Guild Wars 2

Not sure what the point of this post is. It looks like a humble-brag with the humble carved out. If you want to give advice to players, give helpful advice you would listen to. If you want to suggest something to the developers to improve balance, do so. If you want to talk about how much better you obviously feel you are than the majority of your teammates, and that you blame your frustration at your lack of progress/perfection on them, consider taking it to map chat in pvp, as the forums aren’t really for that.

Bifrost I: The Experimental Staff

Not so much a bug as it is my error, but it’s preventing completion – I deleted the star fragments without finishing out the combine/bring steps. The craftsmen don’t offer them and they haven’t dropped in the multiple attempts I’ve made to farm them again.

lighter.2708:

Browrain.7346:

I doubt the PvE’ers were complaining on April 15, 2014 when ANet merged PvE and PvP skins. PvE’ers running around heart of the mists with their fancy legendaries while the PvPers had nothing.

So, I don’t mind our ranks showing in PvE.

this

okay

I’d like to disable the visibility on my Ruby rank too. I’d just like complete autonomy over which targets I place on myself, regardless of the game mode I’m in. If I want to walk around looking like a noob in QD with no titles or ranks, I should be able to.

It’s important to keep in mind ArenaNet tries different things to see what works best and what doesn’t. If they see the Mesmer become what they view as overpowered with any play style, they’ll change it because it’s one of the least popular professions and the rest of the community won’t take being consistently beaten by a class they don’t understand. So be patient; in no time we’ll be just as weak as we were before the patch and we’ll be back to complaining about the heavy classes again.

For the devs: would iLeap work if it used Lightning Pull’s functionality and aimed it directly at the target? It’d likely eliminate a lot of the terrain issues plus be pretty fun to see – cloneballs flying over the parapets in wvw? Sign. Me. Up.

I’m also of the mind that making a new thread is fairly pointless, as the Guardian thread (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-Known-Issues-2014/page/2) looks exactly the same, but with less profession-crippling bugs (for instance, double dodge trait proc – if only ours had that bug!) and players posting about how happy they are that the slightly more uncomfortable ones got fixed in a such a timely manner. Seriously, the only difference is just that the thread wasn’t abandoned after all the bugs were listed. Whatever’s least broken seems to get the most priority, interestingly.

One good thing about all these Mesmer bugs is I’ve begun to spend a lot more time outside and not on the computer playing Guild Wars 2 or buying anything from the gem store, ever, because I have no intention of sending money to a publisher in the process of milking their cash cow until it “kitten” bleeds.

I’ve never been a heavy user of the stun-lock play style but your complaint does have a lot of validity. I think it should be changed, too.

During part of the beta, sword three was an actual leap that allowed you to swap with the clone that stayed in your previous position, and it was amazing.
I would assume it was changed to protect against mass terrain exploits with portal if the experimental teleportation gun didn’t already open that option to literally every other class. So I can’t really figure out why it’s not just a simple leap with another signature Mesmer ‘oh kitten!’ button as the chain skill.
Is it because it’d be too easy to swap into an encounter, use sword 2, and swap out? If word 2 still granted distortion, sure. But blur doesn’t actually protect the Mesmer much with how many AoE options there are. The only significant protection it’d allow would occur in PvE, and only momentarily.
Or it could be because it’d afford the Mesmer too much short-range mobility. We can certainly leap around a lot. But that is a misnomer – because though we have 3 leap finishers, all of which we can equip at once, we have no skills that cause us to actually leap. On top of that, without prohibitive allowances for upgrades or otherwise worthless trait points, we have no speed boosts with substantial up time.
In melee we fight much like thieves, using trickery and deception to stay alive. But when our tricks trick even us – illusionary leap is truly an illusion and often never takes place, deception deceives us with a false promise of refuge, blink does literally what it says by causing us to just blink in place – and our skills and traits lead us to think we have a fair shot on the battlefield, how is the Mesmer supposed to stand out as ArenaNet’s signature class?

Vol.7601:

get lucky. see sig

So, add platinum doubloons to everything? Pls explain

I’ve only done orphanage, but using a staff guard with good armor, 3 diff power runes & a bloodlust sigil it’s eaaaasy. Especially, as Brother Grimm said, if you attack through the wall without breaking the door. You can also use symbol of swiftness on the wall itself and it’ll damage enemies in the room beyond. Then, you can jump on the bunk beds on the second level and use empower while the guards and your symbol of swiftness kill Ted.

