Guild Wars 2

People so obsessed with AOO auto mauls in beastmode they don’t realize the deer can do 5x the damage on it’s own.

The multiple hits are definitely a bug but it can still do 20k-30k on a single hit with a simple maul+aoo

The reason this makes me angry is it’s another example of how terrible anet is with adding OP stuff then nerfing it to unusable. Why the kitten did you add it in the first place?

The damage was intentional, you can see the correct values on the skill fact, who in the hell thought giving the deer a 4214 damage SINGLE hit (so it gains full aoo bonus) was a good idea? Kittening idiots.

Switch to deer in combat, press sic’em+maul and watch charge do 20-30k on a squishy :x That’s enough for me, haha; but like I said they will -obviously- nerf it. So annoying.

They did this the last time with the bristleback and smokey pets. Why add something you know darn well you’re gonna nerf later?

#deerissoulbeast

You have to run marksmanship or maybe the sic em thing + bm to get those numbers (bm is normal but marksmanship gives up nm) or sigil of wild etc; it’s a lot of modifiers.

It’s basically just a for fun build and focusing on pet damage will always make you lose in serious situations because pets are dead to random stuff (especially condi) in 2 seconds

Before, bristleback could always output this damage; you’re just noticing the other pets got their hits more land-able, so you are seeing the damage they were always capable of, just could never land.

DeceiverX.8361:

On-demand and sustained stealth on all kits including in other professions should be removed, and then the kits reworked and the thief at its core improved. The problem isn’t that the other kits need to be more like D/P but D/P is just powerful on the conceptual level while the rest are underpowered in their implementation, too. It doesn’t help ANet keeps adding in synergy to exclusively the OH pistol, intentional or not (either way, poor design).

Most existing abilities and traits across the game need substantial changes; unfortunately this is very unlikely to occur given ANet’s love for non-competitive profession design.

This is extremely accurate^

And one thing I forgot to mention in my OP is that I was slightly afraid of sustained stealth becoming too easy, when I just wanted access to on demand stealth for skillful use of stealth skills without having to use pistol offhand + bound on one set (or D/P)

So we are left with two options. First, do exactly what is stated in your quote; though as you said, it ain’t gonna happen.

Second is buff all other weapon sets to compete with D/P SB, whether via giving them stealth or other things as Khronos suggested, I don’t really care what they do as long as it makes the weapon sets competitive.

Though I think all good thieves and good players in general agree that power creep needs to stop and all around nerf bats for SO many things are in order just to tone down the skill-less convoluted game play we have now.

Thanks for all the good feedback

Good points, and you are right about thief needing on demand blind/stealth/dodge etc to stay alive.

But there is a difference between skillful timing of those mechanism and literally pressing nothing but v and 5 repeatedly with an occasional heal and press of a signet.

I don’t think spam play is healthy, but there is a fine line between having it on demand and spammable, so I see where you are coming from.

The only other thing we disagree on is thinking that the state of thief is fine. I want more viable weapon sets; I understand this is a problem for pretty much all other classes as well, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to speak up about it.

Take P/P for example: The auto attack is garbage, the stealth attack is an awkward condi hybrid attack, #2 is next to useless, #3 is a massive initiative dump with an awkward might stacking component, #4 #5 are available on D/P so meh.

There are so many things they could do to make this weapon set work; make #2 stealth, block, evade, blind…like…anything?

Don’t forget the point of this thread: D/P SB is your only choice for competitive play, and dodge spam is cancer. What can be done about this?

I appreciate the feedback but you’ve only shot down my suggestions without providing some different ones for the above issue.

I actually don’t care if all sets get stealth, I just thought it would be an easy way to make all other sets become more viable while not needing to nerf D/P, and as I stated, I really don’t know how to fix the SB problem.

I’m not sure you read more than the tldr^^; No nerfs to DP, just a buff to everything else including staff ( by giving it stealth)

The nerf would be to the fact you can literally press dodge and 5 on staff or dodge and 3 on dagger dagger 10 billion times because of acro/physical heal/and agility signet.

