Guild Wars 2

FJSAMA.2867:

The auto recharge ammo system on mantras is useless. Too long, making it just better to spend the last charge and recast again.

I think that’s intentional, it’s a QoL change so you don’t have to waste charges after finishing a fight. They openly stated their intention was for mesmers to spend their charges and recast the mantra in combat (if not in the patchnotes it’s in a WoodenPotatoes interview). Contrast that with the Firebrand where the ammo recharge is shorter, the final charge is stronger and the cooldown is much longer.

@OP: nope, not missing it one bit. If the heal or Restorative Mantras are too weak now that’s a separate issue caused directly by their nerfs and the extra charge would be even less useful now with the recast bonus.

Carighan.6758:

Hrm, maybe. Frankly I’d prefer a set of patchnotes which start with “Phantasms have been removed as a skill type”.

No thanks, I actually enjoy the playstyle of splitting up my capacity over multiple independent entities. Haven’t seen any PvE-viable alternative proposals that don’t become the same mechanical piano as any other class just with purple butterflies.

Levetty.1279:

Photoloss.4817:

Carighan.6758:

I want less Phantasm-reliant stuff. Not more :<

+%dmg upon shattering a phantasm, like Berserker’s Power?

It should be for shattering anything.

Was trying to keep PvP spammability out of this. Probably way off the mark but I was more thinking of around +20%dmg per phantasm that successfully shatters (i.e. not killed while running and you only get the bonus upon impact) for 10s or so, stacking up to 3 times.

Sublimatio.6981:

why cant they just remove how the phase mechanic works and rework it, maybe make rigom desperately running into guldheim and we have to keep them separate , otherwise rigom explodes and wipes pt or something.

Heck no, current AI pathing and aggro is way too sluggish (not to mention buggy) for any more movement-based mechanics. Getting VG to move in a circle is painful enough.

OriOri.8724:

Carighan.6758:

Yeah, bit of a shame. I think overall I’d genuinely prefer Confusion to just deal damage on skill activation again, but it’d require a massive overhaul of the entire condition / skill mechanic in the game to be viable across modes.

That would never be viable in PvE, but for WvW/PvP that would probably be best for confusion in order to keep its uniqueness.

The conditions are split anyway so what’s to stop them giving PvP confusion 10% of the PvE tick but maybe even higher skill damage?

Carighan.6758:

I want less Phantasm-reliant stuff. Not more :<

+%dmg upon shattering a phantasm, like Berserker’s Power?

Doam.8305:

Yeah in GW2 I’d say that would be worthless but then again the new Warr elite is more of a traditional Mesmer than our entire class. So I’d say it would still be viable based on Spellbreaker merely existing.

You seem to have missed the “Spellbreaker is a useless PvP-only spec” doomsaying, and the fact it’s an optional elite spec added to a class which (prior to this patch anyway) already had better dps and better group buffs than mesmer, and an actual viable dps build on top of that. Sure give the mesmer a hexlord elite spec in the next expansion but don’t make it the core design of the entire class!

Vyriis.6258:

Do not take this as me defending the shatter system, though. I still wish Mesmer of GW2 were more like Mesmer of GW1: Massive health and energy degeneration (energy in form of endurance, I suppose, or cool downs) with a very counter based play style. We went from very deadly Hexers in GW1 to falling closer to the performer aspect, in that we are entertaining with our pretty butterfly illusions, in GW2.

And be absolutely worthless in PvE? No thanks? (never played GW1 but we’re talking about a mesmer rework not a full game redesign, what little we have in interrupt builds is patently useless against breakbars)

Mind you MW is great for finishing off open world mobs and a decent filler for tagging, it’s really only in sustained dps situations where a burst damage skill with a cost is not desirable.

Fury on yourself does not apply to phantasms. Any non-stat bonuses only apply if they are granted to the phantasm itself (e.g. GotL, spirits, alacrity)

Illusions are half our class mechanic and we use those all the time. Why are you so fixated to have one specific skill used in one specific build type? I agree we could use many small improvements and already mentioned a few, but why are you desperate to spam F1 off cooldown?

