Guild Wars 2

Embolism.8106:

It sounds to me your opponent was a condition Mesmer, given how you speak of boons and three Clones casting.

As a Necromancer, you should be well-equipped to deal with condition Mesmers: you have the ability to not only cleanse, but turn enemy conditions and boons against them; plus you yourself are able to dish out conditions far better than the Mesmer could.

As a condition Mesmer, a competent Necromancer is one of the toughest professions for me to face: they are highly resistant to my conditions and are able to inflict lots of conditions themselves, which ironically are very difficult for me to deal with due to my low HP (Toughness does nothing against conditions) and scant condition removal.

In other words, if you are unable to deal with a condition Mesmer as a Necromancer, you may want to evaluate your own play rather than accuse others of being overpowered.

Yes, I have to completely agree with Embolism. I too play a condition mesmer and what you described sounds an awful lot like a condition mesmer. For me, necromancers are amongst the hardest classes to face for the reasons Embolism described.

If he was beating you, he was either very skilled or you were doing something wrong, or some combination of the two. This is especially true since you say you couldn’t get away from him. Mesmers in general are pretty bad at stopping people from escaping without specializing into just that area of combat at the expense of others, and condition mesmers in particular lack the burst damage to quickly cut down a fleeing foe.

Also, you say make very generalized statements about what he was doing. If you are going to call for a “nerf” at least be specific. Which abilities were giving you trouble? Which traits (of the ones overtly noticeable in combat) were giving him an unfair advantage? Which specific abilities were giving him all these buffs and which specific abilities were preventing you from escaping. Provide detailed information on exactly what aspect of your opponent’s build makes him inherently overpowered to such a huge degree as you describe. If you can’t do that, you probably need to learn more about mesmers. I know that I used to have a horrible time fighting thieves until I learned their tricks; now they are no different than any other class to me.

Finally, if you want to claim that mesmers are overpowered, provide multiple examples of how and why they are. Currently, you are providing only anecdotal evidence of how you lost to a single player, which honestly seems more like a case of a skill difference than some inherent advantage that he had. Right now it sounds like you expect to win every 1v1 you get into. Surely, if it took him 13 minutes to kill you, Mr. OP Mesmer probably had to invest quite a bit of effort to win. Maybe try to provide us with videos of your future encounters with mesmers so that we can either see for ourselves how overpowered we are or we can explain how to properly counter them.

There are currently two main reasons for getting a legendary weapon: you like the skin, or you want the prestige associated with having a legendary. If either of the above applies to you, then you have to ask yourself “How much do I want the skin/the prestige?” If your answer to either of those is “a lot” then you should probably go ahead and get one. If you like the skin so much that you’re just dying to have it, presumably you’d like it just as much upon your return and it would be worth it. Also, legendaries will always be prestigious, so if you are really interested in showing off to your fellow players, getting one would probably be a good investment. Of course that being said, there may be new legendary skins out once you return, so you have to ask yourself if you want to rush and get a legendary now when there might be a skin that you like better out once you return.

I love the butterflies and the purple theme. As EsLafiel very clearly showed us, the butterflies and the purple really compliment the theme of the mesmer. There are already tons of customizations available through dyeing one’s armor, through the different particle effects and weapons, and even through the basic physical appearance/race of one’s character. I wouldn’t be opposed to an option to customize the color of the butterflies, but I think that asking for wholly new particle effects is a waste of time and resources for ANet, plus there would be plenty of players upset if the butterflies were removed.

Besides, everyone who plays a mesmer likely knew that there would be butterflies from the numerous videos/photos of mesmers that were available even before launch. Ultimately, people shouldn’t play a profession if they have major qualms about it, including aesthetic concerns. It is not wise to play a class you don’t like aesthetically and then come here trying to change it to fit your own personal style. Not everything has to have some dark/manly/tough/etc theme to it and I think that this subject is as silly as a necromancer saying that he finds death shroud and his summoned minions too ugly and undead looking and would prefer pretty well-dressed and groomed minions and a flowery death shroud.