IMO it’s just not a healthy playstyle

Ya I know ;-; I’m sad I wasted time writing it tbh

This only relates to SPVP

TLDR:

1. D/P too stronk, so give all other weapon sets on demand stealth.
2. SB too mobile; perhaps buff staff mobility or other forms of mobility.
3. Stop the mindless dodge spam cancer before it goes mainstream (kill signet)

1. D/P rekts, why is that? On demand stealth, on demand rupt, on demand blind+gap closer (best skill evar), amazing auto with poison and high dps, nice stealth attack, etc. . . .(I bold things so they pop out at you :< )

I don’t want to nerf any of that. Thief right now has a pretty decent spot in meta I think, along with pretty much every other class having at least one option and I don’t want to disrupt that balance(lul).

I’m not for giving every weapon set ALL of those things, that would be stupid. But the easiest thing to tackle is stealth.

Every weapon set has a pretty cool stealth attack, but not every weapon set can have stealth. That’s stupid. Here’s what I’d do (like anyone cares or any dev would pay attention to it, but I’m annoyed so I’ll say it anyway)

Rules: None of the stuff I’m adding needs to hit the target to grant the stealth; the stealth applies after the hit to not f with reveal of course. Also keep in mind that currently the BP HS combo grants 3 seconds of stealth regardless of any trait (SA does not increase stealth duration from combos)

Dagger main: Remove combo finisher of HS. HS now grants 2 seconds of stealth on use. Increase ini to 5 (what like you used this for anything other than stealth? It’s a net buff :p)

Pistol main: Body Shot now also grants 2 seconds of stealth. Increase ini to 5.

Sword main: Infiltrator’s Strike now also grants 2 seconds of stealth on initial cast. 5 initiative. I would honestly just remove the ini cost of the secondary cast.

Short bow: Disabling shot. 2 secs of stealth 5 ini you get the idea lul

Staff: Either Dust Strike or Debilitating Arc, IDGAF lol 5 ini 2 seconds of stealth.

2 seconds might not be enough to reliably land your stealth attack, perhaps 3 seconds of stealth and 6 ini?

But wait ohmuhgawd what about cloak and dagger and bound+bp, you will give dual wielders perma stealth!

Right now anyone running D/P and bound already has perma stealth (yes, even without SA). It’s not that big of a deal since outside of dueling dash is better. Also this is why reveal is a thing, l2p?

2. SB 5 is ridiculous. It makes SB a necessity in any serious form of play. I don’t wish to nerf it as mobility is what thief basically brings to meta. Without it we probably wouldn’t be there.

I don’t have a good solution for this. I thought about gutting the damage of vault and making it 900 range so it can basically be a SB but would that just be too ridiculous?

Really just at a loss on this one

3. Dodge spam builds, both acro staff and condi d/d varieties are kitten to this world. Kill them with fire. I don’t want acro nerfed; instead I think it is simpler and probably enough to just change signet of agility to do anything other than give you 100 endurance back.

BUT WUT ABOUT THE DAREDEVIL HEALLLLL

Acro doesn’t give you big hits. They also need to twine in bound with the vault to do decent damage I think. If they take the Physical heal with bound and standard acro staff traits, they could get CCed to death. If they take dash to not be CCed to death, then they lose a lot of damage and rely on vault. It won’t get them far.

If it’s still an issue then a further nerf to physical heal or acro could be fine I guess, but I think agility signet’s death would be enough.

Sorry to waste your time if you read all this; everyone knows ANET isn’t doing anything atm lol

For what it’s worth, I live in Taiwan with 200-250 ping. Came back to the states to visit fam and had 50 ping. I can’t tell any difference at all. This game does a great job of hiding the latency in a way that is similar to some other “global” mmos such as FFXIV.

However I know the latency is there because I also tried this with Blade and Soul, and omg it was unplayable. I could feel that .2-3 seconds and it was terrible.

So, bottom line, unless you suffer from rubberbanding or unstable internet, 200-250 ping will be perfectly playable on GW2 as a thief. (you can’t notice the delay in this game and that delay is probably effecting your enemies’ timing as well as your own regardless)

That’s my experience

Bit of click-bait title sorry ;p

Anyone else tired of only having one choice of weapon since we’re basically forced into SB as one of them? It’s too good, you just can’t not run it if you’re trying to be competitive.

