Guild Wars 2

Ilthuain.5634:

300g per color seems completely reasonable. An item like this should be expensive, otherwise every joker ends up with it.

…and 300g is a drop in a the bucket for large WvW guilds. I have more than 300g in my account now, and I’m in a tiny RP guild. It’s really not much if you prioritize it, it’s only an obscene pay-wall if it wasn’t that important to you in the first place (which means you shouldn’t have it).

Most “large WvW guilds” would rather spend that money though on siege and food, where it is much more effective. Most of those guilds already coordinate through mumble/TS. In the end, I doubt very much that many WvW groups will end up using this. We already have so much to spend gold on for WvW, with such little income from it, 300g PER COLOR is insane. The WvW community asked for this almost immediately when the game came out, to help coordinate, and hopefully for more commander functionality and squad functionality. Having 300g per color means, to coordinate effectively either all the guild groups have to coordinate colors, or people need to get multiple colors. Now we’re not just talking about 300g, but ~1000g. On top of that, there is NO added benefit, besides being account bound. They haven’t touched the squad or commander system in any other way that the WvW community has been asking for for years. So, to many of us, after having no new content for a LONG time, seeing them do this just shows how little they actually think about the WvW experience.

Don’t think this will EVER get full real use in WvW. It will most likely be a vanity item for PvE folks (hey, look how many colors I have…I’m LOADED!). Heck, spending the 300g on the new anti-siege traps would be more worth it..that many traps and you’d be able to perma-anti-siege trap during every engagement!!

CHIPS.6018:

Anet, former WvWers who left will not be back into WvW by increasing its costs….

Since when has anet actually cared about sustaining WvW? For them, its most likely just a way to get $$ from transfers by stacking servers, which, based on their last seasons, they want to encourage.

For anyone who thinks 300g isn’t much for WvW players, try running in WvW (not EotM, because thats just a champ farm…I mean actual WvW) and see how fast you get 300g. You can do it, sure..especially if you get a lucky drop, but it will take a while. Add on the fact that commanders often spend their own in game money to buy siege, upgrade, etc. Even if a whole guild chips in to help with that stuff, commanders still often spend a lot of their own money. If you go after a T3 keep, you might need many trebs, or many rams, catas, etc just to crack and OUTER wall. Then there is a long fight in inner. And, after ALL of that work (sometimes 2-3 hours of work fighting with an enemy) you finally cap the tower, get 1 champ bag, and a few silver and karma. This is what WvW people mean when there are just SO little rewards given the effort and time put in. The WvW community is bleeding guilds who are leaving the game after years of neglect…and this doesn’t exactly help.

I fully expect tomorrow when they announce it and the price, there will be an all so subtle advertisement “reminding” people they can buy gems and convert to gold! I mean, it’ll only take ~$50 PER COLOR! What a deal!!

Overall, really disappointed with this big “content” patch. Even having only 1 mastery, when past patches used did those more than once every 6 months. And the new trap…I’m not sure if it was fully thought out…

This trait is fine as it is because its an adept trait…the only annoying part is having to take 2 into inspiration. Since its an adept trait, making the condi’s be removed before the heal would make it an exceptionally powerful trait, especially with the mantra heal, and it would probably have to be moved to master tier.

The balance devs seem to not really understand mesmer (Maybe none have actually played one more than ‘testing’)..I hope they’ve learned at least the basic terminology since the last time mesmer was on the live stream, since they got it wrong. If anything, given the last few mesmer patches, they’ll try to nerf a build, and end up nerfing something totally different, and bugging more of our phantasms. Honestly, I would just be happy if the ONLY thing they said was “We fixed the pathing issues with the phantasms, and oh yeah, your iWarden will now actually attack correctly.”

If its not in spvp, its not that big of a problem. I haven’t played spvp in over a month, so I haven’t checked, but I doubt its in there. If it was, imagine the bunkers….bunker warriors/guards just sitting on a point. Or, it could go full cheese and do a triple turret-perma protection engi build since the turret damage would be decent and let the engi sit there with protection constantly up and just healing constantly.

How about, when they fix all mesmer phantasm bugs and actually make them all properly function, you all can have your mounts?

The comparison to expensive exotics is actually worse. People bought those for the skins for different characters and then the skins went account bound. However, they were still left with 2 weapons, with the SAME stats, that were soul bound. You still have ALL the benefits of having 2 legendaries..the only difference is you can’t have the kitten of being able to boast about grinding mats/gold (mind you none of it is difficult content…just takes a while) for 2 different weapons. If you kitten is THAT important to you, and you feel THAT entitled, despite the fact you still have 2 legendaries with even MORE benefits to them than before..then I don’t think we can help you at all….

If they increase the drop rate of silk and lower level tailor mats I think armor ascended crafting will be better. It should be telling to them that all the tailor mats have shot up in price by a lot. At lower level mats, its mostly because lvl 80’s don’t get those drops and the lower level players don’t always know about salvaging. At the higher level, because silk is needed to craft medium and heavy armor on top of light armor, it also is at much higher cost, since you can only get it from salvaging. You get as much leather as you do silk, but the amount of silk that is consumed is much higher than the leather.

I don’t craft my ascended armor. Why? Because selling my Damask for 15g gives me more than a SLIGHT stat increase. The fact that Damask is 15g, while Elonian leather is 2, Spirit Wood is ~4g and Deldrimor Steel is 4g I think should indicate to the devs that crafting light armor is significantly more expensive than crafting any other armor set, giving a disadvantage to all light armor classes.

The problem with the thief is not with initiative. I’ve seen many bad thieves that just spam some skill (sb evade, heartseeker, s/d #3, etc). The moment you interupt them once, or daze them or really anything they’re down a lot of their initiative and easily killed. The problem with thief is more with the stealth mechanic: there is little downside to poor play. If a player is in stealth and attacks a person and it is blocked, the player remains in stealth. Having an attack blocked should instantly drop stealth to force the player to use his/her stealth wisely, whether its a thief, or mesmer, or engi, etc..

