Guild Wars 2

Rip Killshot Mesmer

I’m excited for the nerfed version of this build, because it’ll make a burst condi spec actually playable.

The dodge is literally your only survivability. Adding Inspiration means you can only take one of Dueling or Illusions. We’ll see how that works…

Thanks a lot for this. Very helpful!

YourFriendMarvin.4127:

Buschleague.6738:

YourFriendMarvin.4127:

Being dishonored for purely Account Sharing isn’t right. Some people such as myself got hit again at a random time, and it’s really unjust unless the accounts being shared are being manipulated in a wrong way. The issues with leaderboard boosting/Monthly Automated Tournaments are an example, but just sharing accounts and no manipulation of any sort involved shouldn’t get you extreme dishonor buffs. Account sharing has been happening in all game modes of Guild Wars 2, and it’s been really one sided to how they are executing unfair dishonors. Especially when I know there are a ton of people who have account shared, but I myself get hit due to being a big name in Season 5 incidents. Investigations need to be more stronger, and not just based on IP’s. Sure it’s ToS violations, but I feel as long as nothing bad is happening like just doing dailies for a friend while they’re on vacation or casual stuff shouldn’t be punished severely. Before you decide to give out more dishonors, really look into things.

I’d just be happy it isn’t a ban, you’re the one breaking the TOS agreement.

I know that, but that alone shouldn’t dishonor for the rest of the PvP season if nothing bad like manipulation involved. Look at PvE boosting/Account sharing on that part. They don’t look into that as much, and it’s one sided because of the outrages from this community. My point is that they just take big names that people complain about and hit them to please everyone without actually looking into it fully. I knew the risks, but purely account sharing shouldn’t be punished severely unless you manipulate things for the bad reasons. It’s just lazy on their part, I knew the risks, and it doesn’t change my view on it.

…so you don’t see how their account sharing in this situation manipulated the AT Monthly in a… bad way?

I love pennies. Glad UGO was ahead of the curve on this one.

TheFisix.6047:

Nos.9803:

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain

Does this mean I am now the #1 Necro NA?

Come holla at yuh boy!: https://www.twitch.tv/fisix4phun

I love a good plug. I’ll come watch!

lulz
/Sly

It’s a sad state of affairs. I hope the 0 tolerance for unethical behavior in sPvP continue.

@CrashTheGrey has saved this thread. Thank the Six for your contributions.

It’s really a sad day when people are not only willingly support toxic behavior but to attack those who seek to prevent it.

jebro.6370:

nothelseth.4621:

Banning the only halfway decent players because you get bullied into doing it by opportunistic people faking outrage in order to further kill off their scene because all they care about is their own ego.

What are you basing these bans on? TOS being broken? In that case I advice you ban half of NA, including the people that probably endlessly whined to you about doing this.

IMO it’s none of anyones business other than anet of what people does w their ingame tourn winnings. The only way I could find a ban justified from your end is if someone actually changed the outcome of a match by cheating. Nothing like that happened.

But yeah, I’m sure jeff convincing you of banning the team that always beats him is all done in the ‘’fairness of competition’’ and not you getting bullied by whispers and not having the nuts to take a stance.

Good day,

I apologise if you have been misinformed about the current situation. I have spoken to a majority of players, community members and viewers about this occurrence.

If you believe that one person is able to convince an entire organisation which is run democratically to ban others I am afraid that you are sadly mistaken.

If we see cheating in the game mode which is the feature of our tournament, we will act. To run an organisation you must have rules. This enables a safe and structured environment to foster a positive gameplay experience and environment. If we feel this is in breach of our ethics we will act.

Please refer to the start of the thread mentioning temporary ban. If things change, we will change our stance.

Thanks.

Jebro

quoting for emphasis.

I’ve still failed to see how this decision was controversial in the least bit. It seems like the people opposing UGO’s decision are basing their criticism on a lot of personal mess that has nothing to do with the facts of the situation. idk Jeff from Josh, and I don’t think he’s that important in the grand scheme of things. What I do know is that UGO’s stance against unethical behavior is something that has bolstered my confidence in the pvp community.

Ben Phongluangtham.1065:

We’ve identified additional accounts of players who were involved in account sharing and match manipulation.

We’ve given them dishonor for the remaining season for now. Our investigation is still underway, so additional action may be taken later, should we determine it appropriate.

Quoting for relevance, since everyone wants to ignore the PROOF that Anet has gotten enough evidence to give these players dishonor until the next season.

Now I have no issues with Jeff and he is probably correct about all of this, but for the life of me I can’t understand why someone who wants to see the proof (that has been declared to exist) before joining a blind witch hunt is declared a troll.

lulz you can’t have it both way. You can’t say Jeff is probably correct but then call this a “blind witch hunt”. Which is it?