Rangers by the way rarely cared when their pet died outside of top tier speedruns, and gladly sacrificed it by pulling all the group’s condis onto the poor thing. Warriors don’t have much of a class mechanic to begin with, thieves don’t get much for raids either, engineer is a mess, eles use half of theirs and necros arguably less than half (1 skill, 2 more for situational utility, the damage absorption rarely ever matters)

OriOri.8724:

Minstrel chrono is not a dps build.

Not every build needs to use every aspect of the class mechanic, I said it’s not much but we have one endgame-viable build that does use shatters. I personally also use F3 on pretty much any raid breakbar and F4 to block things like sloth shake but my static isn’t good enough to fullclear every week so maybe that’s just for casual scrubs.

OriOri.8724:

As for ele, switching to water or earth is just switching to more defensive/supporty skills. Its not as if eles aren’t using attunement swapping or overloads at all. Don’t play enough druid to know what to say about its pet swapping, or lack thereof. But again, a druid a support class, so we should be comparing cRanger to the power mesmer build.

Condi ele exclusively camps fire, some guardian and warrior specs might only press F1 for a damage modifier trait, necro rarely used more than (RS5+)RS4. A burn guardian built around VoJ passive procs is somewhat decent and technically never “uses” the class mechanic. The vast majority of ranger pets see no use in PvE. All of these could and should be criticised but given the general state of the game mesmer not using shatters in one dps build is not a major concern.

OriOri.8724:

And none of that changes the fact that we have a self defeating mechanic. It literally destroys itself when we use our F skills.

Until the next round of PvP nerfs roll in I prefer to think of it as an optional choice: you shouldn’t shatter and blow up your dps, but you can if the situation calls for it. Like an ele who can switch to water, lay a field, switch to earth and blast it where a low-health thief would just keel over and die.

I would much prefer to have CoF replaced with an illusion retarget skill (illusions last 1s after a target dies so you can retarget them) and the condis be shifted to MW/traits, that way the dps build would at lest use 1-2 “shatters”. I quite like the current phantasm concept though since it focuses more on planning and resource management than mechanically grinding rotations which the “single-use phantasms” I’ve seen suggested would inevitably devolve into.

Edit:

Would it be op if we something like this?:
You summon a phantasm or 3, let them do their thing, let’s say they do 50k damage in total from few of their attacks, then you shatter them (mindwrack) and each phantasm or clone now deals 25% of the total damage they have done in the time they were summoned?
Let’s say for every 10 seconds they were summoned, daze from diversion would last 1/4 longer?
That would give mesmer a reason to let them attack, but also a reason to shatter.

Hard to track/display, incredibly confusing if anyone ever got hit with it in PvP, nothing new over what we could already do with Chronophantasma if chrono had a viable dps spec.

When does a dps ele ever switch to water or earth? That’s half their class mechanic ignored too. Or druids not swapping pets if their group brings enough cc. Every build opts against using some specific components of its given kit.

Oh and technically minstrel chrono uses shatters to gain some extra boons for what little it’s worth.

Unless it’s merely a tooltip fix they also stealth nerfed iZerker to 1s cast time (was 0.75s).

Not complaining about the actual attack additions since they’re a pure upgrade and will only cause inopportune hits in very specific circumstances.

Amaimon.7823:

We refer to story agony as Spectral Agony since this is what the Mursaat called it in guild wars 1. We deliberately say Spectral Agony instead of just Agony because in gw2 there’s the fractal of the mists where agony is used as a mechanic. So it’s just to make a clear distinction between the two agonies.
Spectral Agony is just the concept of damage coming from Mursaat, Cairns, and Aether Constructs.

Okay so NOT his red circle poison which I believe is listed as “Shared Agony”?

Amaimon.7823:

I just thought of something else. After the swipe attack, Cairn spawns several green fields instantly, after which he lets out a burst of Spectral Agony. This one requires immediate reaction, rather than his dance dance revolution where you have plenty of time. Could be that you’re so focused on attacking the boss that you missed these greens?

Don’t those lift you in the air too? Pretty sure I didn’t miss any greens either way as everyone else was still stacking next to me and making no effort to move even during the spike damage. Actually the pattern where he spawns ~6 circles of equal size and immediately charges up felt reasonably slow most of the time.

