Guild Wars 2

Concerns/Things To Think About

Confusion and Slow:

It seems to me there is a clear negative synergy between Confusion and Slow. Slow slows down skill use. Confusion damages on skill use. It seems counterproductive to use both Confusion and Slow. This is very concerning – it means right away Scepter and Torch are not viable weapons with Chronomancer. Ethereal combo fields are also not looking very good with Chronomancer as a result, despite 3 of the wells providing Ethereal fields.

Lack of Actual Gameplay Difference:

This is my #1 concern for Chronomancer.

If you look at the type of thing you are doing on Mesmer, and the type of thing you are doing on Chronomancer, they are going to be very similar. You will still be shattering (just more frequently to maintain Alacrity and Slow), you will still be summoning Illusions to support allies, you will still be using AOE skills to support allies (Wells instead of Glamours). With the new weapon updates for regular Mesmer, reducing skill cooldown by doing things (like maintaining Chaos Armor) is already going to be a core part of the gameplay.

Absorbing attacks for allies with Echo of Memory is interesting, but absorbing attacks with an AOE effect isn’t going to feel very new or different for Mesmers given our history of projectile absorption/reflection. The AOE stun and Continuum split are cool but I really don’t feel these two things will substantially change the gameplay.

Playing as a slow but heavy hitting melee juggernaut with short range shouts is a substantially different gameplay experience for Necromancers. Playing with the Longbow with some more mobility is a substantially different gameplay experience for Guardians (even if it is derivative of Ranger).

Chronomancer definitely provides different things (different support, different debuffs etc.). My concern is it is doing them in exactly the same way a normal Mesmer does normal Mesmer stuff.


Other Concerns

My other #1 concern is that the opportunity to address core issues with the Mesmer class is not being taken. For example Guardians have been an A+, meta class in all game modes basically throughout the lifespan of the game and regular Guardians are still getting Tomes looked at. The issues around Blood Magic and Necro support are being addressed as part of regular Necro as well.

In both of these cases core issues with the class are being addressed by fixing the class, not with specializations. Regular Mesmers have a lot of issues and I hope these will be addressed at the class, not specialization, level.

Mechanical
For example Temporal Curtain and Veil not stacking with ANYTHING

Mimic
I honestly thought this would already been changed. Easier access to the Signet of Inspiration effect doesn’t seem promising – you are choosing the ability to copy buffs and share to allies with significant trait investment VS simply removing them via Null Field and providing condition cover as well.

Lack of Weapon Variety:
I find it deeply concerning the cries over the past years about the FOUR offhands and TWO mainhands have been ignored. Adding yet another OH weapon and no MH or alternate skill bars is going to put Mesmer basically last in both raw number of weapon skills and the number of possible weapon combinations.

Thieves Hard Countering.
I am fine with being countered. What I am not fine with being told “this GRANDMASTER trait doesn’t work on 80% of thief skills”. Power Block will never see proper play in sPVP in its current form because of this and everybody knows it. One suggestion is make “default attack skills” unaffected, instead of all 0 CD skills.

Putting Time Marches On in Chronomancer
This needs to be a regular Mesmer trait. Put Time Catches Up as minor for Chrono and let it give the speedboost to Phantasms when summoned (so it benefits both Phantasm and Shatter builds) and then come up with a new Adept trait for Chronomancers.

Closing
I’m still looking forward to playing Chronomancer and I’m hoping it will be even more fun than it already looks to be!

The Devs had asked for feedback so this is just my personal view, now we have Chronomancer traits and a few specializations revealed. I am not the worlds best mesmer, nor the most hardcore player but I main Mesmer and I really love the class (this post probably sounds more pessimistic about the class overall than I actually am).

Good Things

• Theme: it is similar-but-different enough to Mesmer. The team has done a great job in translating the time manipulation theme into the Slow and Alacrity mechanics.
• Wells: Wells look great, visually, thematically and in terms of effects. The float on Gravity Well is a great idea (please keep it!).
• Traits: It is nice to see the traits trying to address some long standing issues (with movement speed increase on Time Marches On and the slowness of illusions with Time Catches Up). Traits are also an area I feel could be improved.
• Continuum Shift: Great idea. A bit iffy about the destroyable rift since it gives the control to your opponents or NPC AOE damage but great concept.
  