Was this fixed?

Every few days I go back to Subject 7 with 5 gambits and a brilliant reflect build that highlights the Mesmer’s unique ability to somehow not exist while dealing tons of damage, hoping I’ll get lucky with 3 wardens that aren’t in a nihilistic depression. But every time I’m disappointed.

I mean, ideally we’d have a temporal curtain and iWarden that change appearance when traited, but right now all I want is for the core mechanics of our profession to work properly

ASP.8093:

MesmeForever.3612:

I’d suggest increasing the radius and applying applying like a .25 second daze to up to 5 targets and ripping a boon, with increased damage on interrupt. Balance the damage/recharge/cast time/mobility as needed.

I’d much, much rather have Mind Stab be a more useful boon ripper with its current casting time than yet another area interrupt with a higher cooldown.

My personal opinion is that the Mesmer has enough boon ripping abilities. We have a clone, a phantasm, a glamour, a manipulation, 2 weapon skills (one of which is spammable), and a trait that allows even all four of our shatters to rip boons. Then there’s sigil of nullification. We’re able to remove boons from multiple foes in an AoE with probably 75% of those listed methods.

I mentioned the casting time/cool downs for people who would point at the AoE daze being OP. I just suggested the core mechanic of the skill. Maybe that would even need to be tweaked to remove the necessity for a longer cooldown. How about weakness on 5 foes and vigor on 5 allies, with some damage? That would fit with the idea they’re going for with sword; empower yourself and your allies while hampering and dealing increasing damage to your foes.

Ultimately what will get the best results for a mind stab rework suggestion is to answer: what skill functionality does the greatsword mesmer lack? Doesn’t have to fit the name even – it’s not like they couldn’t rename the skill if they needed to.

Mesmé
Tester; Maining Mesmer since 06
Online time is random anytime between 10am and 4am CST
PvE/Key Farming//WvW//PvP
NA: FA

I need to leave a guild so I can join another one first lol

I’d suggest increasing the radius and applying applying like a .25 second daze to up to 5 targets and ripping a boon, with increased damage on interrupt. Balance the damage/recharge/cast time/mobility as needed. Animation could be a giant rotating whisperblade hovering for a moment above the target area, like comet, to telegraph the skill and also give the GS some of the SFX love it needs. Maybe make it cause a light field for condi removal possibilities and increased viability in pvp.

I’d love to see this as a thing for pve and allow templates to group armor/weapons/back skins for a particular swappable look, while separating armor and weapon stats (from dmg to runes & sigils) to function like traits, managed in a UI panel outside of combat and selected from a menu rather than taking up inventory space.

…I understand y’all have to make money, though. I appreciate the introduction of templates!

Oh, also: an NPC’s dialogue changed in Brisban. They’re spying on someone or something that isn’t bandits.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scout_Caseal

Nekroseth.5186:

So we are getting another mindkitten living story, with 0 worth of content?

Years…and when I say YEARS I MEAN YEARS are passing without getting a single weapon or guild hall or other decent permanent content. Don’t even want to mention features, since they added ONE last month WOAH, hardcore progress.
Psss (whispers) other games get a whole expansion worth of content by this time.

Gw2 kind of feels like its still in beta. Don’t even bother calling me stupid…its my guildmates opinion, and I only agree.

So lets hope they give us another jumping puzzle, that is sooooo MMORPG ish…really -_- Really I came here to be Lara croft, not to combat the elder dragons that treathen Tyria.

Anyhow…I better not get into this kitten to deep..would take a library to write it all down.
On topic : Guild wars 2 artwork is like 10 times better then the game itself. Not sure, why. Truly, these excellent pieaces of art inspire me, and get me in the mood for indepth fantasy….then I get this extremely kittenty not even nearly anything I could call rpg. more like half platform console game, with some half decent system, so it looks like an mmorpg atleast by cover….So i look at these amazing artworks and it gives a really sour taste to my mouth.

Oh and sorry for all grammar kittenes…but i never learned English..nor do i wish to learn it on Gw2 forums. Happy day.

Your post was kind of hostile for a lore speculation thread and didn’t actually have much to do with the subject presented.