Sephylon.4938:

Where were you standing? If you’re in-front of Cairn, all 3 of its swipes deal damage.

Obviously somewhere in melee range not paying attention to his facing
Do the “3 swipes” actually hit simultaneously? My issue is not the total rate of incoming damage but getting spiked in an instant like a VG green or Sabby timebomb popped.

Sephylon.4938:

The shared agony deals hp% damage if I’m not mistaken, this is hearsay so take this with a grain of salt. I’m not too sure myself.

I have consistently taken either 4k or 8k. I don’t care about the number itself but the fact a single circle sometimes deals double damage for no apparent reason. Maybe I should double-check with the eles since Hardy Conduit+Frost Aura could be responsible for ~50% dmg reduction.

Sephylon.4938:

To my knowledge, the swipe attack can not be blocked, or invouned though, only dodging will work. I’ve tried to distort through it as well and had similar results, the special action key works in evading it though.

Blocking actually seemed to work at least sometimes, while Blur (which should be an evade) sometimes didn’t. Then again I know Tequatl waves can be dodge-rolled but not evaded via Blur…

Sephylon.4938:

As for this part, yeah, I’ve had people complaining about the same thing. Try playing on best performance I guess? One advice I can give is that the teleports will appear on Cairn’s 1st swing and there will always be three of them. Keep an eye for the orange outline of the teleports, they are the most noticeable thing in my experience. Also the teleports will pop as soon as it makes its 3rd swing, so you have until then to position yourself accordingly.

I already tried looking for the orange outlines but to my dismay often found them obscured even by my own wells -,- Anyway thanks for the help.

Amaimon.7823:

Spectral Agony is the first thing that comes to mind, the agony of others reflects heavy damage to their allies.

I deliberately put up two points because yes, the red circle poison hurts (I assume that’s the “agony” you mean, or is there another one?); but in some cases there were no red poisons on the team or all 3 were clearly in view and far away from me, yet I still took a >10k spike in melee range.

So, just did Cairn for the first time yesterday as a Chrono and some things really irked me for feeling inconsistent, badly broadcast or even bugged. So I’d like to ask for clarification of what just went under my radar vs. things that are actual problems with the fight.

So the first thing I noticed was that I seemed to be taking random 10k+ spikes every now and then while standing in melee range, usually downing me on the next “proper” attack. Nothing even remotely close appeared in the combat log. Am I being silly or is there some hidden trick?

Secondly and unrelated to the first, what determines the damage of the red poison (Shared Agony?)? Because I have taken variable amounts of damage standing in only one of those, it seems to be about 4k base but I’ve been chunked for 8k single-hit no-crit, again with only one red circle in existence. Actual mechanic or did I sometimes luck out on a shared damage reduction? (too strong for regular Protection though)

Thirdly, is there a bug with the spin swipe/“pool noodle” attack where it hits through defensive abilities? I could’ve sworn I got hit by it while I had Blur/Distortion on me, in one instance I literally saw the pink icon in my buff bar right before and after I got hit.

And finally of course a remark on the fake difficulty of our skill FX drawing over the telegraph of the port circles. Hard to see is one thing and totally fine, but impossible to see because we’re properly using our abilities? Bleh.

So, any insights? Thanks in advance!

So, just to be clear, this is not intended to start a flame war, but is a genuine question from an ignorant PvE scrub. Also I am entirely aware of the psycological impact of having several seconds to fully witness your inevitable doom versus instantly dropping dead.

My question is, besides this psycological effect, is there a factual reason people seem to hate condition dps in every PvP format? Not just individual broken builds, but the whole concept? Because from my perspective in PvE you actually have to wait longer for the same effect (top raid dps builds are pretty even in terms of power vs. condi, depends on enemy armour and mechanics of course). In theory the fact conditions ignore toughness is offset by the ability to cleanse them after the initial hit, and condition duration actually is a major factor in good PvE dps.

