Guild Wars 2

Playtest reports:

Chronomancer remains a lot of fun despite my inexperience with F5. Shield is great, and I switch to sword basically to use the shield skills.

Illusion generation is pretty rough without staff. Scepter’s clone-on-block isn’t a good replacement for staff 2. It’s particularly bad since sword 3’s clone is so unreliable. Maybe I should run mirror images.

Well of Precognition is fantastic. It’s just what the build needs to be a sustained disruption threat.

Power scepter is in pretty good shape. Skill 3 hits nice and hard. I’m not good at using the AA for clone generation, though.

Focus could use some love, as you say. I’d love to see Warden’s Feedback stay as a master trait, but increase the area or duration of the focus skills. Raising the curtain height so it reflects more consistently would be great, too.

Awesome, thanks so much. Let me give this build a try and see how well I can play it.

Hi everyone,

Has anyone experimented with any chronomancer builds for PvP with both shield and focus? I love to use focus in all my builds—it’s just a really fun weapon to use—but I also want to mess around with the new hotness at the same time.

I doubt it’s possible to make a absolute top-tier build with this constraint, but I don’t mind—it’s not like I’m a top-tier player in the first place (plus, it feels like focus missed out on a lot of the recent balance patch love). I just am looking for something that’s durable enough and powerful enough to feel like I’m contributing to fights.

I’ve been messing around with something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRArd8OWUNqznYIiOyAoC2p6kNarWA-TJxHABXXGIgTCwJ7PAwTAAA
But I can tell it could use some improvement and focusing.

Thanks!

To head off potential complaints:

This is easily a large enough sample size to prove the point. These statistics have nothing in common with the classic MMO “ony deep breaths more” or “warrior gear dropped 5 times in a row” complaints.

I really want to see a viable interrupt skill in Inspiration. This doesn’t seem good enough, but something has to be. With Warden’s feedback in the tree, it’d be really nice to see something that rewards focus pull interrupts.

Some inspiration-thematic Ideas:
When you interrupt…

• Healing power + your next heal skill heals allies too
• Transfers all conditions on you to the target, steals all of the target’s boons
• Phantasm alpha strike: all phantasms gain might and immediately execute their attack skill
• All healing done by target affects you too
• When the interrupted skill finishes the 5s cooldown, your healing skill cools down instantly
• Target is surrounded by a “temporal circle” that functions like temporal curtain
• A null field spawns at target’s feet
• A portal spawns at target’s feet and your own
• All your charged mantras gain a charge

Nike.2631:

Specific timetables were specifically stated as not something to look for in CDIs, but unless Chris is a pathological liar, I think we can assume they’re actively working on this stuff now. Plus most of last week, earlier today, and likely all day tomorrow…

Yes, I know. But what are the takeaways?

It’s not “when are we going to see results” that I’m asking about, it’s “what in this discussion did you find particularly important”.

Specifically, we know what long-term plans Chris finds particularly interesting: they’re what he put in the proposal, and is now soliciting further feedback on.

But, haven’t any of the suggestions in this thread that aren’t large programming projects piqued enough interest that they can be included in the proposal?

Nike.2631:

Gingelyr.3648:

Hi Chris,

I’m sure you can execute on this proposal, given enough time, and am very excited for it… but it’s not happening any time soon. What’s the plan for keeping Horizontal Progression going in the next few months while ANet codes and designs elaborate new systems, as described in this proposal?

That would be precisely NOT the topic of these threads.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Rules

2: We will not be disclosing information pertaining to what is currently in development.

Until then, we’ll have to rely on what they already had in the works (which I’m 99.8% won’t be elaborated on here, stealing the thunder from whatever presentation/media blitz is already planned around those offerings). Past CDIs have shown turn-around time of less than three months where philosophy can readily influence work in progress…

Perhaps I should be more clear. This proposal is extremely ambitious, and reads more like the feature list of a MMO in progress than something that can start appearing in ~3 months.

