Guild Wars 2

BrunoBRS.5178:

Gaidax.7835:

Stof.9584:

- Lack of educational aids <> initial learning curve of the gametype.

Am I the only one who sees a problem here? I personally only play in Hotjoins and you know what? I don’t wan’t to get “educated”, I want to have fun kittening around and fighting people my way once in a couple of days for several hours.

I think you are a bit drifting away from the definition of a word “game”. Guild Wars 2 is a game first and foremost, not some sort of educational program or a real sport (despite of the esports whining all around).

I basically view Hotjoins as a Deathmatch with a twist and it’s fun for me, why should you ruin that fun? What for? So that you will have less “n00bs” in your precious tPvP? Don’t you think it is a bit selfish?

why would having better learning tools (which are most definitely needed) get in the way of your hotjoins? it’s not like adding a decent guide to PvP mechanics, roles, strategies, etc would suddenly replace your hotjoins.

if anything, a more educated playerbase would turn hotjoins into something more enjoyable for everyone, instead of the occasional “ball of 8 players chasing people around”, where no one has fun (too easy for the zerg, too frustrating for the individuals getting chased).

But maybe, just maybe, we don’t want to have better learning tools? Maybe we just want to log in once in a while and have an hour of fast fun and be done with it for two days? Hotjoins is a place where you can jump in, have fun with minimal responsibility and headaches and jump out at will, that is it’s purpose – pure fun for those who want fast action without obligations.

Hotjoin is a popular game mode and exactly because it is the way it is, why mess with it?

I do not understand, what are you trying to fix exactly?

Stof.9584:

- Lack of educational aids <> initial learning curve of the gametype.

Am I the only one who sees a problem here? I personally only play in Hotjoins and you know what? I don’t wan’t to get “educated”, I want to have fun kittening around and fighting people my way once in a couple of days for several hours.

I think you are a bit drifting away from the definition of a word “game”. Guild Wars 2 is a game first and foremost, not some sort of educational program or a real sport (despite of the esports whining all around).

I basically view Hotjoins as a Deathmatch with a twist and it’s fun for me, why should you ruin that fun? What for? So that you will have less “n00bs” in your precious tPvP? Don’t you think it is a bit selfish?

Too much drama?

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

Gaidax.7835:

even more powerful with Berserker hitting like a truck (up to 5.3k)

loldragoon… er, lolmesmer.

sighs

I’m talking about sPvP, son. Not your PvE 100 percent+ crit nonsense.

So I logged in today to try out this so called nerf.

Honestly? Nothing changed… The most obvious change is cooldowns nerf, which I admit, kinda takes time to get used to, but on the other hand I feel even more powerful with Berserker hitting like a truck (up to 5.3k in sPvP so far) and adding Restorative Mantras with Mantra of Recovery (instead of IC) and Signet of Illusions and HP buff are really felt well – there is no one-shotting phantasms with random AoE sneeze anymore.

I think overall it was good and stays good for whatever it was good before (which is 1v1, skirmishing and hotjoins). All the doom and gloom preaching is way overblown.

-_-

Stop crying, will ya?

With Signet of Illusions fix we won’t need to pump out as much phantasms as before, to begin with.

Here is a diverse build for you: 20/20/0/30/0, take Restorative Mantras instead of IC, enjoy boosted healing and more condition removal with Mantra of Recovery across the board.

If anything, this + new Signet of Illusions will make Phantasm Mesmer even more OP 1v1 and a bit more viable in anything other than that.

Big deal. So now I’ll take Restorative Mantras instead which will boost my healing by 50% and with Signet of Illusions fix my phantasms will stay around much longer.

If anything, as a whole, this patch is a buff for Phantasm Mesmers.

Well, on the other hand with Signet of Illusions working properly, we won’t be losing phantasms as fast as previously.

I’d say it’s not a big deal, especially since on top of Signet of Illusions fix every Phantasm Mesmer will now pack Restorative Mantras, so hurr… probably Phantasm Mesmers will become even stronger 1v1 now.

Really, the only reason I ever need to spam phantasms to begin with is because they get killed fast – this patch will fix that.

I think stealth could use a counter, yes. The problem is that stealth or not – thieves and mesmers are perfectly killable as it is.

Maybe a good option would be a 50% movement speed debuff while hidden, this way you would counter stealth by simply running away until it fades, without crippling it’s defensive use.

Run away… no, really, unless there is some special circumstance there like you dropping on a completely unsuspecting mesmer with slow reaction, you can’t win.