Every time Sly says “certain friend” or “certain someone”, I’m instantly triggered. Sly is the meme we needed in 2017.

There is enough circumstantial evidence for action to be taken as evidenced by the dishonor. That little detail alone speaks volumes in my opinion. Anet doesn’t like “witch hunts” which is why those with “proof” haven’t posted anything really concrete.

This situation is NOT complicated. This isn’t about viewership or money. This is about having ethical standards. Those disagreeing with UGO’s decision based on the former should take a deeper look at how we’ve gotten to this point in the first place…

claps I’m glad there are people out there who refuse to reward unethical behavior. Running a tournament with integrity in mind trumps viewers or money.

If these allegations are true, it’s really disappointing… and this response from anet is even more disappointing. People are making a mockery out of this game. As a manager irl, I don’t tolerate unethical behavior from customers or employees alike. They are NOT welcome ever. I don’t understand why Anet continues to give a slap on the wrist to people who abuse the system.

SneakyTouchy.6043:

MailMail.6534:

Please enlighten me. When/where have malicious situations been instated against players in other games?

And you’re right. The system is such a mess and punishing enough. The devs are very busy. I doubt they’d waste their time targeting players. The idea is really laughable.

When and where is irrelevant for two reasons. First, it’s a matter of fact that devs are human and all humans have a chance to behave poorly, lie, and cover up their poo to maintain their position. Secondly, there’s no evidence that Anet is doing it, so it’s not really a point worth supporting. I’m just saying that it’s not ridiculous to suspect based on human nature.

This is conjecture, but for the sake of the thread, I digress.

Evan Lesh.3295:

I’ll just leave this here:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm

got em

SneakyTouchy.6043:

MailMail.6534:

The idea of a naughty list is ridiculous on so many levels that it isn’t worth refuting.

The idea is not ridiculous at all. It’s not unheard of for game devs (in general) to create situations that are malicious against their own players based on ideological differences or having been offended. It’s rather just unlikely because big companies are more likely to adhere to recognizing the risks involved.

What is ridiculous is the idea you can claim to begin building proof of it on an open forum without expecting consequences. IF there is any such thing going on, the threat of being caught would likely result in it being covered up by simply removing the flag from any player claiming to study it.

I don’t believe there’s any such thing going on however. There’s too much going on with the matching algorithm that’s obviously problematic, and doesn’t require a naughty list (or privileged list) to screw anyone over.

Please enlighten me. When/where have malicious situations been instated against players in other games?

And you’re right. The system is such a mess and punishing enough. The devs are very busy. I doubt they’d waste their time targeting players. The idea is really laughable.

The idea of a naughty list is ridiculous on so many levels that it isn’t worth refuting.

The fact that you made this thread without offering any such evidence shows that it is simply clickbait. “I’m about to EXPOSE Anet! Come back next week when I update the thread!”

Players are frustrated. I understand and share in these sentiments. However, threads like these without evidence makes the legitimate claims out there look like just another sad and pathetic attempt to excuse poor performance on the player’s part.

BYE.

eta – Have fun being added to The Naughty List for the rest of eternity.

Lyssa protect me. I had to end my stream tonight early due to the disconnecting! uses Cry of Frustration

A podcast list without KitAndTheTravelers? Pfft!

Also, Hosts of Ascalon is my all time favorite. Must see!

I’ve listened a few times to Shadow Of The Dragon. I also occasionally check out Tea Time which is pretty high quality.

I feel so blessed to be out of the fray this time.

Very sad yet unsurprising. Don’t worry though, it should be fixed to its intended use by 2020.

While I understand offhand sword is a “dueling” spec, I still think it’s a horrible buff. Dat 130 range tho.

This is definitely an “intended nerf” to Condition Mesmer. That being said, I haven’t found it to be that devastating overall. I’m currently using Improved Alacrity instead which has given me quicker use of my non-clone skills/utilities. Overall net 0 in terms of Condi Mesmer imo. I’m actually using Dueling with Deceptive Evasion and loving the change.

For Dps Mesmers, I think this was a net negative in terms of nerfs/buffs… There were other buffs that for DPS Mesmer that can be discussed in another thread.

rbbthole.9074:

Fay.2357:

Zintrothen.1056:

MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! On NA and EU.

Can you feedback an entire city? Yeah, didn’t think so.

#QueenJennah2017

Just to be clear feedback create a dome around your foes that reflects projectiles… The one built by Queen “the weak” Jennah was bigger but was a mere block too; I saw no reflect on enemy’s attacks… Plus I heard from Logan that, after a long walk outside on a sunny day, her feet smell like a wet charr…

This is libel. I’m reporting this post to the devs.