If it were practically possible to obtain the Chaos of Lyssa back piece recipe through game play to begin with, hardly anyone would use real money to buy it (with gold traded for gems bought with real money). Just be patient. Believe me, as a Mesmer and big fan of Lyssa since GW1, I really want one, too. When the buy orders drop, that’s when the drop rate will rise.
This is even proven with the game itself. Sales have fallen since launch (as is to be expected with any game), and since then it has been offered at half price multiple times. If it were offered at half price to begin with, that’s exactly half the game’s initial sales that the developers, investors and publishers would have missed out on. Instead, they aimed higher and we were just as eager to buy. Some waited because we didn’t see a point in spending that much, or didn’t want it that much, but the majority either pre-ordered (I needed that 3-day head start!) or bought it at $60 USD.
As the game gets older, fewer people are willing to pay as much for it, so they lower the price. The same is true with this and any status symbol or ‘new thing,’ in-game or not. It’s economics and capitalism translated into a 3D world. NCsoft is ArenaNet’s publisher and investor, and real-world cash is their motivator so they give us what we want – shiny objects to play with.
Something I’ve wondered about these shinies: do we actually want them to be widely accessible, or do we need to be one of the special few who has one when most others don’t? Does it bother us that Legendaries don’t require game play to obtain, or that they no longer make the owner as ‘special’ as they first did? There is a difference.

Everyone wants to be recognized, but there is a line between human need for validation and learned entitlement.

NCsoft’s focus is business, not game development (which is neither inherently bad, nor good, just is), and the game and items in it are products, not powerful weapons, protective armor, or symbols of achievement.
It can be tough to realize for those who play the game for immersion and escapism, and to feel the safe sense of innocence a virtual world with established rules can provide. I’ve been there, and I am sorry.
However, real life knows no bounds. We inflate the market (by purchasing gems to trade for in-game gold, or through exploiting or hacking) and therefore encourage those responsible for game monetization to develop the game to focus increasingly on microtransactions and gold sinks rather than on game balance and new zones to explore.

The player base is only offered what it has collectively indicated it will purchase.

That isn’t to say I am okay with how the game economy works (I’m not), or that I don’t disagree with some of the game’s development. It was promised early on that real world money would offer no greater stat advantages than in-game currency, but we have things like armor-reduction/regeneration/speed/damage ‘boosters’ that can only be obtained through chests or direct gem purchases – of course, technically, you could earn in-game gold, buy the gems, and then buy the stat boosts or chests and keys, or farm keys to open chests, but that’s a gray area and a different discussion.

“Creating a microtransaction system that doesn’t upset or alienate your player base is straightforward once you clearly define what’s in-bounds and what’s out-of-bounds.”

- Mike O’Brien, May 2012, http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/21/guild-wars-2-interview-monetization/#s:guildwars2-16

btw please don’t move or close this post, moderators. I worked hard to make sure I wasn’t inflammatory or disrespectful, and even though I started with the Chaos of Lyssa back piece, I felt this topic dealt more with overall game ideas. I’d just like there to be less strife in the game and on these forums.

FurySong.6348:

After 500+ runs without any drops and a bit of bitterness, I would appreciate some feedback from an ANET dev on this subject but I wanted to ask to any passerby developers that can explain to me why the drop rate for this recipe is so low?

There have been buy orders of upwards 600+g in the last two days and they haven’t been filled. I do not know if this is intended but this doesn’t follow the latest trend that Shadow of Grenth and Light of Dwayna has followed; those recipes were rare, yes, but they’re cheap, and the reason is because they were dropped from readily accessible presents last Wintersday.

The problem I feel is that since tickets and tokens are much more harder to come by, the Queen’s Gauntlet isn’t often run. But when it is farmed, not only are you spending money and receiving one token in return, but you’re also not getting anything else. No coins to make up for the money loss, no sprockets to trade in for more tickets, no nothing.

Compounding the problem that the Chaos of Lyssa recipe is so horribly low in drop rate that I can’t understand why this would be intentional. If I wanted to go further, the backpiece itself takes 15 days to make(and 50g) or you can make it in one day with 250g instead. Whichever you choose, it’s still expensive to make.

That backpiece would only appeal to a niche amount of players anyways just like the previous two god backpieces, so why is this one so special? I ask again, is this intended?

The reason why a high-end item was introduced is so that they could spur gem sales (to buy gold, and then the recipe from the TP). Anet will probably make it easier to obtain through actual game play rather than a credit card transaction after NCsoft has gotten their cut of gem sales.