Initiative is really fine as it is…

I really honestly doubt WvW will EVER see new maps before the game mode just utterly dies and most people stop playing it. They can say it takes months and months to do it, but the game has been out 2 years, and we’ve been given 1 map that is more PvE than WvW. EotM has a lot of interesting potential mechanics (breakable bridges, etc) that will never be put into WvW. In the end, I can guess that WvW players will have to do with empty promises from devs saying they’re “working on stuff” and resign ourselves to the occasional update doing small patches and quality of life stuff, and a few more masteries… After 2 years they haven’t implemented some of the biggest wants/concerns from WvW people, such as a useful squad system/commander tag updates. WvW CDI’s have been a total bust, and it seems that even the devs have stopped responding to the forums for WvW (not PvE mind you…)

Basically, in order to accomodate people with multiple screens, and using NVIDIA graphics drivers in doing so, the game doesn’t use fixed aspect ratios. This allows people with multiple screens to essentially drag their screen across 2-3 screens (keeping the same height). This gives an aspect ratio that can let people have greater “access” to different points of view for throwing down AC AoEs. While its not an exploit in anyway (no more than comparing someone playing with high graphics vs low graphics), I think most servers/guilds consider it cheap.

There are also MANY AC placements that people don’t know about that allow even people with normal aspect ratios to get stuff inside. You can blame the fact that AC’s don’t need LOS and can go through walls.

The reason infiltrator’s arrow, blink, spectral, etc work is that it has an animation before the effect happens. So, for infiltrators, you shoot the arrow and hop in before the arrow “hits” the ground. In order to change it, they’d probably have to either drastically rewrite the skill mechanics, or the golem pilot mechanic. For the amount of work they’d probably have to do, it’s not worth it.

Also, getting rid of the animation for infiltrator’s would probably cause more people to complain about thieves using it to just instantly teleport across a large area, since it wouldn’t have the animation delay (though it is short)

lLobo.7960:

Just a small idea to help the less populated servers or timezones.

Make Outnumbered buff give certain mistlock instabilities at random to the other team.

This would give a better chance to small groups against zergs, and provide some interesting results.

It’s a decent idea, but the outmanned buff is already wonky on when its active or not. They’d have to spend A LOT of time making sure the mechanic is balanced (no agony ones, the exploding enemies would have be changed, etc). However, it’s kind of a neat idea :P

Laylie.5703:

If all we get are the two traits that were already data mined then a lot of guilds will be leaving. Wvw as a whole is already on the verge of destroying quite a few guilds.

I’d say this. A decent chunk of my old guild (which was disbanded following seasons) left GW2 to go play Archeage. Why? Well, its free and has new content they can actually play, and new kinds of pvp they can play. It seems like gw2 is bleeding players and guilds in WvW, and my guess is all it will do is let anet actually use the excuse “Well theres so few of you, we can’t put out a lot of updates”

So, I play a turret engi build when I’m pugging up in teamQ tpvp (elsewise I prefer triple kit/double kit builds). Here is what I have noticed, even in high tier play (I’m current ~rank 200 on leaderboards):
1) People just don’t attack the turrets. They try to grind down the engi fast. However, any compentent engi will be able to dodge/block (if using p/s)/regen while they blow CDs. I’ve seen necros pop lich form and then try to just deal me damage. Most points have places to LOS when dodges are down.
2) People put AoE, but they put it right on the center of the point. This may force the engi off the point, but does little to hinder the sustained dps.

What are the turret engi weaknesses:
1) lack of lots of condi clear. Some turret engi’s also run elixir gun which gives them a bit more, but in general they can only clear a few condi’s every ~20 seconds or so.
2) Lack of stability. They may have a stun breaker if they are using elixir gun, or if their thumper turret is down. However, with the thumper turret toolkit you only get ~1 second of stability.

Turret play is fairly passive, however there are still quite a few turret engi’s out there which rely too much on their turrets. Take one or two of them down, and they’re toast. It’s a bit like the MM/spirit ranger builds. There are a lot of who run them, they’re annoying builds, but many players become dependent on the AI rather than their own skill, which you can then exploit to beat them.

Aleglast.6027:

Mesmer has great survivability not because of stealth, but because she can create five clones of herself.

I wish my mesmer could have out 5 clones….

The survivability in stealth for both mesmers and thief doesn’t come from the stealth itself, but the TRAITS. Thieves can have initiative regen and health regen while in stealth, allowing them to reset fights fairly easily. Mesmers that use a lot of stealth often use PU which can grant them great access to defensive boons, also allowing them to seemingly reset the fight. However, both of these play styles have weaknesses, and PLENTY of counters in stealth. In the end, I only see 2 issues with stealth:

1) Blocking attacks doesn’t drop the attacker out of stealth, which is why you often see poor play on thieves who are just spamming until they get a hit. There is little punishment in stealth for missing your initial attack, only really attacking at a bad time (revealed)
2) You get no data on whether or not you’re hitting an opponent in stealth. This isn’t a major issue, merely a minor annoyance.

Stealth has plenty of counters, you just have to learn them.

I really doubt in the end this has a significant impact on points…I see it sometimes in WvW, but its often just a roamer who seems to not want to get a cow in the face. I’ve NEVER seen a significant group (5+) all do it to prevent stomps, so I doubt its a real issue. Just be glad you’re making them have to quit (and maybe even requeue!)

Basically, what those threads are saying shows an underlying issue of free transfers. If free transfers are offered, often times large guilds move that server and massively stack it up (HoD, KN). The servers can then skyrocket through the ranks, but they often times end in many of those transfers leaving the server suddenly. This leaves the server in a higher tier, but with a significantly smaller population. It also takes longer to go back down the ranks than to go up, so often times the server slowly trickles down to their original ranking (KN), but that can really hurt the population. If they offer free transfers, and have it be maintained, that what you would probably see forces hopping between these servers, even if its every 3 months, which would cause quite a bit of instability.

