Guild Wars 2

Captain Obvious.6951:

So while spamming one button may take less skill than having to hit 2 or 3 buttons like an Engi, it’s how the class was designed. Don’t fault me for playing a character as it was designed to be played.

I main thief in pvp. The only skill I “spam” is auto attack, which for dagger/pistol is pretty much the best damage you can deal. Heartseeker is “better” but blowing initiative for top damage is a waste of a ton of utility.

No, spamming exactly one skill isn’t how it is “meant” to be played. That is such an asinine declaration for a profession mechanic that is all about using skills tactically.

So once again I’m back to my point of not liking skills in a PvP game that force me to not attack. What am I supposed to do… run off for 5-10 seconds and ‘wait it out’? Do you realize how dumb that sounds? 5-10 seconds of not being able to attack someone can be the difference in living or dying, winning and losing a fight or a pvp match.

You’re a thief and you’ve spent this entire topic talking about guardian’s access to retaliation over anything else. Sure, others get access to retaliation, but apparently not enough to merit your attention.

Do you realize what Guardian’s position in the pecking order is? They are the hard counter to thief. DH even goes a step further on that.

You are legitimately complaining about a boon that only damages your skill-less playstyle, specifically.

Retaliation is punishing fast attacking heroes, but is all but useless against slow hard hitting ones. Do you realize how dumb THAT sounds?

It’s called combat design. Squirtle beats Charmander, Charmander beats Bulbasaur, Bulbasaur beats Squirtle.

Retaliation beats multi-hitters and quickness, Burst beats Retaliation, Aegis beats Burst, multi-hitters and quickness beat Aegis.

Captain Obvious.6951:

And of all these options all of them only last a couple of seconds, and none of them can even come close to doing an entire life bar of damage back to the enemy player.

One skill on one profession in the game is capable of this. Okay, three on one profession counting your shortbow point. Everyone else has cooldowns, and the fact that you pretend initiative isn’t instead a fancy kind of global cooldown doesn’t change the fact that you’re dying to a boon designed to counter your playstyle.

But putting a boon on and standing still while the enemy kills them self isn’t reactionary at all. In fact it’s just the opposite of that. It’s not reactionary at all. You just press a button, get a boon on, and now what… a player is forced to run off and ‘wait it out’? I mean cmon listen to yourself.

The entire alternative is the enemy dies to your Unload spam. Yes, as others said, you should be playing like a thief. You’re not a duelist, Thief is all about ganking, outmaneuvering, and robbing people of their numbers advantage. If there’s one enemy you can’t kill, that’s supposed to be your team’s job to deal with.

Firing off auto attacks into a crowd on a point and using skill 2 to drop cluster bombs into the crowd I’ve almost killed myself doing that as well.

This still isn’t your role. Yeah, cluster bomb can be a good utility for that purpose sometimes, but as clearly demonstrated, the circumstances must be right. The best thing you could do in the team fight is to put one enemy in down state and then book it to the next point. And if they have retaliation? Do something about the retaliation or just move on.

Again what am I supposed to do against some bunker guardians and engi’s with retaliation on? GO RUN AWAY AND WAIT IT OUT? Letting them control the point and win the game? That isn’t reactionary game play at all.

Guardians/DHs are your hard counter. Do not engage.
Engineers have really good sustain. +1 someone else on an engie or do not engage.

By the way? Most engineers will have reflect on their toolbelt. P/P and SB are 100% susceptible to reflect. Between that, Retaliation, and a bunch of other horrible things, Engie may as well be a soft counter to your specific weaponset.

Sometimes your reactions need to be about the big picture.

Stop running pistol/pistol.

Captain Obvious.6951:

6 unloads in 4.5 seconds

I agree with a couple people above me – pressing 3 a whole bunch may be a demonstration of just about the least amount of skill imaginable.

You want to stay on topic? Alright – no, I don’t think retaliation needs to be scaled down/nerfed. Why? Because Retaliation here is doing exactly what it should be doing – that is, it’s punishing spammy gameplay, and is an active, direct counter to the specific kind of move that lasts longer than a dodge roll.

You used Unload 6 times, so let’s break down the poor choices(before we even touch on pistol/pistol being a really terrible weapon set):

-The enemy has Retaliation.
-You fired off Unload #1. Mistake 1, as you shouldn’t have done this knowing the damage at stake. (IF Retaliation was put up reactively, I can let this slide.)
-Seeing the retaliation damage, you did not choose to break the skill or disengage, so you took full Retaliation damage. Mistake 2.
-The enemy still has Retaliation.
-You fired off Unload #2. Mistake 3, as by now you should have been VERY aware Retaliation was in play.
-Repeat 4 more times for a total of 12 mistakes.

The fact that this game has dodge rolls should tip you off that this is a reaction-based game, and that doesn’t just hold true for incoming attacks. If your outgoing attacks are a poor choice, the onus is on you to cancel them or have a contingency.

Here’s what I suggest, even though you’re keen to ignore advice in this thread:
1. Have Stow Weapon on a convenient hotkey. If you’re using WASD like I do, I find Z to be sufficient. If retaliation goes up during your burst, you want to hit Stow Weapon and disengage(get away) from the enemy asap, especially if you’re running zerk – which you are, since you have no HP.
2. Consider marauder or even valkyrie(assuming these are both still in pvp, i haven’t looked lately) amulet until you have the basic skill necessary to actually deal with Retaliation. If you think that they’re bad because they’re not meta, then consider that the meta doesn’t have problems with retaliation.
3. If you must use pistol/pistol, worry less about how much damage you can do in 4.5 seconds, and instead focus on how to bait the enemy’s defensive cooldowns out. As a thief – no matter what weapon – initiative is practically your blood. Run out of initiative and you will be missing a lot of your survivability.
4. And even still, consider the area around you. Sometimes it’s enough to simply bring an enemy down to half health and force them to disengage in order to swing a teamfight. If the enemy is smart, they’ll realize that if they’re at half health and you stop spamming, then your initiative is building back up for the next volley. This may get them to LoS you, but there’s only a few classes that can continue to pressure you from safety(mesmers and rangers come to mind).

