Guild Wars 2

^ Let’s not be biased. The Fire autoattack in Scepter is all-out terrible, and should be looked at. If left as it is it should be because the other Fire skills are too strong to support a decent Fire autoattack too (whether or not they are indeed too strong is open for discussion).

As for Staff, it is highly polarizing because the only attunement with reasonable damage is Fire, and the others are just there for very specific purposes: Water for heals, Earth for extra blast finisher at start of combat, and Air for Windborne Speed. None of the other attunements come at all close to Fire for damage, and a Staff Ele will want to switch back to Fire ASAP if he ever switches out of it. The weapon is still viable right now because its damage output is so good, but well-balanced it is not.

I personally don’t really care what changes are implemented (I’ll just adapt to whatever you give me), but just one thing … if you must change things like what Berserker’s gear does, make it so that we don’t have to craft / acquire completely new equipment. Thanks!

You heal zergs, so:

1) Don’t die (spec defensive stats);
2) Have water fields and blast finishers (i.e. use Staff).

There’s a baseline guide here; tailor as you see fit: http://intothemists.com/guides/107-staff_build_for_organized_groups

nirvana.8245:

All these BG players and guilds talking about how bad it is on BG, but they never leave.

I’ve been itching to move off BG for a while, but the transfer cost is a pain. Will you sponsor me? No? Didn’t think so.

There’re so many people who say things like “why don’t you tag up? why don’t you use superior siege? why don’t you have max ascended equipment? why don’t you transfer?” etc yet once I ask them to send me the gold to transfer / buy commander tag / buy superior siege etc they all shut up.

Rhyse.8179:

Jeydra.4386:

Gorani.7205:

Josh Davis.6015:

There are a lot of valid concerns with the elementalist right now and we’re going to be working on addressing those points. Once everyone gets back from holiday vacation we’ll be posting up our proposed balance changes and we’ll go from there.

This surprises me a bit. Wasn’t the December update meant to be a big balance update to fix stuff? If they have to admit that there are “a lot of valid concerns”, why did they not address them with the December patch?

I’m backing this. If there are a lot of valid concerns, they should’ve been addressed with the December update. Knowing that there are valid concerns and then releasing a big patch that doesn’t address those concerns is like saying there are valid concerns of the balance team’s competence. I know it sounds rude, but honestly, nobody should release something they know to be flawed.

I get the impression that Anet is afraid to make big changes, so they iterate tiny bit by tiny bit. Then they don’t come back to it often enough and those tiny tidbits become insults that highlight how many other, bigger things are being ignored.

Balance patches like Dec 10th should happen once a month. The changes made are tiny, and at most result in a build shifting 10 points or a utility being swapped out. Anet needs to be willing to take on the big problems. If they’re afraid of backlash, then they should start an open test server so they can see the results in advance.

What I actually meant was, there are two possibilities that I wouldn’t fault the balance team for in the immediate aftermath of the December 10 update.

1) The balance team thinks there is no problem.
2) There is a problem, but the balance team is not aware of it.

The specifics of the state of balance aren’t important. If either of these is true, then the balance team would’ve done as good a responsible job. On the other hand, if as Josh Davis’ post implies, the balance team knew there was a problem but still didn’t fix it, then that is a completely different matter and is very revealing about their motivation and sense of duty. Certainly if I any of my employees did something like this I would be very dissatisfied and demand an explanation. I don’t fault people for doing a bad job if they’ve done the best they can, but if they aren’t giving their job their all, that’s grounds for a performance review.

Because it’s almost certain that there’ll be something going on in EBG, with enough players to make something happen and enough opponents to not be boring. Good chance of a commander tagged up as well.

Also EBG is the only fair map. The other three are imbalanced towards the defending server.

I think the self-only by default and trait for AoE idea is a great one. It would be a big buff, but the trait would still be powerful (a tribute to how strong Elemental Attunement is).

Gorani.7205:

Josh Davis.6015:

There are a lot of valid concerns with the elementalist right now and we’re going to be working on addressing those points. Once everyone gets back from holiday vacation we’ll be posting up our proposed balance changes and we’ll go from there.

This surprises me a bit. Wasn’t the December update meant to be a big balance update to fix stuff? If they have to admit that there are “a lot of valid concerns”, why did they not address them with the December patch?

I’m backing this. If there are a lot of valid concerns, they should’ve been addressed with the December update. Knowing that there are valid concerns and then releasing a big patch that doesn’t address those concerns is like saying there are valid concerns of the balance team’s competence. I know it sounds rude, but honestly, nobody should release something they know to be flawed.