While I’m sure ET wants some transfers, I doubt you want your server to get massively overstacked, and then dumped in a higher tier the moment those transfers decide to leave to the next low tier server. I mean, look at the last season: people COULD have transfered to ET for free, but instead many transferred to HoD for free, massively stacked it, and now many of those guilds are leaving (and I’ve heard they’re leaving things in a bit of a wreck, though thats mostly through 2nd party people)

Radakill.3469:

Someone must be pretty dedicated to spend that much time and materials just to impact your supply stack. That much dedication is unlikely to be long term.

I somehow doubt that Anet is going to bother policing this sort of thing, their view will most likely be “use it or lose it”.

You’d think so..but TC for instance has had a set of a few trolls for over a year. They openly admit in chat to just siege trolling, and a couple openly admitted to being “paid” to do it. These people come back, often during “important” matches and spend literally 5-6+ hours a day hopping between maps draining all the supply of keeps, destroying golems, etc..for weeks on end.

But, you’re right. Anet doesn’t care. They really in the end don’t. The fact the same trolls have been reported for over a YEAR with screenshots, video, even of them admitting their just trolling, and they keep coming back. Anet will constantly 1) remove posts that have any specific SS’s or names, and tell people to ‘report’, even though they know, and everyone else knows, that it does ABSOLUTELY nothing, 2) constantly tell people they’re ‘looking into it’, but after 2 years the same issues are there with no official dev response about it. Anet seems to care about WvW for 1 main reason: money for transfers. In fact, all of the trolling could be stopped by having a few game mods that can hop between the all the matches if a siege troll is report. They can watch the person, and then act in real time. Many other MMOs have this, GW2 does not.

6. So, there is a clear reason why this often does not work. And most of the times a commander is in the right for NOT doing what you suggest. One thing I suggest most players to do is to try to command themselves, and then they’ll start to understand why some commanders make certain choices. So, lets give a scenario like you said. You’re in a T2 keep being attacked by a group of 40. You have 15 people. You have two choices: go and attack their keep and hope it pulls them off, or stay and defend. If you port out and attack their keep on that side, if they have a competent commander, they’ll just have 10-15 people port of our their group and go counter you. Your keep has 25 enemies left with very few defenders, and now your team has a 15v15 fight in an enemy keep. Odds are the enemy will grab your keep since it has fewer defenders and you won’t get yours. The only way a strategy like this works is if you have a small group of ~5 try to ninja it, OR you have another force on the map (in which, they can always come help defend anyways). Often times if your keep was properly sieged up, you can defend it from 3:1 or even 4:1 number differences, especially for Hills and Garrison. Also, a common strategy is to repair out, and keep pushing them. Your team might die a lot, but they can get back into the keep much faster, so you slowly dwindle their numbers.

In the end, if you cannot beat a group in YOUR keep, odds are you won’t be able to beat them in THEIR keep, if they’re smart enough to respond with even a small force. Then you’re fighting against THEIR siege, and they have the advantage. It can work, but if you have a group that isn’t all in comms, etc, you often end up losing your keep. Best strategy: try to call out to other maps for help, or keep running supply in slowly and building up siege on the inner walls.

7. So, on TC we’ve had lots of debates about this issue. In the end, text commanding is VERY inefficient compared to voice commanding. It can be done for things like defending for general commanders, but you CANNOT command in an active fight and give commands in text . You just can’t, at least not effectively. This is why groups in voIP have massive advantages over groups that aren’t. If you don’t run in TS/Mumble (you rarely have to talk, just listen!), then you’re limited to what you can say. You can do general commanders: “Build AC’s here”, “Push to them”. But, in the middle of a fight a commander can’t keep typing “Stack!”, “Blast”, “Push”, “On me”, etc..especially since there really are no chat macros. It’s not a matter of being elitist or exclusionary, its just a matter of what you can actually do. Again, the best way understand this is to try commanding yourself and try to type out all the commands you need. It’s almost impossible to be effective. Great commanders tend to use both: text for general, and voIp for specific. Its also hard, in an active engagement to read all the text that is scrolling by and respond to it. They may be reading it, but just are too busy to type.

8. This is typically called Karma-training (or K-train). Servers often do this when they massively outnumber and opponent, or on Fridays/Thursday nights when PPT isn’t as important. Why do this? Well, if you’re up by 40k, you don’t need to hold T2/T3 stuff on offensive maps. You can go on there, cap stuff, have some fun and take rewards. It’s not a practice I neccessarily like, but thats why. If your enemies don’t have the numbers to really affect you, then most players don’t see the point in sieging up a keep and actively upgrading it when they can just roll in with 2-3 times the numbers if it gets attacked.

I hope this helps. Many of the things you brought up are brought up over and over again by newer players, often times without people explaining why. Defense rewards in general are tricky to implement, since they are prone to passive farming/exploiting. Many commanders have their own style. Its best to find one you like running with, and then try to join his/her guild, or just run with them. Do what is fun for you

So, I’m a fairly veteran player in WvW, so let me try to address some of these. Some of the issues have a “historical” reason.

1. The issue with balancing numbers is very tricky. Unless you make it like a tpvp system, where there is individual matches, you’re really just going to have a weird WvW system. Also, if they restricted the amount of players that could be in a map based on the minimum of the servers, it could be easily exploited (i.e. server blob sees there is opposition by pug force in a T3 keep. The commander tells them to all leave WvW. This reduces the population on that map to a small number, kicking other players out. If the blob is in TS/Mumble, the commander tells them go back in and storm the keep, now with very few people actively defending). There have been many discussions to try to figure out how to “balance” population differences, from better outmanned buffs, to changing the PPT weight. So far none have been applied because its very tricky to devise a system which is FAIR and not easily exploitable.

2. Its been long known this buff is buggy, mostly because it seems like its based on a hard ratio, so if a person on the opposing team comes in and sets it off by 1 person it comes off. I.e. if its set to a 2v1 numbers, and the other team gets 51 players, you lose the buff…50 you have it, 51 you don’t. Seems a bit silly, but you have to make a “cutoff” somewhere.