Sincerely,
A male who plays a male mesmer

Gubrz.7283:

to the mesmer in [Taco], sylvari, survival staff build.. i so love u! u kicked my butt on 2 diff toons of mine, and im in the mists trying to copycat you! lol

held off amazingly well! i THINK you were a yak
i was busy trying to stay alive and watch what you were doing while you killed like 4 of us, it was so sad, but funny at least i was on lowbies tho, so i dont feel TOO TERRIBLE.. but some of those other guys were 80!

d’oh!

great job!!!

Hey there! That was really a great fight! That was some of the most intense, and consequently most enjoyable, fighting that I’ve ever been a part of. I’m actually from Maguuma, but there is a different [TACO] guild on Yak’s Bend, so it’s pretty easy to think I’m from YB. Thanks for the lovely compliments though, and if you want to PM me to discuss my build, I’d be happy to do so with you.

Eldenbri – You are right about the sigils. Since ALL sigils share a cooldown, and since you have very high crit chance whilst using two quick-attacking weapons, you will frequently find that the on-crit sigils are preventing your on-swap sigils from triggering. Even if you use a sigil with a short (2s) CD, you will still find that it will interfere significantly with your Sigil of Battle. I would recommend putting on-crit sigils on both sets OR on-swap sigils on both sets. Then, as you suggested, I would put Bloodlust or Perception on your off-hand weapon, since those stats will benefit both you and your illusions.

As for your second question regarding the Chaos Master trait: Debilitating Dissipation probably could be swapped for something else, since you don’t have Deceptive Evasion to make the most out of it, Also, since phantasms don’t trigger the trait, and since you plan on using phantasms, you won’t get much use out of the trait. Furthermore, since you have minimal condition damage and condition duration, the random conditions you get aren’t going to do much to the enemy. Considering all of the above, I would recommend Bountiful Interruption if you are able to consistently get interrupts as it can net you a significant amount of might and other boons. If you aren’t able to land interrupts, then you might try out Mirror of Anguish, but in all honesty, I think Bountiful Interruption has much more potential.

It depends a lot on what sort of build you want to play, but in general, I’d recommend greatsword. the iZerker can do tons of damage just by whirling through an enemy zerg. The knockback from Illusionary Wave is also useful for stopping stomps and knocking people out of Shadow Refuge. Generally, in zerg v zerg combat, the victor is the side that kills the opposition the fastest and the most brutally. Staff will give you excellent defense, but won’t have the burst damage you need to accomplish that objective.

I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to vehemently disagree with you and state that just about everything you said is incredibly misinformed.

First of all, you talk about clones doing damage. The only clones that do damage are those that apply conditions. Presumably you had difficulty facing a condition mesmer (maybe it was me, I just came from a lovely WvW session).

Why would you run away from clones? They will follow you until the ends of the earth pretty much. If you need to deal with clones, it’s best to destroy them from range lest you trigger any of the on-death clone traits and find yourself bleeding and crippled.

While most of a condition mesmer’s damage comes from his clones, a substantial chunk also comes from the mesmer himself. This means that when the mesmer is in stealth, you will be taking noticeably less damage. You can use that opportunity to destroy his illusions, heal, cleanse, etc. If you force a mesmer to waste his dodge rolls making clones, you just created a window in which you can focus down the mesmer.

What sort of condition removal are you using? If you have very little or none, then all condition builds across all classes are going to be an issue for you, not just the mesmer.

Did you try running away? Condition mesmers, by and large, have little to no access to swiftness nor any sort of passive movement speed boost. Also, the majority use staff and scepter/torch so they will have no way of immobilizing or crippling you to prevent your escape (I’m probably the only one that actually uses sword, haha).

Were you sure you were targeting the mesmer whenever you had a chance? Mesmers use light armor; even with lots of toughness we can’t handle extended periods of focused fire so we have to rely on stealth, teleports, and boons to augment our survivability. The best thing you can do is to be relentless when focusing us.

Finally, I would say that I don’t think any mesmers, let alone condition mesmers, are overpowered. We recently had several nerfs. Illusionist’s Celerity got moved up, which means that Decoy, one of our stealths, had its duration increased for most builds. As others have already stated, we don’t have tons of stealth. All our stealth skills have short durations on relatively long cooldowns (except maybe traited torch stealth) and we use them to drop target and gain boons, not to hide and let our clones do damage to you. I think what’s likely happening is that you’re not noticing the mesmer come out of stealth and you’re giving him extra time to damage you. Learning to focus the real mesmer and quickly reacquire your target when he leaves stealth will dramatically help you. I consider myself to be a pretty decent player. I can manage 1vX scenarios pretty well against less skilled players, but I’ve also faced very good players 1v1 who either killed me or came close to doing so.