You probably want Chaotic Transference (Chaos 25) instead?

Aside from that, it’s your build. I would probably not run Mimic because Feedback is strong. If you do that I’d trait for Staff as well (drop Master of Manipulation).

Well like I said I generally don’t have trouble surviving. I play on BG as well, but I generally average fewer deaths than the commander when I’m with the zerg. I’ll be fine, don’t worry

Do you think it’s worth giving up 10 in Inspiration to max out Domination? If I do that I’d probably give up Temporal Enchanter and take Harmonious Mantras, although the only Mantra I can possibly use is Mantra of Recovery. I dunno, Mantra of Recovery without Mender’s Purity feels rather strange to me.

Yeah but once again I’d have invested into maximizing my condition damage to deal 8000 damage. If instead of maximizing condition damage I’d gone for maximizing power, then I’d have 2000 power instead of 2000 condition damage. That would something like double the damage coming out of the GS phantasm – a huge effect. I’m not saying give up on the glamour fields completely either. The glamour fields are obviously strong, but I don’t need to go all out and trait for confusion if it’s not effective. I’d still equip the glamour fields, just not trait + equip for condition damage.

So something like:

20 Domination (Empowered Illusions and GS training)
10 Dueling (Far Reaching Manipulations)
10 Chaos (Master of Manipulations)
30 Inspiration (Temporal Enchanter, Glamour Mastery, Warden’s Feedback)

With PPT gear and Mesmer runes (five of them anyway, and then any of the other runes that give +25 power). Possibly give up on Temporal Enchanter for 15 Dueling (Sharper Images), and since I’m quite confident in my ability to stay alive, I can mix in some Berserker’s gear as well. From the build editor I’m seeing something like 2200 power, 1500 toughness, and 1150 vitality, which should be enough to stay alive with.

Then when it comes to zerg vs zerg fights, instead of using glamour fields that do 8000 damage, I’d be using the GS phantasm that, if it hits 10 people, will be doing significantly more than 8000 damage and I’d still have the glamour fields. Certainly looks more appealing to me.

Jorjeis.2169:

Don’t completely discount the confusion from glamours in a condition build. 20 into Dom isn’t AoE capped, and with 215 dmg per stack across a large group when they’re probably spamming their auto attack it adds up to a reasonable amount of condition pressure. That said if you want to go condition damage I see 10 Chaos (Debilitating Dissipation) as a prerequisite. The block on scepter 2 is also going to completely ruin someone’s day if you’re condition damage. Another thing you might like to consider is Sigil of Torment on GS.

Yeah, but I’m only going to get two stacks at most for 430 damage per skill use. On the average each person may autoattack maybe three times before the confusion is cleansed, which means after sinking everything possible into maximizing my glamour fields, I do a whopping 1290 damage. The GS phantasm alone would do more than that! It just doesn’t look worth it to me.

Wow I didn’t even notice the Confusion nerf in WvW. This is not encouraging … according to my calculations I can expect to max out at roughly 2000 condition damage, which in turn means:

Confusion does 215 damage per skill use per stack
Bleeding does 142.5 damage per second per stack
Burning does 828 damage per second

A full-out glamour build would apply one stack of confusion on glamour cast (thanks to Blinding Befuddlement + Dazzling Glamours), and it would apply another stack of confusion on exiting the glamour field, and that’s it. There may be a bit more confusion coming out of the Scepter, but it won’t be in AoE. This amount of confusion damage after going all-in on condition damage is absolutely depressing. I have little else to gain from condition damage – I realize the staff is a great support weapon, and it is based off condition damage as well, but I simply never swap to it since tagging targets with a Staff in zergs is a frustrating experience. All those resources going into condition damage for so little actual damage. Meh.

I think at this point it’s probably better to go into Power-based builds instead while still having the glamour fields … Glamour Mastery (-20% cooldown on glamours) and possibly Temporal Enchanter (+2s duration on glamours) would probably be enough; those fields don’t get more powerful with higher condition damage after all.

I’ll have another think about it … thanks for comments!

If you really want to keep up the burning (is it really worth it?) equip and activate Signet of Fire. The downtime should be easily compensated for by your weapon skills.

Bumping this old thread. My Mesmer may have been level 80 for a long time, but she still doesn’t have max equipment and I want to get some opinions before I commit to getting that equipment since it’s expensive and I don’t have that much free $ available.

