Guild Wars 2

LGBTQ-gamer? Agenda (level 23 at time of posting) offers a safe & non-sexist space for QUILTBAG gamers. All levels and servers welcome (Piken Square-based though). Dedicated allies also welcome.

Agenda has been active since launch in 2012, with a core membership of good friends and many other affiliated players. We take a relaxed attitude to repping and multi-guilding, and though many of our members do spend all their time with us we’re also happy to have people who just want the option of a welcoming, friendly and supportive space to visit when they need one.

We have a guild hall (Gilded Hollow) with tavern, mine, workshop, war room, arena and market, all under constant upgrading thanks to our driven and dedicated membership.

We run guild missions every Saturday and planned events every Sunday (such as HP/mastery runs and map completions), and are currently putting a new raiding group together to tackle Spirit Vale.

When out of game, we keep in touch through our secret Facebook group.

If you think you’d be a good fit for Agenda, message nikku.3562, Elvirais.5472 or femko.7263 in game.

Agenda [GNDA] – EU LGBTQ guild

LGBTQ-gamer? Agenda (level 23 at time of posting) offers a safe & non-sexist space for QUILTBAG gamers. All levels and servers welcome (Piken Square-based though). Dedicated allies also welcome.

Agenda has been active since launch in 2012, with a core membership of good friends and many other affiliated players. We take a relaxed attitude to repping and multi-guilding, and though many of our members do spend all their time with us we’re also happy to have people who just want the option of a welcoming, friendly and supportive space to visit when they need one.

We have a guild hall (Gilded Hollow) with tavern, mine, workshop, war room, arena and market, all under constant upgrading thanks to our driven and dedicated membership.

We run guild missions every Saturday and planned events every Sunday (such as HP/mastery runs and map completions), and are currently putting a new raiding group together to tackle Spirit Vale.

When out of game, we keep in touch through our secret Facebook group.

If you think you’d be a good fit for Agenda, message nikku.3562, Elvirais.5472 or femko.7263 in game.

PopeUrban.2578:

Nikku.3562:

We’re already talking of just having a single designated guild Scribe who we funnel materials to.

That’s the point of the system. It’s a guild-centric crafting profession meant to be supplied by a guild, as what we make is primarily for the benefit of the entire guild.

So why’s it not part of the guild hall system?

I agree, I made a previous post about the ludicrous material requirements which make Scribing seem less like a crafting profession and more like a part of the guild hall system which has been weirdly outsourced to individual players.

I could rally my guild to farm hundreds of piles of silky sand, to donate highly valuable materials or to run every weekly guild mission possible (for resonating slivers) if the result is going to be a useful upgrade to the guild hall. But not for a few crummy chairs, and certainly not for the consumables which I think are the most grotesquely wasteful crafted items I’ve ever seen in a game.

I am actually happy with grinding for stuff – when the grind is commensurable with rewards and with other grinds in the game. The Scribing grind is neither of these things. It is absolutely bonkers, and Anet seriously needs to rework the profession.

I know we’re all getting to grips with the new guild hall stuff, but I was wondering if any other people/guilds have been taken aback by the huge volumes of grind-intensive materials needed for the Scribe profession? Some key items like resonating slivers appear gated by weekly guild missions (in return for crafting the most piffling tat – Writ of Basic Accuracy and Basic Strength are unbelievably wasteful), and other materials are needed in volumes which come close to guild hall upgrades (around 500 piles of silky sand for the most basic furniture items, amongst many other materials).

I didn’t expect Scribe to be just like any other crafting profession, but as it stands I can’t see why it’s a profession at all. We’re already talking of just having a single designated guild Scribe who we funnel materials to. It might as well be part of the guild hall upgrade system.

Same issue here – it actually started in game when I would just get this error message whenever I tried to WP. Since logging out I haven’t been able to get back.

Scout Acan is still bugged (personal story step In Their Footsteps), tried relogging and changing instances and no change. Multiple people in same instances having identical issue.

AT LAST.

/15thankyouthankyouthankyou

Waldir.2571:

Cronicle.5691:

Its been stuck in “initializing” for well over 20 mins now.