Agreed. I’ve been in many a match where comebacks have occurred for both my team and the enemy team. For a player to stifle that opportunity is extremely frustrating. Report them all.

There’s been a few situations where my entire team wanted to quit. That’s a different story entirely. I usually just ask the enemy team for 1v1s in those scenarios. Works out where I feel like I’m able to salvage a poor match.

I find the other posts to be a distraction from the core problem. Instead of telling others how “useless” it is to report idle players (this is like telling sexual assault victims to not report abuse because reporting it doesn’t usually lead to “justice”), you should be using those key strokes instead to urge Anet to action.

I commend Anet on this thread. I hope larger structural issues with balancing can be approached with similar fashion to this more micro issue. The feedback here seems to be really helpful and effective.

Looking forward to the changes.

Azukas.1426:

Fay.2357:

They aren’t new…for WvW at least.

It’s worth noting that sigil of absorption has a specified boon order of removal. This makes it mostly useless in PvP, but quite strong in WvW. The order is resistance, then aegis, then retaliation, then swiftness, then other stuff.

Sigil of ruthless is okish I guess…but the stacks are only applied for 3 seconds. It’s basically only useful as part of a shatter burst combo…except the sigil of draining (is that in PvP yet?) would probably deal more damage anyway.

Reason we need to test cause I wonder if they’ll change the priority order. I will say removing resistance first is insanely strong even in a PvP setting with how prevalent warriors have become. I’m looking into a condi and power version to work with atm.

Except, when they pop Resistance, they will typically pop Stability as well. This goes back to what an earlier poster said about needing to strip Stab first somehow. And if you’re a Mesmer taking boon strips skills/traits, you probably don’t need this sigil anyway.

I love the aggression.

Thanks for being swift with these changes and taking high consideration of the forum posts. This right here is a prime example of anet receiving feedback and applying it. Bravo.

What’s stronghold?

I use Disenchanter in PvP when solo-ing. The boon removal is very nice. I use it offensively for the most part as it removes quite a bit of boons from the enemy team at a rapid rate. While it’s very random in its bounce, I never tend to have issues with it removing condis when I need it to. Like everything with Mesmer, if you can’t learn to position correctly then you aren’t Mesmering correctly at all.

This thread definitely catches my attention! Good job OP. Hopefully some good discussion comes of this. Some of the suggested rune choices would need some tweaking in my opinion, but the general idea of most is something I agree with.

lock this thread.

I don’t want the cele meta back.

OriOri.8724:

I agree that condition application is a huge problem in the game right now. I also agree that overall mesmer has tons of condi cleanse. But its still mostly tied up in Inspirations.

Not exactly. It’s just our strongest way of condition clearing by far, which it should be.

Carighan.6758:

I’ve always wondered which type overall balance is the best in this game, and I feel that “one aspect per traitline” works best.

That is to say, we’d have a specific traitline for, say, dealing damage. And one for CC. Being Mesmers we might have two for that. One for conditions and dealing with them. And so on.

In other words there’s be a traitline which is all about removing or disabling conditions. You want to be durable against conditions, take it. You don’t want it, don’t take it.

The game could then easily show your spec to outsides too, because all they’d need to know is something like “Domination/Dueling/Inspiration”, translating to “Nukes, DoTs and Heals” or something like that. Give the traitlines icons and it’s even easier to represent. This’d remove issues like this thread has because the traits only need to be balanced in the context of the traitline, not in a vacuum.

+1 to this.

The trait lines should be more definitive and build-defining. That being said, I’ve always thought that Mesmer had enough access to condition clearing. We have multiple utilities, a few traits and a heal skill.

How rampant conditions are on a macro level is a big part of our condition clearing problems. It appears to be that every button pressed spits out a condi on most classes these days.

Silverkey.2078:

At the risk of not being very popular, not being able to cast damaging phantasms while remaining in stealth sounds good to me.

It sounds pretty awesome to me. To balance around WvW roaming is to go down a deep dark rabbit hole with no good results. I remain vociferous in my opinion that the phantasm changes were a net positive, albeit minimal, for overall Mesmer balance.

OriOri.8724:

The dueling line needs to get a decent condi clear. I think that desperate decoy could be made into a pretty powerful condi cleanse that would be perfect for duels. Change it so that evading an attack transfers 1 condition from you to each illusion (so up to 3 transferred total) with a 15-20sec ICD. Its fairly weak on its own, but you could combine it with light fields (WoE or focus) and/or domination signet trait for pretty solid condi cleanse in a duel situation without being forced into the inspirations line.

Great suggestion. What happens when you don’t have an illusion?

I’ve had a change of heart. This map snowballs quicker than any other map by a long shot. Officially my least favorite map of all.