I notice that when I’m alone, I can generally not die simply by remaining alert and equipping Blink, Decoy, Mass Invisibility and Veil, so that shouldn’t be much of a problem. On the other hand when zerging I change to Blink, Null Field, Feedback and Time Warp. Veil’s still good and I swap it in every now and then when the situation demands (replacing Feedback). Blink on the other hand is absolutely essential to staying alive and I cannot give it up. That resolves the utilities – seems quite straightfoward to me and every Mesmer will be running some variant of this, barring some specialized builds. For weapons I simply camp the Greatsword and never swap. Even if I can see the fight coming and switch the second weaponset to Staff, I still never swap. The Greatsword is just too good.

I notice that since Warriors + Guardians are extremely common yet resist direct damage, that perhaps condition damage is the way to go. Furthermore, since I will usually have two Glamour fields and since Mesmers have confusion traits that go well with it, that might be the best option (apparently confusion is great in 1v1s too).

Intended idea:

Perplexity runes x6
CPT gear: condition damage, precision, toughness. Getting toughness over vitality since from my limited trials so far it’s been the more useful stat (thanks Pyroatheist for the suggestion).
Greatsword + Scepter / Focus. GS is necessary since in my opinion it’s the only effective weapon in a zerg. Focus is good even in a zerg since it provides the swiftness necessary if we’re dying and I need to run, or if they’re dying and we’re chasing. Scepter feels better than Sword since I’ll almost never be in melee range anyway. I might swap to Sword if I’m PvDooring, I suppose.

Traits -
Domination 20: Empowered Illusions (+15% illusion damage) and Confusing Enchantments (confusion on exiting a glamour field)
Dueling 15: Far Reaching Manipulations (enhanced range on Blink).
Inspiration 10: Glamour Mastery (reduced cooldown on Glamour fields)
Illusions 15: Master of Misdirection (confusion lasts longer). Illusionists Celerity compensates not having GS training.

10 points left – not sure if +2s duration on the Glamour fields is worth it since people tend to run out of it quite fast. If it isn’t, then I’d put it into -20% cooldown on Blink, since Blink is just that good.

Problems and questions:

1) This is the big one. I’m not sure either if the entire idea is even worth it. After all Healing Rain / Shake it Off / Save Yourselves etc just flat out removes conditions in an AoE. I have little experience with the typical zerg builds as well and don’t know if they pack enough condition removal to make this idea pointless. I know when I’m zerging I typically don’t have trouble with conditions, but that’s probably more a consequence of me not joining the melee train than anything else. Anyone know?
2) Assuming the idea is worth pursuing I’m actually not sure if this is a condition or a power build. It feels more like a condition build, but all that condition damage does nothing if I’m just autoattacking with the Greatsword (well, a bit of bleed stacks). If it is the latter Power / Precision / Toughness gear would make more sense.
3) Not having Deceptive Evasion really sucks but what to do?
4) Goes without question that one of the two sigils in the Scepter / Focus set would be a Sigil of Energy (50% endurance on swap). For the remaining two slots though, Sigil of Malice (condition damage) or Sigil of Bursting (+condition duration), or something else?
5) 30 into Illusions with Dazzling Glamour (blind on Glamour) and Blinding Befuddlement (confusion on blind) might be worth it. Is it? Illusions 30 without Illusionary Persona would be weird, but the only use for Persona I can see is to get off a free Distortion, which I find I generally don’t need (Blink suffices to keep me alive).

Thanks in advance for comments!

Upham.6137:

Jeydra.4386:

I call that stalking. Malicious stalking. A moderator’s since deleted the post and the disagreement’s since blown over, but for obvious reasons I don’t want him to be able to tell what I’m doing in-game. This kind of thing shouldn’t even be allowed to happen in the first place.

Sounds like a serious case of forum warrioring and I agree they shouldn’t be able to see what you are doing if you don’t want to, but he’s not a stalker if he made all that up, becase he didn’t get that info from staring at his friendlist, he just added you and lied about everything else.
If they changed the block feature at least he wouldn’t be able to say he monitored you when he actually didn’t.

After he made that post I called him a liar. He didn’t respond, but he didn’t take me off friend’s either. Shortly afterwards two more people, also from Blackgate and who spend a lot of time in WvW, added me on friend’s.

I don’t see any other word to describe this other than “stalking”.

@SoPP, I’d transfer off Blackgate if I could, but it does cost 1800 gems that I can’t afford.

I thought you were talking about having a Mesmer open portal, have the zerg run into the enemy and then portal out before the enemy can hit back. I’ve certainly not seen that before – 60s duration on the portal may not let it work. But that would be new meta … you’re talking about hiding and portal’ing an allied zerg into a keep though, that’s a very well known tactic and has been around since before I can remember.