On the other hand, mesmer won’t really be able to catch you if you run.

Condition damage can be cleansed and it can be avoided just fine, you simply avoid it when it is applied and it’s pretty much the same kitten really, heck it basically fails every last point in your “Remember” list.

1) Condition damage can be blocked and dodged at application.
2) It’s application can be avoided if you are invulnerable
3) Dumb point really – I was not aware you can dodge direct damage after it already hit you.
4) Application misses if you are blinded.
5) Direct damage already “persists” on target if you are CC’ed, dodging or preoccupied, because you ALREADY took off their HP to begin with.
6) Application triggers retaliation, it is even worse, considering said ranger needs to pump out quite a few autos to get those stacks, while one hard DD attack can do just the same damage and only get retaliated once.
7) Hardly “most”. On the flipside, can be avoided entirely or greatly reduced by leaving the area for a couple of seconds.
8) Most characters carry condition removal which can remove/transfer/convert said stacks as easily.

Really, the only benefit of going condition heavy is the fact that you don’t really need mostly to invest into critical stats and can use those for defense instead.

In my opinion, condition damage is worse than direct damage, just because the condition removal is easily available and sometimes comes in AoE form too.

I think you conveniently forget to mention the bad side of the deal for thieves, namely it being tied to a sword which is nowhere near as damaging as a dagger.

I play as Phantasm Mesmer in hotjoins. It is sure fun, the build is without a doubt powerful 1v1, the only real counter is to try and burst me down ASAP, if I’m not dead in the first 15 seconds – it’s usually over, you won’t be able to sustain all the phantasms once they are up.

Good thieves are the most consistent counter, you can never kill a GOOD bunker Eles who AoE tons and kite well really (though they won’t kill you either), very rarely a well played Engineer gives real troubles.

No idea who said BM rangers, if anything Phantasm Mesmer counters them. Same with Minion Necro.

Phantasm Mesmer is also very good at avoiding bad fights like all kinds of difficult 1vX fights.

Troubles begin when there is too much AoE going around, which is what usually happens in any eventual team fight. Sometimes it is really depressing, because it can go as far as nullifying your damage output. Another issue is that despite being good 1v1 – you can’t hold a point well, stealth leads to neutering and you can’t really stay in the circle and take it, unless you are a tankier build, which has it’s issues (if someone decides to leg it – you won’t stop them).

All in all, this build is undoubtedly powerful, but it falls short of being OP, really, because it’s just not as omnipotent as some other builds which are both great 1v1 AND in teams.

I think it a very healthy build balance-wise, because it is made for 1v1 and that’s where it excels and not so much in other cases. In my opinion it is a good design, because it makes people take a calculated risk and decide what their speciality is. Great 1v1 builds keep party builds in check, makes them more risky to use and not become a fireproof way to victory any time.

Also, while I agree that it does not take a Ph.D to play Phantasm effectively, fighting decent guys is far from spamming buttons some seem to believe working in all the cases. For example fighting a good D/X glass thief is really brutal, it’s always a thriller there – you are one mistake away from getting downed. Same with decent Elementalists, if you don’t pay attention, you will lose ground under feet fast and there is no running from Elementalist as Mesmer.

Question is for what. In PvP, I’d say Pistol is the best, followed by Sword and Focus.

Pistol is great because it is really simple and effective – #4 is a great AoEkittenbutton and #5 deals great damage easy.

Sword offhand is also pretty simple, it’s phantasm hits hard and fast and it also has AoE CC, weaker one though, however on the other hand it also a block if you let it work like that and a block that nukes pretty hard too.

Focus is a good source of Swiftness, it has an even better AoE CC, but it’s phantasm is sort of situational and it’s effective damage is terrible because it attacks once in 10 years and no one is really going to stand there near it for 5 seconds, so it lands all it’kittens.

Honestly, such posts never seize to amaze me.

You played this game for 2000 hours… what are you complaining about? That Anet can’t shove you a new content at the insane rate you consume it? You just nitpick really, any sensible person would see straight through your post, you are bored and you expect Anet to somehow magically revitalize your experience, despite you basically seeing every nook and cranny of their world.

You are done here, you won’t be getting expansion-worth of content every month (despite some Anet PR bullkitten), they can’t do it, especially not for people who fanatically play this game for hours upon hours every day and probably will finish whatever Anet throws at them short of a real expansion in half a day.

