terms with your healers to stay alive if things go sour.

Cairn allows you to do good damage (easily top), but the downside to Cairn is if you accidentally get Shared Agony you will be spamming mantras for a minute. It is entirely possible to force yourself not to get Shared Agony, but things happen and losing 55% of your DPS for a minute is pretty harsh.

MO you’re able to get good DPS and move without hampering your rotation too much (you might cancel a few BF, big deal). However, only 60% of your DPS is cleave, so it might be better to run other damage dealers.

Matthias is awkward because there’s so many mechanics. As a Power Mes (not Chrono) you’ll have free reign over your utilities (Feedback, Signet of Domination) to support the team. However, there will be many points where you don’t attack due to the way the fight works. Thus, your DPS will heavily rely on RNG whereas running Condi allows you to constantly damage (unless you need to do Poison/Corrupts). Typically, Power and Condi will have the same damage output here, unlike most fights where Power is generally better.

Honestly, the only people in raids that peak faster than me are Guardians and after ~20s my DPS matches or tops theirs (PF ramp time). Elementalists definitely can surpass Power Mes DPS, but it requires skill (something most players, including me, lack) and also opportunities for things such as precasting (see: KC burn phase).

Check out this raid report from ~3 hours ago. First phase, I hit just under 29k DPS, although VG phase 1 is a golem battle. In the second and third phase, because I have to deal with mechanics (see: moving, avoiding blues while moving, CC) my DPS drops but sits around 24k.

Admittedly, some of the other DPS players do have to go to Green circles while I just twiddle my thumbs and auto attack, but not every DPS player is doing that, and it’s usually DPS that can still do something from afar.

I will admit my view might be scewed a bit since I run in 2 raid squads per week. 1 being a hardcore raid guild where I won’t be top dps as mesmer no matter what I try (and I usually run cPS since our guild mesmer are all topnotch and can provide 12-15k dps while caping alacrity and quickness at over 90%+ both). The other being more causal where I usually just help out with still very skilled players.

So yes, maybe on a pug level mesmer dps might be tollerable especially when other dps have to run for greens (considering there is 4 dps spots, that makes it quite easy to be top dps).

Sabatha while a good fight for power mesmer you are top dps because 2 of your 4 dps are jumpers. The fight is also very favorable for elementalists and guardians due to low movement.

When comparing dps one has to look at dps from an even playing field. Power mesmer is terrible at jumping for Sabatha for example, toping the other dps because you can’t fill that role isn’t a fair comparison.

Also please do take note of your might, alacrity and quickness uptimes on that fight report. None of them are good and your 3rd dps sits at 16.5 might stacks average, 28% quickness and 7% alacrity AND it’s a dps druid. Hardly a fair comparison now is it? Imagine it had been a tempest, DH, thief or dps warrior who get at least 20 might average, 50% quickness and 50% alacrity (still not good values btw).

Makai.3429:

Heijincks.9267:

Makai.3429:

Cyninja.2954:

Makai.3429:

Jahroots.6791:

You’re probably not missing anything. It’s a matter of taste.

Some players are into ‘twitch’ style gaming. They enjoy mechanically complex encounters and quickly become bored if they don’t feel a rush while playing. Most (if not all) of the highly skilled, seriously dedicated sort that the devs actually collaborate with fall into this category, thus going forward a lot of of the newer PvE content appears to have been designed with their preferences in mind.

There are still lots of others (like me) who really just want something moderately engaging to play with other people at a comfortable pace, but we aren’t the intended audience for fractals and raids.

For example: I really, really enjoyed T4 fractals when Necro was OP and instabilities were basically negligible. You could pug everything everyday with virtually guaranteed success. And for what it’s worth, the rewards were much more satisfying when the content was easier. But, others felt this level of difficulty was a ‘joke’ and so on, so they changed things to be legitimately challenging. So now the hardcore players are satisfied, but now I can hardly stand to bother with ’em.

They simply cannot please everyone, unfortunately.

Yep, and those of us who don’t like or can’t do twitch play are getting pushed out of the game, just to satisfy the elitist raiders, which is really sad.

No one is forcing you to do T4 fractals. No one is forcing you to raid (even less so now that there is alternative methods to gain legendary armor).

What you expect is the same amount of rewards for 0 effort. Fine, play open world pve or run dungeons, the rewards in some of those areas are huge too.