And finally,

5. Don’t use pistol/pistol. As demonstrated, it’s comically easy to counter, between retaliation, reflects, line of sight, long blocks, invulnerability…

PvP is not a dps race. Sometimes the best weapon is a little slower.

2 queue max is ruining ranked, I agree!

… It should be solo only. And ATs should be more frequent(I suspect they will be once they smooth out all the weird bugs they’ve had with tournaments stalling and people getting stuck in them), and not divorced from the primary grind in PvP(ascended/legendary armors). I’d also like to see a streamlined lfg tool for ATs; you can bet that uncurated parties won’t win, but it will be one more option to fill out parties. (Ideally some small pip bonus for being an LFG party would be nice. Nothing to make losing a viable strategy, but enough to say ‘thanks for your time in making this tournament a little more competitive.’)

But yeah. Remove duo from ranked. Duo is just one more imbalance that throws off the matchmaker, and improperly skews rating.

I’d actually be curious to see a 4v4 ranked ladder that is only duos though, that said. No new maps, just an experiment in composition balance.

I +1 the sentiment that asks how you take 13k retal… and Guards with 40k hp… I…

No, we’re talking about some other game. Right? We have to be. Either that or there’s some traits I don’t know about that a;sp cause damage on hit. OR the OP is mistaking confusion for Retaliation. Hard to mistake if you have condition floaters enabled, but I can definitely see a (particularly nasty) confusion burst potentially doing something like that… paired with other conditions… … But this is basically just Mesmer territory, not guardian.

The only times I’ve ever been wrecked by Retaliation are against various PvE bosses. I almost never notice Retal in PvP; it’s one of the boons I am least afraid of. Fury, 15+ Might, Protection, Aegis? Concerning. Retaliation? pffffffffffft.

I feel like all we need is for cleanses to convert conditions into a temporary single-condition immunity for a few seconds. No stacking, no removability, just a way to really punish condi users who use their burst before cleanse for just a second or two. So if I cleanse off Poison, I am guaranteed a second or two of breathing room for healing.

This also has a side-effect of making it obvious when a cleanse goes off, which is otherwise a very passive thing.

I also feel like all the non-poison damaging conditions should be a little more meaningful than “Bleeding but with different common durations and base damage.” Which is to say that, like Poison, they should have a secondary effect. Obviously, balance around that change should happen especially for condi overload professions; I’m proposing a more meaningful condi experience, not just saying “condi needs buff lol”. By diversifying what condis do, we can better feel their effects and later provide feedback more compelling than “condi is bad.” (Torment and Confusion, by virtue of being from the days before all damaging conditions stacked, are a decent start, but not everything needs to be extra conditional damage. There’s plenty of little things that can have more interesting effects on the game, like reducing movement speed, cutting damage dealt/cleave damage, adding personally-undesirable effects to attacks, and so on.)

ZeftheWicked.3076:

2. Access to outside points way to easy from mid. Guys from mid are free to invade your close using a nice shortcut while guys on the outside have to take the long road around to mid. Unless AGAIN you have teleports or shadowsteps…

Not every map needs, or should have, an identical approach between points. If we’re stuck with conquest, as long as both sides are fairly even in how things work, the point to point routes should be different from map to map.

Personally, I really like Colosseum. Granted, I’m a mesmer/thief most of the time, but it’s enjoyable and isn’t bogged down by severely overcomplicated mechanics.

The only change I’d like to see at least to start though is some encouragement for opposing shield and sword users to fight each other. Maybe something like one inflicting damage on the other makes both of them immune to all ally and enemy intervention until one of them falls(maybe teleport them to a part of the map just for this purpose?). I also don’t like that a team can have both buffs; it makes snowballs even more snowbally, where I feel the map mechanic should be a snowball breaker.

I also in general agree that Shield needs a buff. Really, it should be an exact mirror to Sword; 20% protection(incl condis), auto-res for allies… I also feel like both Shield and Sword should only apply their effects in like a 600 radius. They should stand out on the battlefield as being capable of turning a single fight at a point around, rather than being a huge personal buff and a decent party-wide buff. This will make it so that thieves and mesmers certainly still can grab it, but given their generally more lone wolf nature, they’d either have to change how they rotate or defer it to another member of the group.

phalaris.5134:

Kadj.6725:

That… honestly sounds like a bug, you might want to report it formally. I assume you’ve double and triple checked that you have the correct armor set for the upgrade you’re performing? (WvW armor is incompatible with the PvP upgrade for example.)

I have four Ascended sets from PvP, which take on the names from each stat selection, such as Grymm Svaard (Marauder Stat Selection).

I double checked and none of my precursor sets would work because I have selected already the stats. Very disappointing tho.

Yet I don’t know if that’s intentional or simply a bug in the mystic forge!?

Read the top of that tooltip, dude. Appearence is completely irrelevant, here, the Svaard thing refers to the original item, not the stats. And if you originally got it from PvP, then that means you reforged it through the forge to change its stats. That effectively destroys the original item and gives you the PvE crafted set in the desired stats.

That… honestly sounds like a bug, you might want to report it formally. I assume you’ve double and triple checked that you have the correct armor set for the upgrade you’re performing? (WvW armor is incompatible with the PvP upgrade for example.)

Buyer’s remorse is a time-honored tradition in MMOs. You’re not getting tickets back; get back in the arena or don’t get legendary armor. In the future, don’t spend currency on something if you’re not prepared for that currency to have more value at a later date.

Rodzynald.5897:

It might lead to teams evening the score so that everyone is happy, but let’s be really honest in here. Would people really waste their time and even out the overall score just to let the one team win in the end… like giving up the fight?