Don’t get me wrong, I love SB, it’s just getting a tad boring.

I’d personally love to run P/P Staff or maybe D/P Staff, but I feel I’m hindering team without the z axis teleport.

If I were in charge, I’d change SB #5 to something cool that does massive damage for high ini like staff 5, and to compensate the loss of the tele bring shadowstep’s CD down from 50 to like 20ish >.>

<,< pls

>.>;

First of all let me say that even through all anet’s balance fails, this is still the best pvp experience I’ve had in an MMO just for the action combat and not having to level a character and having everything on even terms and it being free with the exception of the buy to win HoT issue.

But one thing really bothers me; well 2 actually:

1. Despite the “toning down” of some effects, I still cannot tell half the time what boons people have/what they are doing due to a combination of two things: the character animations are either too hard to see/or asura etc in clutter and I have to look up at the character’s name plate that I am attacking to see what boons they have. For the most part.

Oh wow that takes one second to glance up at, right? Well that 1 second annoys me and could cost me a win when I’m having to glance up so often when I’m trying to keep my eyes on the field and the character’s animations….see my above complaint. UI mods would fix this but anet doesn’t allow them I think. Stability for example has no animation tell of it’s own.

Let me give you a little example of why this sucks: Bandit’s defense on thief lets you block and then knockdown; If I’m fighting a zerker war for example and I block him when hes all up in my butt, I have to glance up for a second while the fat cow is right next to me to check if he’s got stability to see whether or not I can kick him down. If I kick him and he’s stable I’ll be dead in 1 hit from being kept in place by the kick’s animation, and also I might be dead regardless in the split second it took me to glance up and not watch his animations.

There are probably better examples but you get the idea. Also to help the character animation issue I would like cast bars and also standard model option for ALL game modes please. It was a nice goal to have everything animation based but it’s just not working IMO.

For the glance up issue, put the kittening boons on the target enemies’ head for christ’s sake.

Am I alone in my opinions here? ;-; This really annoys me.

Lettuce.2945:

Wrong on the survival route. In the 1 v 1 sense, not tpvp, an equally skilled settlers ranger will beat the d/d cele ele. Already tested. Just practice more.

What do you mean by in the 1v1 sense, not tpvp? Are you talking about WvW? I heard there are classes that can beat d/d ele in WvW, but this is Spvp forum.

Condi ranger cannot beat a cele d/d ele right now, no matter what cleansing options you choose. They can beat bad ones o.O if that’s who you “tested” this on lol…

Unless you meant off point? You might be able to beat one off point by just dodging the hell away from fire attunement attacks since you don’t worry about capping, but a good elementalist off point will still not let you kill them…so I’m pretty sure your “tests” were with dueling bads lol

That’s the reason I’m sketchy about burn nerfs themselves, as burn guards/engi/ranger whatever else aren’t real problems. They are problems for people who don’t know how to play, ofcourse.

Ele is the only one of the burning specs that seems to be too much IMO. Burn guard maybe, but even on my ranger with average condi cleanse burn guards don’t bother me much. Ele however is just at a ridiculous level, and pretty much everyone in this game agrees with that, but for some reason anet hasn’t touched them yet. They nerfed might stacking, and I think they nerfed cele at one point? Nothing changed in regards to d/d ele. If they nerf burning, I predict nothing will change about d/d ele.

Elementalist d/d spec is the problem. Nerf it’s access to burn and might stacking. Fix the darn buggyness of ring of fire too.

Yeah, again, the only glaring problems I see in game at the moment are

1. Cele d/d ele. Fix this darn spec. Nao; it can be beaten by nothing on point. Good mesmers and cele signet necros can give it a scare but it’s just way over the top.

2. Burning has made bleeding irrelevant. Either burning or bleeding needs to mechanically be changed because right now burning is just 3x as strong. Maybe give bleed some unique other side effect, like the other condis have, and make burning the straight up damage condi.

The OP is correct here. Some classes literally don’t have the condi cleanse to deal with the burn meta.

My mesmer does, by taking inspiration line it’s not a problem which is why mesmer is good against a cele ele for example. On mesmer when taking that line I can’t be killed by conditions 1v1.