It’ll probably take at least 9 months to execute the core of this proposal. As you note, past CDIs have had results on content only 3 months later. So, are there any useful takeaways from this CDI that don’t require a huge programming project and instead can just inform future approaches to the kind of content addition that’s already going on?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Here is the proposal I believe we are making, please discuss and let me know if anything should be added or removed…

Chris

Hi Chris,

I’m sure you can execute on this proposal, given enough time, and am very excited for it… but it’s not happening any time soon. What’s the plan for keeping Horizontal Progression going in the next few months while ANet codes and designs elaborate new systems, as described in this proposal?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Here is the proposal I believe we are making, please discuss and let me know if anything should be added or removed…

Chris

Hi Chris,

I’m sure you can execute on this proposal, given enough time, and am very excited for it… but it’s not happening any time soon. What’s the plan for keeping Horizontal Progression going in the next few months while ANet codes and designs elaborate new systems, as described in this proposal?

You mention that Bountiful Interruption is great with a focus, but there are very few lockdown builds with a focus. What should I be looking at if I want a focus-focused (:P) lockdown build?

I assume:
Not CS, because I’m not dazing
Yes Focus reflect
Yes BI
??? Imbued Diversion?

I’m late to the party, since I took more time off for New Year’s than Chris.

My one horizontal paradigm:
Build flexibility. I want to feel like as I play my character more, I become more and more flexible in the types of content that I am prepared for.

Right now, content that requires a very specific build is a pain in the kitten, because after I go to the trouble of getting that specific gear, there’s a big cost (inventory space) to keeping it around.

I bought some Ravager’s gear early on, before I knew better. That could have felt like progression (“now, I’ll always have some Ravager’s, in case that stat set becomes useful”) but instead I had to salvage it to make room for gear sets I actually needed. Similarly, I bought some Mad King runes for a cool condition duration build, but now the gear they’re on is taking up space in my bank because they’re two expensive to overwrite.

So, I’d much prefer a stat wardrobe to a skin wardrobe

Chris,

I’m not sure you realize this, but a lot of us posting to this CDI would be incredibly gratified to have you pick and respond to one of our posts.

It’s thoughtful of you to try and engage with one particular player over his feelings about whether this CDI is worthwhile—but from the perspective of the rest of us, it feels like we’re “doing it wrong,” because it looks like we’d get more attention if we vented our emotions instead of sticking to the topic and being constructive.

One person feels better that you care about his frustrations, but some of the rest of us feel worse because our substantive posts don’t get the same kind of personal response.

I hope you won’t respond to this, and instead give some less meta posts about progression the attention you can spare.

Xenon.4537:

Sirendor.1394:

Maybe we should also introduce the balance of skill-reward into this discussion, since it is something which seems incredibly off balance in the case of ascended armour.

My biggest concern is that the vertical progression we have seen now requires no skill, but a lot of time

I think they want to keep the game highly accessible to players of all skill levels while offering smaller, more specific challenge content for those hardcore players. If you were here around launch you would have heard the deafening cries of people begging them to nerf dungeons (which was a shame in my opinion).

I think you first need to define what “requires skill” means both to yourself and others. Then you need to think about whether that fits anywhere within the overall game design.

This is a very good point, as much as I hate to admit it. Skill-gating can separate players as much as grind or gold requirements, and even if we think this is fair it’s not necessarily fun.

That said, it seems entirely reasonable to me that skilled players gain cosmetic benefits unavailable to other players. Think like “Arena Champion” titles or hats or whatever. No one should be that sad they don’t have a “I’m Super Skilled” hat if they are, in fact, not super skilled.

Also, while it’s true that some players can’t pass a skill gate, some can’t pass a gold or grind gate either. We can pretend otherwise, because “eventually you’ll get enough gold, as long as you save,” but I don’t think that’s a practical reality for many players, some of whom can’t outpace inflation and many of whom will just find the prospect of saving money for months for Pink items to be unfun and a reason to quit.

Hi Chris,

Here’s some more brainstorming about my earlier post on how ascended gear bundles together horizontal and vertical progression, and why that’s frustrating (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression/page/25#post3382067):

• To start with, the already-proposed and seemingly popular idea of unlocking new stat combinations (on a legendary-style drop down menu) with various tasks. That sounds awesome, but maybe would take too long to implement.
• Mystic forge recipes for ascended gear, to change the stats. Ascended ring + 1 pristine fractal relic + 1 fine crafting material = ring with different stats. Of course, you’d need alternate recipes for WvW-only players.
• Cheap infusions of stat-swapping. An infusion with -94 power, +94 condition damage that fits in any power-primary ascended weapon. Should be pretty cheap to make, or perhaps a slightly more expensive version with stat-switching and agony resist.
• Ascended cooking! These foods do something similar to the stat-swapping infusions, letting you temporarily bend your ascended stats to some other purpose.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Aeonblade.8709:

Lheimroo.2947:

Moshari.8570:

Give the ascended gear either “limited” stat swapping or full stat swapping like legendaries…or a way (a quest for instance) that would allow you to Add a stat for stat swapping.