My thoughts on the balance for us:

• Arcane Thievery: lol ok so they reduced the recharge so that we could ineffectively use it more often? Awesome. tbh, when it does work, it feels great. However, I think it needs a total rework still.
• Lowered CDs on glamours, SoM and pDefender are nice though of little consequence. Definitely makes them more viable in lower end pvp I guess.
• Time Warp buff is nice for raids/WvW I assume? I’m unfamiliar with those formats. I assume Well of Action is good for getting out 8s of quickness with max boon duration.
• Love the buffs to our other block skills. I still think pSwordsman should rip 2 boons if his attack surprisingly hits.
• After so many years, I’m glad to see some improvements to some of our phantasms and look forward to the others getting some buffs as well in the next balance update.

Overall, the buffs were very minimal. Didn’t do much of anything for build diversity and the underlying issues with a lot of our builds. SIGH That being said, I’m not going to complain about the buffs we did get this go around. Maybe stockholm syndrome has crept in, and I’m just happy with whatever Anet gives us at this point! lol

Let’s get a few things out of the way:

• stealth is an extremely strong mechanic. Some might say it’s a broken one that doesn’t have much place in the game.
• for this to be some unfair nerf to Mesmer stealth implies that Mesmers use a lot of stealth to begin with. Decoy is really the only “meta” stealth we use in PvP. I would argue that the buff to torch phantasm actually is an overall buff to torch itself despite the “nerf” to Prestige. I will definitely be using it in my condi build next season if it isn’t “hot-fixed” by then…

The only attack on a Phantasm that does meet that goal is the Torch one, but the other two are plain and simple nerfs to stealth with absolutely no benefit to the Mesmer for using them.

This is blatantly false. lol You’re a great poster here, but your use of dramatics isn’t helpful in this case. I’m not going to sit here, lie and say these buffs were HUGE. They were not. They were indeed disappointingly minimal. However, they were definitely overall buffs.

Why do I need to Cripple something that I’ve likely already stunned?)

Because you won’t always have Magic Bullet available for use. It is, indeed, added pressure in the way that not only do you have to worry about a hard CC, but you also must worry about a soft CC. Both attacks add a CC now. This is a buff.

The Staff one, on the other hand, is another bad joke of an attack. (Yes! Just what we asked for! More slow projectile attacks on the Mesmer

Yes, that buff is extremely minimal. That being said, I’ve noticed that when the projectiles do connect, my pWarlock tends to see more 10% dmg increases. Our AA is pretty weak, but I think the bigger issue is that other class AAs are simply too strong. That’s a completely different discussion though.

Have the guts to call it what it is…it’s a nerf to stealth/phantasm builds

What game mode are these stealth/phantasm builds being played? Are you also using PU? If you are talking about balance in regards to the outrageously OP stealth mechanic in WvW roaming, then yes, you are correct that this was an intended [and deserved] nerf.

I’m stuck… again. This happened to me Monday night as well. Reported it both times.

Curunen.8729:

waiting for Mirage.

:)

This is very disappointing to me but not surprising.

That being said, I think the change has 0 impact balance-wise for both Revs and Mesmers. The precedence of giving profession-specific abilities to other classes was broken a long time ago.

Windwalker.7421:

If HoT had stayed true to the ideal of not replacing Core but augmenting it with another choice, then Chrono would have been focused in exactly the way you describe.

Oh well…water under the bridge…

This is so important. You both are so right. Unfortunately, the reality is that despite what was promoted, that was never their true intentions… because they’re a business. That being said, I’m hoping they won’t have to subject themselves to continued power creep in the next expansion and that they have some stronger selling points outside of elite specs.

This thread is click bait.

25 stacks of confusion against an actual human player is only realistically possible with Mistrust.

Make Slow Great Again.

I’m liking the new map so far. The visibility is so much better, and I love the extra exit near camp. It’s definitely less frustrating to fight on mid.

Seriously perplexed why people actually have discussions with this poster when his clear and proven bias prevents him from a productive discussion on balance.

Everything the Boss Ross said.

Fay.2357:

Ross Biddle.2367:

• I am amazing – This is clear – We can all agree!

It is known.

crystal!

Ross Biddle.2367:

Ithilwen.1529:

Here again, there is agreement with one of my main premises.

Clones die so easily and without any penalty at all. This undermines practically all Mesmer builds.

Hence, killing clones should carry a penalty. I contend that penalty should be damage/conditions just as it was,

OR

Clones are immune to all sources of damage (they can still be hit for 0, and still have condi’s applied), and phantasms take 10% cleave/aoe damage, and only 100% focus.

That way there’s no flaw in the system for Mesmers, and no silly “penalty” for anyone else.

Your conclusion doesn’t follow btw.

Clones dying from cleave and AOE is called counter play. Penalizing people for getting rid of our clones would get rid of this counter play. Listen to the Boss Ross.