Now let’s talk about my ranger; on ranger I take healing spring traited (pulse 2 condi removes) and 2 survival utilities for on demand 2 condi removals. That seems like a lot of cleanse right? Well, for a short while until the cele ele starts timing the fire attunement or burn guard burst you when spring is on CD, then you basically have to run or die. I could go all survival utility route and do no damage, all for the sake of cleansing. But it’s awkward and inefficient.

Some classes just don’t have great ways of getting the burning off. Should it be this way? I don’t know. The only class I really see being a problem is cele d/d ele. The other burning classes can smartly be dealt with and have sufficient weaknesses. Cele ele does not, and I think that spec in itself needs attention before burning is tweaked.

As you said yourself, those enemies were incredibly bad. That thief and mesmer and necro, my god haha.

Condi ranger has some innate problems at the moment, the biggest being that axe/dagger will get you bursted down dead by a good power opponent, and SB lacks reliable condi application.

Another is amulet choice. Carrion has no sustain and a few bursts through your HP pool and you’re toast. Settlers has too much toughness (that doesn’t scale properly) and no hp, which means you’re also a sitting duck for a quick unexpected burst combo from either condi or power.

Also bleeding is just lol right now compared to burning. It’s just garbage.

So I run a pure burn build that does the job well enough, using balth runes, smoldering/geo sigils on both weapons and cele. Flame trap, sun spirit, and torch just annihilate anyone who dares fight you on point. Even with only 750ish condi, you can easily get to 3-4k ticks of burning. Higher with settlers and carrion, but again you trade off some survivability. I can’t be bursted down easily by a mes or thief with cele, and I also have the sustain to outlast them; something that carrion can’t do, and settlers may not give you the chance to do because a mesmer can get through that 16k hp before you know they are there.

Also beastmastery double birds :p Once you go peckpeck you never go back

I think our hardest matchups right now are cele ele and cele necro. Everything else can be dealt with if you play properly. Cele ele won’t be able to beat you if you use your condi removal properly, but you won’t be able to kill a good one either. Cele necros you have to be extremely careful with or you’ll have your burn back on your butt and be dead in seconds.

I want to know in what kittening universe the OP is living in that has immortal bunker rangers in spvp lol

The closest I can think of is a settlers condi with evasion on weaponskills and survival utilities, which is quite strong 1v1 (it was stronger before patch, for example it no longer can outlast many things that it could before, such as d/d ele) but get more than 1 person on you and you’re instantly dead with that 16k health pool…so haha please tell me what build you’re talking about.

I run settlers and balth runes with triple traps and hs. I find using axe/dagger in this meta is asking to die, so Ive been running with sb for range and damage or gs for utility and mobility.

The traps and torch with balth give more than enough damage, double birds have great burst too and force your enemy into eating traps. You dont really need the damage from axe 2 and wilting strike gives you plenty of weakness uptime with hawk and eagle. I cant decide between double burn duration sigils or hydromancy to go with the geo tho.

You may worry about avoidable damage with relying on traps, but keep in mind that aside from you bending over, enemies have no way of seeing them, birds will force people into them, and you are playing in spvp on points so they have to step on them for the most part or they lose the point. With more defensive quickdraw evade spamming weapons such as sword sb or gs, its pretty hard for one person alone to kill you, but I find with axe mh im auto dead as dagger 4 sucks now

Please add tips and ideas for changes, or do you guys still think going the bleed route is better? I also tried a survival of fittest version with 2 surv utilities over sunspirit and signet of renewal, but I found I fell in love with sun spirit.

Sorry for long post, this is for theory-crafting enthusiasts who love condi ranger. Please help me improve this build or give me other ideas you’ve found to be better, as I don’t want to play power ranger; I already play power necro ele war thief and mesmer…I love my condi ranger.

Rather than making a new thread I’ll bump this one, as it’s the only one I found on the topic. I’d been trying to come up with a tPVP condi build that works post patch, and it ended up being similar to what Tsubodai posted above, but with a few key differences. I nicknamed it DIAF (die in a fire) lol. I hesitated to post anything burn related though given the imminent possibility of a burn rework, but this build is really fun to play.