  
  Continued below…

This is exactly the kind of content I enjoy.

Except for the bit where it’s located in the middle of a zergfest…

And I’m in Australia using the Mac Beta Client, lol.

The difficulty level is ok in itself.

The problem is the “unfair” parts of the fight.

For me this is (in order)

1. Bad rendering – if you have a slower CPU for the first 5+ seconds you can’t see Liadri or the red circles leading to lots of instakills from her first AOE.
2. Unfair hitbox for higher latency players – being from Australia I have been hit by her AOE attack MULTIPLE times even though I am CLEARLY out of her circle on my screen. Because of the latency I still get hit with it… not to mention the times I have died after casting blinks or blurred frenzies that didn’t register in time.

Far below:

3. Bad camera angle makes it hard to see

Seriously if you want to make challenging content thats fine, but holy crap if you want to put it lag central at least playtest it on older computers and higher pings.

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

I voted for Kiel because I preferred her rewards and felt her character is too shallow. Also, Evon is greedy, and its never a good thing for a person in the position of power to also be the wealthiest. Do the math, that’s only one step from dictatorship.

You realise Evon is NOT the richest person in Lion’s Arch, and the richest person is actually already on the council, right?

Not to mention the Lionguard was already represented on the council by Ellen’s mentor and close friend.

K U T M.4539:

The blurred frenzy change was a while back…

Ohhh ok, when he said “hating it tonight” i thought he meant they had changed it again, lol.

Are you able to post the changes? I don’t think they have been posted on the announcements bit yet.

I’d really like to see one or two more traits for manipulations.

Arcane Thievery vs Null Field

Mimic/Absorb vs Feedback

I don’t feel like these measure up in terms of raw power, Mimic requires channel vs Feedback’s instant cast, and Arcane Thievery has a longer cooldown vs Null Field (despite their power levels being fairly similar). But by taking these you are sacrificing both group utility and the bonus combo fields which can be very powerful (almost all our weapons have finishers, but only staff and focus can create fields).

Glamours have the direct benefit of four traits, with duration, cooldown, confusion and blind, as well as several “feeder” traits (confuse on blind, medic’s feedback).

So it would be cool to see some traits that “buff up” the weaker manipulations without making a traited Blink too ridiculous!

And not because a main hand pistol would be cool (which it would be, dagger would also be good).

I feel like at the moment, there are 4 cool (and unique) off-hands, particularly with the off-hand sword buffs the last patch.

Scepter, with its mix of clone generation and conditions, seems to only excel in the niche of “condition on clone death/replacement” builds.

So it seems to me, most of the time you are stuck with taking some combination of MH Sword, Staff, or Greatsword.

I feel like with only these 3 weapons plus sometimes the offhand of your choice, your options are really constrained. For example something like iWarden -> Magic Bullet -> iDuelist could be really fun with condition/bleed or straight phantasm if we had another good MH weapon, but it isn’t possible to do this.

I typed this since ANET has said in a recent blog they are planning to add more skills to the game

This is just how it feels to me, what do you think?

Edit: cleaned up my typos and tried to simplify the points a bit

Really, people, you’ve been saying a vote for Knashblade is a vote for RNG, but it is actually quite the opposite.

WHY!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?

• Kiel will cause inflation:
• Cheaper waypoints simply increases the amount of money PCs can spend on other things.
• All this means is that there is more money in the system. A PC can’t “take advantage” of it by using waypoints more, rather everyone will simply have more money.

Why causing inflation is bad, and why Kiel is bad

• So everyone has slightly more money! Woo…
• This won’t give you any special advantage – in trying to buy items at the trading post, you will be competing against other people who also have that extra money
• Inflation makes barrier to entry to new or less active players higher
• Inflated gold means gems will be even more expensive
• The one benefit of inflated gold is that it makes repair costs and some vendor items “cheaper” (i.e., worth less since the same amount of currency is worth less). So in other words, unless you die a lot, don’t know how to use waypoints properly, or think buying white gear at the “Armorsmith” is a good idea, you won’t be getting any benefit from Kiel.
• AND YOU DON’T DIE A LOT, DO YOU?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?