I now understand why all the content we’ve been seeing is temporary. It’s not a gift from A.net, it’s not the passionate work of designers who couldn’t care less about money – no, the sad truth is, it’s just an attempt to get people back in the game before the stuff expires. None of it is for the sake of lore or immersion, don’t let them bullkitten you – it’s the cold reality of a game that, like many, has turned rotten because of the desire of both developers and publishers to cash in on a product, rather than provide an experience worthy of remembrance.

Please… Are you really that naive? This game is not some sort of philanthropic project by NCsoft for kittened kids or something. This is business and NCsoft pays the bills and makes demand. And no, NCsoft is certainly not a bunch of passionate gamers. They are your usual bunch of people who want to make money.

Every game studio has their more passionate and less passionate crew, there are guys who are living and breathing with their “baby” game and there are those who just want to bring in paychecks home. In the end though, both of those cases need to get money from somewhere and this somewhere is an organization that wants to see profits and it’s their right, because as horrible as it may sound – you NEED them, without NCsoft, there would not be any Guild Wars as we know it.

This works both ways, on one hand people who do it for cash know that if the game fails – they will go down with it, but at the same time the passionate guys also realize that they can’t do whatever they want, because if it would be their way – the game would never come out to begin with and would have updates once in a millennium.

So yeah, this is the cruel reality and neither devs nor NCsoft can be blamed for it, because despite all their shortcomings they did pull out a great product with amazing value. And you can’t blame NCsoft for wanting to make money, that’s what they do and heck, in my opinion they do it in a good way, because they make stuff that let’s people have fun and does good.

Now banks on the other hand…

Maybe because Guardians have the best access to both boons and condition removal and on top of that get free Aegis and Regeneration just for being a guardian?

Dying to conditions as a guardian? That’s ridiculous, the proffession which can easily cure 2 conditions passively withite trait investment and has an array of utilities which remove and convert conditions?

Heck you already HAVE those 2k extra health (and in reality even more unless your manage to die in like 5 seconds) by default, it’s called Virtue of Resolve.

Phantasm 20/20/0/25/5 GS + S/P Berserker.

I use it for Hotjoins and PvE. I’m a casual kind of guy atm and I often only log for like an hour a day to mess around in hotjoins. This is an excellent build there, you will win most 1v1s and won’t die to anything less than 3 people if you play your cards right.

Some may say that GS is not optimal, but I like it, it gives both a decent ranged power and AoE. That is very useful in many situations.

Real Mesmer is pretty easy to spot – he will either dodge, cast fast or run in circles and such. Clones are pretty dumb, they only auto-attack.

Problem with S/D build is that it does not have enough damage to finish things fast and the longer the fight goes on the more powerful Mesmer will usually become, he will have all his phantasms up, his important cooldowns he blew at the start will get back and so on.

Try to finish the fight ASAP, the more you prance around with shadowsteps, the harder it will be for you.

No, I think it IS a bug. I remember reading that if the Ranger has Ogre Runes and got a rock dog out from those runes, then it also heals him on top of the pet and even for higher ticks than the pet itself, resulting in a very fast rally.

I did not test this personally, but with the dog appearing out of thin air it may actually be the case here.

I think there is a core problem with utilities in the game. I think that utilities should have 60 seconds CD at most. Things like 80-90 seconds CD are just too long really. Same with Elites, some are very powerful, but in my opinion 180/240 seconds CD is simply bullkitten – it should be 120 seconds CD at most.

People do not pick many decent utilities just because their cooldown is ridiculously long to the point where it is not worth the risk relying on them and then finding yourself on cooldown on that vital utility in the next fight.

Droughboi.2945:

Pyroatheist.9031:

You only got to level 5. If you think that you can fully experience the nature and feel of a class in the first 5 levels, you’ve got another thing coming. Get it to level 40, then take another look at it.

…. at level 40, I’m still going to hav the same weapon skills. I was specifically addressing the weapon skills. Not the entire class as a whole. obviously there will be more damage etc, but the basis of my question wouldn’t change. coming from a straight forward class like theif, mesmer feels very different with it’s wep skills. It’s not as straight forward, so I was hoping for some elaboration on the weapon skills and personal thoughts. You telling me what is quite obvious will still leave me with the same question.

The point is that with traits many of your core weapon skills receive up to 40% cooldown reduction – it makes things much more fluid, I mean basically half the CD speaks for itself. On top of that some of those skills become as much as 40-50% more effective on top of that CD reduction. The sheer volume of boost some weapon skills get from traits is staggering.

On weapons – in my opinion Sword+Pistol and Greatsword are the most straightforward of all – they got damage and they got defense – you press a button and stuff just happens as you expect it to happen.