This is for tPVP only, conquest mode. It has great sustain and can survive for a bit 1v2, great mobility, craps out aoe burn aids on everyone on a point, great at holding side point skirmishes. Weaknesses: if you react too slowly, burst will instantly kill you from your low health, so if you’re being focused get the kitten out; this is no DD cele ele. Enemies also have a pretty easy time running from you since all your damage is concentrated on a point aside from throw torch; but that is why this was made for conquest only. You keep the point, you won the fight. You also might be thinking, our aoe fire fields are small and avoidable. Yes, they are, that’s why we are going to FORCE everyone into them on a 15 second burst cycle and laugh as they die.

build:

-GS/ST (don’t stop reading, I’ll explain why lol)
-Balth runes + Smoldering and Geomancy (max burn)
-Settlers (max condi with sustain)

traits:

-WS: Expertise training, Refined Toxins, EB
-BM: Gfte, WS, BW
-Skrm: Trapper Expertise, HB, Quickdraw

Utilities: HS, Sun Spirit, Flame trap, and Signet of Renewal with entangle

Pets: Hawk/Eagle (I don’t play the cancel games, it seems like a bug to me and I don’t exploit them)

So let’s chat about weapon choice and pet choice a bit. GS was chosen because of it’s incredible utility and mobility combined with quickdraw. We all know shortbow is just an abomination right now (make bleed not positional for christ’s sake) and our beloved Axe/dagger sw/t was gutted a bit with the off hand training nerf. So until dagger’s 4 range is fixed, I’m sticking with GS because I feel like a sitting duck when I am using axe/dagger.

But GS has -no- condi, so I gave it some. Sun Spirit + Geomancy+ Refined toxins. Boom now it’s a makeshift condi weapon >.> Trust me the utility …makes it worth it haha (at least until the offhand training fix <3)

The birds are because we now have the 15 ICD taunt which makes them viable over double dogs and I think their damage output is worth the switch. They both become condi dealing with Expertise training, they have bleeds on their 4 second CD f2, sun spirit effects them, and refined toxins gives them poison. This combined with their insane hard power hits and 4 second weakness+blind spam makes them superior. They also have a 6 second ICD leap which they spam through all the fire and water fields I put down, making them both survive longer, and have a nice up time of fire aura.

We have good team support with short CD water condi cleansing fields that are pretty massive, and clutch condi team removal with renewal signet. Sun spirit buffs everyone with burning damage from 1000 range, and even if they have no condi damage it still is a nice boost. We also have really nice aoe cleave, lay your aids right on a dead enemy’s fase with flame trap and bonfire and taunt the rezzers, could also explode your sun spirit and toss out a tangle with a geo wpn switch, it all adds up.

rotation:

Start with GS until you’re ready to burst. When you’re ready and in position, switch wpns —> throw torch -->Serpent strike—>throw torch—>pet F2+ bonfire+ flame trap—->leap through the fire—>switch weapons, leap again, etc etc, just an example. You also have 2 flame traps for every bonfire, so you can keep up some sustain damage with fire aura and sun spirit while you’re waiting for your taunt.

This build gives you 4 leap finishers on a short CD. Need healing? Use them in the water. Need mobility? Use them to get to another point quickly or to run away. Otherwise, you will have a pretty insane up time of fire aura, as well as your bird.

I usually will start the fight with double bonfire but for the rest of your fight you need to be using throw torch for quickdraw offense or leaping for heal, because quickdrawing bonfire only works once at the start if you want to keep a rotation up. Don’t forget to maul for vulnerability if you can land it, and we also have GS 5’s interrupt. Also the block is nice.

you can proc is in a lot of places actually, but this seems really only useful to zerker LB rangers IMO because condi survival needs to sit on node, and there’s no way to proc it on node

I was testing builds in prep for next week and gave this trait a try ( even though it’s in heavy competition with the new OoakheartS and expertise training for next week’s build)
and since I am giving up the utility muddy terrain for the new amazing QZ, I was gonna miss the immob; so I tried the trait.

anyways so I noticed that it’s on a 1 second ICD and adds fury and removes 2 condis from SotF >.> <,< >.> 1 second icd >.> <,< do you think they will fix this next week or have they not noticed or is there not really any viable competitive ways to use it?