I actually thought about it a bit since my previous post and when I think about it, I don’t know if point sharing would even be that popular. It would be a minor timesave in the end only for those who don’t even want to try, and directly harm the efficiency of it all for the ones that do.

It would take a massive coordinated guild’s efforts to really pull it off, and compared to pve that’s probably not the most efficient way to farm money once everyone’s reached byzantine and hit their limit on the season’s armor as a result. Since you can’t get ascended armor without touching the economy(crafter marks), that means at the end of it all the only real negative to the game is the gold reward at the end(trivially fixable).

Which is to say that coordinated guild would probably be done after a few days, the economy will be almost entirely unchanged, and pvpers eventually settle back into a routine of competitive fights where everyone’s putting in 100% to make their time as efficient as possible.

rwolf.9571:

Do you think it’s fair for a copper rank to consistently play against platinum? If you do, that’s messed up.

If we were talking about Ranked, I would agree. But unranked? I would say that is the perfect place for this to happen. It provides a place where, if ranked matchmaking weren’t garbage at times, copper could easily measure the skill difference against platinum and maybe learn some things.

Unranked really doesn’t matter. You’re playing for reward tracks(70% pointless) and…… some achievements. Ooooh high end esports.

Hang on — Your complaint is that there are skilled players in Unranked?

Oh, I get it. You wanted to farm Unranked, but you got farmed instead.

All having no pips for losing does is make people give up and afk at base more frequently when there’s even a slight score difference. Punishment breeds toxicity, and toxicity lowers quality of gameplay.

I would much rather see pips be based on percentage of winning score(rounded up). If you lose 450-500, you get 9 pips. Above that you get 10 pips, and obviously brutal blowouts of 10-500 mean one pip.

And if this creates a situation where people start collaborating on points and artificially evening scores out? Then the problem is with PvE’s legendary armor acquisition being unreasonable. Classically – that is, back at release and thereabouts – the endgame grind was always about looks and not stats. So if the problem is that legendary armor is, stat-wise, too desirable, and people are no longer chasing after the coolest skins, then PvE needs a comparable route to the skinless legendaries.

Right now there’s a huge disparity. Raids require a massive time and social investment to even complete a single one, to a point where people are selling raid clears because of their exclusiveness. As a part of this, there’s even more grind involved with getting gear you can ping so you don’t get kicked from the non-selling groups. PvP doesn’t require either of these forms of investment, making them appeal so much more than PvE.

Personally, I showed up in PvP because even though Ad Infinitum was a perfectly obtainable legendary for my fractal group, I desired the skin of The Ascension so much more. The bonus of Legendary’s stat selection and being best in slot was second to that; desirable all the same for my stat-experimenting ways, but I already had all the back items I needed.

But this time around, I’m going to pvp not for a skin, but because I can’t make the time/social/financial investment that a raid demands. It’s a very different problem.

Explaining something in such an obtuse way that even other people misunderstand you isn’t a problem with me, mate.

Esplen.3940:

{an explanation}

Oh thank god, an explanation. Now I understand what you’re getting at.

Okay, so Chaos is not trash tier except for the part where it literally needs to be the rarest encounter type in the game, a reflect-abuse boss. … Where it is used as a base stat crutch, and only because Anet’s encounter design sucks so badly that Mesmer – as usual – is carrying everyone through it. Which in my book makes it Chaos trash tier.

Goooood stuff.

Your bank and achievement points are not reflected on your main character, they’ve essentially been copied. Recollect the points on your main character and you will have your rewards.

Okay well your actual explanation for why you think Chaos is amazing is lacking and your wording pretty much went “chaos makes traited focus possible” without actually explaining where, at any point, you would make use of boons, boon duration, or manipulation skills.

I guess this conversation is a dead end, gg.

EDIT: I see you added more.

I didn’t exactly take it out of context – you provided little other actual information. I’m forced to extrapolate.

Esplen.3940:

It has exactly 1 minor, which is why it is ran. The Major is nice, but not necessary. Although if you want to talk about that, Inspiration is almost mandatory and ran specifically for 1 Major, everything else is icing on the cake.

So you’re seriously running Chaos for boon duration?

Okay, maybe I don’t understand just what gear/party you’re using. No part of this makes sense. I’m willing to trust that you’re not an idiot, but I’m either being given misleading information here or you’re willing to sacrifice a mountain of other useful traits for something that different gear should be covering.

Esplen.3940:

Against Matthias where reflects are necessary and needed on demand, being able to run a traited focus

I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt at first so I left it alone but I think you’re mistaken? Focus trait is in Inspiration. Manipulations gain reflect under Chaos, which is to say… it will start to affect their rotation, yes.

If Focus were under Chaos, this wouldn’t be a conversation because Focus is actually meaningful. The only thing you get out of Chaos if you’re running the Quickness/Alacrity/Sig-Insp setup is Bountiful Disillusionment and the occasional Protect/Regen combo(or just Protect from wherever you’re getting Regen from), but generally speaking you… really shouldn’t need any of those. Again, specific comps.

EDIT: Wait, maybe you’re saying you’re sacrificing signet of inspiration for a manipulation…? Running Chaos+Insp? If so, that would be a thoroughly confusing choice. You shouldn’t? need more boon duration – as you said, a waste of 495 concentration – and you’re going through all that trouble and breaking your quickness(by 3s i grant, and this can be bridged by time warp I think) for 2s of reflect when you could run Feedback and still maintain whatever chrono dps counts for. Surely there’s better choices; granting that no signets weakens Domination a bit, Dueling comes to mind. You can pull Mirror from an evade if that’s a thing you can reasonably do(I don’t actually know raid bosses) and Superiority Complex can buff up the reflect damage. And you can give your Warden Fury! I guess!