If there were epic quests in place where you could unlock stat combinations for your gear that’d be.. awesome. That would be unbelievably awesome.

No more grind; make it about challenges.

I agree, would love to hear from Chris on this idea specifically, epic quest chains to unlock swappable item stats and new item stat combos.

This is a cool idea. Lots of logic problems to think about in regard to it. Need more time to think (-:

Chris

Hi Chris,

I think I see where the current logic problems are coming from.

Currently, ascended gear bundles together vertical and horizontal progression—even though most people think of ascended gear as only a vertical progression mode.

There are two reasons to acquire a piece of ascended gear:
1. You’re upgrading an exotic piece, and so increasing your stats. This is clearly vertical progression
2. You’re side-grading another ascended piece to change stats. This is horizontal progression, since it’s opening up options.

So far in this CDI, there’s a pretty strong consensus that #2 is too hard/slow. It seems there much less objection to #1 being too hard/slow (although still some). That’s because people have very different tastes for their vertical and horizontal progression.

If you just gave all ascended gear legendary-style stat switching for free, I think you’d be making a mistake because you’re trivializing the horizontal progression in #2. On the other hand, it’s a mistake to keep the current method, where #2 is as hard as #1.

Ascended crafting is actually a pretty good start at differentiating the horizontal and vertical progression (#1 vs #2). It’s expensive to level crafting to 500, but not as much to get another ascended stat set once you’ve gotten the first. That’s not to take away from the other criticisms of ascended crafting, but that one feature, splitting the horizontal and vertical parts of ascended gear, is nice.

Chris,

I think part of your vertical stats proposal should answer the question “how will GW2’s vertical progression bring people together”

Right now, ascended gear separates players into haves and have-nots. 55AR fractals runners don’t want to play with people in only exotics. My friends without ascended stats feel bad “being carried”. When my friends come to WvW with me, they get frustrated when they die sooner than I do and blame it on the gear difference.

Just because the stat difference isn’t big doesn’t mean the socal effects aren’t larger.

How can vertical progression bring people together?

• working together on getting gear
• sharing stat bonuses among the party so the have-nots get the same boost as the haves
• ascended craters makes useful items for their friends who don’t have the gold to get 500 skill.
  Etc.

Wow stunk because it put fear barriers to me playing with my friends. Gw2 should make gear a reason we should play together instead of a reason we shouldn’t.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Art Progression
Art progression! It’s horizontal why not do it more!!! Well we do this a lot all ready and a lot of it’s constraints comes down to costs.

You already make a ton of Art progression… but you pour all that effort into cheap and easy stuff that doesn’t bring a lot of pleasure to me.

It’s obviously cheap for you to make a backpack, but everyone knows that now, so backpacks are pretty dull.

It’s easy for me to earn the backpack-of-the-month, but everyone knows that too, so no one oohs and ahhs over my shiny backpack because everyone has it already anyway.

So you’re spending a lot of artist time on this stuff, for relatively little player-happiness payout (from me, anyway). Try reassigning the artists to pour their time into something more substantial (like armor sets), and put it behind a more impressive achievement than “mess around in the LS for two weeks”.

I’d get more satisfaction from that, even if these more substantial art rewards couldn’t come every two weeks and replaced some backpacks-of-the-month.

ColinJohanson.2394:

A question to help direct the discussion a bit:

What are some of your favorite progression systems of all time in others? Be they horizontal, or vertical, just which ones really got you excited and were fun for you to continue to progress in?

Here are my favorite progression systems in this game:
Vertical:
Levelling
Levelling is actually great! If you suddenly raised the cap to 85, I wouldn’t complain.
Why:

• Everything makes me level! I guess there are faster ways, but I can do anything I feel like and make what feels like good progress towards levelling
• Anything I do with friends helps. I make progress towards levelling whenever I play with friends, not just when I do a specific activity with friends.
• After I level, I have more build choices, not fewer! Ascended gear feels like I’m locking myself down to a build.
• It doesn’t compete with anything else. If I want to go for any other goal, I can just go for it and level in the process.