Offhand sword is also pretty simple, just with added block and counter caveat. Staff and Focus are more advanced – some things require careful setup or just produce random effects, they are also more defensive in their nature and can be very powerful if you use them right.

Scepter and Torch are crap really, let’s say, I am sure you can jump above your head and trait and setup in a way that will make those bearable, but really, I don’t see much of a point unless you build a very specialized build that needs those.

Another point on Mesmer weapons is that we NEED and are designed to swap weapons often – make sure you get another set of weapons as soon as you nail level 7, don’t marry one weapon. Again, I suggest for starters GS and S/P they are very consistent and reliable, IMO.

=====

On that “straightforward” part, it reminds me of some guy in yet another “nerf mesmers” topic said: “So, in description it is written that Mesmers beat enemies by deceiving them, it seems in game Mesmers deceive their targets by killing them really fast.”

Trust me, we got plenty of straightforward stuff where you pretty much press one button and do tons of damage. The fact that it is usually not done directly by you stabbing someone is not really making much difference in the end.

I don’t think you should be a slave to -% cd weapon traits. They are pretty good, but really it is much more important to have a build which focuses on something good, rather than being crap at everything but with low cooldowns.

I mean, I just recreated your build in calculator and honestly it is just bad. I believe you want to be some sort of condition mesmer, but then you lack stacked bleeds and you don’t have any confusion either – you just rely on staff auto and clones for conditions really and they are simply not good at it, because some genius decided to put vulnerability on Winds of Chaos.

Your shatters are weak, your phantasms are weak and since you are going for condition gear then your whole S/F will deal no real damage whatsoever. Your defenses will be great, but that’s just about it. Team support? I dare say that whatever you bring to the field is not worth the spot, because there are much more powerful builds who can do the same stuff AND actually be a threat on their own.

Besides that – just do a small calculation there and see for yourself if certain cooldown traits are really worth it – for example – staff and sword (mh only), in my opinion, do not get enough from these traits to go for them just for the sake of getting them. Staff is good as it is even without that trait and same is with main hand sword.

The only necessity is focus trait really. IMO, you can easily toss all of your chaos points into something else, for example get 20 in Dueling for Deceptive Evasion and Sharper Images and 30 in Illusions for Illusory Persona, switch to more power based gear and you will become decently good at shatters.

Or even 10 Domination for +15% illusion damage then 5 more points in Dueling for Sharper Images and switch sword trait for Phantasmal Fury and toss the leftover 5 points into Inspiration for another 15% phantasm damage and you will have a decent phantasm build.

Either of those are clearly superior to your base build.

Phantasmal Illusionist – uses Decoy and casts Veil of Absorbtion. Veil of Absorbtion – you and your allies and minions gain Aegis, invisibilty for 1 second and become immune to AoE abilities for 5 seconds. Recast – 7 seconds.

or

Phantasmal Illusionist – casts Illusion of Death – targets in the area take damage and are dazed for 1 second and are crippled, chilled and weakened for additional 4 seconds. 6 seconds recast. Has double the base phantasm HP.

I think Mesmer, really.

Nice mix of power, defense and disengage options. You will do real good in just about any situation as long as you are not completely zerged down right away or fanatically chased.

You can nuke hard, got some great active defenses and you can attack and defend at the same time. If you are smart and aware of surroundings, you will be able to avoid just about any bad fight, unless maybe if there are 2+ guys who made some sort of sacred pledge to tunnel vision and chase you and only you around whole map AND while they do that there are no friendlies to distract them around.

Caffynated.5713:

ANet can barely handle banning exploiters who paid full price for the game. I don’t want to see how terrible they are at controlling free accounts.

This… Besides that, all the freebies will be like cancer spawning everywhere, ruining the fun with their fails and acidic behavior. There won’t be any consequences for them exploiting and griefing, “what ya gonna do? Ban a free account?”

I think there should be two options

1. Discounted sPvP only account (but then honestly sPvP needs a massive update, it’s a bit ripping off selling such account to play 6 maps one mode).
2. Invite based trial, where every game owner gets, lets say, to invite 1 guy to participate in a free trial every month for let’s say 7 days.

Sorry for hijacking the thread a bit, but besides katanas, I would like to see some nice, good looking and clean greatswords.

Really we barely have any, all I see are some huge chunks of metal with some fur, rusted half-broken weapons that glow and all kinds of fiery and ethereal crap.