No one is pushing any one out of anything by adding challenging content. The fact that you can’t clear the content but still want the rewards is hardly the fault of the raiding crowd.

Putting words in my mouth. Nice. I don’t really care about rewards, nor did I mention them once – I just want to be able to play relaxing group content after a hard day of work, but since the new Raid-Fractals and Raids have pushed out Dungeons, there’s not much choice left.

If you don’t care about rewards and want to relax, T1 is your friend. The option’s there.

I don’t think it’s fair to say that the game is “catering to elitists”. Just like how you don’t like hard content, should Anet only release easy content when there are players who actually do want a challenge? I think the game would be pretty boring if everything can just be facerolled.

I’m not against hard content…I just hate the way Anet implements it, and how much of a vast departure it is from the original. I loved GW1, and was really good at it, and it’s awful to not be able to do certain content just because I don’t have an insanely good APM or reaction time, or because visual noise prevents me from reading enemy actions. When the game first came out, dungeons were the end game content, and it felt really nice to lead my friends through them. Nowadays I just sit around Queensdale and help new players since people like me are getting grandfathered out.

Why not expand on that notion? Make a guild and help people get acclimated to the game (or join one and help out). There is an ambudance if “easy” and/or non-twitch content available to do and especially new players are having a hard time to get to know all of it and what possibilities there are.

That said, GW2 always has had the problem of creating engaging endgame content. It’s always been the players responsibility to set their own goals and find a path to achieve those. Aside from a very minor amount of items or skins, there is nothing locked behind hard content which can’t also be gained via gold or other time sinks. Maybe you are just burnt out after 5 years of GW2.

I just think it’s unfair to blame 1 fraction of the playerbase for arenanet adding some more challenging content which is in no way required or necessary to complete. There is enough content around for every one or every skill and age level.

Ohoni.6057:

I don’t argue that no change is wanted, and if the Mesmer elites get their way on this and they buff everything up, great, that’s just awesome. I just don’t see it as absolutely necessary, I think the class is pretty fun in its current form, and again, the issues are all just “this number should be bigger, this number should be smaller,” and maybe “this attack should proc slightly differently,” which are all tiny things that they definitely can fix, when compared to things like “Firebrand Tomes are a complete fiasco and need to be redesigned from the ground up to function in an entirely different manner.”

Spoken like someone who doesn’t main Mesmer and does give a sh*** perfectly.

Go complain about what you dislike about your own main class and leave other classes to people who have actually played (and suffered on) them for the last 5 years.

Not even going to comment on the argument that weaker utility skills from elites compared to core utility skills are fine since one doesn’t have to use them. Pure bias confirmed right there.

Mirage is certainly “fun” if all you want to do is log in and fool around a bit. Once you actually try to accomplish something with the class though it becomes a clunky nightmare.

zealex.9410:

Cyninja.2954:

zealex.9410:

Levetty.1279:

Infact can we get into this great delusion that Anet are going to buff the numbers? It took 5 years for them to give us a decent damage % trait and we are still dead last in DPS builds, even without taking into account how our mechanics don’t mesh with PvE. We are still waiting for CD reductions, buffs to weak auto attacks and the laughable damage of the weak attacks slapped on to Phantasm summoning skills.

Dead last in dps on a golem and dead last on an actual raid isnt really the same.

True, but banking on the fact that realistic damage scenarios being in your favor versus a static and always similar test scenario is very foolish. Especially when the class you are playing has contradictory mechanics and a long windup time due to having to summon part of its damage. What’s your point?

zealex.9410:

Esplen.3940:

Levetty.1279:

Infact can we get into this great delusion that Anet are going to buff the numbers? It took 5 years for them to give us a decent damage % trait and we are still dead last in DPS builds, even without taking into account how our mechanics don’t mesh with PvE. We are still waiting for CD reductions, buffs to weak auto attacks and the laughable damage of the weak attacks slapped on to Phantasm summoning skills.

But something that took you 3 hours to cook you can finish in 10 minutes if you keep at it.

/s

I suppose you missed the meaning of that What im saying is that practice makes better.

No, he didn’t miss your meaning. You never talked about practice but instead are assuming arenanet are going to bring us some magical buffs which will improve the class. Guess what, if everything is fine and people are content with the crapfest of mirage as it is now, those buffs will never come.

Actually those buffs might never come regardless since arenanet are happy with mirages current state. That alone would have every semi-intelligent persons alarmbells go off.