3. So, there used to be ideas for doing this. However, sometimes you DONT wait to repair walls. For instance, someone is trebbing down your wall actively, you sometimes dont want to waste supply and repair unless a team is getting that treb down. During the 1st season, you could get meta achievements by repairing walls. What was seen was players would actively waste supply on repairing walls being trebbed down, knowing they could just keep putting on endless repairs. This drains the keeps of supplies, hurts the server performance..but hey, they got their 5 AP? So, the issue with rewarding for upgrades/repair is it can incur bad play which benefits a single player but might screw over a server. (i.e. popping a fortify upgrade when the keep has 200 supply and currently under attack).

4. They actually USED to do this. They used to give rewards for people escorting yaks as an event completion. However, it was exploited with bots and players just passively walking the yaks around. Once again, it’d be fantastic if they do this, however because the yaks have fixed paths, far too easy to exploit. Also, it’d give out too many rewards if it was just buffing the yak. They’d have to make it so you only got rewards if you defended the yak when it was ATTACKED and it LIVES, not just escorting a yak passively for it to actually not be exploitable/farmed.

5. There is an underlying issue with giving rewards for doing things like sentrying, upgrading and rewarding. Right now their system is half-way decent. You only get rewards when you do repair/defend when its under attack. if your keep is under attack and you kill people, or put on repairs during the timer, you get rewards. Its often just bronze or silver, but you still get something. They can’t really give rewards for players passively sitting in a keep when its not “under attack”. Why? Well, players could then just passively sit afk and collect rewards from not doing anything. Imagine if your BL had a T3 keep, and you had 20 people just sitting in it getting rewards, not doing anything.

(cont next post)

Recently in tpvp I’ve been playing a triple turret build with the deployable turrets. Why deployable? Well, if your goal is for your turrets to be sustain damage, then having the detonation trait is useful..but in general it will only proc for your healing turrets. What you can do with deployable is toss the range ones in places where melee cant get. They have long range (900+) so you can really toss them places, on top of pillars, etc, that make them really hard for people to kill. On top of that, you don’t have to leave a point if bunkering to get your turrets in range. Far too often I see turret engi’s in tpvp fighting on point and putting their range turrets right on point. They die, and explode and do an annoying knock back that disturbs the player for all of ~2-3 seconds while their sustain dps is now gone. Also, a trick I’ve found is that because the throw is an “arc” you can throw your thumper turret over walls and stair cases in some cases and overcharge it before you even get to the point, clearing it for when you get there. (On temple, I swear nothing is funnier than throwing a rifle and rocket turret onto the pillars and seeing an all melee warrior jumping up and down trying to hit them!).

I think an issue with bombs is, unless your condi traited, you might be getting some better AoE damage (which you can get with rocket turret, rifle #3 and #5), but your sustain targetted damage will be much less if you swap it in favor of rifle or flame turret.

I normally run a kit bunker or powernade..but man I love running turrets recently mostly because it gets people so peeved xD

It’s great when I roam on my engi in a powernade spec, and people burn all their dodges to avoid rifle shots…then I blow them up with grenades. Honestly, you can easily avoid grenades by just moving around, and most mediocre engi’s will miss you. However, if you’re a melee class and get in their face, the engi has the advantage. They know where you will be, and can easily throw down a lot of condis. One of the current metas is to run power nade, so you get the condi damage, plus the grenades hit like a mack truck. If I run that build, in zerker gear, with sigil of fire and air with ~50% crit chance, the grenades do a lot of damage if the player is just trying to stand still and dps me. Grenade/bomb builds have easy, clear counters, ESPECIALLY if you’re a mesmer or a high mobility class or a range class that moves. Grenades chew people up who don’t move and dps, and bombs kill people who get in the engi’s face and just try to roll their face on their keyboard hitting skills. Grenades are projectiles, which can be reflected, or dodged, and seen when thrown. Just keep your distance and you’ll be fine.

When I run my turret bunker, I run a 0/2/6/6/0 or a 0/0/6/6/2 build depending on the map. I do NOT take the bubble. Why? Well, you just get so much limited time out of it if you’re actually working to keep your turrets around. Instead, I get my turrets to have much better damage. I use the deployable turrets so I can easily deploy my range turrets without leaving a point, or so I can toss them in places melee cant get to. The rage you get when you’re fighting a warrior and you see them jumping up and down trying to hit a turret you placed on a pillar. I don’t use the turrets explode on detonation, mostly because it also is basically only used during supply crates (but not as much if you trait for better turrets) and with healing turrets.
I do run the boons for the turrets. When I bunker, I’m currently running healing/thumper/flame/rocket turrets. The combination of these boons makes you a bit more tanky (healing/thumper) and also more offensive (flame/rocket).

The bubble is trolly, but in the end only really good for a first push, or if you’re an offensive turret engi. But if you run bunker, the bubble is mostly useless for most of the time.

With that build I basically never lose a 1v1, and I’ve even sustained against some 3v1’s. I love when a lich necro comes to my point, pops his lich form and I just keep LOS’ing him while my turrets kill him xD People seem to always go straight for the engi and not touch the turrets….

Kimbald.2697:

Just for the EG in a power build:

set up your power gear, and than look at the damage the silly bouncy thing EG #2 does… it hits not bad.
It also jumps: it can jump from them (400 damage minimum) to you, to them (another 400 but likely more), to you.

My only issue I’ve ever had with the EG is that the #2 skill is really easy to avoid and seems a bit buggy. Since its a slow moving projectile, if you’re fighting a mesmer or thief you may not ever actually hit with it. Because of this, I’ve preferred using wrench. The magnet pull is incredibly powerful, especially with combined with the rifle knockback to help get a point to neutral really fast. When traited, the throw wrench and its auto attack cause cripple, plus you have the nails, confusion and of course the gear shield. The EG gives you a heal and condi clease, but if the person is dead fast anyways…plus the heal requires you to stay in the field, which can be problematic since it is a small field and you’re wearing glass (I’m thinking of necro wells, grenades, or warrior bow). You already have poisons essentially from the grenade kit also, so you might as well get as much different utilities as possible.