BUT THERE IS HOPE. OUR SAVIOUR, EVON GNASHBLADE!!!!!

A VOTE FOR EVON IS A VOTE FOR CHEAPER HIGH END GEAR

Why vote for the #1 most cuddly Charr?

• Simple, Evon means more black lion chest keys, hence, more black lion chests opened.
• In terms of supply and demand, this INCREASES supply, making it cheaper
• Black Lion Chests also give new items, which is great. Can Kiel give you cheaper new items? No, Kiel just makes your hard-earned gold worthless.

But WHAT ABOUT THE RNG!!?!?!?

• No.
• Still no.
• Ok, really, the answer is no.
• Fine, i’ll explain it for you: if you look at it in terms of “what does each one give me” it probably seems like Kiel is the much better deal.
• EXCEPT Kiel effects everyone. Cheaper waypoints just means EVERYONE has more money. This just makes inflation higher, and makes everything more expensive. But cheaper keys means there will be more BLC items on the market.
• The kicker of this is that voting for Kiel doesn’t help you get items, she won’t actually help your buying power – but she will make it harder for new or returning players, or people re-rolling, via inflation (that is bad). Voting for Evon drives down prices, this actually INCREASES your buying power. As in, the gold you have before Evon will go further once we elect him.

P.S. Although I’ve made this to look like a typical “propaganda” piece… this is actually a really, really valid reason why you shouldn’t vote for Kiel.

Definitely agree with this.
If you get an early kill, even without meaning too (oh, that guy picked up your obvious ration trap right after you placed it?), you are 95% sure to lose if you run into anyone else. All they have to do is use the item drop trap and you either have to try and pick up items and fight the guy, or run away and leave most of your stuff behind.

Then even if you survive, you will probably attract the ghostie zerg and get karked.

I’d suggest ghosts use the Kark and “inactive” locations and buff #5 to give them faster movement.

In sPvP there’s actually very few situations where its both:
1. Optimal for the mesmer to have Moa
2. Better to stay after being Moa’d

So the first point is: in pretty much any fight that isn’t a1v1, it’s better to have Time Warp. Time Warp is 10 seconds of Quickness, to all allies in the area – compared to 10 seconds of one person being Moa’d.

In other words, even in a 2v2, Time Warp is equal to or better than Moa (i.e., double your own teams output for 10 seconds or halve theirs by Moa’ing one of them – even this is arguable because as a Moa you still have some utility in a fight; while team warp lets brutal combinations happen, like fast 100 blades and stomp).
So anything over a 1v1, TW is better.

In a 1v1 if you get Moa’d you can withdraw. So the question is, if you get Moa’d, why and when should you stay and fight?
Answers:
Team fight – you should stay if on an objective and you aren’t close to dying. But in this situation as I’ve discussed above, TW is a better option so it’s a good thing you’ve been Moa’d

1v1 defending treb/point: if you are in their territory, withdrawing is fine, you’ve already come out ahead by forcing them to recap a point. If it’s your own territory, you might want to stay (but you should be pinging/asking for assist if its near your spawn anyway).

1v1 attacking a point/treb: if you get Moa’d its fine to withdraw, likely they will need to stay on point/treb, letting you come back in 10 seconds no problem.

The only thing I would like to see for shatters (and Mes in general) is more coherent trait options – like Illusionary Elasticity in Chaos line, useful master-level shatter trait in Illusions, change the “effect on death” traits so they don’t directly contradict the class mechanic…
Otherwise shatter is fine.

I feel the comparison to shattering vs maintaining phantasms is flawed, so much depends on the situation (for example phantasm builds will be weaker versus multiple mobs, stronger when you can protect and maintain them and vice versa).

So guys, as a Mesmer I frequently use Staff 2, which has a minor teleport effect.