Statement that anet is fine with current mirage? The community ahs been quite vocal about mirage’s underwhelming performance. What i dissagree with the general community on is that mirage needs tweaks and polish rather tha fundemental reworks. Also implied that its a matter of practice.

As for dps my dps isnt comming from me doing complex rotations. It comes from me summoning my phantasms at the start then aa my way to 30k. A 30k thats way easier to achieve than with power engi power thief guard ele condi dps/ps warr etc. Thats my point.

Everything is a matter of practice, that is valid for every class thus every class can be expected to improve.

Your 30k dps are clearly dps golem values and it becomes clear you’ve never actually played power mesmer in a raid, I have.

Guess what, even with a simple rotation which takes about 10 seconds to reach peak damage (which is insanely long compared to classes like elementalist or guardian who peak at the start of their rotation) we are dead last on just about every boss unless your dps are terrible players.

Sure engi has a very tough rotation, that’s bound to change with Holo. Necromancer isn’t meta for many fights too, might change with scourge. No mesmer will take damage placements from any semi decent warrior, elementalist, guardian, thief or even ranger.

Maybe actually play the classes you are commenting on first. You clearly have not played guardian, condi warrior or thief in raids.

Makai.3429:

Jahroots.6791:

You’re probably not missing anything. It’s a matter of taste.

Some players are into ‘twitch’ style gaming. They enjoy mechanically complex encounters and quickly become bored if they don’t feel a rush while playing. Most (if not all) of the highly skilled, seriously dedicated sort that the devs actually collaborate with fall into this category, thus going forward a lot of of the newer PvE content appears to have been designed with their preferences in mind.

There are still lots of others (like me) who really just want something moderately engaging to play with other people at a comfortable pace, but we aren’t the intended audience for fractals and raids.

For example: I really, really enjoyed T4 fractals when Necro was OP and instabilities were basically negligible. You could pug everything everyday with virtually guaranteed success. And for what it’s worth, the rewards were much more satisfying when the content was easier. But, others felt this level of difficulty was a ‘joke’ and so on, so they changed things to be legitimately challenging. So now the hardcore players are satisfied, but now I can hardly stand to bother with ’em.

They simply cannot please everyone, unfortunately.

Yep, and those of us who don’t like or can’t do twitch play are getting pushed out of the game, just to satisfy the elitist raiders, which is really sad.

No one is forcing you to do T4 fractals. No one is forcing you to raid (even less so now that there is alternative methods to gain legendary armor).

What you expect is the same amount of rewards for 0 effort. Fine, play open world pve or run dungeons, the rewards in some of those areas are huge too.

No one is pushing any one out of anything by adding challenging content. The fact that you can’t clear the content but still want the rewards is hardly the fault of the raiding crowd.

zealex.9410:

Levetty.1279:

Infact can we get into this great delusion that Anet are going to buff the numbers? It took 5 years for them to give us a decent damage % trait and we are still dead last in DPS builds, even without taking into account how our mechanics don’t mesh with PvE. We are still waiting for CD reductions, buffs to weak auto attacks and the laughable damage of the weak attacks slapped on to Phantasm summoning skills.

Dead last in dps on a golem and dead last on an actual raid isnt really the same.

True, but banking on the fact that realistic damage scenarios being in your favor versus a static and always similar test scenario is very foolish. Especially when the class you are playing has contradictory mechanics and a long windup time due to having to summon part of its damage. What’s your point?

zealex.9410:

Esplen.3940:

Levetty.1279:

Infact can we get into this great delusion that Anet are going to buff the numbers? It took 5 years for them to give us a decent damage % trait and we are still dead last in DPS builds, even without taking into account how our mechanics don’t mesh with PvE. We are still waiting for CD reductions, buffs to weak auto attacks and the laughable damage of the weak attacks slapped on to Phantasm summoning skills.

But something that took you 3 hours to cook you can finish in 10 minutes if you keep at it.

/s

I suppose you missed the meaning of that What im saying is that practice makes better.

No, he didn’t miss your meaning. You never talked about practice but instead are assuming arenanet are going to bring us some magical buffs which will improve the class. Guess what, if everything is fine and people are content with the crapfest of mirage as it is now, those buffs will never come.

Actually those buffs might never come regardless since arenanet are happy with mirages current state. That alone would have every semi-intelligent persons alarmbells go off.