So, are conditions numerically stronger than “full zerk” with the “playable” PvP stat spreads? Are the major condition-applying skills that much harder to mitigate than direct damage ones? Do more of the “passive condition procs” fit into viable PvP builds compared to the + %dmg modifiers? Some other reason? Or is it “only” those few seconds where you have 20 + stacks on you, all your heals and cleanses are on cd and you can only sit there and bleed out?

Just one more vote against the mesmer nerfs. Yes chrono-bunker had to go. Yes raid buffs might have been a little too much. No, that does not mean you can essentially cut an Elite spec by half.

You didn’t fix any of the previous over-nerfs (“conditional recharge” traits being weaker than flat 20% ones even when fully exploited???), you didn’t fix things that never worked properly (sustained dps in PvE, lack of reliable AoE for WvW) and instead you pushed out a set of random changes with no real impact.

And while not directly related to this patch, the new breakbar system has utterly destroyed any and all hope for interrupts seeing play in PvE. Can’t you at least make the traits and other “on interrupt” effects activate on breakbar mobs if they’re using a skill while you hard-CC them? Leave out the cooldown increase of Power Block and Distracting Daggers, but it’s heartbreaking to see all those shiny new “on interrupt” sigils as map and story rewards and knowing they will never see any relevant use.

2) is easy, zerker for general use, pure assassin for spamming reflects in PuGs, zerker/assassin’s mix if you run with fully optimised groups a lot (if this option applies to you, you probably shouldn’t be asking this question in the first place…)

As for 1), rampager has several problems: damage condis on mesmer aren’t all that good in PvE (enemies don’t move/attack a lot, iDuelist bleeds are single target), you want precision and ferocity when running reflect-bot, and you’re forced to maintain a weapon+trait loadout that supports “hybrid” damage (so basically Dueling and/or Illusions)

A nice supportive variant would be to trait Illusionary Inspiration, that way you can share your might stacks (at the cost of personal damage when replacing Domination), plus you can share Distortion.

Either variant can also quickly switch to a more “standard” phantasm build by switching in Compounding Power and Phantasmal Haste, which is great for cheesing down champion mobs

Thorfinnr Sleggja.1209:

Do you know of a version of this without Chrono? I don’t have the line unlocked yet, but still enjoy using my Mesmer. Thanks

Sadly that won’t work, you need all the traits to add up or you’ll be left waiting for cooldowns one way or another. The closest you could get to the playstyle would be traited staff+Illusions condi/hybrid, but that isn’t really a viable build.

Replace the celestial trinkets with zerker/assassin (not sure which of those 2 is better). If you have trouble surviving replace Domination with Inspiration and/or swap a few utilities, much cheaper and less hassle than swapping trinkets every time you know you can survive in full glass.

If you still insist on passive defenses try some more focused gear like soldier or marauder, the condition damage and healing power on celestial are completely wasted in this build. And if you think you need any defensive stats, Scholar runes are definitely not the right choice, use something like Pack or Chronomancer (or Leadership for group support) instead.

For open world etc. you might want to replace Compunding Power with Persistence of Memory, just so you can finish off mobs with F1 and have your phantasms back up for the next blob of trash. Obviously don’t do this if you don’t plan on swapping back when needed.

Try to avoid double-casting Time Warp unless you’re at the end of a big boss fight, F5 has a much lower cooldown than TW itself so you actually get more quickness output by only casting it during the split.

Since you ask about open world, just try everything and pick the weapons, utilities and traits you actually enjoy/play well with.

Domination offers virtually nothing except damage boosts (which you don’t need in the open world) and the GS+signet traits. You don’t need to trait GS if you have Illusions and/or Chrono unless you need perma cripple, and signet actives aren’t worth it if you can’t share the distortion unless you like them.

Dueling is largely selfish with damage boosts and the survivability from vigor+sword cdr. Since Chrono gives you a long-lasting block and Alacrity for cooldowns this is easily replaced. You want Dueling if you plan on camping with phantasms, need the extra mantra charge (for tagging?) or plan to try a non-Alacrity Chrono traitset. If you aren’t running any mantras you have to decide for yourself: Deceptive Evasion is good for feeding shatters, but if you plan on camping champions with phantasms it will overwrite them and thus hurt you. Mistrust is practically useless but at least won’t harm you. Or just leave it on the mantra trait so you don’t have to switch traits every time you need heavy stability/stunbreak/cleanse, Mistrust is that useless in power builds.