Mesmers can’t perma-stealth. Prismatic Understanding, Decoy, Veil, The Prestige and Mass Invisibility still leaves a large gap in the stealth duration. A dedicated hunt for the Mesmer will kill him. You just have to sweep for him.

Deli.1302:

Jeydra.4386:

I’ve never heard commanders call for banner rotations, chill rotations, etc, on TS. If your guild does, more power to you. Until it becomes commonplace on TS however, I still see no reason to log on to it (not to mention I play Mesmer in WvW, which means I don’t do any of those things).

Sounds like a terrible server to be in. Mesmers have rotations for veil, timewarp, and null field.

Tell that to the parrot. I use all of Veil, Time Warp, Null Field, Portal and Feedback without having to be told to.

With Staff you should definitely run 30 Fire, because Persisting Flames greatly boosts one of your main damage skills (Lava Font).

The rest of the traits are largely up to you. Personally I would not give up Healing Ripple since it’s so strong defensively, and since I’m going 15 into Water I spend the extra five points to get Cleansing Wave as well. That leaves 20 points to go into whatever blows your hair. If you’re interested in dealing as much damage as possible, Earth 10 would be good, and the rest can go into Air for the extra Precision / Crit Damage as well as Bolt to the Heart. Otherwise you can go 20 Arcana for Elemental Attunement, as well as Blasting Staff, or mix and manage whichever traits you most desire.

Personally I use 30/10/10/20/0, which has the extra advantage of working nicely with S/D (my other weaponset of choice).

Upham.6137:

You sure you aren’t overreacting?
Like I’ve had people trash talking me and sending mails and all, but I’m far from thinking they are stalkers.

And if they can see where your character is, and which character you are playing what’s the worst thing they can do? Unless you are doing something you shouldn’t (exploiting/scamming/botting) there should be no reason to worry about it.

After a disagreement with a part of Blackgate’s WvW community, I had this guy add me to friend’s, then post here on this forum saying that he had been monitoring me for a week (he’d only done that for a day), that I had transferred to Blackgate only two weeks ago (not true), never log on to Teamspeak (not true), and play 30 minutes of WvW a week (not true). The last accusation was especially evil since in that particular week I’d played for over ten hours. But still some people believed him.

I call that stalking. Malicious stalking. A moderator’s since deleted the post and the disagreement’s since blown over, but for obvious reasons I don’t want him to be able to tell what I’m doing in-game. This kind of thing shouldn’t even be allowed to happen in the first place.

Boonprot.6274:

My guild runs with 15-25 players a night, mostly in the 15-20 players range. We typically have no issues wiping zergs double our size unless it’s a few select guilds. Even then, we can typically mow through quite a few of them before we get overrun. I promise you that we couldn’t accomplish this without VOIP. Why? You miss every single bit of micro that the driver/rest of the zerg is trying to coordinate. Book rotations, banner rotations, water/chill/regroup rotations. Line placement, static placement, hammer stuns, immob bombs, etc. It’s impossible for all of this information to be relayed via chat in a timely enough manner so it can be taken advantage of. This is why VOIP is so important.

I’ve never heard commanders call for banner rotations, chill rotations, etc, on TS. If your guild does, more power to you. Until it becomes commonplace on TS however, I still see no reason to log on to it (not to mention I play Mesmer in WvW, which means I don’t do any of those things). It’s strange though to see that you’re mentioning chat in these rotations. Nobody is going to take a timeout to type during a fight, but I would’ve thought you’d have worked out the rotation beforehand. I do see commanders call for regroup, but those are easy to spot without TS.

I just played ~2 hours on EB against JQ and SoR, both of which fielded large zergs. This time I died once. The two commanders who played died a combined three times, although one of those deaths was undoubtedly the commander going on YOLO mode (he must have been able to see that we were outnumbered and getting hit by Treb + AC fire, but he went anyway). I also got enough kills to finish Daily Kills (50 required), without partying.

There is no question that in my experience TS is overrated, and the idea that not being on TS makes one a rally bot or causes one to fail to get bags is a myth.

@Immolator – Two thumbs up! Should I ever see you commanding on whatever server, I’ll be sure to join your zerg.

Rennoko.5731:

Jeydra.4386:

Aberrant.6749:

Yes you should be able to win a 1v3 if you outskill your opponents that much. They already have a number advantage (3x damage, cc, etc.). Why do 3 people need yet another advantage on top of that? Shouldn’t they learn to play instead of relying on a crutch?

Indeed, why should they? In 1v3 cases, let’s restrict the side with 3 to only using autoattacks.