On a different note: I really like having slick. Even now, a lot of players don’t use their stability until they go to stomp on a point, or if they’re at low health. So, as an engi, what you can do is pop your slick, and then while its in duration run in a circle around some player. You can still do your damage burst, but they’re kept knocked down. If you combine the grenade toolkit, blunderbuss + jump + ____ grenade (I like to use chill at the end), you can get off A LOT of damage. If you finish with the chill, then even when they can get up, they’re chilled.

I’ve had quite a bit of luck in tpvp running a powernade build. Basically, you run zerker build, with: 6/0/0/4/4 using power wrench. Your utils are wrench, grenade and slick (stun breaker+knockdown!). I also tend to use sigil of air+fire. It seems like the sigils proc per grenade hit with no ICD. While you have little condition damage, the grenades still hit incredibly hard. Plus, with the 4 in tools, your wrench will now become incredibly strong in melee range, also giving a range cripple. So, if you face even like a PU mesmer you can just toss some AoE damage down and melt them really fast.

Basically, the same as what Vee Wee stated above (I didn’t even notice he commented the same traits). This is probably the strongest power build I’ve come across, especially since it has both range and melee damage!

Caedmon.6798:

hihey.1075:

L2p. That’s all my advice.

It’s not a l2p issue,again..I did not say im unable to beat them.Its about this being a terrible game design,Porting,stealthing,continously evading with the use of skills + their own dodges + using a energy sigil on top of it is what makes them go complete kitten.

Is this one of those 6/6/6/6/6 builds?
s/d thieves cannot endlessly evade and dodge (and if they’re doing that, they’re not doing a lot of damage). Their evade skill that does a lot of damage is actually the 2nd part of that chain, so watch for that skill to dodge. You just have to watch for their timed movements. They are effective because most people see a thief, and instantly burn all their CD’s (while they use a couple evades). This is why they can then easily kill people. They freak out and panic when they see a thief. Just use your AoE, and save your CDs and time them.

Mesmers biggest two problems are: 1) Many of the phantasms are still quite buggy, some of the bugs have been around since launch. 2) The anet devs seem to keep tossing the mesmer in totally different directions. At launch, you saw a lot more different builds, especially since confusion was actually useful in pvp/pve. This is why things like the torch phantasm is all but useless. It seems like every “balance” patch, the devs toss the class into a different direction. First they wanted confusion, then no confusion, then support, then stopped, them mantra, then stopped, then interrupt, etc. It’s also clear that this is probably because none of the balance development team actually play mesmer (in their last live stream they stated what they played). Our trait lines are an absolute mess, with little synergy. Things are kind of spread all over the place right now.

Mesmers don’t need a buff. We need a rework. Our trait lines need to be reworked so they make sense (i.e. don’t have signet traits in a bunch of different trait lines, same with mantra). After playing warrior, thief and engi, it seems like my mesmer really has to min/max. I never really noticed until I played those other classes. We also need all the bugs that have been around for a year or more to finally be fixed!! iZerk becomes useless if it spins and gets stuck in a rock…

Many people here have mentioned good points. The main downside to running phantasms (which I do roaming) is that if the attack is blocked, or evaded, or obstructed, etc the phantasm will not spawn: it will waste the CD. Use this to your advantage using shatter distortion, and maybe sword #2. Interupts also will help. In general shatter mesmers tend to be traited a bit more for sustained fights (i.e. knights of valk) so it may take a couple hard shatters. Many phantasms will track you in stealth and hit you the moment you pop out, so just be aware of that. Also, know the downsides to phantasm AI. For melee phantasms, if they can’t figure out a “path” to you, they’ll freeze. Likewise, range ones require LoS, so you can duck around some rocks, trees, ledges, etc.

Its a tough fight, but it can be done if you know the main weaknesses of phantasms (or bugs, if you want to consider it that way?)

Aniltiger.9186:

Thanks for the feedback!

Regarding SoE was mainly for the ability deal extra damage. It could easily be replaced with Either Feast if that would suit better. Also Phantasmal Disenchanter was primary used for the lowered CD due to Illusionist Celerity and Shatterfodder. Which Nullfied can’t provide. But I guess it is situational as well personal preference.

Pyro – It is true what you say. It might not be superior the regular phantasm build damage-wise but it is a decent shatter build for PvE. Even if the phantasms attacks are lowered, it will be compensated with the shatters (which also make aoe damage) as well providing support for the group.

I agree with others. Many players have swapped to the signet heal because its passive. They can have up 3 illusions and know they’ll have the passive heal. However, since your build focuses around shatters, the worry with phantasm recharge isn’t that major because it will just get shattered anyways fast enough. Ether Feast would be a much better choice.

Have you considered swapping out VR for either Crippling Dissipation or Shattered Concentration? I know its AoE vigor, but since the range is only 240 you may be wasting the boon strip or cripple for sharing vigor to maybe 1 person…

KingZmaN.6473:

Schattenlied.4873:

As Benjamin said lockdown builds with 2 mantras (heal+distraction) are ok, you can use Decoy and Blink as stunbreakers, heal + Mender´s Purity gives you decent condition remove if you need it.
I´m running a build like this in wvw atm (so my stats are much higher than yours, both defensive and offensive) and still the cast time of the mantras is sometimes annoying. Smart players will attack you as soon as they see the mantra casting animation, so they get at least 2 seconds for a burst and/or interrupt. Of course you can try to cover those weak spots with Decoy+mantra cast or other combinations, but you don´t have any skill that helps you in this way. If I ever see a full mantra build while playing interrupt/lockdown, I will eat it alive.

I use mantras. I love non-meta builds. But your build is just lacking the tools to make mantras work. A lot of people have stressed this fact before here, I just wanted to give you the perspective of an other mantra user and show you interrupt builds as a more viable option for those who like to play with mantras.