I’ve tried closing client completely, didn’t help. Tried restarting my computer, didn’t help.
What is up with this patch`? I live in the EU and this is broken. I cant play the game i want to play.

I was having the same problem but than i started clicking around the white space on the gw window, it looks like the “Play” button is there but not visible, once i hit it by accident the game started, try clicking around it, at one point it even took me to the reset password page.

This worked for me too. Super weird bug here.

I agree, the Ambrite Weapon Collection achievement involves a huge investment of time and effort (particularly now that DT rarely passes T4 as far as I can see) and certainly deserves a better reward.

Traited Temporal Curtain to reflect at a greater height. For god’s sake, it’s supposed to be a curtain, not a skirting board.

Thanatos.2691:

Personally, this feels less like material needed in a feature patch and more like stuff they should have been trickling into the game over time like while working on developing real content.

My thoughts exactly. The improvements for new players I can’t really speak to, because, well, I’m not. But the rest of this feature patch feels like the scrapings of five or six regular patches all packaged together. I would gladly give up every part of it for a single red forum post saying ‘Hey guys, we’ve started working on fixing the zerker meta, give us six months!’ or ‘Comprehensive profession bugfix patch coming your way this Christmas!’

From the profession balance Ready Up (courtesy of Dulfy):

Ready Up

Mesmer: Misdirection, crowd control, utility. Brought in for utility all the way from GW1.

Weakness: Conditions are hard to deal with. Lack of AoE – good single target damage but weak at AoE situation. (A bit weaker than where we want to be. We don’t want to make it too strong as we want you to bring Eles for ranged AoE damage). Mobility – not a ton of mobility due to lack of swiftness but they do have a lot of teleports such as portals. Mesmer can get there and back with portals but can’t go too far forward due to lack of swiftness. Low defense against high burst damage – maybe some small tweaks.
Official design: Access to key utility skills. Gain defense through stealth, evasion, misdirection. Strong 1v1 ranged damage dealer but weaker in sustained AoE damage. Weakness – conditional removal, sustainability if illusions are countered, AoE damage make it hard to sustain illusions.

I don’t want to treat these balance notes as gospel (this is the same Ready Up in which the devs stated that Warriors need more escape options, which just screams ‘I have never played this game’), but it would be nice to think that there was some clear vision for how Mesmers should be. I cannot see how the new Mimic fits into this proposed vision at all. It feels like a very ad hoc change, unconnected to any broader design philosophy, in order to ‘rescue’ a little-used skill which has always worked strangely.

Blades of Sabatine.5639:

Just the other day was doing some pve in dry top. Summon the sword man, it appeared on the ledge above me. I wished I had taken a picture. It did nothing till I killed MiB.

Hah, I’ve had this too – Dry Top is particularly bad for illusion pathing issues.

Esplen.3940:

Prepare to be disappointed and dis… excited?

New GM trait – Bountiful Disappointment.

Celestina.2894:

I like the process, mainly because it feels like a prototype of precursor crafting.

I agree! Please Anet, use this kind of system for crafting precursors!

Best LS so far. Loved the Ace Attourney-style interrogation scene, all the little details and dialogues, fan favourites making a comeback, fun new map area, boss fights with an epic feel and another gorgeous cutscene. Really good job all round <3

loseridoit.2756:

becareful with your suggestion. Chill is one of the most OP conditions in the game.

In WvW and PvP, certainly. In PvE, not so much. But regardless of its utility, Mesmers have almost no access to Chill. I’m not suggesting we get an autoattack that stacks Chill :P It would just be nice to have one weapon skill which reliably applies it, given that we’re supposed to specialise in shutting enemies down.

MSFone.3026:

I didn’t even know that warrior trait existed… wtf that is an absurd kittenin trait why the kitten is that not a mesmer trait. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if I were in charge of class balance at Anet I would want to kittening kill myself in shame. This is an embarrassment for warriors to have that trait and not mesmers.

Yeah I was furious/baffled when I saw this blatant Mesmer trait get given to Anet’s favourite profession. Particularly when compared with the buffet of crap we got served with those Grandmaster traits. Totally ridiculous.