If it were up to me stealth on any class should never have been implemented and thief should of been given some other playstyle.

Stealth poisons competitive PVP in ever MMO I’ve played. (and I play both stealth and non stealth classes, no bias here)

But removing it isn’t an option. And I haven’t thought of any good ways to solve the problem. Nerfing thieves certainly isn’t the answer. I would think just eliminating stealth stacking and make thief stealth similar to mesmers would help immensely. Also fix the kitten s/d ignoring of LoS sword #2

Uhg all your arguing is pointless, no amount of buffing or nerfing classes is going to change anything.

The -only- reason why thief has a huge impact on meta and forces other classes to spec with thieves specifically in mind is because they stealth and port endlessly and that gives them the benefit of catching people off guard mid fight and ganking them off 1 by 1.

Mesmer somewhat also causes this issue but you usually see them coming and hence the opponent can prepare accordingly for counterplay so it isn’t as big of an issue.

It should be glaringly obvious that currently all successful meta specs are ones that can’t easily be picked off by a thief surprise stabbing them in the butt.

1v1 thief is perfectly fine. Problem is when you are say a zerker necro/ele/ranger/mes/ whatever pewpewing in your safe positioning and suddenly kahblam you’re dead from the theif that just snuck up on you and you might not have full health with CDs ready to fend him off.

This problem will probably always exist if the stealth mechanic itself exists.

You will see a mesmer coming. They have 1 port on a medium CD and their stealths only last so long, have medium CDs, and are usually not wasted for sneaking up on people as they are much needed escape mechanisms.

Thieves have infinite stealth and ports until they reach their desired targets.

Cynz.9437:

conquest shapes the meta not thieves; give stronghold some time and you will see change in meta

revealed bug was huge in pve/wvw…. you can’t just ignore other parts of the game

conquest indeed shapes it’s meta, as will SH shape it’s own meta. That doesn’t mean something else can’t also shape the meta…lol..Thieves have the biggest impact on meta because the other specs and classes are basing their builds upon what can survive a thief’s surprise onslaught. basically get cele or get dead, was a quote I read somewhere; or play a medi guard lol

Cynz.9437:

frosty would disagree with you, he nukes most thieves on his mesmers~
how is reavealed upon leaving stealth is fine? did you even think about pve for a sec?

I told you it’s unnecessary, I was just throwing it out there ( as when I played d/p through that reveal bug, it literally had -no- effect on me whatsoever lol aside from the broken SR)

And I never said thief was destroying zerkers 1v1, I said they are sneaking up on low armor zerk specs and destroying them whilst they are mid fight. Essentially a thief’s job isn’t to 1v1, it’s to sneak up on people with ports and stealth and pick them off.

So yes, many mes, rangers, wars, etc who play zerk can 1v1 a thief. That doesn’t change the fact that they shape the meta.

scrap the ferocity garbage and increase the mantra charge to 4 instead of 3. Or perhaps a new " cut the casting time of mantras by 50%. I’d consider taking it over DE on an interrupt build if they did that.

As of now it’s never going to be taken over DE

Cynz.9437:

then other classes shouldn’t be able to receive heals or use other blocks upon using heal or block… sounds fair~

I don’t think the reveal is necessary, but those suggestions are stupid comparisons lol

Also the other thing that is a bit problematic about thieves is that they shape the meta; I think every class and spec revolve around what can survive a thief sneaking up on you; its not that d/p thief for example does -so- much more damage than say a shatter mes or lb ranger, it’s that they do it when you aren’t expecting it because of stealth. So naturally most zerker specs have been pushed out of meta, as you can see with whats happening to shatter mes because of thief. The only other prominant zerker is medi guard….the only one that annihilates thieves

I love playing thief but I think it’s a bit unhealthy that they single handedly shape the meta

I think d/p thief is fine and the only thing it needs is maybe the reveal upon leaving stealth (it happened during that bug, and aside from shadow refuge, was completely fine)