No, even if this edit is right, Chaos is still surely garbage tier.

This thread has nice, structured feedback on the profession? I’ll throw in my lot.

Overall:
I like the base mechanical concepts and the core ideas behind the elite spec. In terms of combat, the skills tend to fit what I’ve always wanted out of Mesmer, an agile combatant with more focus on Shadowsteps.

Now, onto some specifics.

Ambush:
These fire automatically as soon as conditions are met. This? This is terrible. I love the hell out of Sword, but I can see it getting me killed in, say, fractals(putting aside that I’m stuck in chrono for the rest of the game) and skyhammer, and really any other place with a change in altitude large enough to trigger fall damage/death walls/lava/etc, or in fights with a lot of AoEs.

Put these on F5, and create a new UI mechanic where we can, say, ctrl+rightclick on that skill to give it priority over autoattacks(but obviously, not interfere with that particular ctrl+rightclick). Alternatively, I’m hesitant to say “give us more keys to press” but it would be nice to see a key specifically for any conditional skills, including stealth attacks and such. But I’d prefer it on F5.

Mirage Mirrors:
I like the idea, but stationary touch-triggered objects have always been really bad. We don’t see much tactical use of engi medkit or rev energy orbs for a reason. If they could at least slowly move towards us (while not stealthed) we could get more use out of them.

Axe:
Fix #3. “Shadowstep to a random point around your target” should not mean “any valid navmesh around, including above and below, your target”.
I’m not a fan of condi so I still might not use it. I’m a little sad that it’s not viable for power, especially since axe 3 is obviously meant for phantasm support where phantasms are mainly power, but I guess I can accept that that’s just my loss this round. At a minimum though, because of all the cooldown nerfs post-chrono, I feel like some personal alacrity would not go unappreciated.

False Oasis:
Slow heals have always been bad. We barely tolerate Signet of the Ether and only because it’s an interesting utility for phantasm generation, as it is. Rebalance to 3 pulses with equal overall heal and we might have an okay start.

Crystal Sands:
This doesn’t make it into my utilities, but I feel like this is a pretty good skill. IF you nerf the damage, reduce the cooldown, but otherwise it seemed pretty decent. Kinda wish the shards had a better spread though, RNG damage isn’t fun.

(Is this a good tagging skill for WvW? I notice there’s no stated player limit.)

Illusionary Ambush:
Same deal as Axe 3, fix the axis problem. Otherwise, decent. Nice way to enable Axe 3 access to other weapons. Wish it were ammo-based but I can understand why it isn’t.

Mirage Advance:
Since Mirage is supposed to be Mesmer with a Thief subclass, I feel it stands to reason that this should be our “Steal”. Line of sight requirement and cast time holds it back, badly. I would actually consider replacing Blink with this, despite losing a stunbreak, if both of those changes were made.

Sand Through Glass:
I guess every spec needs a throwaway skill. If this chained to a leap or shadowstep that specifically targetted the mirror, it might be an interesting skill. Otherwise it just comes off as a… fairly dull skill, one that clashes with the mechanic it’s producing by putting us at a distance and providing a huge cue to our next action.

Jaunt:
I really don’t know why everyone wants more range to this. I wouldn’t say no, but I think this skill is a quite interesting elite already. It might not be great in premade pvp groups, but in ranked/unranked where you can’t rely on anyone to actually capitalize on Moa/Grav Well it’s a nice skill that lets us kick off the clone-on-deception trait.

Traits:
I haven’t thought enough about Mirage’s traits, but I will say that if it’s true that clones’ sword ambushes aren’t triggering On Interrupts, that needs to be fixed, badly. I was initially sad that they also don’t count for Confounding Suggestions, but given that Daze overwrites Stun I think I prefer it that way.

Viability:
I feel like this will be fixed by nerfing everything else down. Simply put, power creep in damage/cleaves/AoEs does not mix well with our clones’ static HP pools. Our primary mechanic should not be negated by someone autorunning at us while spamming 1, especially not since we don’t have On Clone Death traits anymore. (That might be something to consider if you drop any traits altogether. If this spec is about deception and mirages, we should be able to seriously punish people who fall for an illusion. The classic movie example is someone walking towards a mirage and realizing that salvation is yet all too far off…)

This is easily tested, but:

No. Demo characters have a copy of your main character’s bank. In fact, they have a copy of everything, from achievement progress to reward track status. No demo progress, in any capacity, is reflected on your main character. (You can even burn through transmutation charges – it doesn’t matter.)

What I’d l like to know is if Anet would do us a solid if we happened to get an ascended or precursor drop… It makes playing demo characters at all a little nerve wracking, knowing I might lose out on the best possible RNG.

Oxlade.6931:

Can you see the new spec with axe being a PvE spec for fractals, dungeons, raids etc?

We’re stuck on chrono in any raid/high difficulty setting for the rest of this game’s life. Alacrity+quickness is impossible to compete with. The only exception is if there is more than 1 mesmer main per 4 other players, and then I think you’d be suffering from an inferior selection.

Esplen.3940:

However, a Chrono can easily bring reflects without hampering their rotation, and if the Chrono is set up with 100% Boon Duration via Chaos, they can run a traited focus without even touching their utilities.

Chaos is a trash trait line with exactly one minor trait worth something and one major trait worth debating in specific comps.

I think Jaunt is excellent. It requires more careful positioning than Blink to be in range, but it hits most of the generally useful pvp blink sweetspots. I do feel like 20 seconds amm recharge/cooldown is overkill, but I think range is fine for something that isn’t supposed to replace Blink. I don’t understand why it damages and confuses, though.

Illusionary Ambush/Axes of Symmetry, yeah – I’m not sure how that got through testing, it seems almost maliciously bugged given the z axis thing. Just using it a few times in khylo with no clones will demonstrate how worthless it is. Utility not worth taking, 1/3rd of weapon too tactically dangerous to use.

