Guild Wars 2

jportell.2197:

In a game where point control is imperative the focus can pull people off point for a grand total of 2s at best. Other classes have better push off mechanisms guardian hammer 5 for instance is amazing because it has a long duration and when traited a decent CD. They also have AOE point control with staff or offhand shield. Which makes sense and gives them more consistent point control than any other class in the game (consider the weapons that have it and the CDs the relative cooldowns between the weaponsets are about 20s plus giving a good 5-10s of area denial depending which weapon they are taking with them.

In PVP mesmer is better off using something like an off hand sword or pistol because mesmer DPS is more effective at point control than mesmer CC. Plain and simple.

So your arguement is that a bunker guardian, built for nodecontrol, is better at area denial therefore itV is a non-issue?
First off, yes, ring of warding is a strong spvp tool. It is balanced via being on a 40 second cd (almost double of itV) and the biggest factor: it has counterplay to it.
Ring of warding only interrupts if you walk into it and it covers about 50% of the smallest nodes. It has a noticeable animation, the guardian is rooted during it, ~1second execute time. You can interrupt the cast or use reactive stability.

The biggest issue for itV is the lack of viable counterplay to it .
You literally have to guess when the mesmer is going to use the aoe pull, so it cant be reliably dodged/blocked. Best you can do is SyG for group stability if you manage to react within the 0.25second casttime of temporal curtain and the possibly instant follow up of pull.

And im not sure if you played tpvp competetively but 2s off point for a 25 second cd with no chance of counterplay is simply very strong. It allows for follow up cc and ~2 capture ticks on the node .
Furthermore im confused as to why you specifically call it “mesmer dps” and “mesmer cc”.
It doesnt matter from which class the damage or cc comes. Control abilities need counterplay with visable animations/long casttimes or long cooldowns.

As far as i’m aware most mesmers on the recent priced pvp tournaments are using sword/focus with either staff or gs. Xeph from Team Paradigm for example.

Hmm, couldnt Lifeforcegain be viewed as a special form of healing?
Because if you look at it from that angle, you deal with % healing instead of flat healing which makes the whole arguement of “toughness for sustained fights; vit vs condis or burst” a bit more complicated than expected at first.

Let me provide an example:
A necro runs noticable LF-Gain, lets say soul marks trait (3% LF per mark).
If you have ~17k DS hp (14k+20% from SR traitline) 3% LF equals 510 DS hp.
Now you run vit gear instead of toughness and have 25k normal necro hp pool instead of ~20k. Which leads to roughly 21k DS hp.
In the “vit-gear-scenario” 3% LF would equal 630 DS hp.

The point im trying to make it is: LF generation skills and traits scale with vitality.
In that case using vitality gear in a sustain type build is of comparable effectiveness to toughness gear.

Or does it not work like that? Are there any flaws in that line of thought?

loseridoit.2756:

Episoph.5289:

I also see the arguement that coming up alot that it needs to be strong because the focus would otherwise be underpowered. Temporal curtain also acts as a light field, so you can use it with iWarden to aoe cleanse conditions (which is worth gold for most mesmer builds) or gain retal with iLeap. Focus can be traited for reflection which makes iWarden and curtain a source of damage and even untraited, the iWarden is able to provide a safe zone with projectile block vs many strong pvp builds like condition engis.

While i personally love playing Sword/Focus on my mesmer, i expected Anet to nerf itV a long time ago, just because it is mandatory and really strong in the current state of sPvP. I just hope they find a way to nerf it without destroying the flair of the skill since it is fun to use…but it is currently to strong in my opinion.

condition engineer use mostly gernades so there is little chance to use the iwarden as a projectile block and the fact that iwarden spawns behind the enemy make the skill even more useless.

This discussion is really about the untraited focus because traited focus user will leave the skill out but untraited focus user will immediately use into the void

focus phastasm is near crap when it is not traited.