Simply, you didn’t win the 1v3. You downed, but did not kill. What’s so different about that from “I got them to 50%, but not 0%”?

Because at 50percent hp I cannot spam f on my allies to heal them for ludicrous amounts of life.

The 3 players have every right to use any and all skills at their disposal before their hp reaches zero, at which point the downed mechanic is far too forgiving for the downed player and more so for certain downed classes

Too bad?

That’s like saying Mist Form, Distortion, Death Shroud, etc, are far too forgiving and should be removed.

Aberrant.6749:

Yes you should be able to win a 1v3 if you outskill your opponents that much. They already have a number advantage (3x damage, cc, etc.). Why do 3 people need yet another advantage on top of that? Shouldn’t they learn to play instead of relying on a crutch?

Indeed, why should they? In 1v3 cases, let’s restrict the side with 3 to only using autoattacks.

Simply, you didn’t win the 1v3. You downed, but did not kill. What’s so different about that from “I got them to 50%, but not 0%”?

Eh, are you complaining that you can’t win 1v3s because the downed state exists? It’s a 1v3. Are you even supposed to be able to win that? What if I complained I don’t deal enough damage because I can’t win 1v100 fights before they killed me?

Also if you have 8 people on ACs and down people, it’s hard for them to get ressed because the AC fire is murderous on the would-be ressers. Even if they do get ressed they will be quite low on HP for a while. If an allied zerg pushes with AC backup will generally win the fight.

I have no problems with the mechanic and I view it as just the way the game works. It’s like how characters in GW2 can’t fly or how each downed state has four skills. The game’s built that way. No complaints.

Here’s a question for you BoonProt. When I played GW1’s PvP seriously I could see a big and immediate difference between having TS and not. There is no substitute; everyone has to be on TS. In fact not only do people have to be on TS, they need to have microphones and be willing to use their voices. In WvW however I’ve both played with TS and played without it. I can see almost no difference. I still do the things I do and I could’ve done it just as well without TS (in zergs, anyway). Why?

nirvana.8245:

Jeydra.4386:

Kai.9182:

Jeydra.4386:

Kai.9182:

dadada.1306:

Kai.9182:

Always gonna have rallybots follow the big blue dorito just feint push chokes and get them killed.

And you’ll become known as the commander who’s always getting people who follow him killed. I like it… weeds out the lame commanders.

Well the ones in teamspeak don’t die and you become the hilarious commander. kapeesh rallybot?

You’ll quickly become known as a troll and people will simply refuse to follow you. After that you’ll be like “guys I need everyone on me” and “if you’re not on the commander you’re doing it wrong” and “omg why do we have so many PVERS who don’t know how to follow commander on this server?!” and then ragebuy 1800 gems to transfer elsewhere.

Or you wipe them after with the group in teamspeak and not be bad.

Yeah, wipe an 80-man zerg with a 40-man TS-coordinated group, I’ve yet to see that happen.

I did it with my guild quite a few times tonight with 30-35. Do coordinated guild groups count? Or are we just talking pug groups?

Read a post I made later.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Regardless of the specifics of the OP’s situation, I agree: the game should only allow you to treat as “friends” when both players are on each other’s friends lists.

• No information about location, APs, or logon/logoff.
• No support on the leaderboards.

“Follower” should be renamed to “Requests to be added to friends list.”

Technically knowing that someone else is blocking you is information too.

I prefer the GW1 system, where if you ignore someone you appear offline to that someone (and that someone only). He can only tell you are ignoring him if he stumbles across you in the game world, and then attempts to whisper you.

Is it just me or does BG have a problem with JQ? It seems like every time I log on, BG is fighting JQ and leaving SoR alone.

FrownyClown.8402:

oZii.2864:

Yea not sure what lightning tested it did say he didn’t have good success with it. Perhaps it is meant for S/F with earth 5 invuln on focus you can be immune to physical and condition damage and have a nice size window to put good damage down.

its helped me a lot in tpvp, but necros change up their build a little bit and they are actually able to kill me easier because i have little condi removal. I have killed pure condi necros easily with it.

So bring some condition removal? Like, they changed their build up a little bit so they are actually able to kill you easier, why can’t you change your build up a little bit so you’re actually able to kill them easier?

Nanyetah Elohi.4852:

we get sick of watching you die stupidly. really. Brings everybody down.

That’s what the rally bot and pug slurs are about. People are trying to discourage the get killed supidly behavior. Voice communications can help a lot with that.