I think the cast time on Mirage Advance needs to go, the cast time interferes with some trick plays I feel we should have access to. Is this the only shadowstep in the game with a cast time? And yeah – line of sight is upsetting, it’s really not worth the slot it takes.

I’d only accept that if all rewards, including legendaries, were acquirable in unranked. This will have a particular effect of reducing the number of people who even care for ranked. (Maybe add rewards for division placement and buff rewards for top 250 though, that might keep people interested. And I mean seriously buff top 250 – sizable gem rewards and legendaries make for hungry players. You want them salivating. Titles are the dumbest reward imaginable.)

Also, I’d actually still be able to pursue the things I want out of pvp, since I don’t meet basically any of the requirements you are all suggesting. Competent player interested in doing well(placed mid gold), rank 40ish, only like 300 games played. Yes, I do feel like I’m being treated as a “worthwhile” sacrifice here.

glenndevis.8327:

The point I was trying to make is how the Infinite Horizon trait barely does anything for this ambush.

Ah, yeah, fair enough.

I do think there’s some merit to your multiple-clone idea though, and in fact that may be the point. It’s not just the mesmer who can use the daze; you throw a sword clone out, swap weapons, and as long as that clone is out you potentially have access to an extra interrupt no matter what weapon you’re using.

In fact, I can see both sword and staff clones as intended as a supporting ambush rather than intended to be fully stocked up and utilized; in this manner, maybe I can see why that one leak said clones are supposed to be used like phantasms(or however it went…). They become a utility rather than mere ammunition, so mesmer gameplay becomes a little less linear. This makes sense, given that it’s unreasonable to expect to have three of any single clone out for an ambush.

Yeah, GS is… strange. I want to hope that that will be the one clone skill in the game that has close damage to the mesmer, but it sounds like it’s just going to be incredibly neat looking and flashy but not at all a worthwhile source of… anything, really. The best we can hope for is it triggers the GS trait per user and per target for 12 might, but that would make it the only ambush that actually requires a trait to do anything meaningful at all, across all gamemodes. It’s not even a terribly great cleave… it’s a wvw tag at best, and even still not great.

Either the skillfacts are hiding some important info or it’s a skill that has been pre-nerfed. It’s hard to imagine anet putting so much work into a skill that is only flashy and not really effective.

Solstace.2514:

Not matching up silver tier players with plat and legendary for starters.

This happens only because there’s not enough plat/legendary players to maintain a reasonable queue time.

I feel like this conversation keeps happening…

Curunen.8729:

Yeah I’m interested to see what kind of interrupt builds can be made.

You could even go Dom/Chaos/Mirage, take CS, PB and CI, run Sw/P + Traited staff (or take another weapon if not wanting to use chaos storm for interrupt procs) and take Mantra of Distraction.

Although I imagine Dom/Duel/Mirage with Sw/P + Sc/Sw or something, both Sw and P traited and taking Supriority Complex, Power Block and Confounding Suggestions might be better as you won’t be susceptible to boom removal as with using CI – kind of important if Spellbreakers are going to be neutering all those boons.

I never liked Chaos. It almost always feels like we’re sacrificing an entire traitline for either Immobilize or more stealth, and while locking people out of dodges is always good fun, ambushes seem (ironically) extremely predictable.

Surprisingly, I’ve been staring at all three dueling grandmasters and considering all the options. I guess DE will be best paired with Signet of Illusions, but both of the other two are really appealing to me.

Dunno… suffice to say, while everyone else is partying on condi builds this weekend, I’ll be studying the blade.

Refia Montes.3205:

I mean I see the synergy with the Domi line and PvP. Yes Power Mirage would work in PvP, but in PvE it has no place since in PvE Daze doesn’t matter. It’s just used for breakbars against bosses. :/

You’re running phantasms in pve anyway. And don’t kid yourself – chrono is permanently our role in raids. I have long held that if they don’t make perma alacrity+quickness available to more than just us OR so severely nerf them as to be useless, chrono will always be worth more than its slot.

And Daze will still inflict vulnerability even if the enemy is hiding behind a breakbar, if I’m not mistaken. The interrupt traits would need to vanish, but there’s still enough clone generation to consider shatters to some extent. (The theorycrafting is a little less fun with this one just because it doesn’t really take advantage of anything new, though.)

glenndevis.8327:

I just don’t like that with Infinite Horizon you don’t get much more since daze doesn’t stack.

Would have been nice to have a good power build with Mirage but looks like that’s not what Anet wants.

If you run Domination, 5 stacks of vulnerability (innate) for the Daze, and traited, daze is 1s Stun every 5s(7.5 with 0 endurance under vigor though, which you’ll probably always have).
You can go full interrupt within the same traitline:
-3 more vulnerability stacks on interrupt (innate)
-3 seconds of quickness
-Power Block for 1k damage+Weakness(+15s cooldown)

If you get all 8 stacks of vulnerability(even more if clones can also daze, should you take that trait) you’ll get 4% extra damage(total of 12%) thanks to the third minor trait that provides bonus damage for vulnerability.

Basically, this may be one of the best-synergizing skills I’ve ever seen but no surely there’s no hope for power mesmer, power mesmer is dead, rip.

Dastion.3106:

I’d also be surprised if Phantasms did ambush attacks. Them being skill 1 attacks and clones using skill one is a logical flow given how Anet tends the program their skills. Clones actually have the skill 1 attack so giving them mirage cloak logically should flip the skill to the Ambush version. They might do it, and the utility may even act differently, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.

If I remember right, the code is actually “use the first available skill from right to left in the skill list.” They have since patched it out, but you used to be able to throw GS2 and fire off a racial transform to end up with a clone of the transform. So as a human I could get an Avatar of Melandru as a clone, who would fire off its skills from 5 down to 1 in that order(so healing fields and the like happened – it was neat, if limited in usefulness).