Rennie.6750:

Cyninja.2954:

Rennie.6750:

You do understand that mechanically challenging encounters are not the only way to design a difficult encounter, right? This isn’t your first mmo is it?

Certainly not, it is one of the few MMOs which does not force constant gear progression on it’s playerbase and thus can’t take the route of constant more difficult enemies based on stats.

Enlighten me, how does one create challenging content without stat progression and/or mechanically demanding encounters?

Nobody said a statistical challenge had to reward better gear for the next tier of difficulty, it can also completely offer horizontal progression. The funny part is that dungeons offer more difficult content as you need to know your class, fractals just either take someone yelling in caps at you for 5 mins or you banging your head on your desk for an hour to figure out what the obscure objective means. You don’t need a good build, you don’t need good gear, you don’t even need to use different spells because bosses have their own set of challenges, it’s just boring puzzles and a bunch of stuff to kill spamming aoes or dots around them to kitten off melee players. Dungeons have that too but it’s much better done and far more interesting as you need to know your class.

You didn’t answer the question.

The question was how does one create challenging content, not how does one create different types of content?

Also no, dungeons are by far not more challenging than fractals at this point in time. Go in with a group of full ascended players who can press more than their autoattack, you’ll have a hard time killing any boss in more than 5 seconds and skip just about all mechanics.

I’m sure dungeons are more intersting to someone new to the game (their also far more similar to dungeons in other MMOs which makes the transition easier). Now run them over 20 times each and come back and say the same thing. Some of us have been playing this game for over 5 years. Story and encounters are intersting only so long, after that it’s all grind.

If you think higher level fractals don’t require gear and builds you’ll be in for a big suprise (and very likely not get taken along by most groups). Unlike dungeons where you can go in with barely any idea of what you are doing.

Rennie.6750:

You do understand that mechanically challenging encounters are not the only way to design a difficult encounter, right? This isn’t your first mmo is it?

Certainly not, it is one of the few MMOs which does not force constant gear progression on it’s playerbase and thus can’t take the route of constant more difficult enemies based on stats.

Enlighten me, how does one create challenging content without stat progression and/or mechanically demanding encounters?

Rennie.6750:

Yeah I see, and I was told that it was a game with a casual friendly endgame lol, I suppose I was lied to.

Depends on what you consider endgame. Fractals are one part of the GW2 endgame. Open world encounters and gathering gold for legendarys or other shinie stuff is another, just as wvw ,spvp or raids are. Fractals are no more endgame than any of the others since all you get eventually is loot and gold to eventually purchase the items you want.

Rennie.6750:

But I’m not even opposed to a challenge, I just find mechanically challenging encounters tedious and uninteresting.

Then you won’t enjoy raids.

Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497:

However, Season 3 had 5 well crafted maps. Each of which provided a different currency and some easy but time consuming ways to get Ascended trinkets and backpacks. Each map also had something that made its mechanic a little more unique.

Just a small correction, it’s 6 maps (one for each episode and Season 3 has 6 episodes), not 5.

VP needs 1 of 2 things:

- decent damage
- bar break before his jump

Both of those are in short supply with a fraction of the playerbase. He is easily doable with 5 people because that’s his basic scaling level. With each person added it becomes harder to compensate for lack of damage or crowd controll.

VP gets done a lot more seldom nowadays but I’ve gotten 2-3 kills within the last few weeks without even trying to catch the event (and I’ve had the achievement done since week 1 of HoT release).

Either gather some friends and do the event as a small group or join a group when they do it and hope the amount of competent people outnumbers the “afk 1” spammers.

Rennie.6750:

My fractal experience: annoying mechanics that require cooperation. Not allowed to have a couple of players who have no clue about what’s going on. Too many fractals and the progression system discourages learning how bosses work and their special one shot kill animation.

Yes, how dare content require a basic amount of skill/practice to get completed and even worse, player cooperation in an MMO. Unheard of!

Nothing within the normal scope of T1-T4 fractals is unreasonable and the ramp up in difficulty is steady as such that people can get used to it. There is new players with sub 5k AP running T4 fractals within weeks of starting the game. T4 really is not that hard any more.

The only remotely challenging content is the challenge modes and those get shuned by a majority of the playerbase and only get run by people enjoying the challenge. So there is no problem there.