I understand your play-style, it’s kewl, I just like using 4 mantras is all.

You’re free to like playing however you want. However, when you post a build on the forums saying how good it is, you must be able to prove it. Several of us, who are veteran mesmer players, have came here and stated that, while the build may be fun, it is not all-in-all very great. There are many builds out there that are fun to run, but may not be very good. However, when you run in tpvp, especially if you solo queue for team queue, you’re playing for the team. You must be the best help, and this is why people run specific builds. These are the builds which maximize a mesmers ability to help the team win. Your build, while may be fun, has several massive flaws which mean you will probably hurt your team more than help it.

You are claiming we’re biased, but we’re not. We’re not in some secret mesmer club which is trying to bring uniformity. We like new builds, new metas coming out, etc. BUT, you’re biasing yourself. Your essentially telling people you don’t care what anyone says negatively about your build, because you have all the insight on it and we just can’t understand. If you have fun playing the build, that’s fantastic. However, in order to educate those who may wish to use the build YOU posted on a PUBLIC forums, we’re listing any benefits AND consequences.

Play how you like, no one is telling you to stop playing your build. However, the moment you post it on a public forum, you open it up to be discussed. If you want to run off meta builds, all the more power to you. BUT please don’t come to an open forum, post a build for discussion, then tell everyone who discusses that they’re being trolls for not accepting how insightful and great the build is, and then say you don’t care what people think.

Look, I’ll make an offer: if you want to message me any time I’m in game, we can try to set up a 1v1. Then I can show you the flaws of the build.

You keep mentioning how insightful this build is. I just don’t see it, and I did read your text file. It seems like you’re so set on using something “different” that you’re essentially gimping yourself. You’re using the excuse that a mesmer with lots of skill will do well anyways. BUT, a very skilled mesmer, using a proven very useful build, will be even better. In tpvp you have to build for whats best for your team. If you die every engagement because you have no stun breakers, or are glass even though its a sustain build (which means you really should be running like knights or valk), what are you going to tell your team? “Sorry, I’m actually a skilled mesmer, I’m just running a build you wouldn’t understand?”. There is a reason people run condi clone death, or shatter, or phantasm builds. They’re reliable, well tested builds. I know quite a few veteran mesmers that wish mantras, or signets, or anything else would be more viable in tpvp, but right now they’re just not.

As stated before, it doesn’t matter what your text file says, it doesn’t matter how great you feel the build is. I’ve been there, where I was so sure I found the next great build (signets), but I was wrong. In the end, the weaknesses of your build are too great to counter any benefits.

KingZmaN.6473:

Pyroathiest, Handin, and Raunchy (and anyone else of similar dialogue)

All the things you say are valid in the context you present, but, is void of what I shared in my extra text file, as well as, in my previous posts on this topic.

1) You claim that everyone who states anything against you’re build is a troll. We’re not. We’re giving you constructive criticism, and I think all of us have tried mantras at some point or another.

2) I read your .txt file. Everything we’ve stated is valid. What we’re saying is: even though your build has good sustain, because you’re glass, you’re too prone to CC and burst. Glass is NOT good for sustain, bottom line. No matter how good your sustain is, if you’re glass, one pistol whip from a thief and you’re almost dead.

3) Despite what your text file says, it doesn’t change the fact that your build has a few vital weaknesses. These weaknesses are inherit in using mantras. After you do your instacast ,you have to recharge. The moment a single dps’er notices you’re running mantras they will engage you, and it will be hard for you to recharge. You’re running no stun breaks, no mobility. This means you will be very slow when moving in combat.

We’re not engaging in a personal attack against you. We’ve looked at your build, at your text file, at your images, and are telling you the flaws in the build

I’d hate to break it to you, but I agree with Natsu and Pyro. This build has been around for quite some time, and there’s a reason you just don’t see it in tpvp. There are several main downsides to mantras:
1) During the charge (especially since it seems like you’re running no invis) you’re a massive target. If you keep getting interupted during the charge, you’re entire build loses, well, everything. And I guarantee you if you’re against a decent player and they see a mantra mesmer, they’ll be on you hard.
2) While it has some support, it requires the people to really bunched up for it to be effective. You lose your group support utility there.
3) Mantra’s paint a HUGE target on you. The icons don’t copy over to your clones, so they’ll know exactly where you are. Any thief or single target dps’er will see a charged mantra and just immediately know you’re easy prey. Since you have no stealth and no mobility, you’re a sitting duck.
4) You aren’t even using the “best” mantra, and that is the stability mantra. I mean, thats a double stun breaker AND shares some stability. I’d swap that out for the distraction or pain mantra.
5) You’re using scepter, and I can’t figure out why. It seems like you’re going for damage, but then not using sword. Scepter has very low direct damage. It has decent condi for the confusion and torment.

There is a reason a lot of people run either shatter, phantasm or condi based builds. Whether you run the typical shattercat or blackwater, or use some other variation, they almost always revolve around that. They’re just optimal. Some run a mantra, but not all mantras AND moa. In general, if both Natsu and Pyro question you on your build, don’t take it harshly, just learn. When I come up with a new build idea, I’ve been known to bounce it off of Pyro. Sometimes its a “sounds interesting”, sometimes its a “that’s totally awful!”

Keep thinking of new stuff, and try it out. But, they’re not trolling you, they’re telling you why this build doesn’t work well in tpvp/spvp. In general, most of the dps in tpvp now a days is either condi, or direct burst, and LOTS of CC, especially in NA tpvp. Account for that in your build.