Not sure how the iWarden spawning behind the enemy makes it worthless in his projectile block effect.
You can choose which enemy you target and often times its the better choice to not target the enemy player and instead using it on a nearby minion/turret/pet because they cant dodge it, are more likely to eat more dmg hits from iWarden (which deals pretty decent aoe damage with lots of bleed procs with the common 15 dueling minor) and most importantly it ensures that it is easier for you to take cover.
The focus skillset has many uses. A lot of which are very strong if used by a skilled mesmer but the tradeoff is that they are highly situational.
I agree that in most standard situations the iWarden is inferior to iDuelist and iSwordsman but you get a ton of utility in exchange and its up to the mesmer using it wisely and in a skilled manner to make it worth it or not.

There is a reason every top tier tPvP mesmer runs sword/focus at the moment.
Into the Void is really strong in terms of area control and the combo finisher/projectile block offers a lot of utility for the team.

You can even use iWarden on downed players to provide steady, high AoE damage, making rezzing him difficult.

And let me reemphasize: i dont want itV to be nerfed into the ground but in its current state it is simply too strong for the reasons i stated in my previous post and we should be (at least i am) happy that Anet has not nerfed it already.

tl;dr : In a game with pointcontrol as a pvp mechanic focus outclasses other mesmer offhand weapons – itV needs a slight nerf to reduce amount of AoE displacement pressure.

I dont understand why we cant just have an objective discussion over into the Void and related cc skills instead of shrugging it off with “mesmer is already nerfed alot” or “he’s a thief so it has to be wrong”.
I main a mesmer and love playing my sword/focus set so much that i even invested the time to grind out The Anomaly and Bolt. But even i can admit that in PvP scenarios the pressure into the Void produces is invaluably strong.

HAHAHAHA!

No, really, no! When a thief goes into stealth, I know there is a backstab coming, but I can only GUESS when it will hit me. Maybe within a second, or maybe 4 seconds later.

Sure, many thief players have a rhythm of stealthing and backstabbing, and after I’ve eaten the first 2 backstabs I can ANTICIPATE when the next ones will hit me. But that’s just the player, not the thief class/ability. If a smart thief player varies his timing, I’m toast because I’ll waste my dodge rolls for nothing – aka at the wrong times.

Sorry, but your defending arguments for backstab are INVALID.

Just as INVALID as your arguments regarding “Into the Void”.

And exactly this line of explanation is what makes into the Void so strong as a pressure tool. After you put temporal curtain down you have a 600 radius area denial for a 4-5 second timespan where you can AoE-Pull up to 5 targets in an instant… whenever you want during those 4-5 seconds: an instant aoe displacement
And 600 radius is quite big, for comparison its almost double the size of a traited Glue Bomb.

While placing the temporal curtain has indeed a brief casttime and animation (which is very hard to see on asura) the actual cc effect can be used during any other activity such as channeling a mantra or your mass invis, healing or even while you stomp someone.

There are not many cc skills that are comparable to the amount of pressure itV creates. Anet balances this game mainly for spvp and the point-cap mechanic, thus displacement cc is usually well telegraphed (like banish), affects only single targets, requires close range (like updraft) or has long cd (like shield of absorption 40sec to 25sec itV).
Other really strong cc effects which might need a rebalance are engineers flamethrower knockback (15sec cd, short range, aoe) and throw mines.

I also see the arguement that coming up alot that it needs to be strong because the focus would otherwise be underpowered. Temporal curtain also acts as a light field, so you can use it with iWarden to aoe cleanse conditions (which is worth gold for most mesmer builds) or gain retal with iLeap. Focus can be traited for reflection which makes iWarden and curtain a source of damage and even untraited, the iWarden is able to provide a safe zone with projectile block vs many strong pvp builds like condition engis.

While i personally love playing Sword/Focus on my mesmer, i expected Anet to nerf itV a long time ago, just because it is mandatory and really strong in the current state of sPvP. I just hope they find a way to nerf it without destroying the flair of the skill since it is fun to use…but it is currently to strong in my opinion.

Logic.2358:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with All-Stat/Celestial gear. People saying they are awful and bad (Lehova.9518 and Lopez.7369, to name a few in this thread) are either ignorant or trolling (I’m inclined to believe the former). Celestial gear provides on average 20% more statpoints, and so long as you can make use of them, even a bit, its worth it..