Jahroots.6791:

Rising Dusk.2408:

• Better liquid gold and item rewards than dungeons ever gave.

Naw, I disagree. Dungeons in their prime were infinitely more rewarding than fractals could ever be. You could have an entire set of best-in-slot, meta gear in two weeks flat, all the while earning enough gold to convert to gems and buy just about whatever your little heart desired.

Are you comparing exotic gear when dungeons were current content to ascended gear now? Kind of biased don’t you think?

The fractal 40 farm now is similar in gold reward or even better to dungeon runs during their prime with the exception that it’s a lot more boring (aproximately 30g/hour). Running T4 fractals daily nets between 10-30 gold depending on drop luck within 30-40 minutes with an okay group. That’s not counting any ascended gear chests you might get.

I find it hilarious how even the most advent defenders of Mirage in this thread by page 3 have started to throw in things like:

- yes it’s clunky but I like it
- stuff can get buffed
- they might change it
- it’s a tradeoff
- people should be less negative, I’m sure arenanet will fix things

Must be hard to defend an elite when the best arguments one can muster when confronted by some basic facts is:“I’m sure they’ll come around to fixing stuff”.

What do people actually think why there is criticism and why people are speaking up? It’s so that arenanet take notice because their trackrecord of fixing, balancing or even keeping mesmer basic functional is abysmal.

zealex.9410:

Cyninja.2954:

Ramoth.9064:

Actually, after the adrenaline change last patch, core war is par with berserker war IMO. Which is great.

Personally I think core guard is better than DH.

Both for spvp at best, please note the game mode you are making statements about since the usuall game mode on the non pvp forum is pve.

As far as pve, that statement is so far from the truth it hurts.

zealex.9410:

Levetty.1279:

Durzlla.6295:

Levetty.1279:

Levetty.1279:

Durzlla.6295:

Cyninja.2954:

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

Levetty.1279:

Durzlla.6295:

Oh I’m sorry I missed the part where you can dodge mid cast without interrupting as well as the part of Mirage that disallows them to use signets, sword, and the domination line.

The whole point of giving us a worse dodge is so we can carry on attacking while dodging. Mesmer provides better tools to do it. Mirage is pointless.

No need to be so confrontational.

Mesmer doesn’t give us better tools to do it though since we can use all of those tools while also having the tools the Mirage has, that’s what my post was saying.

Mirage doesn’t prevent you from using ANY of those tools from the core class, the only thing it takes away is the short roll from dodging, but if you really need that mobility you can trade out your elite for jaunt.

Mirage also takes an entire traitline and replaces it with a completely worthless one that has no throughput or group support traits outside the single two grandmasters.

So, yes, you are most definitely losing something by taking Mirage.

You’re not directly losing something it’s opportunity cost, this wasn’t an argument over “what’s better at support Mirage or Mesmer?” This was “Mesmer is better at evading while attacking” which is blatantly false. If your goal is to be offensive while being hard to hit you’d want Mirage over base Mesmer, and for that role you sacrifice very little.

That’s not what you said though. you exactly said:

Durzlla.6295:

Mirage doesn’t prevent you from using ANY of those tools from the core class

and in this case that is untrue since you can’t take 3 core traitlines with mirage thus you are effectively not able to use all your core abilities. Mirage is competing for a traitline slot and is barely better than the core trailines, which is the actual problem here.

Mirage does not prevent him from taking sword, signers, or the domination line as my original quote was talking about. But nice try.

And the elite specs really shouldn’t be that much stronger than the core specs, they should give a different playstyle, not an upgrade, just as Anet said they wanted it to be. The problem is they kittened up balance wise on the first batch and now everyone thinks elite specs are supposed to be a mandatory upgrade for you based on your role.

Well theres the problem isn’t it. You have two choices Durzlla

1) Elite Specs are better then core: Mirage is useless because its weaker then core Mesmer.

2) Elite Specs are sidegrades to core with new ways to play: Mesmer already has better tools to dodge while attacking, Mirage adds no new ways to play.

Still waiting for an answer to this.

Sorry, thought I had replied to this.

1) I fully agree with you if elite specs are supposed to be better than core, Mirage has low numbers, I’m not arguing with that, I just assumed the numbers would be buffed.

2) I disagree that Mirage is worse at dodging and attacking, since it literally does that better with the new dodge mechanic on top of what mes already has. will say that it’s got worse mobility than Mesmer though.

