Showing Posts For Marius Verius.2530:
That’s a cool idea. Hopefully they’ll polish the game to that level, which should mean that everything of higher priority would be all taken care of. =)
Since we’re on the UI train, I’d like a different cursor color, like neon green or something. Sometimes I just don’t know where my cursor goes.
Does the torch still cause an AoE blind upon activation of The Prestige?
If so, when traited as such, you also have AoE confusion – twice if you use Signet of Midnight. And if you use another fun trait, also 1 second of distortion per signet activation for those worried about taking damage while in stealth.
As far as I know, signet of midnight is instant and doesn’t break channels. I’ve done it while reviving people against Alpha in CoE, so it should work with the Prestige channel, but I haven’t tested that specifically. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Edit: tested the above for fun, and it does work.
(edited by Marius Verius.2530)
9/10 above for Moltek Oversunder
Oddly enough, my Charr is Rhak Hammerhorn
Blood legion warrior, known for his big horns and unstoppable charge. Hammer warband.
Got 2 more:
Naradak Blightmaw, Ash necromancer of the Blight warband, wears the skull mask all the time (which kinda makes his teeth/maw look all septic and deadly – plus, I figure necromancers might chant or whisper their spells, so the blight literally comes from his maw).
Kala Grimwhistle, Iron legion marksman (ranger) of the Grim warband (cause once they arrive, things look real grim for the enemy) – her whistle signals a deadly, precise and calculated strike.
Can you also add timewarp to the list?
Alot of times when using the skill the people in the area of effect do not get the buff from it.
Seen this as well.
Okay, I’m going to come clean.
I am a HUGE fan of the Guild Wars 1 Mesmer.
I love it, every little thing about it.I DETEST what has been done to us in Guild Wars 2 :-(
I still play the Mesmer. Ascalonian, Mesmer at that.
I want Hexes, I want controls, Degen, proper ruddy interrupts, not this half baked clone shattering that interrupts 20 seconds later!:-(
Loved the GW1 Mesmer like no other MMO class ever conceived. Today I actually started pondering whether to play Prophecies from the start again, while the GW2 Mesmer hopefully gets patched up. Can’t stand all the bugs, all that lost potential.
I heard Restorative Mantras are now limited to 5 targets, so probably less viable in WvW (whereas Guardians have fields) but still great for anything else.
Don’t forget Null Field and Inspiration Signet. =)
Can anyone confirm these:
Staff #2 doesn’t seem to teleport you straight backwards all the time. I’ve often been teleported diagonally – one time even forward.
This is already on the list, in a way (Invisibility – NOT breaking channel effects that require a target), but occurs when downed. When an enemy is channeling the stomp and I use the #2 downed skill, often I’ll still die. So far it seems to happen about 1/3 of the time.
(edited by Moderator)
This is exactly what I’ve been doing in PvP lately. The stats aren’t the same, I’m rolling 20-0-30-0-20, but the idea remains. I pester people and grind them down with conditions, confusing them with clones and cloaking, and escaping when things get ugly.
It’s just awesome to be able to capture an entire point while 3-4 people are fighting your clones around the corner.
It’s common now for me to die only once or twice, if at all, during an entire match.
I only stop having fun when I die or lose effectiveness from buggy skills/traits, which unfortunately happens more often than not, these days.
You lost some true fans on this one anet, just so you know. It’s not that you messed up, it’s your lack of communication and your unwillingness to fix the things you messed up.
That’s precisely the heart of the matter. Today I logged back on to GW1 and stared at my Mesmer with nostalgia.
Maybe I should give Prophecies another run from the start…
I wasn’t able to make it, unfortunately…
So how was the first Mesmer Meet? Can we have some screenshots? =D
I like to avoid focusing on a single condition lest they just remove it (unless you’re really good at piling up cover conditions, but even then they wouldn’t last as long as the bleed). If you’re using the Staff, chances are you’re inflicting a bit of everything anyway, so I’ll second the Undead runes.
Throwing cards would be pretty awesome.
Sweet!! I loved those Mesmer meets!
Will do my best to be there. =D
I still remember running Urgoz with 12 Mesmers – was so epic!