I wear full valkyrie with divinity and ascended celestial trinkets on my thief, and am able to make use of all the stats nicely. I can still throw around 7-9k backstabs like a zerker thief, but ive got 17k health padded by a good amount of toughness. The precision is helpful because ive got no precision on my gear. I rely on the Hidden Killer trait (providing 100% crit from stealth) for my backstab crits, and i receive about 30% crit chance from traits and ~10% from my trinkets and runes. The condition damage gets used by my poison fields and bleeding from multiple skills, the healing power doesn’t matter much but it is helpful for sustain and Signet of Malice.

What im trying to get at is that the only reason you shouldnt get ascended celestial is if you are a complete min/maxer type or you will not use ~2 of the stats AT ALL. There is a _very_small difference in damage between zerker/ruby builds and ceslestial and if you can use the stats its a much better choice.

I agree with Logic.2358.
Personally i use Celestial trinkets on proffessions that can use 5-6 of the 7 combat stats. Allthough i tend to do alot of WvW on my characters and in pvp scenarios full damage builds are easily punished if you solo roam. Sometimes i do mistakes and dont see the thief/warrior flanking me when im fighting 1v2 or 1v3.
The extra defensive stats give leeway to recatch your balance in such situations and gain control over the fight instead of dying to the burst.

So i use celestial trinkets on my guardian, mesmer and elementalist.
Fun bit of math: when you compare celestial to berserker you loose ~80power, 30prec and 2% crit dmg. Projectile reflects ignore your power but include your precision and crit damage to calculate reflected damage. So its a smaller dps loss if you are running a reflect heavy build on your guardian or mesmer for example.

I like them, some dont. Only reason to not take them for me is if i were to only speedrun with my characters – never pug at all – and never do wvw.

In pve the mob AI is blunt enough to avoid every bit of damage which makes zerker superior, otherwise celestial is a good choice.

How disappointing the newest instance was is already discussed in many other threads so we should try to stay on topic here.
Personally i assume that ANET has difficulties designing which activities reward the new ascended gear. Next step is probably ascended armor and its rather difficult to add that as a reward for already existing content (WvW for example) without annoying a chunk of their customerbase (does anyone remember the pitchforks when ascended gear was announced?). They are scared to make it casual-unfriendly if they release it too fast, so to speak, which is a shame since Fractals where originally intended to provide the pve challenge GW2 currently lacks.

Nikaido.3457:

Episoph.5289:

Reflection trivializes a lot of the pve content. If you state that it is “doable at 10 without it” then, allright everything is doable if you can eat the shaman arrow and the add’s projectiles without feeling punished heavily…

You are supposed to dodge the friggin arrow. I don’t even need to read more, your original premise is already wrong enough.

At higher level the reflection is for the grubs, you’re still supposed to dodge the arrow and no decent group would waste reflection skills in between phases, we all dodge arrows, we keep the reflection out of cooldown for when the grubs spawn.

At lvl 10+ the level of damage done by the grubs is not that high. If you can’t handle them without reflection, too bad.

Maybe i should have put my statement that i enjoy the arrow mechanic and the fact that you are supposed to dodge it at the start instead of the end of my post. Or maybe, just maybe, you should consider reading complete posts prior to to replying – eases up the potential misinterpretations.

Guess i could have worded it better, allthough i said “everything is doable if you can eat the shaman arrow” to emphasis the amount of leeway you get at level 10 fractals, because everyone knows that you dont use reflect for the arrow alone and just dodge them. From your following statement i see you agreeing with my original postulation which consisted of (to paraphrase here):
“When someone says he can do it at lv 10 without certain reflection skills and brings that up as an arguement over the evaluation of the encounter, then that is rather silly in my humble opinion, since the dmg values of the grub adds are not punishing enough to make it challenging without said reflection.”

So if you reread my post or just take my paraphrasing here (which i hope clears it up a bit) we can agree on that matter?

I have to agree with Avylin.

Avylin.2635:

It’s unfortunate there are so many players around willing to enable selective content just so they can pretend to be better than others.

What do you think you’re doing in this encounter that takes so much more skill, rather than composition? Strafing back and forth at 900 range until it’s time to stack behind WoR?