I was with this zerg yesterday playing against JQ. I didn’t log on to TS. Throughout over two hours of play, I didn’t die once, but two different commanders (and presumably the other people on TS) died three times.

It’s not typical, but hey, “supidly behavior”.

I concur … if you choose this particular monster, you also have to deal with the consequences of the choice. FGS and FB are both Elementalist skills and therefore should be fair to use. After all, players are already using things like Hounds of Balthazar and Lich Form. If you don’t want them to be used, choose some other mob against which either skill isn’t ideal.

phantomlord.3417:

Jeydra.4386:

Kai.9182:

Jeydra.4386:

Kai.9182:

dadada.1306:

Kai.9182:

Always gonna have rallybots follow the big blue dorito just feint push chokes and get them killed.

And you’ll become known as the commander who’s always getting people who follow him killed. I like it… weeds out the lame commanders.

Well the ones in teamspeak don’t die and you become the hilarious commander. kapeesh rallybot?

You’ll quickly become known as a troll and people will simply refuse to follow you. After that you’ll be like “guys I need everyone on me” and “if you’re not on the commander you’re doing it wrong” and “omg why do we have so many PVERS who don’t know how to follow commander on this server?!” and then ragebuy 1800 gems to transfer elsewhere.

Or you wipe them after with the group in teamspeak and not be bad.

Yeah, wipe an 80-man zerg with a 40-man TS-coordinated group, I’ve yet to see that happen.

Watch this video AGG was running about 25-27 people destroying blob after blob :P
http://www.twitch.tv/aggression_gaming/c/3360450

OK, let’s rephrase: it’s impossible to beat a zerg twice one’s size that is not consisted of lots of uplevels, is equally buffed with food, and is aware of your zerg’s presence before the first spell is cast, no matter how coordinated on TS your zerg may be. If you have a video to the contrary, I’d love to see it. Jang Gun’s a great commander, but a couple of days ago we ran into just that on EB in BG vs. JQ, and he couldn’t do it.

I watched the first few minutes of the fight you linked and while it’s impressive, the first attack had the element of surprise, and after that the other zerg were never coordinated enough to cut losses and regroup. Also it really is not hard to play like that, just do like the guy in the video did: call target on commander and then keep following him. I’d be quite confident of surviving a fight like that without dying, even without TS, although I wouldn’t join the melee train since I don’t have nearly enough defense to survive the damage.

One more thing … I’ll say again that to play well without TS still requires some people to be on TS and follow the commander. If a server plays entirely without TS, they’d be at a gross disadvantage. But if half the population is on TS, the other half can tack onto the first half if they play well. I will log on to TS if it’s clear that there aren’t enough people on TS to play without it (or if the situation is dire enough that we need every advantage to stabilize), but if there clearly is a core of people who are already coordinated on TS, I generally don’t feel the need to log on.

@Above – the very first time a player sees the commander do something like call for Veil, Water Field, AoE on Arrow carts, etc, then yes he needs that kind of detail. After that however … if the player is thinking, he should also learn how to do all those things without being microed. Are you not able to figure out to put the Static Field, the water field, etc, where it is without the commander saying so?

Kai’s idea is to get all the friendly militia killed, and then kill the enemy group. That’s not the same as what you describe. You can kill a 50-60+ man group with 20-30 people on TS plus friendly militia, yes (also if you had ~30 militia in addition to the people on TS, you’d be at equal numbers, and you can’t claim you won an outnumbered fight). You can’t kill that same 50-60+ man group with 20-30 people on TS and nobody else, at least not without something like heavy siege backup.

I don’t know what goes on in SoR’s TS, but if it’s anything like BG’s, it’s perfectly possible to play well without it.

Kai.9182:

Jeydra.4386:

Kai.9182:

dadada.1306:

Kai.9182:

Always gonna have rallybots follow the big blue dorito just feint push chokes and get them killed.

And you’ll become known as the commander who’s always getting people who follow him killed. I like it… weeds out the lame commanders.

Well the ones in teamspeak don’t die and you become the hilarious commander. kapeesh rallybot?

You’ll quickly become known as a troll and people will simply refuse to follow you. After that you’ll be like “guys I need everyone on me” and “if you’re not on the commander you’re doing it wrong” and “omg why do we have so many PVERS who don’t know how to follow commander on this server?!” and then ragebuy 1800 gems to transfer elsewhere.

Or you wipe them after with the group in teamspeak and not be bad.

Yeah, wipe an 80-man zerg with a 40-man TS-coordinated group, I’ve yet to see that happen.

Anierna.6918:

3) summoning ice bow prior to engagement, although I’m not sure about that. The Giant may not have a large enough hitbox. I’ll have to test.