GS condition is about bleeds from clones, forget everything else.
The bleed strength is decent. I wouldn’t recommend it over staff for gear with no power at all (like the OP’s Rabid). With Rabid staff will outdamage the GS, and of course staff has much more utility too, especially after the zerker’s nerfs.
Sigils can help there, but they’re all x% chance to inflict <condition> on crit.. something to consider nonetheless.
If you’re focusing on confusion itself, I’d get some domination for the added condition duration. Mind wrack also scales with power, and there are a couple useful trait options that go well with condition damage.
For conditions across the board, however, dueling seems to be the better choice, especially when coupled with sigils for condition generation. Staff works well too.
We need to keep complaining until the fix these bugs. I’m fine with balance nerfs once they get rid of all the bugs. Why oh why did I get map completion!
yesyesyesyesyesyesyes this!!! lol
I’ll start by saying I haven’t taken the time to read everyone’s posts, so I’m just looking to post my sPvP build that seems to work pretty well, though I haven’t tried elsewhere.
Here goes:
20 – V, IX
0
30 – V, X, XII
0
20 – II, V
For weapons, I got the staff and sword/torch. Utilities are Ether Feast, Decoy, Mirror Images, Blink. Elite is Mass Invisibility.
It’s obviously geared towards survivability, but I’ve reliably been able to win fights just by persevering and spreading confusions. Works well when outnumbered and gives you plenty of escape mechanics.
So there’s my 2 cents. =)
Edit: forgot about runes. I’m running a full Undead set with Carrion amulet/Shaman jewel (remember, PvP gear). Not sure about sigils yet.
What kills me about problems specific to the iberserker at the moment is Anet has the expertise to instantly fix the problem.
That’s the heart of the matter. They know what’s wrong, they have a list of all the legitimate bugs, yet there’s barely any communication with the player base regarding fixes or changes – even after causing some problems with the latest patch.
Before GW2, I had been playing EVE Online and I witnessed a major player outrage happen due to miscommunication or plain lack of communication. Long story short, they made some changes without being clear and came out as greedy, deceptive kittens. The player outrage was such that hundreds of people sat at the major market hub shooting a well-known monument for days in revolt to the direction the company was taking.
The result? They apologized, explained everything they intended to do, and in a short time re-adjusted the game to cater to their players without adding extra bugs or throwing things out of balance. They also replaced the aforementioned monument model with a messed up and shattered one to permanently reflect the event.
Transparency is golden these days. Anet should seriously consider that.
AoE skills like Chaos Storm will simply not trigger if there’s no LoS. No cooldown at all, you just get that little red message on screen.
Phantasms should be the same, but then they have to fix all the LoS bugs so we can actually cast them.
When that’s done, I think blocks/blinds/dodges/invulnerability shouldn’t prevent the summon but should negate the initial phantasm attack. Or, if it prevents the summon, then don’t use the full cooldown.
The idea of phantasm is to be an illusion with major damage output.
I thought phantasms were supposed to take the place of the old GW1 Hexes. By that logic, they should focus on utility rather than damage output. But then, due to their cooldowns, perhaps they should output stronger shatter numbers so that the increased burst damage justifies sacrificing your “hex”.
As for LoS, it needs to be fixed or not used at all. I like the ground-targeted idea, but then how would you bind the phantasm to your target?
Best solution would be to fix LoS, but who knows when that will happen.
Well no, I can get by that, though I’d design it differently (I had a lengthy post about shatter-types vs payloads, need to find that again). But the general idea isn’t bad at all, assuming it gets tweaked to the point where out utility / staying power / stable power relies on Clones and Phantasms, while our spike power and emergency survival relies on Shatters. That’d mean a Mesmer excels at following stable damage with a burst (or with emergency retreat), but her downside is that if you pressure her early (forcing the Shatter), she needs time to re-establish baseline power.