The fact is that the reflection skills are broken. They trivialize some content which isn’t designed with their use as a given, or cause headaches for every group that does not have access to them when it’s what the encounter is based on.

Reflection trivializes a lot of the pve content. If you state that it is “doable at 10 without it” then, allright everything is doable if you can eat the shaman arrow and the add’s projectiles without feeling punished heavily…
It’s just saddening to see how some people jump to making fun of others and suggest that you lack skill if you dont enjoy the fight mechanic. Makes me wonder where the skill comes into play at the shaman encounter. Finding the capslock button to tell PUG groups they shall stack on WoR? Because actually using the abilities isnt what makes the fight fun.
I can enjoy the fight because, as someone already stated, it forces you to keep moving, emphasizes rally mechanics for newer players and has a telegraphed one-shot mechanic that is harder to dodge the closer you are.
Being forced to use reflect at 30+ (or 40+ depending on your AR and if you are full zerker) isnt a fun mechanic, it just excludes whole professions and leaves them as feeling useless, if they get even a chance to pug high level fractals.

It’s a mystery to me why you care what other people think about you…or do you mean they are calling you out in chat every time you go down? Because then it’s a different story.

Personally whenever i see someone go down, i see that as an indication for being a bad player. However i dont bother typing it in chat, since when i decide to PUG i expect a bare minimum (read being able to walk forward and collect loot while using auto attack) and not a 5star elitist player or whatever.
Just view it as a challenge. Everyone else wants to range the Legendary Archdiviner? Fine. I’m going to melee him and have some fun aswell as sense of accomplishment.
The only time i get mad is when i go down myself, because that just means i suck – end of story.

I have to agree that 250 point stat boosts are a bit too high to say “noone forces you to use it”.
If you dont use it, your are suboptimal, which is fine for some but not for others.
I like the idea behind stacking sigils as they are providing and incentive to not go down. So you could view them as a reward for skillfull play.
There are however 2 main issues, that make this salty:

1. Sigil stacks stay when you unequip the weapon which inherits the stacking sigil! (i always viewed this as a bug and i still hope they will fix this)

2. In some scenarios like, if you are mass zerging in wvw, the risk-reward ratio gets out of control. At that point its a free stat bonus in a rather safe environment.

I enjoy having some variety in the choice of which sigil to use, but when the opportunity cost of using a specific sigil consits literally of “having enough gold to buy it” and “being fine with using the inventory space”, then its flawed execution.
Double clicking to change the weapon every hour or once per dungeon run isnt something that would hold anyone back from gaining another whooping 250 power.

People tend to overlook the positive sideeffect of being focused: it is basically an invite to carrying any pug group!
I’m fine if i end up in parties where i get focused (even when i am on classes that are new to me) because when i mess up it just means, that i have to play better .

Guild Wars 2 has a combat system that gives you the tools to overcome sticky situations with practice and knowledge of the encounters. If you are being focused by cc heavy trash, then guess what: they all have animations, so dodge them when you can and use armor of earth instead of running away.
Staying in combat and being focused means the rest of your team has it easier. It is an incentive to improve and learn to handle the situation. If you are a good player, you can carry your groups as an ele in full zerker gear and if you dont like to have to be on spot with dodge timing then switch to more forgiving pvt.

It’s an ongoing issue with Arenanets design philosophy. They want to give each class a unique feel and have, in my opinion, succeeded if you only take the playstyle into regard.
You suggest to give warriors less might and fury and compensate with giving prot, regen and stability? That just ends up fusing warrior with guardian elements (guess some could call it a freud’sche reaction based on the comment that guardian is your main).

Balancing pve in the current state is a rather hard feat because not enough skills are (yet) split between pve/wvw and spvp which is a matter of utmost importance for this sake.
In my humble opinion it is neccessary that the dungeon encounters themselves get reworked so that pure dmg with minimum utility isnt always the optimal choice.
If every player of the party is skilled a mix of war/guard/mes currently simply fills anything that the pve content asks for and that is the core issue.