What happened to having Greatswords with more slender and clean STEEL blades? Something like human cultural greatsword, which could be just gorgeous with shorter hilt and longer blade.

For example Ghastly Greatsword is awesome despite glowing.

Please name another Mesmer ranged weapon option that does good damage from range.

Yeah, I totally see warriors farming Eles in PvP all day long…

This thread is unreal.

I still wonder why did they revert it back to 3 seconds in WvW of all things…

Zelulose.8695:

Well I guess this build is 100% fair then. Everyone seems to be bashing my gameplay. I won’t argue to defend it because that would be pointless. With all the mesmer support, regardless of there state, I can run my iduelist with security now. Thanks all for your undying honesty and kind support. XD Just needed a popular opinion a to whether mesmer sharper images needed a fix.

It is is 100% fair. It’s whole purpose is to rock 1v1. If it would be some god mode 1v1 AND very good in a group play too, then we would have an issue. As it is now it is pretty weak the moment you have to deal with more than one guy and AoE makes me a sad kitten too.

So just use it and abuse it. Until this build is made better in the team fights, I see no issues with it being disgustingly powerful in 1v1, which it definitely is.

Zelulose.8695:

So I tested max toughness mesmer with heals and an idefender and he kills me before I really see him. Ask anet what to say to this video XD. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k99BKVpBxXQ

This is why people complain. Imagine what he does to GC thief or any other non tank.

Yeah he totally rocked you with those sharper images, right?

You just failed hardcore.

I tried a lot of combinations in sPvP and in my opinion the best overall is GS + S/P 20/20/0/25/5 build with Berserker Amulet and Jewel. I’m using 5xOgre 1x Divinity and Sigil of Whatsitsface that gives +50 power on kill with sigils of energy for more dodging. With that you can easily get 2500 power and your duelist will spike up to 5k + bleeds.

The point for going berserker is that we really have a lot of active defenses with stealth, blink, blurred frenzy, mirror, CC and extra dodges from sigils and vigor that you can often end a fight without even taking more that like 20% damage.

You can delay the moment when you take damage for a really long time and that’s all your phantasms need and with full berserker stats they will really rock the enemy fast.

The only 2 real counters for this are a super glass cannon thief that manages to land that initial overcharged backstab and keeps up the pressure and AoE spamming D/D Ele (but he has to be a really good player – average ones are food), everything else is either easy or average.

Berserker Gear also teaches you to play, you will learn to juke and escape 1vX situations like a pro – things like stealing a Svanir/Chieftain kill at the start and then running away from the average angry mob will become a norm, besides it is thrilling and more fun.

You guys crack me up, most of the professions and specs can’t even touch you on mobility…

Really… All that nerf did is actually give a chance for my Mesmer to actually catch you in WvW when you get in over your head and that is only because I have 1200 range cripple and stun and not because I have some superior mobility. Really, all my mobility is based on 900 range blink and swiftness from runes and many others have it just as bad.

You need a reality check here – you are still one of the more mobile professions out there, it’s just not on the ridiculous level at that anymore.

Mesmer is ok. The only real change needed is fixing bugs with Phantasmal Berserker, Signet of Illusions and Illusionary Elasticity.

Fixing those will improve Phantasm Mesmer for group action and will elevate Condition Mesmer spec to a viable state.

Nothing else needed.

I think Eles are fine. It’s just that I believe that they need a really good player to shine. I play Mesmer and so far I met only one really awesome and dangerous Ele that was a real threat to me.

He was D/D build with Valk amulet and Zerker jewel, he had awesome AoE and had some neat tricks like Churning Earth + Lightning Flash. We met in sPvP in several games, these were some great brutal fights when we met each other and I think he killed me more than I him.

But other Eles than him were just merely like pebbles on a way of a train.

So I think it’s not that the profession is weak, but that it is really difficult to pull it off right.

I think our down state is pretty good.

The #2 is kitten good. Don’t know what’s all the complaining about – it’s like Thief #2 and #3 combined, #3 is also pretty awesome, it hits like a truck, I had quite a few cases when I got downed first and then not only downed the enemy, but outdamaged him in a downstate and rallied.

The #2 sometimes, rarely will fail, but compared to most #2 skills – it’s pretty reliable. On the upside, sometimes some amazing saves happen when it literally ports you on the other building level or under some bridge and you just bandage there happily while the enemy wonders what happened.

Is it only attainable from deer boxes or you can actually craft it?

It was nerfed a long time ago, now it removes one condition and boon from all respective targets in the area of effect every second.