(We can presume common NPCs follow the same logic, considering how oldschool Braham opens with shield bubble in the molten boss fractal.)

I think Ambush might get around that altogether; they fire off their Ambush as soon as they gain cloak. It’s entirely possible Ambush is in slot 5, or not even in a slot altogether and is pure code. If they even have the same skillbar logic, there’s plenty of support for flipping from “Locked” or just nothing to a usable skill when conditions are met(see cultist hammer).

The only reason our auto-attack cuts out and gives us Ambush in that slot is to give us domain in how to mess with our enemy(and possibly get around any bugs involving the clone generation on scepter interfering with Ambush).

Phantasms can still go either way, but I’m hoping Ambush will just be their regular skill at worst, since we could actually really use a way to reset+coordinate phantasm attacks, both in terms of their attack ticks and in terms of combo fields.

musu.9205:

right now power mirage seems like a bruiser build without sustain dmg , in the end , condi build will be far better with better sustain dmg + better burst dmg which is what mirage is supposed to do anyway .

So what you’re saying is people are saying it’s not power viable because our auto attacks are weak? We’ve literally never had power sustain, I’m not entirely sure where people are getting this idea that we should have it— oh wait that’s right, people listened to that “clones are as good as phantasms” third-hand leak and jumped to conclusions.

I will grant the build lacks strong defensive sustain, though. Dropping shield hurts these days.

And I would look over the other specs, but I don’t really know too well how they play with core traitlines.

I would not rule power out though just because condi is the obvious meta.

musu.9205:

@Kadj.6725 btw given how thief stealth attack requires a target to work , i think ambush will be same . it is reasonable .

Thief stealth attacks can still be used under stealth any time, they just have no practical application without a target. Furthermore, Mirage Thrust has an identical description to Warrior’s Savage Leap.

“Lunge at your foe and strike them with your sword, briefly dazing them. Leave behind a clone at your original location. "

I mean, as things go? That’s a pretty nice addition.

And if we can use it without a target, we get more mobility. Notably – I don’t know how other leaps work, but if it’s affected by movement speed, we’ll also have super speed as an option during the skill’s activation.

So let’s say we go Dom/Duel. CS, DE, Self-Deception, Shards of Glass, Elusive Mind.
We dodge and the following things can happen:
1- Stun Break
2- Clone generation from DE.
3- Leap
4- Clone generation from Mirage Thrust
5- iLeap OR use a Deception with trait to get a third clone (Jaunt to add 400 range to leap?)
6- Shatter, illusions have a chance of becoming Mirage Mirrors
7- Touch Mirage Mirror, repeat starting from 2.

The question I have for the preview is whether the super speed trait applies to illusions. There might be an argument to be made for swapping Elusive Mind for Infinite Horizon if so.

I dunno dudes, between that and taking Jaunt’s ammo into account, we can do a lot of illusion generation and shattering on Power, and our basic generation rotation is also a potentially 1000-range gap closer(1800 with Blink, 2200 with Jaunt+Blink if possible – and even more if super speed affects leap) capable of stun. We can both bait out and interrupt a heal basically whenever we want from an extremely long range, and with good target selection, can bounce back before anyone even realizes what happened. (Guys. Power Block. Seriously!)

So… Not power viable, amirite?

Let’s test it first.

(If yall are mainly looking at PvE, most of that still applies as a pre-phantasm burst, or a last-target burst if axe 3 is on cooldown. Off-weapon will be axe for target management. Axe is still good to consider for pvp for that sweet 600 range shadowstep, but it’s hard to imagine it competing with staff if going sword main. Sword+Axe would have to be an extremely aggressive playstyle.)

Tseison.4659:

But the interrupt for clones is a bit of a turn off. It’s essentially a daze?

It works for and against us. It’s most useful for a Warden, but applies to all in niche circumstances(notably clone ambush). Warden would keep attacking for several seconds, when what you want is for it to damage your new target now.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if the game code has the trigger for illusion death be “is the thing I am currently using my skill on dead? if yes, die.” By interrupting it, this possible edge case is cleared and the illusion will strike the new enemy all the time rather than occasionally just die anyway.

I disagree with both the idea that losing should get no reward, and the idea that you should only be allowed in ranked with X rank or X games played.

I think rewards should scale equally with points earned. If there’s a 500-0 blowout, losing players get nothing. If there’s a 480-500 or higher game, both sides get all non-rating rewards – full pips, full rank points, full reward track. (I feel like rating should take good games like this into account too, but rating is a tricky thing and I’m afraid to mess with a system that already only barely works.)

Reasons:

1. You will lose pvp players if you prevent access to and functionally lock rewarding game modes. PvP will absolutely die; you have to remember, it was on life support when they first started adding these rewards in, and it still is.

2. By scaling the match rewards, exerting effort is made worthwhile. In the face of a blowout, you can still fight for the last few points you need to earn the next pip. Putting up a competent fight is still rewarded, and you don’t rob players of their time for losing by one point.

3. Bots and serial idlers will be just a little more discouraged, since this means their contribution is actually vital to their rewards.

Oh, and rank is a meaningless stat that should go back to being removed. I’ve seen plenty of really garbage-tier players at rank 100+, and my guild is full of really good sub-40 players.

Zlater.6789:

@kadj.6725 you should never run lost time, never. Lost time is a waste of time because you will always have 100% uptime of slow on bosses. That’s because the minimum 4 iavengers that you should have up in your squad will keep it up for you.

Or you could run lost time while a chrono with a better build carries the rest of your group.

You’re still ignoring cyninja’s comment that you aren’t getting enough Quickness on everyone by dropping Illusions/Illusionary Inspiration.