Illusions has little damage boost, especially since Phantasmal Haste doesn’t mingle too well with Chronophantasma. It has tons of cooldown reductions though, which makes it great for a more shatter-oriented playstyle with tons of personal Alacrity. Also lowers the cooldown of F5 if you want to spam that a bit more.

For utilities Mantra of Pain and Blink are always a good bet, though the mantra isn’t really worth it without Inspiration. “All wells” has the issue of locking you to a specific area for 3+ seconds as you lay them down, plus they all have cast times.

When going into the jungle make sure you have at least one duration-based defense (Sword2 or Shield4 mainly), one stunbreak or other instant-cast escape button (Staff2, Blink, Decoy, Well of Precognition) and one on-demand condition cleanse (even a single traited signet is enough most of the time, mantra/well is also good)

Or if you’re lazy pick your favourite group-play build and swap out the weapons and utilities for whatever you feel like using. Things like the Alacrity-bot build work perfectly fine when solo and you’ll have a bigger contribution to large boss fights. Full zerk GS+MoP is all you’ll ever need for any tagging purposes, though Tides of Time has a certain charm when launched through 20+ Risen

In general, GS for tagging, burst, AoE, Sword for dps and lol25%evadeuptime, Focus for swiftness or Shield for group buffs/skipping mobs that can actually hurt you. Mantra of Pain+Restorative Mantras gives good sustain and AoE tagging when needed. Use as much zerker/assassin gear as you can survive in, it increases your ability to tag mobs and the occasional death will teach you how to better use Mesmer’s plentiful active defenses.

Learn which mobs are reasonably safe to melee, that fixes the well issue since you drop them at both yourself and the enemy. Eternity and Precognition always go on top of allies you expect to get hit, Calamity and Gravity always go on enemies. Action and Recall technically affect both friend and foe equally, but low uptime of chill/slow rarely matters. Especially if you have them traited, drop those on your most damaging allies (those should be melee anyway most of the time) unless you need them right now for a specific breakbar.

When running wells F5 is fairly easy to use: get 3 illusions up ASAP, hit F5, cast everything starting with TW, cast everything again EXCEPT TW once F5 ends. Recast all wells once more (Calamity 2x), then wait for F5 and all wells to come up again, repeat. Only cast TW outside of F5 if you need to finish off a boss extremely quickly and no more difficult encounter will pop up in the next 2-3 minutes, as it has a longer cooldown than F5 itself.

Another, less forgivable roadblock appear to be invulnerable mobs. And apparently iWave was affected by multiple bugs, seeing as is regularly fails even without the trait.

You seem to have missed the “ask nicely” part of my post…

I don’t bother with precursor crafting hence I don’t know which Frostgorge event you’re referring to, but the Lyssa temple works reasonably well during weekdays. Note the whole thing used to have a 5 HOUR reset timer upon completion, so don’t waste your time waiting within one instance of the map (LFG tool+note down ips of maps you’ve already tried).
Use the LFG tool to taxi in as many likeminded people as possible, have everyone afk in the event circle to scale up the boss. Lyssa is extremely easy with 3-10 people, but if you get enough people together to spawn a champ gorilla that should buy you enough time for the seal to fall. If by some chance anyone actually knows what they’re doing and tries to defend the seal before your target champ spawns (usually unlikely as the event circles don’t display properly for seal defense) have everyone afk there instead and hope the waves of upscaled Risen drive them away.

Use whisper chat to contact individual players and stay friendly, this won’t attract trolls or other unwanted attention. Try going for the event while most players are busy elsewhere, like the Dwayna temple, Claw of Jormag or Frostgorge champ train.

And yes, most of these are roundabout, borderline exploit solutions, but everyone except Anet’s nonexistant QA department is already aware of the matter. Seeing as you can’t buy collection progress with gems (and buying existing precursors off the tp is actually cheaper than the “journey”…) this will be addressed eventually, perhaps even before the end of next year if people find a way to “farm” these events for ingame profit.