I’m absolutely in favour of making Confusion, in some form, more useful in PvE and more distinctive of Mesmers. Personally I’d also like Mesmers to get more access to ‘make a choice’ conditions like Torment and shutdown conditions like Chill, rather than simple DoTs like Bleed and Burning.

I know one way of tackling the zerker meta that’s been floated on the forums is increasing PvE mobs’ attack speed. Though this would have to be part of a wider design shakeup, it would also serve to make Confusion more valuable in PvE.

There’s one in Lion’s Arch at the Sanctum Harbour waypoint.

I mean come ON Mordremoth, we’ve not even finished cleaning up after last time!

Thanks for doing this frifox.

Bug #9 – I would add that pathing issues can lead phantasms to stand there and do nothing upon summoning, similar to the iWarden. I have noticed this with the iDuelist and the iSwordsman, and it’s particularly prevalent in Drytop.

OoL #1 – I believe the Temporal Curtain Swiftness not stacking has been stated to be working as intended. Personally I don’t think that makes sense (Swiftness stacks duration so this contradicts the entire boon system), but if they’re not going to fix this then, since fixing tooltips is all the rage, the tooltip should be changed to reflect the situation.

If they’re fixing tooltips then I’m surprised we haven’t got a change to Focus 4 – ‘Applies a boon which looks like Swiftness but isn’t, because Swiftness stacks duration’.

I wish they’d called their mad god something else. In Scotland ‘Menzies’ is a perfectly normal surname and also the name of a chain of newsagents, and pronounced ‘ming-is’. I have to suppress a giggle every time I see the name refer to some eldritch terror in Tyria.

Anyway, I thought the diagram in Scarlet’s room depicted the six Elder Dragons all being connected to the Pale Tree. There’s definitely a similarity between it and the Realm of Torment diagram, but I wouldn’t put it past Anet to be trolling us here

Well, these ‘fixes’ are just ludicrous. I wasn’t expecting any kind of serious bugfixing with this patch, but the fact that they’ve chosen to focus any capacity at all on these piffling non-issues (and one unambiguous nerf) when we have an expanding list of serious bugs is mind-boggling. I can’t begin to imagine the process that pushed these ‘fixes’ to the top of the list. Dev engagement regarding balance nose-dived this year and is currently some of the worst I’ve encountered in any MMO. It honestly feels like they just don’t care anymore, and it’s really putting me off the game.

Lishten, could you please add these details about the Masterful Reflection bug to the list?

atlavis.6028:

I know that it doesn’t break stuns.

I’m stucked after casting it. I can attack, use skills, but can’t move.

Ah, OK I think I’ve had the same thing, and only in WvW and sPvP like you say. There have been around 5 times I’ve used Phase Retreat and become stuck at the new spot. It’s always been on generally flat terrain. Visually I don’t appear to be clipping into the ground but I just can’t move off the spot. Further Phase Retreats, Blinks and even WPing doesn’t fix it, though once a kindly enemy knocked me back and that appeared to do the trick.

I’d say I’ll try to replicate and record it, but frankly that doesn’t seem to be progressing bugfixes atm

Then they should say that instead of saying they’re fixing it or ‘looking again’ at it.

What is the incentive for us to document bugs when they are not addressed? Or worse, if we are told they will be addressed and then they are not?

I would flip the thread title on its head – contempt breeds negativity.

The new Mesmer GM traits are either mediocre (Power Block, Maim the Disillusioned) or jaw-droppingly bad (Bountiful Disillusionment, Disruptor’s Sustainment). Triumphant Distortion had potential, but what we were expressly told about it (no internal CD) turned out to be untrue, and additionally it turns out not to benefit from other distortion-related traits. Admittedly Necros and Rangers also got mostly junk, but Warriors and Thieves got some very attractive new traits.

More importantly (for me at least), there is a growing list of serious Mesmer bugs and ‘wtf is this really working as intended?’s which we were expressly told would be addressed in the feature patch. The most hotly-anticipated fixes were either not fixed correctly (such as iWarden and Portal Entre) or simply not even mentioned (such as iElasticity and Temporal Curtain). The Power Block bug, which was not particularly OP and opened up new and interesting strategies, was hotfixed almost immediately. Nothing else has been addressed, despite the fact that these are very long-standing issues.