This has the disadvantage of frequently getting me stuck inside terrain. Being inside terrain counts you as underwater, so I can’t use Blink in small spaces (larger spaces you can find ground, and return yourself to the normal terrain – smaller ones you are basically stuck). I’ve tried portal/the underwater weapon mobility skills and no dice.

When this happens in the personal story, I can’t waypoint, else I lose my progress. Log in/out resets progress (returns you to world map).

Is there a way to simply kill your character (return to the spawn of the story instance)? Or otherwise return to the start?

Getting a bit annoying, trying to do the Temple of the Forgotten God, been disconnected once while in the end conversation (reset it to beginning by logging me back into world map) and got stuck in terrain once after reaching the top level (dry ground).

Scepter:

• Ether Clone does not confused

Slot:

• Mimic does not reflect first projectile during channel

As someone who has played the Sylvari story and a little of the Charr, a couple of easy improvements come to mind:

1. Link between stories more. For example, as a Sylvari, Branthyn is the Vigil recruiter, it would be cool to have her show up in Vigil missions, likewise for the other orders. Similarly, if I’ve spent 10-30 running around with Traherne, he probably doesn’t need to be reintroduced (i.e., dialogue should account for past choices, even if its only 2-3 lines different).

2. I feel like the Sylvari story needs to have some sort of depth. Like the Cycles didn’t seem to do much apart from introduce one character in one of the possible stories.

3. Male Sylvari… I’m not sure, but it just seems every male Sylvari character comes across as an annoying know-it-all. Traherne excluded, the male Priory recruiter and the twins in the “All Things Have a Right to Grow” story and even the PC at times comes across as insufferable know-it-alls, rather than genuinely curious or earnestly naive.

The signet that resets shatter cds!

GS and Staff are both good standalone weapons, however I feel that Staff + Sword/OH combines better.

The reason for this comes down to combo fields, Chaos Storm and the flexibility Sword/OH gives.
Basically, having Sword lets you melee effectively, gives you a leap combo finisher and good survivability with Blurred Frenzy and Chaos Armor (from leap combo into Chaos Storm, Feedback etc.). This means you don’t have to run around in circles and lets you bunch multiple mobs relatively safely. As well, Chaos Storm is best when both you and the mobs are both standing in it – but greatsword #1 is going to do marginal damage if you do that.

Being able to safely stack mobs makes your shatters much more effective. As well, you can use Blurred Frenzy to invun after stacking confusion, allowing them to take confusion damage while you are untouched. On the other hand if you are running around with a GS/Staff, the mobs aren’t going to proc confusion much.

Finally, I feel choosing the right offhand (if solo most likely focus or pistol) gives you comparable utility to the greatsword. Focus #4 alone gives straight up better control than Greatsword, with speed, aoe cripple and a push/pullback. I also rate Warden more highly than Beserker, but thats more personal preference (both are whirl finishers, which is ok – but Warden doesn’t run out of the combo area half the time). I’ve found it’s actually easier to kite with Sword/Focus/Staff than GS/Staff, because you aren’t dependent on your phantasms for cripple/movement, letting you safely stack staff clones/phants.

Some nice changes would be:
Torch 4 burns on cast, blinds on reveal
Buff scepter in some small way
Give shatter builds some decent traits to back them up (I actually quite like shatter as it is at the moment :P)

OH Sword has a good phantasm and AOE Daze(!!!!!)
Focus has AOE speed, AOE snare, AOE interupt/reposition, and the highest damage phantasm
Torch also has a good phantasm, and gives you a free disengage (e.g., in sPVP you can force a weapon swap to melee with Illusionary Leap and Blurred Frenzy, then disengage back to range, etc etc).

The sadness of mesmer is there are actually 4 good off-hands, but only one good main hand.

Love your videos, I saw the first two from your original reddit videos. I really liked the weapon reviews in particular. I too am a big Staff fan!