Horizontal:
PvP Rank Finishers
Admittedly, there are some problems with the acquisition of these, as evidenced by the farming debacle, and maybe the progression is too slow. But, they’re super cool, and upgrading your bunny finisher is within reach without farming.

Dungeon Master Title
Hard to get, but not particularly tedious, and is worth a lot of respect, in my book.

Vertical rewards: conflicting with horizontal rewards
One of the big unaddressed drawbacks with many of the current vertical reward schemes is that they compete with horizontal rewards for limited resources. Want Mjolnir? Better hold off on ascended crafting. Love minipets? Going to be hard to get the laurel ones if you also value agony resist.

Ok, it’s fair I can’t have all the rewards all the time, but it has the effect of making my long term horizontal goals less exciting, because they keep getting pushed back by short term ascended gear goals. My suggestion is to move some rewards around so I can progress on vertical and horizontal rewards at the same time. A good example of this is how it’s possible to get ascended weapons in fractals, so while I chase a fractals weapon I can also feel like I’ve got a chance of getting pink stats to go with the skin—though perhaps the drop rate numbers mean this is a bit of a fantasy.

Vertical rewards: tough on friend groups

Edit: a quick TLDR of the stuff below: You need to ask the question “how do our vertical progression system create a social experience that brings players together, not segregates them”

One area where I think vertical awards need addressing is their effect on friend groups. The bonus stats separate me from my friends without ascended gear, and add a little tension when we’re doing anything together. I say something like “ok, this fight is tough to stay alive during” and they say (or think) “if it’s tough for you, what chance do we have in our worse gear.”

I’m going to step in and anticipate an argument: that the stats on ascended gear “don’t matter” since “everything can be done in exotics”. If the bonus stats don’t matter, then it should be painless to remove them, right? Nobody would complain if the next patch turned all ascended items into exotic-stats but pink text for prestige. Of course not, the stats do matter, even if they don’t create an impenetrable barrier.

Agony resist is the worse offender here, since that stat matters more than any other in fractals, which is something I quite like doing with friends.

I’d love to see a solution where, instead of my ascended gear separating me from my friends, it boosts us all together. A straightforward solution would be to apply the bonus stats to the whole party, though maybe people would gripe about that.

Other off-the-cuff ideas:

• Guild ascended crafting. Donate Globs of Dark Matter to the guild to produce ascended guild missions which drop materials and “vials of craft XP” for all participants.
• Even better, take out the guild requirement for these missions, and make “ascended world bosses”. One player sacrifices a piece of ascended gear (probably a surplus ring) to summon a harder version of a world boss that drops ascended gear for everyone.
• Shared ascended gear drops. Instead of asc. gear chests dropping for one person in the party, have a single chest drop that everyone can loot.
• Party infusions. These go in infusion slots and have /negative/ stats on them, but offer a buff to the whole party that compensates the individual player’s loss.

I left WoW not fleeing a “gear grind” but because the game put obstacles in the way of playing with my friends. “You should be happy to play with other people” is a cardinal rule that ANet follows when designing content (e.g. shared gathering nodes) and could use some more application in the realm of vertical rewards.

I’m so excited for this topic! I really care a lot about rewards, and specifically the horizontal/vertical split, so bear with my enthusiasm.

Horizontal Rewards: Don’t cheapen them!
I think the missing element in horizontal rewards right now comes because too many of them are “cheap”

• Cheap to get: designed to be acquired in 2 weeks, mostly by just participating in LS content
• Cheap for ANet to make: backpieces, shoulders, minis, etc.; not skills or armor sets

There’s a limit to how much of this cheap stuff we can take before it stops feeling like a reward. Of course there’s a place for it: you can’t produce new skills every two weeks, and it’s nice to have some short-term goals. But right now, I feel like it’s too much.

There are some good examples in the game of horizontal rewards that don’t feel cheap:

• Mini-legendaries, like Infinite Light or Volcanus
• T3 Cultural Armor
• Fractal weapons
  The big problem with these examples is none of them have a very nuanced acquisition method. Gold, gold, and grinding fractals—you can do better.

Some more examples:

• The Radiant/Hellfire gear has a good acquisition method, but it’s more helmets/shoulders/gloves.
• The Zenith weapons look great, but are given away for so few points that they feel cheap because everyone has them, often without trying.