I think they should fix the bugs in the arena first before they fix reward drop rates. Some classes have it easy in there while others *cough*MESMERCLONEDEATHBUG*cough* have it quite rough.

This match is not built with fairness to all classes in mind. Beat her as a Mesmer if you can and then fight her as a Warrior, and see if you still feel this particular issue is what should be dealt with.

Hey, I’d like to go ahead and bump this thread since I was really excited about this trait and now it seems to be yet another half-second flashy Mesmer mechanic with little practicality in gameplay, yet is a grandmaster trait.

This thread is why I’m proud to have EARNED (not purchased with real-world money) my GW1 Champion of the Gods title. I actually had to WORK for it and there was no way to buy it with real money through a trading post. People compliment me on it in-game sometimes (I will never display anything else), and I expect it’s because they know just how hard it actually was to obtain. Ultimately, through stepping out of my comfort zone and challenging myself by meeting players who were far better than I was, and learning from them both tactically and interpersonally, I started earning a lot more, feeling more accomplished, and having more fun. I used the in-game currency I’d earned through play – not a credit card, hacks, or ridiculously game-breaking exploits – to buy the rest of the stuff for my Hall of Monuments. My record guild runs against Dhuum, DoA, and FoW as a Mesmer, Rit or E/Mo were not the result of a cash infusion.

Because they were introduced from the beginning along with bugs, exploits, hacks and trading post stock-brokerage tactics that have nothing to do with player skill along with the near-total reliance on RNG, ‘Legendary’ weapons have become nothing more than outrageously overpriced baubles rather than a symbol of achievement – both for the player, and for Anet’s art team. When looked at that way, it makes sense why Anet relegated them to simple skins to apply to any weapon. It’s why I’m not bothered that I don’t have one.

I found a bug I havne’t seen reference to before. Compounding Power actually increases your damage numbers exponentially with Spatial Surge when you keep auto-casting. Gets up to 180k and then resets. The important thing to note is that it doesn’t actually do that damage; it’s just a UI bug :P So nothing as fun as the old Descent Into Madness bug. But here’s the proof!

It only damages when you interrupt and if all their skills are on cooldown, there’ll be nothing to interrupt. You’ll be mashing them into the floor while they stand there, helpless, stun breaks used and skills on recharge. Halting Strike won’t be what’s broken :P

Sariel V.7024:

Sinbold.8723:

What would have been a great idea would be to allow us to use the leftover pieces when we don’t have enough for a full key. 25 pieces make a key. How about for each piece we have leftover, we can make a makeshift “pick” to pick the lock on the chest, with each piece we have left over contributing 4% to the success of the makeshift lock pick. Got 24 pieces and can’t make a key? Double click them to form a lock pick with a 96% chance of success. Only one piece of that Toxic key? Still got a 4% chance to open the chest with it. That way we still make use of the pieces, even if they fail. I just hate clicking on “destroy” for anything other than bloodstone dust.

Poor idea. The smart people will break their piles up and use them individually. The chance of using 24 pieces and having all of them fail is only about 1 in 3, so you’re fairly likely to have multiple successes.

Then lower the number of keys and the drop rate. The numbers aren’t important. The idea itself isn’t bad.

I personally like the dissolution of LA’s patrons into various other available hubs (which have the same crafting and trade resources as LA did, the other stuff isn’t used often enough to be everywhere). Having everything centralized like that is what gave us Spamadan in GW1.
I hope that, however it turns out after this LS arc, they keep it decentralized and come up with a way for people to gravitate toward like players. For instance, they could create permanent hubs at the locations of the current temporary ones which each have all the same resources, but appeal to players based on aesthetics, location and faction choice. Whatever the case, I hope the hub or hubs they replace Lion’s Arch with (and, for that matter, the other major cities) aren’t above some action every once in awhile. Having everything be an ally in a game gets boring.

How long does it last on its own and is there a way to turn it off?

Mesmers used to be able to clone-dodge while wielding a bundle. The resulting clone would use whatever the Mesmer’s main hand weapon was before picking up the bundle, if I’m not mistaken. Haven’t used that trait in awhile, though, so I wasn’t aware it was broken. I think all these bugs are worth considering, though. However, Anet have their hands full with the ambitious releases they’ve been pushing out and fixing Mesmer bugs only appeases a fraction of the community, rather than wowing everyone like the destruction of Lion’s Arch does. I don’t think these will be looked at until the programmers at Anet get a second to breathe.