I just figured if you weren’t going to go for that argument, you’d at least go for the more specialized dps argument…

If you aren’t running Lost Time alongside Danger Time, I’m willing to bet your DPS is substantially lower than just about any other alternative. Even firing Time Warp and Well of Action twice via Continuum Split won’t chain effects together, and adding four blocks via shield might get you a little bit further but when you have three iSwordsmen out and at max damage% you really don’t want to overwrite them.

Your non-chrono lines have some promise when Mirage comes out, but otherwise I… don’t see this build making waves, sorry.

ceejay.2517:

This doesn’t make any sense.

The whole point of this post is that it costs quite a bit more than the PvE equivalent.

Let’s put aside for a minute that you completely missed the part where you can select any current stat set on acquisition, which bypasses a lot of grind. (And I’m willing to ignore the legendary upgrade thing for now since that was not by original design.)

A quick check of a few ascended pve chestpeices’ material costs shows that:
1. They hover around 70-80 gold, with leather being the most expensive.
2. They require some small measure of grind for vision crystal components.
3. There is some variation of cost due to insignia material’s prices.

Grandmaster marks:
1. Hover right around 16-20 gold, with metal being the most expensive.
2. Don’t require any more grind than the base need to craft them, AND are currently a non-farmable reward for pvp.
3. There is no tangible variation in cost.

So there’s a fundamental problem here in what you’re saying; if we’re on the same page here, there really isn’t that huge a difference in cost from what I can tell. MAYBE this is because the wiki base cost calculates absolute base cost, beyond the usual price jump caused by the time-gated crafts, but both crafting recipes have time-gated costs and comparing luxuries is a weak argument.

Finally, realistic pricing(rounded to nearest gold):
Tailor: 19*4 = 76 gold, 4 gold more than the armor
Leather: 17*4 = 68 gold, 15 less than the armor
Armorsmith: 21*4 = 84 gold, 10 gold more than the armor

I don’t really feel like doing this number-hunting for the legs. I will admit the difference will be a bit greater(7+ g for at least light legs, at a quick glance), but you seem insistent that both chest and legs need adjustment.

… That’s it? This is what you’re taking issue with? Given how suddenly the economy can change, I’d say this is some really fine calculation on Anet’s part. If you think 14 gold(taking vendor into account) is “quite a bit more” then I have to admit, I’m not terribly sure how you’re getting the gold to begin with.

Maybe legs should be adjusted to 3, but based on stats I think both the marks and base crafting recipes for shoulders/hands/feet should be reexamined.

I don’t really feel like sitting here all day chasing down numbers. The short of it is though, it’s absurd to think of these recipes in a vacuum. I disagree with anet’s game economy choices a lot, but the economy can’t be ignored when making statements like how something should cost less.

Dom/Illusions/Chrono. Sword/Focus, GS. Take the shatter traits that give might, damage%, Master of Fragmentation, and the chono traits that provide a clone as well as recharge phantasm. Daze Mantra, Blink, Mirror Images, and whatever heal and elite you like(gravity well is a good second pull).

Open with gs2 or sw3 clone, focus 4 to pull a group together, mirror images and Diversion. Should have 20 stacks of vuln on the entire group. Use both phantasms and then Daze mantra -> Mind Wrack -> Sw2/Gs3. Between everything you’ll be proccing your +damage minor trait; anything left over at the end will probably die to residual phantasms and you’ll have a lot of might(nearly 25 stacks if you’re doing a lot of fighting and also use a third shatter).

When chaining kills, you won’t have Mirror Images or Diversion up, so just clone+phant+phant and daze mantra instead for the next volley. Not as much dps, but the tradeoff is worth it since you’ll basically have a murder button.

Other traits are in general up to you.

Oh and if you just want single target damage, you can probably swap MoF for that fancy new phantasm trait and focus on phantasm uptime instead. I haven’t played with it myself.

In the current economic state, you can just about afford 1 mark each time you loop Byzantine. Marks are not unreasonable.

I do feel like 3 marks is a bit much for the weakest three armor slots, but considering it’s basically “free” endgame armor with any stat choice I have a hard time complaining about accessibility. I had to work much harder for my original PvE ascended set.

For artist’s notes, IMO the problem with the newest set of badges is that they were just too similar. The most noticeable color on each badge was actually completely unrelated to the division name, and was really the secondary color of the division emblems. Furthermore, for the primary colors, metal colors just… aren’t terribly distinct. And when you take in various location-based color filters, the subtle difference on the few available pixels can become even more ambiguous.

And I think character design can apply even to little symbols; the silhouettes of the new emblems were almost all completlely identical, moreso than the previous(now current) set. I know you don’t have much room to work with, but the thing about the second emblem set is that you can at least make out the basic shape of the core of the emblem without discerning colors; bronze is largely solid, silver is an empty core, gold is a hexagon with a little star, platinum is more of a diamond. Legend could perhaps use another look; it looks like a slightly off color bronze at a glance, sharing similar colors and not having a terribly distinct shape. It perhaps could use something a little better, something that catches the eye, worthy of those who are in the highest league division.

As for the argument that the second generation required familiarity with the divison art, I don’t really see how the third generation was an improvement since it was an even more arbitrary mapping to rank. I would see that if you had actually mapped them to, say, item rarity colors – a color all players can relate to – but instead they just came off as fairly randomly chosen, and lacking the character and prestige one would expect for what should be a point of pride for those who display them.

Following that advice, if you choose to reexamine the emblems, I think redoing the colors so that they map to items would be a better starting point: Fine on Bronze, Masterwork on Silver, Rare on Gold, Exotic on Platinum, and Ascended/Legendary(ascended would “pop” better) for, well, Legendary. Ignore Basic, it’s too bright for what should be 0th tier.

BUT I do like the second generation/current emblems, to be clear.