The reason hammer warrior is so effective in tpvp is because the AoE CC takes up the entire cap point. So, you either have to sit in the point and deal with it, or fight off point. The fact that hambow is a low skill cap build doesn’t make it OP. If anything, you can exploit the fact that they may not be that experienced and pull other stuff out on them. In general, I’ve found that in tpvp most players want to stick to a set of 1-2 builds for each class, making it easy to predict their builds, and thus their play (i.e. engi’s now are mostly either balth condi spammers, or decap, though I personally prefer to run a condi bunker)

Recently, I’ve found that I can counter hambow fairly well by using a s/p+p/d venomshare thief build. It appears that the constant poison makes them much weaker, and the pistol whip hurts their skill rotations, and being able to bounce in and out of the fight helps stay away from a lot of the damage. In general, I’ve found that if you meet a group that is using cheese to win, to do something different that they cant expect.

Tl;dr; While I personally hate the hambow build, because it is just incredible cheesy, it is only cheesy for the gamemode that tpvp has. If there were more game modes, or variations of the point cap, then it wouldn’t be as big of a problem. The problem with them is the same as necro marks, guardian bubbles, etc ==> CC and AoE taking up an entire point with a bunker standing in the middle. There are counters, you just have to try to run off-“meta” builds.

Zylonite.5913:

Lol…a yak parade only when TC 2v1’ed everything?

what a shameful display…

Actually, a yak parade has not been held during this season when TC faced JQ or BG. I was either too swamped with work, or the match was too close. That was like..just me..dolyak tonic’ing (as I do often) when NOPE decided to RP walk for fun?

Chaba.5410:

That’s it? A single golden yak? Oh, TC, how low you have become. Where have gone the days of the yak zerg and FA’s animal control squad?

There’s only ever been a single golden dolyak. Other colors exist, sometimes in herds, but the golden dolyak stands alone, a singular emissary to the Great Dolyak Spirit. The Golden Dolyak often roams the borderlands, so keep your eyes peeled!

PSA: There will probably be a dolyak parade this week, assuming I don’t get swamped with work again!

Even if it was against the Rules of Conduct, which it most certainly is not, since its a 3 way fight, what could they do? Ban everyone on all those servers? That’d be silly.

2v1’s aren’t fair. But WvW isn’t meant to be fair, at all. Player numbers aren’t preset, stat equality doesn’t exist, etc. The tourney system essentially screwed over JQ and TC, so they’re doing all they can to maximize their rewards. So, WHY does JQ and TC continue to 2v1 BG? Well, IT WORKS. Look at when, in week 1, JQ was constantly 2v1’ed (http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/29/161 ). You can tell they pushed throughout the entire match, kept pushing. TC does the same when we get 2v1’ed. We constantly push and do everything we can to hold our points. BG appears, when looking at the scores and from what I’ve experienced (I havent been in EB yet mind you this match), to have a lot of players effectively give up so only a few of the guilds are remaining to really push. That being said, it can be really boring when the one server stops their push and just throws their hands in the air.

I almost exclusively play engi in tpvp, though I recently also rolled a thief for fun. I found running a venom share p/d+s/p build works fairly well against many engis. Run Basilisk venom instead of Thieves guild, and run s/p. Multiple stuns are a BANE of engis, and so are conditions. Thieves have access to both.

If you are trying to just shadowstep to an engi, spam 22222 or try to spam for backstabs, you will have a bad time. If that engi is running nades of bombs, a good engi will start to just lay AoE at their feet while the thief tries and fails.

Honestly, there are definitely some very powerful things about an engi, mostly built around their traits. However, the top bunker-y builds are low on dps. The top dps builds are low on bunker. A good bunker engi can withstand almost anything (except a decent condi necro probably). However, while they may have some condi damage, their output dps will be relatively low.

So, I’m just gonna jump in an give my opinion. I recently decided to roll a thief for fun, after playing mostly mesmer in WvW and engi in tpvp. Here is my thoughts about my experience with thief:
1) Backstab isn’t as strong as people think (its similar imo to a zerker mesmer shatter). Often you have to really build for the damage of it, but you lose on lots of other utilities. A bit of ground AoE is a huge deterrent.
2) Using steal with dagger equipped, however is a really easy way to get a backstab. Go into a couple seconds of stealth, use steal. This will shadowstep you to the player, and place you behind them. Tap your backstab.
3) Stealth play is VERY forgiving to BAD play. What do you I mean by bad play? Spamming attacks with a block (i.e. engi shield), or with aegis, or evades up, etc. There is very little penalty for initiating an attack in stealth and missing. If an engi is using his block, you can KEEP hitting him in stealth, keep your stealth, and still get a hit off the moment the shield comes down. This is probably the biggest thing about stealth that needs to be changed. You see both thieves, and even PU mesmers alike, abusing this.

But really in the end, the problem isn’t in the thief profession. It’s in the mechanic that anet calls “stealth”, which is very forgiving to BAD play, for any profession that uses stealth. On top of that, hitting a player in stealth gives you no damage indicators (unless you happened to be watching your combat logs). If you happen to play a class with an auto attack that chains you can get a bit lucky, but not everyone has one (i.e. mesmer GS/staff). Damage as well won’t reveal a person in stealth. If anyone has problem playing against thieves, I’d recommend, if they can, to roll in and play a bit in normal spvp (since it’ll auto level you to 80) and see how the mechanics work. It REALLY helps.

I think the problem with Badges of Honor is that, really, besides siege most people have no other use for them. It’d be great if we could trade them in for a lot of different stuff. Take the old (and new) spvp rewards. You could exchange glory (and now in the loot reward chains) for stuff like dungeon armor, cultural armor (with gold), level up tomes, etc. And yet, we got NOTHING like that in WvW.

I think many people would be very happy if we could use our badges as currency for non-WvW stuff, like skins. We really haven’t had an update to our loot system for quite some time, and you’d think it’d be something which they could implement with little extra “new” coding (they’d have to consider how many badges are worth, for instance, CoF armor). Also, trading in badges for transmutation charges would be FANTASTIC (image 250 badges/charge). Tpvp players can get quite a few charges and level up tomes now fairly quickly (since the update, I’ve gotten 12 tomes and ~8 charges)

Hi there! Thanks for this post! This is Handin, TC’s friendly Golden Dolyak and current leader of the Dolyak parades. I’ve been holding them semi-sporatically still! In fact, we held one just last week!