At this point I’ve come to realize that 90% of the “Nerf (Insert Class Here)” threads are simply a product of a lack of understanding on the part of the OP. When I first started playing WvW I couldn’t kill a thief to save my life. Now I find them relatively easy to fight. The best thing to do is to analyze your own weaknesses and educate yourself about the classes that are giving you trouble. Doing those things will help you get better. Heck, you could even try playing a mesmer to learn more about our class. I think you would discover pretty quickly that it’s not the god-mode class you’re describing.

My suggestion would be to think long and hard about which skin you like better. Then, I would recommend transmuting that skin onto a weapon with Carrion stats (Power, Vitality, Condition Damage). This will allow your clones to keep putting out condition damage while you’re using the sword, but also give you a little power to boost your sword’s damage. Also, vitality is useful in helping you be a little more durable, since as a condition mesmer you will need to outlast the opponent rather than quickly burst them down, especially if you aren’t using lots of confusion. I would also recommend transmuting your Whisperblade to have the same stats for the above reasons. Rabid stats (Condition damage, toughness, precision) could also work well, but you miss out on the power which is useful considering both sword and focus are power-based weapons.

There are a few waypoints which were added to the game later on. I believe there are such waypoints in Plains of Ashford, Snowden Drifts, Cursed Shore, and Brisban Wildlands (there are probably more than I’m forgetting). I believe that the exploration prize was not updated to include these new waypoints, but the title and the badge on the log-in screen were updated.

To find the waypoints that you’re missing, mouse over the name of each zone on your world map and it will tell you how many of the zone’s waypoints you’ve unlocked.

@Esplen – The OP said he was missing waypoints. The Chantry of Secrets is a POI, so he probably already has it, since he said he had everything but waypoints. In fact, since it is required for Krytan Explorer, which he has, he must have already visited it.

Azure Prower.8701:

zerospin.8604:

The best mini game yet, surpassing Super Adventure Box.

No.

NoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNo!

We have to go to the armory? That’s where Zadorojny is, you say?

Archer.1658:

Kravick.4906:

Archer.1658:

Lol Anet is absolutely the worst company I’ve ever seen. Brb making blurred frenzy a suicide button vs engies and guardians now.

It was OP as all hell before considering it was up 20% (25% traited) of the time in every fight.

Lmao “OP”, it roots down a cloth class. Regardless, sword is now a death trap vs these professions. In fact, lets assume a guardian’s retal ticks for 300, blurred frenzy hits 8×. That is 2,400 damage. Now lets assume you attack a party that has a guardian and they all have retal from the guard, assuming 300 ticks as well, that is 12,000 damage. This is just assuming blurred frenzy, the most common combo is to go ileap-frenzy-shatter, in which case u’ll be taking another 1,200 damage from 4 shatters. You will instagib yourself on a group of 5 people that have retal. So it goes from “OP” to death trap, yeah great fix.

Oh and btw, most retal ticks are above 350.

Ok, first of all, I agree that the nerf to Blurred Frenzy was a bit unneeded. However, it’s not nearly as bad as you make it out to be. Yes, Blurred Frenzy hitting eight times will generate 2400 damage for the mesmer in your scenario. At most it will generate 7200 damage because it can only hit up to three targets.

Really though, other than in large ZergVsZerg combat, where are you going to have the opportunity to have 24 unblocked, undodged hits against people who have retaliation up? Most decent players will do SOMETHING to mitigate damage because they know that a shatter is on the way, so in actuality a large chunk of of the hits won’t even make contact in most situations.

Also, there’s no real excuse for “instagibbing” oneself on retaliation. The mesmer has plenty of boon stripping abilities, FOUR of which are either common utilities or on common weapons. God forbid we actually look at our opponents’ boons before we rapidly unload every single one of our attacks. I run sword and played WvW for several hours today and, because I pay attention, not once did I find that Blurred Frenzy was causing me to take excess amounts of damage. I certainly didn’t take anything in the 3-7k range that you are advocating as common.