That is not the same as getting points for standing on an already capped node.

I was thinking about my suggestion of boosting victory bonus and I don’t like it anymore. If there are more incentives to win, there will be more trash talking and bickering on the losing side. I don’t like that idea in a mode which is supposed to be fun.

Which brings me to another point. What is the purpose of the hotjoin?

Everyone sees it differently, for some people it is a training grounds for tPvP, for some people it is a place to test builds, others join to farm glory, many just want to hop in into action and kill stuff for fun.

Basically it is not really defined – it is a bit of everything for everyone and I think it’s good. And we should remember that, a dude who wants for example to make it more similar to tPvP surely has his best intentions in mind, but while there will undoubtedly be people happy to support the idea, there will also be people who will be sad or angered because their interpretation of hotjoin and their aims for it are getting negatively affected.

Last point is, in my opinion, we don’t need two tPvP modes, one is enough really so no need to ruin Hotjoin just to make people more prepared for tPvP.

Fair enough, though I think that eliminating 8v8 would be a bad idea, honestly we could use more game modes and not less to begin with.

What could be good is improving the left side menu to split it into 5v5 and 8v8 players sections. That would make things more clear and user friendly.

I am not so sure about your glory suggestions, it may sound good on paper, but many players including me hotjoin to have some fun and that means more fighting around and less babysitting some circle. Encouraging bunkers by giving points for guarding capture points may sound like a good idea, but at the same time you are creating another problem – there will be more bunkers, less roaming, less action and more idle lazing around. I think that a price of turning hotjoin into tPvP tutorial will be less fun and less fun = more boring PvP and less people playing it.

You should consider that.

I think the best solution would be massively increasing victory bonus and then letting the players sort out the best way to get it themselves, without tacking on babysitting mechanics like “stand on this circle like a good boy and you get a lollipop”.

OK, so apparently you have identified the issue, what is your solution?

shockwave.1764:

Similarly, I don’t understand how you guys think it’s so annoying, it’s on your screen for what, 5 seconds upon win? What are you doing that’s so important right after you win a match anyway?

Pfft, winning is only half a deal, we have to execute the survivors to make an example of their foolishness in opposing our Holy Empire!

This UI abomination is standing in the way of our divine stomps upon the sinister enemies! They say that Justice is blind… it is even more true with this thing added now.

I think it’s ok, but then I do play as Mesmer and I hardly get any long duration boons I depend on there. I guess it could be annoying for a guardian, but then – it is also annoying to have a guardian get 8 boons with 1 button press when you play against them.

That said, the skill itself is highly situational, IMO. I mean, as Mesmer I got Arcane Thievery that is pretty much superior, has same CD and it is still regarded as a weak skill overall for Mesmers, just because it is situational. You may end up stealing Signet of Rage yay, but you also may fight some dude who barely has any boons and runs non-condition build and then it’s just an utility slot wasted.

So Corrupt Boon is like a lottery really, sometimes rarely you win big time, but most of the time it’s just a loss or breaking even. If anything, I’d say it could use a buff like making it corrupt only 3 boons, but then lowering CD to 20 seconds, would be much better that way. This way it would be useful for a caster all around, while not having the extremes like corrupting SY! either.

GS is still great. Berserker still does decent to great damage overall even bugged and Spartial Surge is a great auto-attack that allows you to just keep up the pressure on top of phantasms for very little effort and danger.

You say all that, OP, but then when you have people screaming “Patch notes naooo!” and people that expect major updates every month, it is obvious that some things are missing and some things are not important enough to point out.

Also NCsoft pays the bills, they have the right to say what they want and take game in direction they want. We got GW2 pretty much because GW1 was successful largely due to the way NCsoft pulled out the right financial cards with no sub for example.

Iruwen.3164:

The former is true for the sixth bonus of ogre too But yeah, as I said it’s more likely to be hit and fall below 90% in PvP/WvW, so both have their advantages.
I’m actually using neither but runes of the eagle instead :p

That’s why you never do 6x Ogre… It’s either 4x Ogre and 2x Divinity or 5x Ogre and 1x Divinity.

Retaliation should return % of the damage dealt.

Rampant killing = ok
Storyline with indentured servitude = oh noes!

%damage boosts do not affect phantasm damage, that said, I mostly PvP, but still runes of ogre seem to provide a very meaningful damage boost regardless of dog or not, but I guess you do have a point, since I don’t think that getting hit is a productive way of completing a dungeon

It’s not like a mix of power and crit you get on top of that is useless…