That would follow the GW1 Mesmer concept nicely: the longer the GW1 Mesmer was left unchecked in battle, the more dangerous she became; building up hexes and degen and diversion/interrupts… and since phantasms are the supposed substitutes of hexes, what you say makes perfect sense. If only the devs would actually come and read our forum, and listen to reason…
The only way I see a GS being viable for conditions is with a sigil for x% chance to inflict <condition> on crit. Then perhaps you could trait for all those “random/confusion/cripple on illusion death” effects and shatter more. With points in the Power tree, conditions also last longer so at least the izerker’s cripple will persist. At least mind wrack scales with power, and there’s a 10% crit chance trait for mind wrack as well.
Lastly, trait for bleed on illusion crit (sharper images) and if you’re feeling up to it (or have enough points), get the extra bounce for those attacks – it works with GS #2.
Edit: keep in mind that shattering doesn’t trigger those “on illusion death” effects. They need to be killed or overwritten. Also works when they die after their target dies.
I can deal with LoS – if it weren’t so buggy and often denied illusion summons under acceptable conditions
I can deal with block – if enemy Aegis burned up with my skill cast (doesn’t seem to)
I can deal with blind – if blindness burned up after my skill cast (doesn’t seem to)
Dodge is pushing it, but I can deal with that too. Just fix all the bugs already!!!
You know, if you stretch some sort of explanation, I can understand blocks and blinds, maybe even dodges preventing phantasm summoning. Maybe blocks have a magical component to them, maybe eye-contact is needed, so forth.
But the block/blind should definitely be burned, and it should trigger a regular 3s (or whatever it is) interrupt recharge.
All this, plus the overly buggy LoS seems to have lobotomized our versatility.
I don’t know what we are. I don’t know what illusions are anymore either.
I’ve enjoyed your videos before, but really feel that you could utilize shatter a lot more. I run 0/20/20/0/30 IP condition shatter build, and players drop a lot faster with 8 stacks of confusion from CoF, prior to even touching Confusing Images and iMage.
Definitely agree. I ran a version of this build (just more focused on condition dmg and less survivability) for dungeons earlier this week and just loved all the confusion stacks, especially when you also trait for confusion on blind and blind on glamour. And confusion on enter/exit glamour lol..
Unfortunately, to get confusion on blind and blind on glamour, you’d have to give up IP — which isn’t a tradeoff I’m remotely willing to do for my playstyle.
Confusion on Blind is actually quite nice as a standalone, however.
True, true. It was amusing nonetheless. =)
I’ve yet to try my Mesmer again after the recent changes, but bugs are what would make me quit the profession.
Anyone striving for advanced class techniques, I imagine, would be utterly frustrated when they can’t pull off amazing feats because of stupid bugs (like the LoS on stairs that I’ve been reading about).
If the bug effect has been made much worse because of this “patch”, I may try a different profession for a while, as heartbreaking as it will be.
They just need to separate the skill-set for each gameplay environment.
PvP-only, PvE-only, WvW-only. Done and done.
And of course, fix all the kitten bugs already, which affect the entire game very negatively.
I’ve enjoyed your videos before, but really feel that you could utilize shatter a lot more. I run 0/20/20/0/30 IP condition shatter build, and players drop a lot faster with 8 stacks of confusion from CoF, prior to even touching Confusing Images and iMage.
Definitely agree. I ran a version of this build (just more focused on condition dmg and less survivability) for dungeons earlier this week and just loved all the confusion stacks, especially when you also trait for confusion on blind and blind on glamour. And confusion on enter/exit glamour lol..
Humans in Tyria back in the day were kitten crazy. I’m sure the Charr were provoked into attacking Kryta and Orr just because they wanted Ascalon back.
I had a bit of trouble with this too. In the end, I picked Ranger. I figured they’re still excellent marksmen and naturally good at tuning artillery pieces (or at least providing the correct adjustment information). The fact that they use bows, at least for my character, is just a personal quirk/preference.
Warriors work too, but I already had one in Blood.
Anet, when can we expect to use our Mesmers as intended?
=( It’s been so long already…
At least they’re instant casts, which means you can cast a charged mantra while using other skills. Charging a mantra doesn’t get interrupted if you cast another, already charged mantra. And you can trait for increased toughness while charging them.
Same for shatter skills I believe, and maybe some signets.