Like I said, nobody likes nerfs, but at least this will encourage players to think a little bit more.

Celestina.2894:

Oh I get it, the mesmer used perm mass invis!

Yes, he was using the very popular 30/30/30/30/30 build with traited permanent invisibility.

I think that the iMage should be kept as a bouncing attack. Currently, the bounce works with both Cleansing Conflagration and with Illusionary Elasticity, and thus provides a torch user with some interesting trait choices. Maintaining these choices is very important in my opinion. However, the iMage could certainly use some tweaks.

The biggest problem is that three stacks of confusion for 3s is very underwhelming. Even traited for an extra bounce and with condition duration, this phantasm is very weak, considering its cooldown. I would propose that the iMage keep the confusion portion of its attack, but apply either chill or burning with each attack. Both of those conditions very much fit with the theme of a classic mage. Furthermore, they both relate to the torch. Burning very overtly corresponds with the flame of the torch, while chill is essentially the opposite of a flame, and is suited to the mesmer’s very “inverse” nature (i.e. using a big sword as a sniper rifle).

I’m not sure which condition should be applied or for how long. Perhaps a random chance at burning or chill to correspond with the “random” nature of the class, though it seems awfully strange to put a damaging and a non-damaging condition in competition like that, given the phantasm’s low attack speed.

What do others think of this idea?

Edited for grammar.

Everything I’m about to say comes from a WvW perspective, so keep that in mind.

The only real use for the scepter is for applying confusion in condition builds, and it will almost always be a supporting weapon, not a main weapon. It can fulfill this role in either group or solo play, but it is typically more effective in larger battles where people won’t notice the incredibly obvious animation and dodge. Often, pistol or focus is a good compliment so you can stun/knockdown people to more effectively apply confusion without the dodging. Confusing Images is the best skill on the weapon by far, but the blind from skill #2 is a useful defensive tool if timed well. The auto-attack leaves something to be desired. In my build (I run scepter/pistol and staff), I have the auto-attack function turned off completely because I don’t want the scepter clones overwriting my staff clones.

Honestly, I don’t recommend using Inspiration BECAUSE you’re using a scepter. Choose Inspiration if you are looking for the defensive options it has to offer, such as additional healing, condition removal, vitality, and projectile reflection. The Malicious Sorcery trait that reduces scepter cooldowns only works on confusing images, and in my opinion, investing 20 trait points for a second or two off of only one skill is a really bad decision.

Anyway, like I said, a scepter will be most effective in a condition build. The Master of Misdirection in Illusions is a great trait for this weapon (+33% confusion duration). Other than that, there aren’t really good traits that affect specifically the scepter, so search around the forums a little bit to find out about popular condition builds (FLIMP has excellent videos featuring the scepter in action). Hopefully you’ll find something that you like.

No, that seems incredibly overpowered to me. Currently, a good condition mesmer has to be very conscious of the positioning of his clones in order to make the most out of the on-death traits. If we suddenly get the ability to apply cripple, bleeding, weakness, and vulnerability with a push of a button, condition mesmer becomes overpowered in WvW and PvP. Image… Every 15 seconds you can Mind Wrack. If you have three clones out and have Crippling and Debilitating Dissipation, that means you can instantly stack ~15 seconds of cripple (assuming 80% condition duration), and a fair amount of the other conditions I mentioned, depending on how the RNG plays out. As far as I’m concerned, having the clone death traits trigger from shattering completely negates their purpose, as they’re designed to punish people for attacking the wrong target, not to be an active dps trait.

curtegg.5216:

In simple terms: Blurred Frenzy will now no longer work against the Fractal JadeMaw’s laser beam attack…sadness.

Given that evading due to a dodge works just fine in Jade Maw, why wouldn’t evading due to a skill?

I’ve literally had my computer on for the past 30 hours monitoring these events. I need Fireheart Rise, and the last time it appeared was on 8/28 at 23:00 UTC. It didn’t appear once on 8/29 so the previous information that every map would appear at least once per day is false.