So, as a suggestion: instead of having a new cheap-to-design reward come out every two weeks with the LS meta, let our work on the LS and other parts of the game help us build up for bigger rewards. An armor set earned for participating in 16 weeks of LS is a lot more exciting to me right now than 8 backpacks in that same time—and 2 new skills would be even more exciting.

Eh, I’m actually predicting this one will be resolved fairly reasonably. They’ll take the light version off the gemstore, but not mess with already-purchased copies. Maybe they’ll replace the light version in a few weeks with something else.

Not perfect (sort of a random windfall for the people who bought it already to get some awesome and now super rare armor) but it prevents it from being a long-term problem.

If I had to take a guess, the Gem Store team is nearly completely separate from the regular development team. They have at least one dedicated armor artist, are fed the update notes by the main dev team, and produce both LS-related and unrelated content.

This is a debacle, to be sure, but I’m guessing it’s a goof-up by the Gem Store team, a decision made without any coordination with the overall principles of gear acquisition in the “PLAY-to-win” game.

Something like:
“Oh, the armor artist is on vacation/busy with something else, but we’d like to put an armor release out because our metrics suggest that we should release a new set every XX weeks for optimal market demand.”
“Well, we can make it work by doing a recolor or something… but a recolor is pretty boring, so lets add some cool particle effects to it.”
“Hmm, fire effects are easy, let’s do those.”
“Ok, let’s pick a few existing sets to use… oh, that one with the cleavage window looks good, lets do that.”

More than 19? Probably partially implemented ones that are intended for levels >50. I strongly suspect that they planned more than 50 levels for this update, but couldn’t get them all in by the deadline. Those instabilities must require a decent amount of testing.

colesy.8490:

Not sure what the point of this thread either, who asks for a second best build?

Pure curiosity about the state of the profession.

Things I find interesting so far:

• The #2 archetype is in a pretty strange state: it uses Empowering Mantras, despite the fact that a 4-mantra bar is by itself a pretty odd choice for fractals, since the charge-and-fire design of mantras has no inherent synergies with the fractals gameplay.

• I was completely wrong with my guesses on what would take the #2 spot (shatter, boonsharing, and conditions).

• It’s funny when you think about the fact that Mesmers are the most likely to rely on their pet DPS in fractals, beating out necros, rangers, and engies.

Heinel, I’m not asking for a philosophy of play, I’m just curious about the state of the class. I’ll play what I like, but that’s no reason for me not to educate myself of the various builds out there.

“Pure” dps means what, exactly? Compounding Power and Empowering Mantras?

To my knowledge, the #1 Fractals build at the moment is widely accepted to be DPS phantasm (either 10/30/0/30/0 or 0/20/0/25/25). The specific trait build will likely change come December with the move of IC, but as far as I know powerful sustained DPS + reflecting is considered to be the best thing to bring to Fractals.

But: What is the #2 archetype? Shatter DPS? Boonsharing? Condition?

Conditions that are too powerful to put on scepter could be put on only at a particular range. For example, either:

1s blind at short range. Get a stack of clones at your position and then attacking you head-on becomes hard, with a good chance any given attack will be blinded unless you deal with the clones.

1s blind at max of scepter range. Now, ignoring the mesmer is the dumb move—you have to charge the mesmer or eat some blinds. Spread your clones out carefully and there are fewer spots safe from the blind.

Replace 1s and blind as needed.

I’d love to see improvements for WvW archetypes working in PvE.

• Conditions: confusion damage is already split to be higher in PvE, but it’s probably not high enough.

• Interrupt: on-interrupt traits have a lot of potential in PvE, if the rewards for interrupting are worth it, even if shutdown isn’t a part of PvE.

Devon,

Instead of asking why population imbalances, momentum, and coverage cause point imbalances, you should address why it’s not fun to play under these conditions.

I don’t care if my server loses a week. I mean, I care a bit, but I’m not motivated by those tasty Glicko points we’d win. I want to have fun!

I’m bored when the only thing for me to do is follow an Omega Golem swarm around as they PvDoor, or, on the flip side, to solo roam and poke sentries because there’s no way to stand up to the enemy zerg.

What fun PvP activities can you give me to do when I’m outnumbered or outnumbering my opponents?