Barefootnate.3506:

Not the slightest idea of who/what Scarlet is,
or why I would be directed here of all topics…

But, I also have been trying to log in for an hour now with no luck.
Please keep us updated.

Is this your first attempt at logging in in the last 3 months? Scarlet’s been a big deal in the game for awhile. Even if you don’t take part in personal story, you ignore your in-game mail, and only play pvp…well, including the pvp part I guess it’s possible you’d never hear of her, but kitten the game would get old fast if that’s the only part of it you ever played.

Shiren.9532:

MesmeForever.3612:

I do find it a bit off-putting that skins like this get released on a near-regular basis and can be sold on the TP for whatever price the community sets, yet again allowing players to gain a financial advantage in-game (which can, in turn, be used to gain a stat advantage through purchase of other items with that cash) if they’re richer in real life than other players are.
Sure, everyone has access to the same things — no one’s directly hobbled in the stat race — but some have wheels and an engine where others have to walk.

My concern is more along the lines that activities in the game feel less rewarding because the most desirable new content is in the gem store and very little of it gets added to the overall game. Those faction specific cyphers would be a lot more interesting if you could get faction specific weapons from them. The Living Story dungeons would have been a lot more rewarding if you could get the faction specific weapons from them (or armour sets). Instead the playable content feels poorly rewarded and the gem store is stacked. I wish they could find a different model or a better balance in the existing model that didn’t make gameplay rewards feel to starved.

I do think the new weapons are a little immersion breaking but in a world with the Dreamer it’s not the worst we’ve seen. I’m sure there are players that will absolutely love these and I’m glad they get to be happy.

The quality of the gem store weapon skins has consistently far surpassed what we’ve seen for the launch skins (especially compared to the majority of exotics). I can’t wait for an expansion where this quality of skins aren’t gem store privileges and this calibre of weapon design becomes a normal game reward more of us can enjoy without throwing out month’s of gold farming or a sizable chunk of your paycheck.

I agree. Very well put. What’s the point in playing if how you’re rewarded is through spending money? Isn’t that venturing near IMVU and Second Life territory (neither of which I’m remotely interested in)?

FrozenStarRo.7240:

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the person(s) who designed these lovely new skins. The staff looks absolutely gorgeous on my necro!

That looks absolutely amazing. Kudos.

I do find it a bit off-putting that skins like this get released on a near-regular basis and can be sold on the TP for whatever price the community sets, yet again allowing players to gain a financial advantage in-game (which can, in turn, be used to gain a stat advantage through purchase of other items with that cash) if they’re richer in real life than other players are.
Sure, everyone has access to the same things — no one’s directly hobbled in the stat race — but some have wheels and an engine where others have to walk.

Sure, it was recently buffed. It now does even more condition damage, yay!

But it’s in the Inspiration line, which buffs healing power and vitality. Additionally, no other trait in that line augments the Mesmer’s ability to inflict conditions. Not one. The trait is Master tier in a line whose purpose is antithetical to its own, and with no meta to support speccing for it.

However, since the condition damage bonus only inherently affects attacks which affect one target at a time and the recharge buff only affects one skill for the whole weapon, I guess it’s not that big of an issue. Except that there always seems to be someone on the forums lamenting the mess that is the Mesmer’s scepter, and I guess right now that’s me.

I’m just kinda mad that they introduced Perplexity runes to the game and, rather than just balance it, they broke the Mesmer. It’s not like the benefit the runes provided other professions was worth hobbling one.

Remember when they said they’d update us on this?

I don’t see the point in making it something you have to calculate for no reason, especially when the alternative is so much easier.

And cool. I’m ambivalent about them, but I keep them around because everyone else says they’re awesome.