The Ice Bow does around 50% of the Giant’s HP. You should definitely use it. It’s why I tied DEKeyzToChaos’s S/D times without using food: I had Ice Bow, he didn’t.

juno.1840:

1. Stacking buffs at range is situationally more advantageous and is excluded on D/D weapon set regardless of situation.

2. stacking swiftness with Wave at range isn’t any different for entering combat than stacking swiftness locally with the old PBAoE Wave.

3. It’s a nerf with regards to execution time depending upon your skill with mouse-keyboard operation. Since Wave is instant you can cast while doing something else. Now you have to slip some click operations in there while doing that.

Maybe, but it is STILL a buff and the extra possibilities outweigh the extra execution time.

Seems to me that only the people who aren’t willing to play better and aren’t willing to switch off D/D or D/F or whatever particular build they were using prior to the patch are complaining.

You could just begin with an Ice Bow and you’d kill it faster …

Linnael.1069:

Besides, no amount of better is ever going to turn “press button, aim, release” into faster than “press button”.

No, but it’s enough to reduce the difference to a tiny fraction of a second. Combining that with the other effects of Arcane Wave being ranged (like its ability to stack Might or hit targets without having to go into melee range, or its ability to stack Swiftness without also entering combat) I’m inclined to view this as a buff. It’s not a major one, but it’s a buff nonetheless.

Kai.9182:

dadada.1306:

Kai.9182:

Always gonna have rallybots follow the big blue dorito just feint push chokes and get them killed.

And you’ll become known as the commander who’s always getting people who follow him killed. I like it… weeds out the lame commanders.

Well the ones in teamspeak don’t die and you become the hilarious commander. kapeesh rallybot?

You’ll quickly become known as a troll and people will simply refuse to follow you. After that you’ll be like “guys I need everyone on me” and “if you’re not on the commander you’re doing it wrong” and “omg why do we have so many PVERS who don’t know how to follow commander on this server?!” and then ragebuy 1800 gems to transfer elsewhere.

Fay.2735:

Jeydra.4386:

Bump!

I now have three stalkers, and the amount of time I have to spend appearing invisible is ridiculous.

If people are harassing you and you explicitly told them to stop contacting/following you. Take screenshots demonstrating their behaviour and send it to support. That way they can determine whether these people should be banned or not. At least as far as I’m aware harassment is a ban worthy offense depending on each situation.

Well they’re not harassing me directly, they’re just monitoring what I’m doing and then posting their observations on the forums. Apparently the first stalker was concerned he can’t monitor me throughout the 24 hours in a day, so he enlisted some buddies to help out. I reported the first stalker to ANet support and got the response above.

Are you sure it’s ban worthy to continue to follow someone even though that someone specifically asks you not to follow him / her?

Lostwingman.5034:

Jeydra.4386:

What’s wrong with Arcane Wave being ranged?

Might stack combo rotations are gutted.

No they weren’t. The player just has to play better.

My opinion -

BG is currently the most populous (and strongest) server in WvW. BG is strong enough to roll over every other server except JQ, which is able to put up some resistance but BG still generally wins. If winning is your only priority, BG is the best choice. BG also has many Oceanic players and almost 24/7 coverage. At the moment queue times are generally nonexistent unless you want to play on Eternal Battlegrounds, which is usually queued. During the WvW season BG were way more often queued but it looks like people are taking a break. I’m not sure what the queues will look like in a few months’ time.

If you don’t want to play for the current strongest server, then JQ is the natural second choice. As far as I can tell their coverage isn’t as strong as BG’s, but Oceanic timezone is quite packed and is in fact JQ’s strongest timezone. Third strongest server right now appears to be SoR, but I’d refrain from moving to SoR because SoR appears to be suffering some community problems. They simply stopped showing up in the WvW season, then one of their biggest WvW guilds transferred off it, and the server appears to be in decline. They’re still populous enough to be 3rd or 4th overall, but if SoR is your intended destination I’d wait till the dust settles a bit before moving.

The T1 servers are usually able to field zergs on multiple maps. Before I transferred off SoS a few months ago, the same does not hold true for the T2 servers, and even then they can’t get any single map queued. That doesn’t mean they don’t have enough players to achieve something, but against another T2 server you’ll be playing with a slightly lower population in any given map, while against a T1 server you’ll always be fighting outnumbered. If you don’t mind (or enjoy) that kind of game, then go ahead and pick a T2 server.