1) The mechanics are fundementally broken. Unless they buff the numbers up so Mirage axe is some auto attacking beast and you ignore most of what the elite spec offers but even then you will just end up a worse DD.

2) It adds no new ways to play. Mesmer provides ways to avoid damage while still attacking and then has dodges for when you need to move away from where you are. Mirage takes those dodges away.

The mobility of mirage is higher lmao. Also mesmer has 2 ways to avoid dmg and 1 of them forces you do use a specific skill which locks you in a specific action (exluding blocks because im talking about evade like effects).

The mobility of mirage might be higher, but the in combat damage avoidance is worse compared to core mesmer. Which of both is more important do you think?

Mesmer has tons of ways of avoiding damage. If you are refering to dodging (an action which the entire game and every class is balanced and designed around the way it is implemented normaly) then no, mirage does not provide an upgrade, this was disscussed often enough in this thread. The reasons why it’s worse as mirage were given and not yet refuted so simply stating “it’s better” provides no value to the disscussion.

What does mirage lose in dmg avoidance compaired to core memser?

Repositioning.

Ramoth.9064:

Actually, after the adrenaline change last patch, core war is par with berserker war IMO. Which is great.

Personally I think core guard is better than DH.

Both for spvp at best, please note the game mode you are making statements about since the usuall game mode on the non pvp forum is pve.

As far as pve, that statement is so far from the truth it hurts.

zealex.9410:

Levetty.1279:

Durzlla.6295:

Levetty.1279:

Levetty.1279:

Durzlla.6295:

Cyninja.2954:

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

Levetty.1279:

Durzlla.6295:

Oh I’m sorry I missed the part where you can dodge mid cast without interrupting as well as the part of Mirage that disallows them to use signets, sword, and the domination line.

The whole point of giving us a worse dodge is so we can carry on attacking while dodging. Mesmer provides better tools to do it. Mirage is pointless.

No need to be so confrontational.

Mesmer doesn’t give us better tools to do it though since we can use all of those tools while also having the tools the Mirage has, that’s what my post was saying.

Mirage doesn’t prevent you from using ANY of those tools from the core class, the only thing it takes away is the short roll from dodging, but if you really need that mobility you can trade out your elite for jaunt.

Mirage also takes an entire traitline and replaces it with a completely worthless one that has no throughput or group support traits outside the single two grandmasters.

So, yes, you are most definitely losing something by taking Mirage.

You’re not directly losing something it’s opportunity cost, this wasn’t an argument over “what’s better at support Mirage or Mesmer?” This was “Mesmer is better at evading while attacking” which is blatantly false. If your goal is to be offensive while being hard to hit you’d want Mirage over base Mesmer, and for that role you sacrifice very little.

That’s not what you said though. you exactly said:

Durzlla.6295:

Mirage doesn’t prevent you from using ANY of those tools from the core class

and in this case that is untrue since you can’t take 3 core traitlines with mirage thus you are effectively not able to use all your core abilities. Mirage is competing for a traitline slot and is barely better than the core trailines, which is the actual problem here.

Mirage does not prevent him from taking sword, signers, or the domination line as my original quote was talking about. But nice try.

And the elite specs really shouldn’t be that much stronger than the core specs, they should give a different playstyle, not an upgrade, just as Anet said they wanted it to be. The problem is they kittened up balance wise on the first batch and now everyone thinks elite specs are supposed to be a mandatory upgrade for you based on your role.

Well theres the problem isn’t it. You have two choices Durzlla

1) Elite Specs are better then core: Mirage is useless because its weaker then core Mesmer.

2) Elite Specs are sidegrades to core with new ways to play: Mesmer already has better tools to dodge while attacking, Mirage adds no new ways to play.

Still waiting for an answer to this.

Sorry, thought I had replied to this.

1) I fully agree with you if elite specs are supposed to be better than core, Mirage has low numbers, I’m not arguing with that, I just assumed the numbers would be buffed.

2) I disagree that Mirage is worse at dodging and attacking, since it literally does that better with the new dodge mechanic on top of what mes already has. will say that it’s got worse mobility than Mesmer though.

1) The mechanics are fundementally broken. Unless they buff the numbers up so Mirage axe is some auto attacking beast and you ignore most of what the elite spec offers but even then you will just end up a worse DD.