Otter.6348:

You’re missing my point. Look at a Warrior – does he do less damage because he doesn’t run toughness or a specific trait? No. Shatters are a class mechanic and a large part of a shatter mesmer’s damage. It’s simply unfair that other classes get to do the same amount of damage if not more without having the same downsides and restrictions. If a mechanic is vital to a class’s damage output, it needs to be on the same level as everyone else’s. A Warrior’s burst skill doesn’t fail because of bad luck, so Mesmers shouldn’t have to have their shatters fail due to bad luck. It’s just that simple.

I’m sorry but that just sounds like you are too lazy to shatter properly.
A big part of a standard pve berserker warrior is getting a full hundred blades combo off and yes, he has to work for that and be smart. In some cases it’s harder than in others to get the combo off without having to dodge or taking an unsustainable big hit.
Lets take Subject Alpha as an example. High damage, reoccuring aoes in path 2 and 3 which you have to dodge. Those ruin HB if you start it at the wrong time (read bad warrior) and ruin your clones if you summon and shatter at the wrong time (read bad shatter mesmer).
To prevent shatters dying to the aoe before going off, you have to shatter earlier. Which is easier if you are in melee or behind the target as someone already pointed out. You can also dodge into SA when the aoe goes off and shatter mid-dodge. This leads to a 2 clone shatter (from clone on dodge and Ipersona) while avoiding the aoe.

If you want to make it easier take instant cast clone production like mirror images or decoy to reach full 3 clone shatters even more often and easily.
A good shatter mesmer is not any worse off than a good gs warrior who cant use HB on cooldown in some pve encounters.

Now phantasm mesmers are another story….they have a right to complain about some aoe heavy fights in pve, but thats offtopic and i play shatter mes in dungeons just as you do because it is easier if done right.

Phira.3970:

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|8.1g.h3.8.1g.h2|0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7|1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.cg.67|p53.k6a.p67.0.0|0.0|0.0.0.0.0|e
25/20/25

Effective Power 6655.49

In comparison to warrior pure damage traiting

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/warrior/?8.0|7.1g.h2.9.1g.h3|1.1g.h3|1g.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7|1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.cg.67|u598.p00.0.0.f5|0.0|0.0.0.0.0|e

Effective Power = 6082

^It’s actually a bit less than that because the site counts the GS and axe towards effective power, but in reality, you are only using one of them at a time. Once you swap away from GS, you get the +5% dmg trait instead of +10% trait. So the actual effective power may look something more like 6082/1.05=5792.

---

In comparison to the Ele.’s effective power, the damage difference is that the Ele. is doing about 6655.49/5792=1.149007645511344952 or about +15% more damage trait-wise.
—-

So taking into account of traiting with a difference of about +15% damage, the Lightning Hammer dps = 500.76*1.149=575.38

in comparison to Axe chain =470.857

Lightning hammer 1 chain does 575.38/470.857=1.22 or about 22% more damage.

---

[…]

In addition to the superior damage, elementalist have the ability to buff mesmers DPS by about 50%. Clearly, you’re getting much more damage on net by substituting a GS warrior with an elementalist.

You did a lot of math on that topic but the basics are skewed.
First off the calculator website for effective power (which you use as base for following math comparisons) is too easily tricked by damage modifiers.
Sigil of Night and Force dont stack; the calculator doesnt account for that.
For Warriors 10% GS dmg and 5% Axe dmg gets added in 1 package allthough they can only use 1 at a time. You even state that later in your post but conveniently dont do the same for the Ele (since you want the conclusion that ele does more dmg…).

So now the imporpant part of how messed up Ele’s effective power from your link is:

You use +10%dmg traits while in earth and while in air in the same build. You can only be in 1 attunement at a time, so if you decide to run hammer dps you want to grab 20 into water for Piercing Shards and Vital Striking.
Bolt to the heart is only active under 33% target hp which is not accounted for(just means that the EP is even more skewed, its still a good trait for the spec).
You need to trait for 10 extra conjure charges if you want to sustain your hammer auto attack. Even more so if Time Warp is used and the conjure stacks deplete faster.
So you have to give up another +5%dmg to burning foes or rely on your team to keep burning up (which doesnt happen in most cof speedrun groups).