Up until this most recent update adding Mistlock Instabilities, I didn’t pay much attention to Agony level by level. I knew I needed to stay out of 50s because I would die in boss battles if I got hit once, so I only played up to 49 and figured someday I’d be able to do more. I didn’t try to get more than 40 AR, though, because it’s a resource-intensive, grind-heavy endeavor that unlocks playability of only a fraction of the game’s content with very little equitable rewards in exchange since almost everything that drops there is soulbound.
Now, in level 40, I am hit with agony pretty much anytime something attacks me. That, I won’t argue against. I can skip that level if I want, no biggie. But it’s made me pay attention to how much damage agony actually does. At level 40, with 40 AR, it takes a huge chunk of my health away and is applied almost constantly in battle making 40 AR insufficient for a level 40 fractal.
To me, that seems counterintuitive. I just wanna challenge myself with higher-level content and I like the party-tray-of-fun-size-dungeons that is Fractals.
I am not mad that I’ve played over 200 of them and haven’t seen a precursor, or that I can’t use the dungeon’s most coveted unique loot, Fractal weapons, without spending real-world money on transmutation crystals, or that the rings presented as big-time loot are un-salvageable, account-bound and pointless to hold onto. I’m in no hurry to be a Guild Wars God. I just think AR level should grant near-immunity to agony within Fractals starting with the same digit. Currently, it seems like a broken and blatant gold/ecto sink. If a game mechanic is meant to prompt money spending, I think it should make sense.

I’d personally love to see them implement stuff about Cantha and Elona to close up the gaps (especially in the case of Elona, since it didn’t get a “Beyond” update) in recorded history between GW1 and 2.

If the part where villagers and ghosts clash is more interesting than hide-and-seek, why wouldn’t you advocate for more balance so that part lasts longer? It’s done in the blink of an eye. A villager is spotted, mobbed and dead in seconds. The only viable strategy is to hide.
That there is only one ghost to start is irrelevant – it’s like an immortal heartseeker thief in a room full of moas that will become allied heartseeker thieves when they’re killed. All you need is one and it’s over, which is why people suicide at start to hurry the inevitable.
The only viable strategy is to hide; the environmental weapons are just different ways to buy insufficient amounts of time.

I know there are threads about it already, but I think it’s worth mentioning again before the content expires for the year:

The Lunatic Inquisition is so unbalanced and buggy it’s not even fun. Most rounds I participated in yesterday I noticed several of my fellow villagers run straight to the courtier spawning area to jump off the high point and die because winning as a courtier is so easy.
The scream courtiers have locks villagers in place (it’s a bug) until they use an emote.
Mad Kings Says locks a villager in place while they follow the command, or shortly after if they don’t. It’s a death sentence either way.
Courtiers do massive damage with their normal attacks while villagers can do small damage if they manage to find certain rare weapons.
Villagers can’t move while stealthed, which means all courtiers have to do at hiding spots is wait for a few seconds for a villager to reappear. There is absolutely no point in using stealth once a courtier has seen you because he will know exactly where you are anyway.
Villagers go into combat mode, slowing their speed (their only measurable advantage), with almost any skill action, and seem to never leave it. This ensures that any interaction with a courtier will result in their death. Even using the Ripper on a courtier doesn’t do any good because they pop right back up in front of you, ready to kill.

The only way I’ve won as a villager is if I happened to be on a team that tried (usually through boredom of easy kills as a courtier – I’ve even been on teams with bored courtiers that just hung out while I tried to survive the others) and I strategically chained my stealth when necessary by recharging it with food.

The mini-game would be a lot more fun if you guys considered balancing the teams.

A word on traits that require the player to be downed to activate the benefit — I’m wondering how much of the player base actually uses them. No one intends to go down at all because that’s one finisher or a few auto-attacks away from being out of the fight. Unless there was a trait that gave you immunity to finishers or mobility while downed (like the drowning state), I don’t really understand the point of traits that give you an effect on rally, higher health or higher damage when you’re downed. It seems counter-intuitive (I’m lookin’ at you, Retaliatory Demise and Chaotic Revival).

Peras Arche.1239:

I propose to make Warden’s Feedback trait change also appearance of Temporal Curtain, to promote, mesmer’s teammates using it as a barrier (similary to how Masterful Reflection changes appearance of Distoriton shatter, to inform opponent players in pvp that it refect projectiles).

I fully support this. Currently, only the Mesmer knows his skill swill reflect; teammates don’t know unless they’re told. The trait makes a pretty big difference functionally – shouldn’t it make one visually?

What I’d like to see in general, for all classes, is traits that apply in both land and water. As is, if I want to be effective, I have to make sure I’m not equipping a trait for a weapon or skill I can’t even use underwater. Makes combat feel much less natural.