As a general approach, be polite and ask players to let it fail. Try a few times during different hours to gauge when you will have to deal with the least impatient farmers/trolls. Offering some alternative activity, ideally via commander tag and map chat, should also help. Maybe look up all champ spawn points on the map and offer to do a train?

If you give details on which event you’re referring to we might be able to come up with a more concrete tactic for “producing the desired results”. Some events can be upscaled or mismanaged by less than a dozen likeminded people.

Silence might also work for certain events during certain hours: the Lyssa and Grenth temples for example have a tendency to fail due to certain key mechanics, and simply staying quiet and waiting for a sufficiently dumb/unattentive zerg will do the trick.

IntheCoconut.3497:

but for now, lets just be grateful that the end-game content for HoT was actually polished and a little bit more original than “lets just send everything on one big suicide mission.”

Err, what? We systematically took down key pieces of Zhaitan’s military infrastructure, then moved in for the kill before he could recover. “Playing it safe” wouldn’t have worked because Zhaitan would have had time to adapt to our tactics, while we were left drowning in an ever growing tide of Risen. The final battle still is very lackluster, but the overall campaign was solid.

Meanwhile Hearts and Minds explicitly relies on a full frontal suicide attack as a distraction (whether this is the DS meta or an unspecified preceding assault doesn’t matter), and instead of slowly working towards our victory (though the original PS assumes all preceding arcs took place…) the key revelations come straight out of nowhere.

As for “polished”, I assume you never died during any of the gliding phases in HaM?

Disclaimer: I’m not trashing the HoT story and saying vanilla GW2 was soooo much better, I believe both stories are pretty good in themselves, but both are presented in an absolutely terrible manner, leaving the player to guess or read up most of the actual plot.

I think the “weaknesses” probably are about subverting the dragons’ domains.

We got Zhaitan through a mix of common sense and sheer dumb luck: Sylvari are incorruptible even in death. Charr war machines formed a bulk of the Pact forces and completely transcend Zhaitan’s dominion over death, being neither alive or dead by themselves.
Our greatest losses to Zhaitan were always due to subterfuge or miscalculation: a sneak attack on Claw Island, Risen Mesmers, plagues and poisons, the general failure to add our own expected losses to Zhaitan’s standing army during tactical planning. With the above war powers we forced Zhaitan’s hand and drew him out into the open, subverting “shadow” in the metaphorical sense. In the final battle we negated the literal meaning too: we fought in the sky using bright magical beams and explosives, there was no place for shadows to exist beyond our own airships, the one place we were fully prepared to defend.

While the revelation was a major letdown, Mordremoth’s “weakness” in itself actually makes a lot of sense: His body is a massive superorganism, no failure of any individual part can cause substantial damage to the whole. His mind, however, forms a logical keystone, it’s always “him”, the one and only. Being the creator of the Sylvari him having a “dream” of sorts seems logical, as does the ability to “link” through Trahearne as Caithe does something similar in the Sylvari opening story. Why he left that link open for us to barge in and stab him though is anyone’s guess. As for his “mouth” continuing to regrow, I guess his body isn’t immediately dead, just lobotomised. Components with their own information processing, like the “mouth”, spitter and spawner vines, along with any minions will continue on autopilot until everything finally collapses or dies individually. But Mordremoth, as a character, is dead and gone.

Or, as someone already commented in a cynical manner, the dragons all share the same weakness: hybris and overconfidence in general, and their disregard for the potential importance of any one individual mortal in particular. Armies couldn’t kill any of them, but a few clever minds working to specifically counter them can.

GS with fire sigil, MoP, zerker/assassin stats, Sw+F as your second set (sword for cleaving at Invulnerable spawns etc., focus for getting from place to place and grouping mobs)

Traits don’t matter that much, take your pick out of Domination(+ %dmg), Dueling(crit, MoP charges), Illusions(iZerker+shatter cdr), Chronomancer(wells, movespeed, alacrity). If running chrono add damaging wells and Alacrity, as much as you can.