However, is no one bothered by the fact that s/d sword #2 can go through LoS? That is really the only thing about thieves that bothers me in general. s/d spam evades plus safety of porting to you and back while you can’t even LoS them is extremely frustrating. I know that s/d isn’t as good as d/p in meta atm, but it just feels wrong they can do that and ignore LoS in so many spots because the port seems to work through the same pathing as LB port and shadowstep

All I hear is “give me the best of both worlds, let me keep DE, don’t make anything good compare to DE”

I really think this trait is damaging to our build variety

or they could make the 2 other opposing traits equally as good as DE :/

They haven’t said 3 will be baseline, but I do think a good idea for them would be to make the new harmonious mantra trait double the casts for a total of 4 instead of 3. This might push the trait to be usable over DE and further separate DE from non shatter builds. Double the mantra casts or double the clone generation, seems fair to me (they are trying to make it nicer with that damage bonus thing but I don’t think it’s enough, just doesn’t outweigh DE IMO)

Happy to see people are taking inspiration seriously though! I was thinking it might work well with cele? For all the healing, and could also use scepter/staff or something for some condi pressure

@sebrent

sorry i’m not being very clear with my words; what I meant was

after HoT I assume a shatter mesmer will go dom dueling and illusions.

and intterupt mesmer is going to go dom dueling and chaos.

a chronomancer of these 2 variants will be even further restricted, IE, that’s what I was trying to say. I can’t see anyone going into inspiration over the other trees. (exceptions being phantasm builds which are not viable in tpvp right now so I don’t take them too seriously)

You misunderstood me. I know it’s still there, but almost no mesmers went past 2 in that line (only to get mender’s purity). now that we are forced all the way in, I can’t think of any build that will go that line- is what I meant by losing access to it

Is anyone else bummed out about not having access to mender’s purity anymore? Is anyone gonna pick inspiration for any build? :x Before we just needed two points for it ;-;

They need to make DE baseline or try their best to separate it from non-shatter builds ( which is what they are trying to do maybe)

As for the halting strike, it contributed to shatter’s dominance (of course not the only reason) so I have no problems with shatter not being able to take that; they need to raise the other specs to shatter’s level.

Is Poison Master’s new -66% healing not catching anybody’s attention? Or does nobody care because it competes with the new Sotf and EB? :o

Coulter.2315:

If you aren’t using DE you’re doing it wrong, the OP is correct in that we need to take Dueling BUT we had to do that anyway and now get access to more powerful traits across the board (up to 3 of our currently selected traits are now baseline lol).

If you are shatter and don’t take DE you’re doing it wrong, other specs can currently perform fine without it. The problem is that now, shatter is the only viable high tier meta spec we have had for ages and even it is being pushed out of meta atm.

Let’s hope that with all the other buffs, DE won’t be “necessary” to non-shatter builds (IP helps immensely with this) and that non shatter builds can actually be included in high tier play

I could not be more excited about the mesmer buffs, especially to interrupt builds! They killed clone death builds seemingly but now IMO interrupt looks very strong like shatter and possibly condi too? ( I don’t play it so dunno)

IP is baseline! Seriously yassss. And all mesmers will be forced to get DE? I don’t even use it right now as interrupt, I find it kills my sustain damage (phantasms) and I have plenty of clones to shatter for boon removal as it is. OP is wayyyy overreacting

SOrry If I missed this if someone said it already, but the OP’s write up of poison master is wrong I think;

Anyone else notice that the tooltip now says -66% healing? Sound like we get 50% damage increase ontop of the stacking damage increase, + double the – to healing ( I assume stacking on its own has no effect on the – healing, and it’s the trait that is doing that)

I am so sick of shatter that I’ve been having fun with interrupt builds recently, my fav so far is a double ranged, I run:

Scept/pistol staff zerkers travellers a/f a/f (you can replace the staff with GS, but I find the defense and ranged daze of staff negates it’s lower damage)

6/6/0/2/0 Halting Strike, Shattered Concentration, CS
Far-reaching, Duelist Discipline, HM
Mender Purity

It’s pretty fun, in team fights I stay at 1200 range (with phantasms strategically placed at far range to not die easily) and I have a plethora of interrupts with 3 power locks, staff 5, pistol 5, and diversion which all are dazes and have chances to stun b/c of CS

I only shatter to remove important enemy boons, quick burst, or distortion so I don’t find I need deceptive evasion with this play style because it kills my strategically placed phantasms when I need to dodge something.

so at range I have phants for sustain, interrupts for burst and denial, and air/’fire on both weapons for more burst at range.