Utility skills
—Mantras require that the Mesmer be completely ineffective during the charge, so using them in any way other than leaving 4 of them charged with Empowering Mantras active lowers the player’s effectiveness outside of short battles.
— The two phantasm utilities, Defender and Disenchanter, are meant to support, but fail. Defender attacks its target in melee, making it extremely likely to be killed even without it absorbing allies’ damage. Disenchanter functions like Null Field, but it dies with its target. Additionally, it’s fragile and its attack is slow and can’t be targeted.
— Veil is helpful in a dueling build as a target scrub, but it isn’t useful in a support build and doesn’t syngergize with the play style of the Glamour Mesmer because of its shape. It’s small and its effects are short-lived no matter what, though it has a very long recharge. If it functioned as it did in the Mesmer reveal video (aoe ring like Null Field), it would make much more sense as a glamour. Make it work like Time Warp in that it only grants 1 second of stealth per second while in the field and you won’t have an overpowered skill.
-- Portal is helpful and support-oriented, but not useful in regular battle.
— Illusion of Life is niche but very effective and would be extremely useful to a good player with a reasonable recharge and possibly a larger area of effect.
— Feedback is great, but would be better for support if it were ground-targeted.
— Null Field and Signet of Inspiration are excellent examples of Mesmer support utilities; the rest are solo skills (which are fine, but we need a balance.).

Traits
—Restorative Mantras could be helpful if the heal were channeled over the course of the charge, like a Guardian’s Empower. The same idea could be implemented with Protected Mantras, only affect allies as well so that, during the channel, they receive increased toughness (or any character stat), and make charging mantras more worthwhile, not necessarily through buffing the skill use. Additionally, Protected Mantras feels out of place in Dueling.
—Restorative Illusions should heal allies upon shatter – while I understand that this could be overpowered, it could also be given the attention needed to keep it from being so. For instance, the heal could be in a radius around the Mesmer or around the individual illusions at the time the shatter is activated instead of when it occurs. Since it’s in a line that shatter/burst damage Mesmers don’t max out, it’s unlikely to be a problem.
—Similar to the conditions caused by Confusing Combatants, Debilitating Dissipation and Crippling Dissipation, I’d like to see some traits that grants boons to allies on clone death.
—Prismatic Understanding, which gives a few short-lived boons while stealthed, does not affect allies, though the marginally lengthened stealth duration does.

Weapon Skills
—The focus is obviously more support oriented, blocking projectiles, interrupting foes, granting swiftness – but we can’t tell what area our shields cover, the interrupt is now telegraphed, and the swiftness doesn’t apply onto other swiftness.
—The staff is another weapon with strong support capabilities, but a combo effect it can already achieve through two other skills on the same weapon incorporated as a skill seems really silly. It could easily be replaced by an aoe blind or something of little consequence so as not to throw off the balance of the weapon. But at least a skill with a special effect that isn’t already used for something else, since Mesmers have the fewest skills of all the professions.

—The Mesmer has no main-hand weapon with even a slight favoritism among support-oriented Mesmers. I think that is a problem.

Combos
—Blast and Whirl are the cooperative finishers, and Projectile and Leap are solo finishers. Only 19 of the Mesmer’s skills allow the class to take part in a combo, making it the class with the fewest of them.
—Of those, one is a blast finisher and 3 are whirl finishers, though two of those aren’t reliable because their position on the battlefield is dynamic.

Elites
—The Mass Invisibility/Shadow Refuge threads exist already, but I agree with the complaint that as an elite, it is inferior. Veil didn’t even get turned into that.
—I honestly don’t know why Moa Morph exists. It doesn’t empower me or my allies, and it only affects one foe. In PvE, it often doesn’t even do that. Why not an elite that summons 3 phantasms (which could be random or completely new) or briefly dazes/stuns/blinds enemies in an aoe?

Thanks if you read. I tried not to be too whiny.

Last year, once I was able to get to the top of the jumping puzzle, I jumped at the clock face after lightning struck it and was teleported into the belfry to receive my rewards.

This year, I’ve gotten to the end 4 times so far and done the same exact thing, but slid down the side of the clock tower and teleported to the staging area instead of the belfry with no

Is the portal’s ‘hitbox’ smaller? Or moved? Some people seem to be able to get in, going off of forum posts. What gives?

You can merch them for a silver each and they stack, unlike crap greens and blues – hardly worth complaining about.