The pattern here is that Mesmer players have repeatedly been told things which turned out to be either ambiguous or just flat out false. That’s going to breed negativity.

This is very useful Edian, thanks! Exactly what I’ve been looking for. It would be great to have a full list of events throughout the day underneath the current and top three you have at the moment.

Aside from the lacklustre GM traits, I am just really disappointed that the exciting stuff I was explicitly told to expect by Anet has not come to pass. iElasticity for staff clones hasn’t appeared. iWarden is still bugged. Triumphant Distortion has a CD. Portal has no range indicator.

Rather than being all about the new game mechanics, I think the general grumpiness of Mesmer players is down to the miscommunication or lack of communication surrounding them. I can deal with lacklustre mechanics (and hey, maybe someone will find a use for them and we’ll all realise that Disruptor’s Sustainment is incredible), and I can deal with being told there are still some bugs to iron out later, but it’s really disheartening to be told you’ll be given something cool then be let down.

Please, Anet. Better communication in future.

Also experiencing this – no in-game communication is possible.

That definitely sounds like you’ve gone out of range. Have they said if they’re going to add a range indicator yet?

Condition caps and overwriting would still be a pain, but it’d be a start.

ColinJohanson.2394:

(edited to add Piken!)

Thanks Colin <3

ColinJohanson.2394:

generally TC is viewed as the RP world

Unless you’re playing in the EU, in which case Piken Square is the RP server

Join us!

Me Games Ma.8426:

Mimic 1
Interrupt your enemy. Mimic will turn into the interrupted skill for 20s(CD triggers after the 20s).
Casttime: 0s
Cooldown: 25s

• Daze: 1s
• Mimic: 20s
• Range: 900

---

Mimic 2
While Mimic is active you store all incoming damage (and you also take the dmg). After that mimic turns into Echo which will deal all that damage to a single foe.
Casttime: 1s
Cooldown: kitten

• Mimic2: 4s
• Range: 900

Love both of these ideas. I’m sure there might be some grotesquely OP implications in PvE, but anything that adds new flavour to control/interrupt builds is right up my street. And both of them lend themselves to that ‘stop hitting yourself’ approach I’ve always felt suited the Mesmer best

There are plenty of skills which are generally rubbish in PvE, but wouldn’t this be the first example of a skill with no possible PvE application? I can’t see Anet introducing something like that, unless the signet-disable was a secondary effect and the skill did something else too.

When I saw ‘social play improvements’ listed as part of the feature patch, I thought for one blissful moment that we might finally be getting the ability to access our various guild chat channels when we’re not representing. I cannot understand why this has never even been mentioned by the development team.

Considering this is a game which allows players to be in multiple guilds, it is frustrating that everything about the current guild system encourages players to represent one large guild as much as possible, and guild leaders to insist on 100% rep from members. Even accepting that this is the case, it’s absolutely baffling that we don’t have the ability to chat across our multiple guilds. Smaller guilds and social guilds struggle in this environment, and players are unnecessarily cut off from their friends across other guilds.

Multiple guild chat would enable a lot more folk to make friends and play together, and actually make having multiple guilds worthwhile. This is the ‘social play improvement’ the game needs. Please think about it, Anet

I RP my main Sylvari character as Soundless, so he has deliberately cut himself off from the Dream as much as possible. Up until now he’s been the quiet, ascetic warrior-monk type, but in the wake of Scarlet and the suggestion that Mordremoth is present in the Dream, I think he’s going to start openly proselytising the way of the Soundless.

I do hope we get to see a bit of Soundless preaching in future LS instalments, as they’ve always been one of my favourite parts of Sylvari culture and this seems like a golden opportunity to explore them in more detail.

Me Games Ma.8426:

I don’t see a problem for anet to break their own rules regarding the buff/debuff system twice.
We have unique buffs/debuffs for as well for:

• Warriors (banners / stances / impale / … )
• Guardians (Shield of Wrath / virtues / Binding Blade / Hallowed Ground /…)
• Ranger (Quickening Zephyr / Spotter / spirit buffs /… )
• Thief (venoms / Haste)

Just to mention some. There are unique buffs and debuffs already so why are they still refusing to give the mesmer hexes? I don’t get this.