2) It adds no new ways to play. Mesmer provides ways to avoid damage while still attacking and then has dodges for when you need to move away from where you are. Mirage takes those dodges away.

The mobility of mirage is higher lmao. Also mesmer has 2 ways to avoid dmg and 1 of them forces you do use a specific skill which locks you in a specific action (exluding blocks because im talking about evade like effects).

The mobility of mirage might be higher, but the in combat damage avoidance is worse compared to core mesmer. Which of both is more important do you think?

Mesmer has tons of ways of avoiding damage. If you are refering to dodging (an action which the entire game and every class is balanced and designed around the way it is implemented normaly) then no, mirage does not provide an upgrade, this was disscussed often enough in this thread. The reasons why it’s worse as mirage were given and not yet refuted so simply stating “it’s better” provides no value to the disscussion.

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

zealex.9410:

Zenith.7301:

zealex.9410:

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

Levetty.1279:

Durzlla.6295:

Oh I’m sorry I missed the part where you can dodge mid cast without interrupting as well as the part of Mirage that disallows them to use signets, sword, and the domination line.

The whole point of giving us a worse dodge is so we can carry on attacking while dodging. Mesmer provides better tools to do it. Mirage is pointless.

No need to be so confrontational.

Mesmer doesn’t give us better tools to do it though since we can use all of those tools while also having the tools the Mirage has, that’s what my post was saying.

Mirage doesn’t prevent you from using ANY of those tools from the core class, the only thing it takes away is the short roll from dodging, but if you really need that mobility you can trade out your elite for jaunt.

Mirage also takes an entire traitline and replaces it with a completely worthless one that has no throughput or group support traits outside the single two grandmasters.

So, yes, you are most definitely losing something by taking Mirage.

Doesnt have group support. Ok? Your point?

If it can’t support, it better exceed as a DPS role in a raid setting in a manner competitive to warrior/thief/guardian. It doesn’t.

You will NEVER be allowed to play Mirage in PvE over chrono so long as mirage stays a garbage DPS spec.

“Play mirage over chrono”. Since when chrono was a dps role and mirage or any other dps had to compete witht he chrono? Do you see what you are writing u dont make ANY sense. Also, when did you get to try mirage again in raids? Esp now that confusions an torment have bleed ticks.

You’re being painfully dense.

Chrono is a support role. A top tier, necessary support role. A raid won’t give up that role so you can play an inferior DPS spec. Which is why you need a top tier DPS spec, which the mirage isn’t.

Not saying Mirage is better than chrono, but the same thing literally happens for Druid, you’re allowed to play as. DPS ranger just like you’d be allowed to play as a Mirage, because you’re not competing for the same role as a chrono, just like a dps ranger isn’t competing for the Druids role so one being better than the other is irrelevant.

Will the group likely have a chrono AND Druid? Absolutely, does that suddenly mean Mirage and condi Druid can never be played because they’re arguably worse than Druid/chrono? No, because their goal is different, it’s to kill things, where Druid and chrono are to buff.

You are missunderstanding Zenith, he is not saying mirage is inferior to chrono dps or that you can’t play mirage next to chrono.

He is saying that:

A.) as far as mesmer slots are concerned, chrono spots will get filled up first and if you show up as mirage people will demand you change to chrono to support or tank

B.) Mirage is an inferior dps spec compared to other dps specs (not chrono since chrono is no dps spec). Cranger while not top tier is close enough for people to take them along (less so now after they fell off even more).

So now you not only have to fill up 2 raid slots with chronos first, you also have to convince your raid lead to take you along on an inferior dps spec. Also dps druid still provides basic support and healing (and most of his other passive benefits) for those encounters where not as much healing is needed. Mirage provides NOTHING which chrono gets taken along for (or close to nothing) and that which they bring is covered by the 2 chronos already in raid.

apharma.3741:

While I will agree there is a financial incentive to make elite lines better than core there isn’t an incentive to make it so pronounced as it was at HoT. HoT destroyed the player base considerably, there’s very little of a PvP scene left, WvW has had to be compressed into half as many servers because so many left and PvE has pretty dead maps from what I’ve seen. A lot of this came from the balance or lack off between HoT and core and how many perceived ANet to have lied to them about elite specs being a side grade of sorts.

I don’t mind the elites being a little better than core lines but the current elites especially chrono is just a straight upgrade to mesmer no matter which way you cut it. The PoF ones seem to be much more tailored to a specific niche and more in line with what was advertised as the idea behind elites.