Might be Guardians granting you their buffs/virtues?
EasymodeX beat me to it =)
This is currently very tough:
1, your clones attack slower than you do
2, if using a staff, the attacks from the clones don’t bounce
3, on some occasions, when your health isn’t full, clones will still spawn with full health
4, abilities which create clones without stealth do not break the enemy’s targeting
5, if clones need to run closer to a target, they’ll usually follow the very same specific, predictable path
6, when downed, a giant red arrow remains above the real Mesmer even if clones exist
7, clones never mimic spell activation effects, not even instant ones, nor do they mimic conditions (so if someone poisons you, they can look for the poison tag for example)
Nevertheless, there are a few precious seconds after you create a clone where the enemy must still find you. In the midst of battle, it can get very confusing – even if only for a couple seconds. My advice, therefore, is to create clones as fast and often as possible while shattering them just as often for maximum usage of the F1-4 skills while visually confusing the enemy at every turn. If still you feel like they’re tagging you (Ctrl+T), stealth skills will help as they do break their targeting.
Run a heavy daze build and tell me a Mesmer can’t lock down.
Or shut down any projectile spammer with Feedback and Warden’s Feedback.
The tools are there; people just aren’t willing to make tradeoffs.
Agreed there. It would still be great to have some of those weird skills back. I’m talking about the ones with really specific effects like the GW1 Arcane Thievery (which sort of came back with the engineer?), or Ignorance.
But all in all, the tools are there alright.
It would definitely be great if regular clones cleared targeting – or if the real mesmer didn’t have a giant red arrow above their head when downed.
I think things are fine as they are (as long as all the bugs are fixed), except that in PvP, the real mesmer should be harder to find. Enemy targeting should be broken upon clone creation (not just with stealth), and the downed state shouldn’t have a glaring red arrow over the real one’s head.
Can we let clones die at end of combat, instead of target death?
in Mesmer
Posted by: Marius Verius.2530
I imagine that the challenge of making clones last is that they’re currently targeted skills, so they can’t be created unless you have something targeted.
At first I also felt that they should last beyond the target’s lifespan, but after playing a bit I actually prefer the illusions as they are now. I think the current state allows for more intricate mechanics. For instance, you can pick different clones/phantasms for different targets, which allows you to shift your pressure during combat or even spread your AoE damage.
Additionally, I’ve found that any illusions created after using any of the shatter skills, even if they’re still running to their targets, will persist. For example: if you were to use Decoy + Mirror Images for 3 clones, then hit F1 and immediately use another clone/phantasm skill, you’d temporarily have 4 clones while the first 3 are still running to the target – once these shatter, you still have the 1 from the last skill.
So if illusions persisted, where would they shatter? Who would they attack? How could you use them to achieve precisely what you have in mind? Even if the shattering skills were to be the targeted ones, you’d only be able to shatter all your illusions onto a single target. Seems too limited, in my opinion, since as it is you can shatter different illusions onto different targets if you want, possibly expanding the range of the AoE.
What does bug me is the fact that, in PvP, others can easily identify the real Mesmer by calling the target. I think that clones should mess up their targeting. They’re easy enough to kill, might as well give us a few seconds of visual confusion. Same goes for the downed state (the real Mesmer is left with a giant red arrow above his/her head).
Illusionary Leap (MH-sword’s clone ability) seems to be very inconsistent past around 300 range or so, especially any time you are in unusual terrain. Certainly at the edge of its 600 range, I’ve rarely seen it work… by which I mean no clone, no cripple, no swap option. Has anyone else had this experience?
I have seen this as well. I’ve also seen the clone getting stuck on the terrain instead of leaping all the way to the target, even if the obstacle isn’t large enough to obstruct anything.
Not sure if intended, but:
The Mesmer’s second downed ability in PvP (cloak/clone) is rather useless, seeing that a giant red arrow remains over the real Mesmer.
Also in PvP, when creating clones while targeted by an enemy, the target remains on the real Mesmer. No trouble at all in finding the real one. It’s easy enough to destroy the illusions already, so can’t there be a little consolation in at least giving the enemy some trouble to find you?