Hexes also could replace phantasms…

These are mostly passive buffs rather than the more complex debuffs that Mesmer Hexes would represent. Only Impale and Binding Blade seem to fit into that category (and they are mostly just timers for a chained skill), and Shield of Wrath as a more complex buff. I’m not saying it couldn’t/shouldn’t happen, only that it would seem like a marked shift away from their current design philosophy regarding combat.

Hexes replacing phantasms would necessitate a complete rework of the profession, so I think that’s unlikely.

I hope it doesn’t seem like I’m criticising your ideas – I absolutely love a lot of them and I adore the intricacies of GW1’s Mesmer – but I think we need to bear in mind that Anet have deliberately built GW2’s Mesmer to be a different beast.

It seems to me like Anet have made a concerted effort not to have lots of unique debuffs such as those inflicted by Hexes like Clumsiness, Shame or Backfire. Effects outside of standard conditions, boons and CC are pretty uncommon in the game and are usually generated by mobs and not PCs. I doubt Anet will move away from this model any time soon. It’s a shame ‘cause while this makes the game a lot more newbie/casual friendly (ie. you don’t have to learn a hundred different skills to understand what’s happening to you), it does seem to detract from what made the Mesmer so fun in GW1.

One way in which these could be made to work might be to rework them as channelled skills similar to blocking. So Shame might be a 3 second targeted channel with some kind of clear visible effect (like Confusing Images), which interrupts and puts on CD the first skill the target uses during the channel.

Would LOVE something like Sum Of All Fears, and the Cry idea would be really nice and encourage us to pay attention to our clones more!

It’s worth remembering that Dulfy has not listed all the locations yet. I found him in the water midway between #7 and the vista to the east of it.

This is why there should have been an achievement, or some other immediate but minor incentive, for saving citizens.

I don’t begrudge folk wanting to get their achievements done – I certainly worked on that when the patch dropped – but because they’re all event-based they give the false impression that the events are the only thing to do, and draw many players away from rescuing citizens.

This is compounded by the reward bags from zerging events, compared to nothing for saving citizens. The bags are full of kitten of course, but it seems a lot of players can only be attracted by immediate rewards (alliance loot bags) and not the actual good stuff everyone gets with 1200 citizens saved. When you spend a cycle just running citizens, it starts to feel like you’re wasting your time because there’s so little help from other players.

Escape from LA definitely builds on the Marionette in terms of massive group events requiring a variety of activities to be undertaken, which is what drew so many of us to GW2 in the first place. But a little bit of social engineering to nudge more players towards taking on different roles seems desirable at this stage.

At least a ‘Revive 2 citizens in Lion’s Arch’ on the daily quests every day would be nice.

+1

At the moment there’s not much of an incentive to move away from the events and zergs and rescue citizens, and there’s something of a penalty in that you’re getting less loot and achievements.

Her name is Maeva. I thought the forcefield might be Scarlet’s doing at first, but having read through the mission on the wiki, I agree that it’s probably just her automated defences kicking in. Good job, Maeva! (now how about letting some of these citizens hide out at your place, huh?)

Tegwen was probably the only character death that actually upset me. I didn’t even notice when Sieran died. I cheered when Tybalt died (seriously, people like him?). When Tegwen sacrificed herself I did /y TEGWEN, NOOOOOOO! She was only in the game for a short while, but her relationship (probably not Relationship though) with Carys was really well written, and Carys’ and Ballista Geargrind’s little eulogy to her was beautiful.

I still think of Tegwen whenever I’m wandering around the Grove.

Isn’t CC supposed to be a Mesmer ‘weak spot’ anyway? I think the lack of stability was a definite design choice.

As Esplen pointed out at least we have a bunch of nice stunbreakers, and also near-permanent vigor with an investment in Duelling.

Thank you for the response Kirk

Not to add more problems to what’s already been identified, but has anyone noticed similar behaviour with other phantasms? Twice today I saw my swordsman doing the same thing – standing still, sheathing his weapon and looking around bored. Will try to get a vid if I see it happen again.