You’ll probably have to manufacture an “unfair” fight in that situation, in which the outnumbered team gets something to even the odds. You’ve resisted that for some good reasons, but I think you’re going to need to think of some other ideas that satisfy your principals while still giving the outnumbered side a way to fight other players in WvW and not instantly evaporate under the zerg.

The thing to keep in mind is: you don’t need to give the low-pop teams a chance at winning the point count. It’ll be hard enough providing these fun fights without worrying about score mechanics at the same time.

Here’s a simple example: the “equilibrium” fight. Imagine a battlefield where the closer you get to the opponent’s base, the stronger they get. This effect goes so high that even the biggest zerg up against the smallest opponents will eventually hit its limit. You get more PPT for every inch of territory you control, and every inch is hard to hold than the last because your opponents are getting stronger.

If I show up to that fight on the winning side, I can head to the line of battle and push in another inch forward before the opponents get stronger again and can hold the line. If I show up on the weaker side, I can push the line another inch forward before we lose some of our advantage. The lower-pop side can’t possibly win (they’ll lose the advantage long before they gain the lead in territory) but they always have something to do more fun than getting zergstomped.

In either case, I’m able to make a measurable, positive contribution to my side’s efforts, and I’m always getting a challenging fight. There’s no perverse incentive where my teammates benefit more if I don’t show up and try to help.

This is an overly simplistic example, but hopefully you get the idea.

Chris,

Does your new commitment to collaborative development extend to looking back at your old commitments?

10 months ago, you offered to discuss social systems in MMOs by PM:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/13tuac/im_the_studio_design_director_on_guild_wars_2_ama/c7756ah

I’ve since contacted you twice by forum PM and once by in-game mail, to take you up on that offer. I haven’t heard back from you at all.

I’m sure I just got lost in the shuffle. You’re a busy guy, after all. But, if you’re too busy to read and respond to PMs that you’ve invited, perhaps you shouldn’t extend the offer in the first place.

If your team is too busy to collect feedback the old fashioned way, by talking to players, I don’t think all the cute feedback-collecting mechanisms in the world are going to get you the information you want. If you’re too busy for something, gotta hire more people, no way around it. Is ANet budgeting any cash for this whole “collaborative development” initiative?

It’s really a darn shame that not only can’t condition builds contribute much to Tequatl himself, they also can’t affect the fingers.

Players have the choice of either keeping two gear sets, power and condition, and switching to power in all the situations where condition is near useless… or just focusing on a power spec and not needing twice the amount of gear.

+1 Chillruption Condition

I’m trying this out now, and it’s pretty fun. The big advantage of condition builds, in my opinion, is that they provide good feedback on how you are playing. Seeing the interrupt boons pop up is very good training for how to use an important mesmer tool.

Plus, it’s got a good mix of the fun weapons. Effectiveness wise, I struggle with thieves because there are fewer visible cues for interrupts.

The Rata Sum Artificing station has been replaced, in appearance, by an Asura-style leatherworking station. It still functions as an artificing station, but there are leathers draped all over it instead of the old appearance.

IGN: Gingelyr
Server: Yak’s Bend
Playstyle: varies a lot depending on mood
Role: Scholar
Playtime: Weekday evenings, either in GMT-5 or +1, depending on work.

I think Giver’s was just totally overlooked in this upgrade. It’s not just missing from the Ascended recipes, it’s missing from the Legendary selection list.

Givers legendaries did exist before! That’s what mine was before I split it.

Before the patch, I had transmuted my Legendary The Minstrel to Giver’s stats (10% condition duration, 64 condition damage, 64 vitality.)

I used the transmutation splitter to reverse that transmutation. Now, however, I cannot put my Minstrel to ascended Giver’s stats. Giver’s in on one of the options on the legendary stat selection menu.

What do you think of 100% condition duration, via Mad King + Lyssa rune 2piece, food, givers weapons, and 20 points in domination?

Is it worth the loss of condition damage?

I’ve been playing with this for a few weeks now. I feel like I have a long way to go before being really effective! Actually keeping poison up 100%, maximizing burning duration, etc.

I feel like I could really use the extra damage from Sharper Images, but I hate to drop my points in inspiration. It’s a dilemma.

Ryuujin.8236:

I’d love to recommend a condition build – they have a great synergy with support builds since they leave your hands free for healing and buffing; but they punch far far FAR below their weight as long as condition cap is a thing.