I really don’t want to hear some parent with a crying child in the background yell at me for not simultaneously being on all three points at once. Nor do I need to hear any number of inappropriate comments the moment a female voice comes through the comm. Nor do I really need to be subjected to any comments I might just find disturbing or disgusting. Nor do I need to hear some 12 year old blow up at me for not ressing them in a poison field/heavy cleave situation, or making one arguably poor play.

I get this enough in text as it is, and if you reduce the ability for players to say what’s on their mind to a single key press, the amount of abuse will skyrocket and you’ll realize you never really wanted to communicate with those super quiet people.

And why does Overwatch get away with it?

They started with the feature. Their community is built around it from the start.

And finally, because of the nature of this game, coherent team comms are reduced to inane babble like “waterwaterwaterwaterwater bombbombomb”. It’s too fast, too indecipherable, and too overwhelming.

(If voice comms were purely for premades, whether it be duoq or ATs, I’d be open to that. But not soloq.)

As much as I wouldn’t be opposed to getting more tickets in PvP, I have to be honest, I really don’t care if I upgrade head/shoulders/hands/feet next season. Body/Legs are already over half the armor’s overall stats combined.

And the way I see it, this just makes legendary Glorious armor that much more prestigious, and also keeps some of the lazier, instant-gratification sorts out of my matches. I don’t really care about the skins(I’d transmute the legendary raid gear if I had it), but I know I’ll be standing out amongst my guild as the only one who can ping a full set of legendary armor with Glorious armor as the base.

And I have no sympathy for people who burned tickets on llamas or extra backpacks. There was absolutely no reason to believe Anet wouldn’t add more to the vendors eventually. And you know? They could also still add more now that they’ve opened the floodgates on legendary trinkets. You put the tickets into llamas and backpacks, which means that you saw some sort of purpose to acquiring them. That purpose has not gone away.

Started late, quit early after I finished out my leggy wings. Practical rating was mid gold or so(now effectively low bronze from decay… lmao anet sure being away two weeks makes me trash tier w/e). To some extent, I think that rating is accurate. I did take heavy losses when I had to switch to other professions for my wings – I still feel the painful losing streak from Scrapper (10 losses, no wins) and the sub-comparable stats from DH(17 wins, probably something like 25 losses), but I’m really happy with my stats as mesmer and thief.

Way I figure, if you’re good, playing a rotating class causes the stats to more adequately reflect your actual skill rather than the modifier from playing one of the main fighters and being subject to how much your team actually works together. You’re also guarenteed to have a rotating class, whereas if you aren’t a thief/mes, there’s decent odds you won’t have either on your team and will have to pick up the slack yourself on one of the less mobile classes.

Thankfully, now that I’m out of backpack hell, I can probably play with much less stress since I don’t need to secure profession wins. Maybe I’ll pick up something else and feel enabled to swap more often before the match…

I think it’s still ambiguous whether they disable (or alter) them right now – the original statement was it would be a one-year thing(hence the name) – but between this and legendary armor, I suspect Anet is scrambling to revive the gamemode and won’t take a chance on rendering the backpack unavailable just yet.

Ithilwen.1529:

That would take a fair amount of rotation math ( slow.)

I don’t pretend to be a super expert – especially not where servers come into play – but I feel like one mathematical function every (cooldown) seconds would matter unless it’s an case of an extremely large number of players abusing it.

As it is, half the job seems to be already done; the game is innately aware of whether you’re facing another player or not, and auto-faces when relevant. It also checks Line of Sight and Range, two reasonably mathematically challenging things. DH pull may ignore facing, but it probably can still use the code. All a raycast would need is either to continue on the same trajectory(rev push) or a ‘fake’ counter-face (pull) to know which way to go. While I’m coming up short on ideas where the ‘counter-face’ code might exist in gameplay already, I feel like it easily already exists.

And if that code doesn’t exist, I question why the skill doesn’t check line of sight at execution at worst. (Assuming it isn’t supposed to respect line of sight. I never really paid attention to that and the wiki doesn’t say whether skills need LoS or not.)

I don’t entirely know what your architecture’s like, but from my (hacky) Unity perspective, I have to ask – are raycasts not an option?

I obviously understand engines can be waaay different, but that’s how I’d handle it in Unity… Since both skills are a single moment of activation, I’d raycast from the target in the direction they’re about to travel and make any point of contact the upper limit of their travel.

Millennials Are KILLING This Classic Profession!

Mesmer has always been the “make something they absolutely can’t live without a GM trait” profession. There’s nothing new here.

Levetty.1279:

Building up Phantasms to kill things in solo PvE is already pretty terrible, swapping the direct damage of Phantasms for PvP focused conditions isn’t going to make it better.

We’re back to Deceptive Evasion. Enter combat, axe 2, dodge, jaunt(procs +clone trait), axe 3, ambush, Cry of Frustration. We’d lose moa for it, but gain a large three-skill burst that leaves an entire weapon set and two phantasms off cooldown open for abuse whether the enemy survives the burst or not. (also jaunt is optional I guess, but I’m under the assumption we’ll still want portal/Sig of Illusions/blink and not some other Deception skill.)

There’s not any more buildup than we already need to set up, and I think you may have forgotten just how quickly core mesmer can pull enough clones out for burst with DE. This isn’t “clones are phantasms now”, this is “clones can pressure.” And the pressure is kept up if you use /pistol and you run those traits, etc.

Drop axe, take Self Deception, Mirage Mantle, Elusive Mind. Sword Ambush for high (25?) vuln stacks if “spam first AA” is the trend of Ambushes. Use the new shadowstep instead of Blink probably(I didn’t catch the range/cd on it), but otherwise play classic Power.

End result, burn dodges for superspeed through a map, or to break stuns.

I couldn’t care less whether this is condi focused or not… my disappointment is in that once again there’s almost no interesting things to actually play with, and it doesn’t really shake our builds up. There’s no new playstyle, no new positions to occupy, and we’re still going to be running chrono in group content. This is a pvp+solo pve spec and nothing more.