One criticism – and it’s ANETs fault since their tooltip is completely wrong – Mimic/Echo doesn’t actually behave the way you describe in your video. >Shameless link to own post<

There’s basically no reason to use it over Feedback though, unless you want to specifically stack projectile reflection.
The other thing I didn’t mention in the other post is that since the first hit goes through, you can’t use it to defend against CC moves, which is rly rly bad.

It’s possible to time the pull so you can run over when the traps aren’t active, but it’s much more difficult to time the traps correctly once the veteran is chasing/hitting you. So if you want to try the trap method, you need to be able to survive hits while you keep him on the trap.

I’d say try Staff in Earth (imob him over traps out of range) Signet of Air -> then switch to air, Lightning Surge -> Static Field -> Gust -> Signet of Earth -> Mist Form -> Lightning Surge → Signet of Air

Should be enough, but you will need to check if all the effects apply and modify your build accordingly.

Alternatively, the slower but safer way may be to equip signet of air and circle-strafe kite while blasting him.

If only there was some way to play your own music in game…

Oh wait.

The thing is, it’s not so much about having the “right” class, it’s more about knowing a class really well. So if you are trying all the different classes, you probably haven’t mastered all the tricks you need to win!

The other thing to realise is not all classes are best in 1v1. So for example Mesmers and Thieves are pretty good in 1v1 (if built for it), so in sPvP it’s usually a good idea to go after solo objectives (e.g., trebuchet, grabbing lone objectives), whereas other classes are really good teamfighters and so want to go into the big teamfight locations (e.g., Clocktower, Graveyard, Keep).

I realise my two points are sort of contradictory, but what I mean is:
If you 1v1 and you aren’t really experienced with the class, you will probably lose to someone who is, even if it’s a “weaker” 1v1 (more team oriented) build.
Not all classes are best in 1v1, and losing a 1v1 isn’t necessarily bad in terms of your teams overall objectives (e.g., if the other team has a lot of 1v1ers, you’ll probably have the advantage in team fights).

Think about the trinity ROLES and what they actually DO.

Tanks = Reduce/mitigate incoming damage/protect others
Healers = Recover damage
DPS = kill stuff

Now in the trinity, you usually only fill ONE role. That is, if you heal, you don’t also DPS as well.

In GW2, you still need to:

Reduce and mitigate incoming damage (by using dodge, kiting, boons like Aegis, reflection/blind AOEs etc)
Recover damage (by using your own healing abilities and reviving downed allies)
Do damage

BUT individual classes aren’t responsible for doing just one of these, instead all classes have some way of doing all of these things.

Now if you think you are with a competent group, that knows to bring the right slot skills and can dodge well etc., then you can probably rely on “just” this to mitigate damage. Otherwise, it’s probably wise to take a bit of Toughness/Vitality.

A big problem is that a lot of people think no trinity = we can all build dps, but dps is part of the trinity itself. It’s fine to focus on DPS, even as a group overall, as long as you have the skills or ability to avoid or mitigate damage as a group as well.

@OP: Ralena and Vassar are much easier when you keep them separated and keep one focused. What this means is you need to use pushbacks, like say Mesmer w/Greatsword. The Boulders nearby also pushback and are reuseable. It may also be possible to separate them using the doors (get one into the corridor and have someone step off the switch, making it 4v1).

They also have damage that is fixed rather than damage that varies within a range, so you can easy compare the damage of two different rotations/weapon sets/whatever

Hey guys, hope it’s ok to bump this!

I did some testing of my own after I realised I could use the practice mobs at Hall of Memories. I tested it on Ranger and also sort-of tested on the Thief.

Current Tooltip
Mimic
Absorb a projectile attack to be redirected at a foe.
Duration: 4 s

[Chains into Echo]
Echo
Echo your mimic, shooting the stored projectile at your foe.
Range: 1,200

How it actually works
Mimic
Channel for 4 seconds
Apart from the first projectile that hits, REFLECT all incoming projectiles back to whomever shoots it
The first projectile does damage and applies effects to you as normal

Note 1: It’s projectiles, not skills – if you get hit with something like Rapid Fire, you will be damaged by the first projectile, then reflect the rest
Note 2: projectiles AREN’T Blocked (they’re reflected) – if you have Dueling III Mastery (Gain 3 seconds of retaliation whenever you block) Mimic won’t proc retaliation at all.