I have the defense of the staff and the block on scepter ( which btw is a very underestimated power weapon, 3 on it does a really nice burst and the block damage can get huge)

and the biggest bonus IMO is the CONDI REMOVAL. 6 condis gone with a click 2 by 2. I can’t be fear spammed, I can’t be CC spammed, it has aided my survival sooo much and feels sooo good; the CD is extremely low., only downside is recharging mantras which I use LOS and invis to do.

cons: thieves will kill you more easily than if you were playing gs/ s/t shatter, because your main source of damage can’t easily be summoned when you’re perma blinded (phantasms) and you lack the extra invis from torch. Ironically, gs s/t shatters have been murdering me as well, again because of the extra invis and sudden burst that 1 shots.

Also not as good of AoE over shatter obviously, and lacks the portal over power lock

Oh and for the love of god they should do something about the utilities. Every serious mes needs to run the trinity pretty much. (portal blink and decoy) This is one reason why interrupt build might be less effective in high tier because they have to choose one of the three in the trinity to give up for mantra of distraction.

So aside from being thief food (though torch users have a fighting chance) and being replaced by medi guards (thief counters), mesmer is really powerful and is only just slightly being pushed out of meta.

So this being said you have to be really careful what you do to promote build diversity, as it might push shatter too high.

Mes has 4 options that I know of: Shatter, Phantasm, Condition (either shatter or non shatter kind) and interrupt.

2 of those are already considered a plague unto man kind by the community (condi and
phantasm, and I understand why, but rather than making anet crap on them like they did phantasms and soon engi turrets, they should just think of innovative ways to make them less summon and forget; because some people just like to play AI and pet classes) so interrupt as the only other thing worth buffing I guess?

If you make clone on dodge baseline to promote diversity, this would only buff shatter passed the other choices and still keep it as the top as it can have more options such as condi removal it might gain access to; so that would defeat the purpose of the thread I think. I like having it baseline with an ICD though and needing the trait to clear the ICD, that might be a good idea.

Awesome Thanks for the effort AG!

Again, please reconsider some of the class based stuff as some of it seems out-dated

I’m not that experienced so I’m sure I could be wrong in my opinions here but these seem strange, because if no one is allowed to run bunker amulet I can’t see how these are AIDS:

Engineer: No “Celestial build” that includes Elixer Gun we can’t use cele amulet so….
Mesmer: No Restorative Mantras trait
Mesmer: No similar Prismatic Understanding permanent protection variants (I.E. 3 in Chaos, 3 in Inspiration) This sounds out-dated because that combo gives 3 secs of prot every 15 seconds, that’s not permanent…
Mesmer: No Phantasmal Disenchanter utility this isn’t even that great of condi cleanse, why is this on the list lol does anybody even use this?
Ranger: Cannot trait more than 2 points in Wilderness Survival trait line this seems really unfair for any non-LB power rangers, that line has ranger’s best condi removal. If you’re worried about Bark Skin, just ban that. If you’re worried about the prot on dodge, that’s a minor trait and I think the banning of minor traits is not a good way to go, I mention that below

I can’t speak to the other classes’ stuff as I’m not familiar with it. Oh and I understand the banning of AI builds, spirit weps, spirit ranger, phant mes, turrets, but a little more specificity would be nice on the rules page; I can give you an example for mesmer:

Mesmer: No Phantasm Mesmer (no Phantasm traits allowed with the exception of Phantasmal Fury and minor traits. No Signet of Illusions.)

That should take care of any viable pure phantasm build while making shatter or interrupt builds still having access to the fury for GS phantasm (though if you wanted to ban Phantasmal Fury too it shouldn’t be that big a deal. ) I put in the minor trait exception because like I mentioned in my earlier post, banning minor traits prevents you from going deeper in a line and is extremely annoying to have that ban in place.

Sorry for my wall of text >-< Thanks again!