Because there are no more official match up threads, I have been advertising them on the gw2wvw match up threads. However, I am still trying to get people from as many servers as possible to help out so that when a parade is scheduled we can get the word out to as many people as possible. Since attendance was getting low from the constant matches, I stopped holding them every week and instead decided to hold them once every few weeks or so. However, with leagues I plan to start holding them more often!

So, keep an eye out! Since this thread came out: expect a dolyak parade during leagues EVERY thursday at 6 PM server time (exactly where and when I still have to figure out for leagues to minimize impact on PPT) ! I think doing this every week can help lower the stress a bit Heck, even last week the dolyaks were outnumbered by quaggans!

The goal was to eventually try to hold them in EotM so as many people from all servers could join, with no PPT impact. However, doing this would require a lot more organization and time than I can spare right now as a grad student. If anyone is willing to try to help me with this goal, please let me know

~Handin, Golden Dolyak

Nuclearpower.8216:

I was wonder if Anet has though of implementing a communication system in game, like Vent/TS/Mumble, that would be provided by the GW2 sever. I saw WoW try and introduce the idea, but there was no need. There was basically a way to voice chat with people in-game with no 3rd party program. However, GW2 is very different and it seems like there may be a need/demand for such ideas.

Yes, this is my first post, yes I’m new to posting in the form, Yes I’m from Blackgate harharhar
BUT I feel this is a possible solution to any server worried about their voice communication being compromised.

Your thoughts?

A few things. 1) It seems like it wouldn’t be worth it for GW2 to sink such an investment, when it seems like its only BG that constantly has this problem. 2) The fact it seems to keep happening to BG no matter what servers they’re against hints that it may be someone just trolling (maybe even in BG)
For Anet to do this they would have to sink a lot of investment time and money into this. Unless guilds paid money, it wouldn’t seem worth it…plus it would put their servers at risk for a DDOS. In the end, BG has to find a way to solve the problem on their end…

Kannata.4356:

Hello, so we bought a few Tomes of Knowledge from the recent Lion’s Arch event vendors to level up in WvW. However, when we used it in one of the WvW maps, the level up animation happened but our level stats did not change (stayed at level 13). The exp didn’t go to our PvE experience bar either as far as we could tell. We tried this 3 times on different WvW maps with the same result. Did we misunderstand what these Tomes do? Any help or explanation would be great- thanks

If I remember right, they shut down the functionality of it in WvW because people were exploiting them. People would buy a bunch of level up tomes, and then if they started to die (or went into downed state) they would pop one of those and insta-rez. So, to stop people using the level up tomes in such a way, if I recall they disabled them in all WvW maps. I’m wondering, why did you try it on a WvW map? Hopefully you weren’t trying the same thing

After talking with a couple veteran mesmers I know about this, I changed my mind. I thought initially like you: “perma reflect, what could go wrong?!”. However, a good point was raised: you only start to get decent reflection AFTER the fight has basically been won. You’d only see it in the middle of the fight at the earliest. On top of that, if you’re actually in the front line, the reflection won’t do as much good. In front, you’re hit mostly with melee trains.

How will this trait be best used? As a survivability trait for surviving ZvZ/BvB fights as a ranged on the outskirts. There, you are mostly hit by range. I don’t really see this as being very useful in small man groups, since by the time you start proccing it enough the fight will almost be over. That being said, I still plan to try it out as a zerg buster build, just to see what happens (i.e. like a 0/30/0/20/20 reflect PTV/VTP build)

Made a new look for the new hair style after rocking a fro for a long time.

Hule.8794:

I am more worried about last 4 servers in EU leagues. These servers are really disadvantaged because they will not get enought tickets to get Mistforged Hero’s Weapon.
I know you will get some parts from achivements and you can craft them in forge, but it just means that these 4 servers will have only option to make one weapon, while higher servers will have option to get 2 weapons.

This will just encourage guilds and players to transfer.

Since they’re giving free transfers to these lower teir servers, I’m guessing they’re hoping that the populations balance out a bit. In the end, there will always be low pop servers, and in a tournament there will always be a “losing” server (which really has more to do with population than skill). The mistforged weapons are most likely just cosmetically different. They also said they’ll be running multiple tournaments, so if you don’t get it the first time, you’ll definitely be able to get it the second time. If they gave the same rewards to everyone, then there wouldn’t be much incentive either to win.

DeWolfe.2174:

Handin, don’t start with that TC Dolly parade bull kitten. Every time I try to run around I get killed instantly. Where’s the love I ask??? TC has become the “way too serious” server. T1 has been a bad influence on you.

Mostly its from fair weathers and/or transfers who kill tonic’ed players. Many of the longer-time TC guilds still try to not kill players toniced if they’re just having fun…I remember once a TC pug group wiped the dolyak parade I was very sad

I can confirm that tonics do not prevent people from being seen. It only helps with people who have not learned how to tab when looking for mesmers. Being a small asura, I hid once in Hills Lords room behind one of the pillars. I saw several people look in, but then ran out (my graphics were hidden behind a pillar).

The name tag issue should NEVER be cause to remove tonics in WvW, since the same issue is there for anyone. And it has a really easy solution: hit tab fairly often when searching for mesmers. Even a non-toniced asura hiding in a wall crevice won’t have name tags. Going to remove asura from the game for that? I doubt they’ll ever ban tonics in WvW, as it would cause a lot of outrage. There are a lot of players who like running around occasionally for fun using tonics, quaggan or mystery or dolyak.

The best WvW guilds are obviously the ones that do GvGs. I mean, if you noticed, all the ones in that survey were GvG guilds. Oh wait, you mean that survey only included guilds that like to do GvGs (which are really no closer to WvW than tPvp in the end..). Hm, that seems like a skewed sample I honestly don’t think there is a “best guild NA.” From my long WvW experience, I have YET to find a guild that is consistantly just amazing in all aspects of WvW. Most are great in a lot of things, but still have lots of work to do in others.