Echo
Fire the first projectile that you were hit with (the one you took damage for)
I believe the Echo uses your own stats for the projectile (e.g., if you were hit for 50 damage, your Echo won’t simply be 50 damage)

Note 3: Like above, if you absorb the first hit of a Rapid Fire like ability, which has multiple projectiles, Echo will only shoot one projectile, not a barrage

So… how does Mimic work? It’s a four second channel, however if you get hit in the first second by a projectile, the channeling continues – do you keep absorbing? Then when you use Echo, does it shoot just the first projectile or all of them? And finally, what happens when you use it against a skill like Rapid Fire, where there are lots of projectiles?

I had trouble investigating myself because the ranged NPCs I found all had very slow attack timers (bandits).

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/z0fff/psa_remember_you_can_play_your_own_music_in_gw2/

This might be the post you were looking for

Yeah, in storymode AC I downed twice, and of that only “died” once on the final boss. First time. In a PUG.

Dodge the AOE, revive the guys who have been downed, and make good use of support-style elites. Roll out of the AOE attacks and heal when you need.
The only dangerous thing is his pull, and that’s countered by taking something like Blink (my death was from him pulling me into foefire and I didn’t have Blink equipped, since I didn’t expect it – second time round that won’t happen).

Anka.3675:

He spawns adds even after resetting, which is what has me the most frustrated and makes it so circular.

Dang that sucks, I guess I was lucky he didn’t do that for me!

I did this fight as a Mesmer, it’s pretty tough.

First, some good news – if the fight resets, he won’t spawn any more adds even if you get him below 25% again.

During the fight, try and keep everyone up at all times by using res, and kill all the adds first.

His ranged attacks are comparatively weak and can be dodged by movement (i think) and rolling. His close nuke (which fears) is pretty short ranged so if you stay at range and spam 2 while moving you can survive a decent amount of time as well.

If you end up in a 1v1 situation, run around and try to res someone, even if you die you can usually make it back before they die again.
If you die before you finish reviving, that’s ok too, just come back and continue to revive (the progress bar will stay up).
Take slots that can defend against projectiles to give you protection while you try and res (my Thief is only level 7 or so, but looking at abilities on the wiki probably Smokescreen is a good one to get.

Edit: the other thing is his DPS isn’t actually that high, so once you kill the first set of adds you can take your time and make sure the whole team is up again before you push his hp low enough for him to spawn the 2nd set of mobs

I cleared AC Story first time today, only had some trouble with Ralena and Vassar because we didn’t separate them well.

According to one of the other party members who has done it before, it has been tuned down a bit.

If you are a Mesmer, I recommend using Feedback on the rangers and Null Field on your allies in pretty much every fight. Also try to use combo finishers whenever you see your allies put down AOE skills.

I also suggest taking Illusion of Life, because getting your allies out of downed instantly is pretty good.

Not sure about Explorable or the other dungeons, but if anything I felt AC story was pretty easy.

Another tip is to make sure you have decent gear for your level – I purchased a set of Level 30 blues for less than 2 silver on the Trading Post, and made about 20-30 silver (including repairs) in the actual dungeon, so gearing up is definitely worth it cost-wise as well.

EDIT: To be clear, this was a PUG.

As the title says, I’m looking for the amount of experience King Adelburn gives when you beat him – if you defeated him recently the amount of experience will show up in the “Combat” chat window.

The reason I ask is I finished AC story just a few hours ago and got a huge amount of experience (half a bar or more, which I estimate is somewhere between 12-16k). So I thought “A-ha! I can do the monthly experience survivor achievement with this, since it will be half done just from beating Adelburn” – but the achievement hasn’t updated anything over 12,358 experience, even though I know I haven’t died since, and have done a bunch of hearts and dynamic events.

I’m a mesmer, earlier today I could’ve SWORN feedback was a ground targeted skill, now it’s not. Was it changed during the service or am I going crazy? O.o