There was a pvp scene in GW2?

What ever there was in GW2 pvp wise died out due to way different reasons than elite specs. The game is not fun for pvp and worse yet, it’s not fun to watch. The last time arenanet tried to cater to the spvp crowd was when the game nearly died post HoT. They barely managed to fix this with their reworks of HoT maps and Living World which took way to long post HoT.

The majority of PoF elite specs are spvp and wvw based and as far as those game modes are concerned, they are super overpowered. Have you seen what a Spellbreaker does to a wvw zerg? Those 1500 range Deadeye crits sure seem balanced.

It’s only natural to not perceive them as powerful from a pve perspective. Those that are not as spvp focused like say Firebrand come with gimmicky 1 button perma quickness stuff while being able to bring decent damage.

I stand by my assessment that elite specialisations will remain more powerful than core builds and this will even increase with the amount of elite specialisations added until every role or niche is filled by an elite specialisation for each class which logic dictates is the ultimate goal of the elite system.

apharma.3741:

Cyninja.2954:

warherox.7943:

mortrialus.3062:

Skuzz.6580:

and? Where does it say that this Elite spec should out damage a core spec and out evade another?
Elite specs are not meant to be far superior than other core specs, so yes, probably another core spec has more evades, another has more damage, Elite specs are meant to open more options and diversity, not give you an overpowered version of other core specs.

Pro tip: If you like Blurred Frenzy that much, just use it when specced into Mirage??

Elite specs are supposed to be pure upgrades to the core specializations and side grades to each other. They’ve said that multiple times.

Literally all of the generation 1 elite specs are flat upgrades to core specializations with the exception of scrapper, which is still a flat upgrade to engineer in PvP.

It’s absurd to say the Daredevil is not a direct upgrade to the thief’s evasion capabilities. Or that Berserker isn’t a flat upgrade to a warrior’s damage, condition damage, and ability to pump out burst skills. Or that the Chronomancer isn’t a direct upgrade to mesmer’s team support capabilities and defensive capabilities.

Again, the Elite Specs are supposed to be stronger than core specs. They just aren’t meant to stronger than other elite specs.

Elite specs were never meant to be pure upgrades to the core professions and they shouldn’t be. They are upgrades right now and need to be toned down/reworked until they’re on the same level as core professions.

Never going to happen, never designed for, this was clear when generation 1 elite specialisations rolled out.

Forget that notion and get real, elite specialisations are upgrades and should be balanced against each other while augmenting the class for different things with each elite. Asking for anything else or even that arenanet rework and/or tone down generation 1 elites is insanity.

From the rumours Ive heard they will be and have toned down the 1st set of elite specs. Look at berserker, most PvP/WvW players have switched to core warrior now as the berserker burst GS cast time got increased and it now only counts as a single bar of adrenaline spent.

I heard there’s a significant rework of reaper on its way with PoF too and that the expansion also serves as a balance patch. The rework is to make it a more direct damage and melee elite spec while scourge would be more condi and support focused. There’s no reason to believe changes like this can’t happen to other elite specs, DH becoming far more selfish, massive damage reduction to tempests and a couple of slight skill reworks.

Whether I have confidence in ANets ability to deliver is another thing but right now I feel a lot of PoF elites are much closer to how elite specs were advertised in the beginning.

I have to disagree. Yes from a spvp and to some extent wvw perspective maybe, but the first generation elites were predominantly pve focused and pve balanced. Generation 2 elites are clearly aimed at competative game modes. My proof, the current quantify benchmark:

https://qtfy.eu/guildwars/benchmarks-august-balance-patch/

- the first none elite spec in that benchmark is Engineer where most people would agree that scrapper is a spvp/wvw elite spec.
- Holosmith looks as though it might be a pve focused elite
- the next core build is condi ranger, where ranger elite was a heal specialised focus which makes sense for it to not show up (same goes for mesmer with chrono being a support elite). Both druid and chrono are THE top tier picks for their desired roles
- the first core build to show up is D/D thief at sub 30k, close to 5k below its Daredevil counterpart

I’ll rephrase what I said earlier:

- It’s not impossible for arenanet to rebalance all the elite specs ingame to be onpar with core builds. It is highly unlikely from both an effort and business perspective that they would though. Elite specialisations sell expansions, having them be better than core specs is a financial incentive.