This would be a more realistic hammer build: http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|8.1g.h3.8.1g.h17|0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7|4s.0.3s.0.2s.0.3s.0.2s.0.2s.0|p58.a6.a4.p46.0|0.0|0.0.0.0.0|e

Math comparisons are well and nice but please dont base them on arbitrary and easily manipulated effective power numbers from such a website.
It just looks like you started your post planning to make the hammer ele out dmg the warrior and slammed into the calculator whatever was needed to get the result, without considering realism.

Allthough i still agree that hammer eles are a worthwile addition to cof 1 or dungeon groups in general but for different reasons than plain dps. Since it is true that Mesmer benefit hugely from the conjure and while the blast finisher/blind may not be needed/wanted in cof 1 it is certainly worth mentioning for other dungeon runs.

Wethospu.6437:

One fact: Reckless Dodge allows me also dodge petrify on Simin.

I can confirm this.
Dodge Traits seem to interact with evading Simin’s Petrify.
I am able to avoid being petrified with my Ele and evasive aracana traited. I was not able to evade the petrify on my necro (did not have mark of evasion traited so not sure how that interacts with it).
Some further information i gathered while testing petrifys behaviour:
stability:
necros lich form aswell as traited stability on deathshroud allowed me to avoid being petrified.
invulnerability:
mist form aswell as the 5 earth skill on focus (obsidian flesh) allowed me on my ele to avoid being petrified.
you can enter ds while petrified and even use life blast, dark path and fear. Dark path will port you to your target, however, you will remain petrified (as in you cant move).

Cliffside is not impossible. It’s broken – yes, but doable so you dont have to restart if you get it as 2nd or 3rd frac.
I solod the final boss yesterday at 21 on my Elementalist. The part from 75% to 50% boss hp is the hardest due to pbAoE Agony.

There is a safe room at the top right where adds dont follow but the boss does. I pulled him there and walked out of his wells (important walk and not dodge). The wells need 3 seconds to apply agony so you have plenty of time unless you walk backwards which you shouldnt do. You can counter his pull with stability or projectile reflect/absorb. Dont have to waste dodge on that either, it does barely any dmg.
On the pull follows to 80% the pbAoE agony and that is the part you need to dodge (i had 15 resist), he uses it like once every 8 seconds so vigor isnt even needed.

So saying Cliffside is imposssible is just false, tho i would like to get a statement from anet if the adds not despawning is intended as partial higher difficulty, im not sure on that.

In regards to your harpy issue: try projectile reflect. I personally just use focus offhand on my Ele and watch them shred themselves with the rapid fire when i reflect (earth 4) and use Air 4 for groupwide immunity to their knockback+ rapid fire. Mist Form, Armor of Earth, Obsidian Flesh to avoid more knockbacks.
Only excuse to fall down there is not paying attention or getting unlucky with cripple midair.

On a last side note i want to say that melee is not overly punished in fractals. You get more dmg and control option in exchange for shorter reaction time to dodge – seems fair to me. Dagger/dagger ele is so much fun for me that i play it most of the time in fractals. Out of the top of my head i switch to focus for the old tom, harpies, last volcano boss, last cliffside boss and the tree in the swamp.

omgwtflolbbl.7142:

I can actually see this being done with a mesmer[…]

Yep, i had the same idea and im trying to get my mesmer alt from 60 to 80 and test it out. Biggest concern would be that im not sure how feedback and mirror interacts with his noscope shot and aoe, but you analyzed that pretty similar to me.
I played the Ele for duoing lupi with Weth (allthough now he doesnt need me anymore) and Invulnerability/Projectile absorb aswell as endurance regen are key.

One thing that you didnt touch in your analysis (and anyone who didnt try this without the usual “stand in a pack and burst grub” probably wont think of it) is the constant insect swarm spawn in p1.
Weth managed to aoe them down while hitting lupi, other classes may have more problems there.
When i tried to solo lupi on my ele i can kite the swarms for p1 but its very hard to clear them and they stay for p2+3 if not cleared.

Very well played Weth, i just wish there would be more challenging content to do.

(NB0124) The Retaliation on heal from the Death Magic trait “Spiteful Vigor” doesn’t get applied when using “Focused Rituals” and Well of Blood.