I agree, and it sucks, but that’s actually makes Poisoned Apples more appealing. There’s no bleeds on it, just poison/burn/confusion/torment.

Now, whether that’s enough dps to matter in a PvE setting, I don’t know.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Here’s a condition option

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Build-Poisoned-Apples/first#post2381371

Man, that’s a cool build. Super flashy, at a bare minimum. I’m now debating between Immortal Mesmer, Poisoned Apples, and Shattercat Heavy.

Hah, well PU is at least very obvious, since you’re constantly popping in and out of stealth.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Sticking 20 points into Inspiration both significantly buffs your focus and allows you to grab one of many traits to help your team. Glamours like Feedback and Nullfield are great for all aspects of the game and are some of our flashiest moves in addition to being combo fields.

The support Mes guide in my sig teaches how to craft a Mes with support in mind and offers a variety of build samples for inspiration. Most of the builds listed there can be used with any gear

I’ve run with 20 in inspiration a lot. I’m always tempted to go for the 25-point phantasm damage, but Warden’s damage isn’t so hot, so I’m hesistant.

I don’t love boon-support builds when carrying, since I find they rely too much on skilled teammates. In particular, there’s this huge difference in effectiveness of the build between teammates who can ride a Signet of Insp. boon dump and people who are x% likely to be down, fleeing, targetting the wrong guy, etc. when the boons hit.

Iavra.8510:

Top thread on this forum, sticky even:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-WvWvW-Pve-Shatter-Cat-Updated-7-7/page/23#post2275686

I also run a version of Shatter Cat heavy and i have never been disappointed up to this point. I’m using knight gear + cavalier trinkets and end up at 2k power and 1.9k toughness so i’m quite tanky while still doing good damage (Granted, i have the base 15k hp but i played guardian for 1500+ hours so i’m used to low hp pools ^^).

I’ve tried something very much like this, and thought it was ok, if not thrilling. I hate to lose Warden’s Feedback, but it is fun to duke it out. I tried it before the interrupt trait buffs, so maybe I’ll get more excited now that Bountiful Interruption is a legitimately flashy trait.

Hi,

I’ve been searching through these forums for a little while trying to find a nice build(s) post-patch. I’ve experimented a bit and read a lot, and haven’t found the perfect thing yet, so I figured I’d just ask.

My priorities, in order:
1. Equips focus. I have The Minstrel, ankitten ever unequipping it :p

2. “Carry” power. I often play with people who don’t have my level of experience. So, I’d like to be able to make a big contribution even when the rest of the team isn’t optimized. It also means I do a lot of rezzing.

3. I like “flashy” traits like Prismatic Understanding and Deceptive Evasion, and neat little things like Might/Chill foods or on-crit sigils.

Can anyone suggest a PvE and WvW build for me?

Thank you!

Edit: Bonus hardmode question: is there any reasonable way to fit Focus and Torch into the same build? PU is so cool… but I don’t see any way to effectively use Scepter, Torch, Sword and Focus into the same stat set.

koopatroopa.5360:

The only thing that’s consistant is the harp sound when you pull it out or switch weapons to it.

I’ve never heard this sound with mine, so not so consistent after all.

I’ve had this problem too, but not on an AMD card. Runs at 10 FPS even on lowest settings, even though I usually get 30-60 on the highest (non-Ultra) settings. Computer restarts and client repair haven’t fixed anything. Updated drivers, nothing. 50%ish cpu and memory use.

I dunno what else to try…

ahurtcorncob’s comment is exactly right. The 6.25% number is completely wrong.

Redo the math that gives 6.25%, except this time pretend quickness had been changed to: 1.0x attack speed (aka no increase) and 100 seconds duration. Now the math in the OP shows that this completely worthless haste is in fact better than the old haste. That means the math behind 6.25% is completely wrong.

The devastating thing isn’t what ANet is or isn’t planning on doing. The devastating thing is that they aren’t expressing awareness of the problem with condition damage in PvE.

Transactions lists do not refresh when I hit the refresh button.

Thanks for the great program. I’d love to see a version that I can plug in to Google spreadsheet’s scripting language, which I think is pretty similar to what you’re using. Something like: use the executable to pull off the session key, then enter that into the spreadsheet, which can pull individual item listings or bulk data off the TP. I’m already doing this with the Spidy API, but I’d rather use my direct connection to the TP over Spidy, which is often down.