Finally there’s PvE. I’ve been on both SoS and BG and frankly I couldn’t tell much of a difference (although I know quite a lot of SoS players who guest to BG regularly to do world events). I imagine the same applies to all the other servers. If you need to you can always guest as well, so it shouldn’t be much of a concern.

I really thought we would lose Valley a couple of times considering how fast the Lord went down and the fact there was no siege in the keep, but being so close to spawn is a huge advantage! Another memorable part was how BG’s commander would yell “YOLO” on TS every time he pushed. He had so few people with him and JQ zerg was so big, it really did feel like YOLO.

Snorcha.7586:

Try destacking your server then you might see more people in the WvW… At the moment, it’s kinda pointless.

I tried but my server yelled at me and called me names

What’s wrong with Arcane Wave being ranged? You can hit more reliably hit more targets with it now, and that’s good, no? You might object “to taking longer to cast”, although if you simply play better the extra “delay” is a fraction of a second. My only problem with it is that it doesn’t work well underwater.

Arcane Brilliance to 900 range would be a buff for that skill. No other comments on it.

I voted 4. I find it’s not amazing per se but it’s a solid addition to the lineup of heals. The fact that it’s an offensive heal that doubles as a blast finisher means it’s preferable for some situations already.

If you can’t be bothered playing better, how about change your gear to add some defensive stats, keep up Rock Barrier, equip Signet of Toughness or perhaps Mist Form and Armour of Earth, use defensive food?

Scintillating play on EB earlier today JQ. I thoroughly enjoyed it, although we got 2v1’ed, Valley inner was breached a couple of times and JQ zerg wiped BG zerg over and over again to the point mapchat had a lot of complaints about people not following the commander, not being on TS, uplevels, and even how we were playing with pugs vs. 2-3 guilds. A few days ago it was complaints about how bad JQ were and how difficult one must try to die against JQ zerg! At least nobody complained about there not being a queue on EB, since there was one.

I want to play against that JQ zerg more often. Any ideas where / when the players in that zerg will most likely be around?

Second looks!

S/D (at least the variant I ran, with 10 Arcana) appears to have been overall nerfed by this patch. Losing Elemental Attunement and requiring 20 points into Water for Cleansing Wave isn’t good at all. The only significant upside is the lowered cooldown on the attunements, but it doesn’t compensate very well: not having instant-protection available, especially to channel Churning Earth, is not good at all. Still the lowered cooldown on attunements mean the damage skills in Fire are more often available. So far it feels like a slight nerf to me, although it may have to do with inertia over not having Elemental Attunement.

Staff appears to be the weaponset that was buffed the most by the patch, although it’s an indirect buff. Lower cooldowns means Staff can switch to the other attunements more often without giving up too much DPS. The other benefit is Arcane Brilliance being a 25s cooldown (same as Glyph of Elemental Harmony) Blast Finisher. That nicely shores up Staff’s lack of blast finishers. It also gives Staff the ability to heal a lot very quickly: switch to Water -> casts Healing Ripple -> Healing Rain and / or Geyser -> Arcane Brilliance -> Arcane Wave. Now if only Staff’s skills in the other attunements weren’t so bad …

I’ve not seriously tried D/X yet. Anyone who uses D/X a lot can comment on how it went?

Bump!

I now have three stalkers, and the amount of time I have to spend appearing invisible is ridiculous.

Why should the commander to tell that the Elementalist needs to cast Cleansing Wave now, but not the Elementalist? Why should the Elementalist miss Cleansing Wave anyway? It’s not like it’s that hard to aim.

I generally will not fight open field when outnumbered unless I have advantages behind me (siege backup, I’m pre-stacked enemy isn’t, etc). Perhaps TS might help win more equal fights, but I think it’s rather foolhardy to try in the first place. Also as I said, if I get the feeling that we need that extra oomph that TS provides (not often), I’ll log on to it.

First looks!

Elemental Attunement is awesome but putting twenty points into Arcana isn’t appealing when it’s the only trait worth having (Blasting Staff etc are also good but I change weapons way too often to use them). Besides, attunement cooldowns just got buffed.

Nerf to Cleansing Wave is bad but with Healing Ripple still good and only five more points from Healing Ripple to the Master tier, 20 Water is probably worth it.

Conjurer’s move is fine and dandy but it’s still competing with some very strong traits out there (-20% Fire recharge, +10% Fire damage) and so I probably still won’t use it.

Conjure FGS buff is great! I remember how hairy it was when I was summoning FGS against Liadri, if only this had been changed then.

Beyond that, I think we’ll have to wait and see. I’ll probably begin with 30/10/10/20/0, and work from there.