The downside of chrono for tagging is that wells have substantial cooldowns (MoP and GS do not!), and spamming shatters/wells to maintain alacrity wastes those skills when you’re not in range to tag something with them.

Action Camera combined with “allow skill retarget” helps a lot for “sweeping” your gs auto over a constant stream of mobs like when farming the halloween labyrinth, for wave spawns like Ulgoth pre and Orr events you want to stand where they become vulnerable swinging your 1H sword, and drop wells/instant-cast illusions+shatters/MoP the instant that blue icon vanishes. For spawns that can be hurt before they’re visible don’t bother bringing any extra illusion generation, this is where chrono really outshines the rest with pulsing wells.

Blink, additional movespeed and mantras can prove helpful when you need to move a lot and/or enemies pack a lot of cc/impairing conditions.

Mordremoth once the bugs are fixed (especially reset if you wipe after a glider phase!), until then Shadow part1. We all know Zhaitan was lame except for the music, and I remember Shadow p2 having some annoying gimmick that made the fight a pain on my mesmer (not “hard”, mind you, but I recall my illusions not doing any damage or something)

JVJD.4912:

Meh i wanted to fight a dragon not a humanoid plant creature :P
But i guess he is still alive we may have the chance after all

I just wish Ibli and Tizlak could’ve been there. “Mother Jungle provides, but her abusive husband will claw your face off!” XD

I hope everything is vague enough for a thread not marked with spoilers, though the past tense in the title should be a warning anyway.

I feel like everything between Tarir and the final mission was a bit short/lacking, especially Rata Novus. That “dragon research” really needed more in-depth info.

Given the time and resources I would also have liked the Trahearne scene to get its own boss fight as the second-to-last mission with the outcome unchanged, and Trahearne’s dialogue in the final mission changed accordingly. The shift from “let’s save our friends” to “let’s go kill the dragon” was a bit sudden.

However, to anyone claiming the ending was a deus ex machina, I suggest you replay the very first scene of Hidden Arcana, then create a Sylvari character (mainly for the opening instance, though everything up to joining your order might help a bit)

I have not completed the story on a non-Sylvari character, but I can tell you that in the final fight playing a Sylvari might actually put you at a slight disadvantage! There is one instance where you have the “Mordremoth’s Influence” effect (aka chill+unable to use any skills) during the fight, with enemies attacking you.

I don’t know if non-Sylvari get an equivalent moment and surviving until the effect ends is very easy (only saw a short ranged cone telegraph attack, and most of the time my allies had aggro not me)

I very much enjoyed a different scene however, where my (female) PC and Canach were essentially teasing each other like a married couple over who would give in first after Mordy was done chewing the scenery.

For actual gameplay I believe Sylvari Solidarity in the first story instance is the only race-locked achievement, though there might be minor dialogue options or tactical choices only Sylvari can make.

Fay.2357:

This is the point. If you’re running a healing build on Mesmer, you are not contributing to the group. As previously mentioned, the only way to actually provide continual healing is by continuously spamming mantras. Doing so means you’re accomplishing…nothing other than mediocre heals. I’d rather have an empty slot in my party than someone doing that, because at least then I wouldn’t have to listen to “agony, Torment, PAIN” 80 billion times.

The chant can get annoying, but isn’t cycling MoP technically the second-best thing you can do when not running chronomancer? More as a nice addition in zerker gear than an actual heal build ofc.

If you are running chrono the best “heal build” obviously is to reduce the CDs of your teammates’ proper heals via Alacrity…

On topic, if you’re skilled enough and no “forced damage” threshold is in place all new sets except Viper will be worthless since you don’t need the defensive stats. If you do need more passive defense these are probably better to mix in than zerk+knight/soldier due to the higher stat total.

adelaide.6213:

Fortunately everyone seems to be running Chrono open world these days. Superspeed shatters give staff amazing tagging potential and kiting champs from range can work just as well evading them with sword.

Superspeed can’t beat hitscan weapons like GS auto or MoP. For tagging the idea is to camp GS, and instead of switching to staff just cycle MoP between spawn waves, much lower cooldown. Sword is for literally standing inside the spawn point where needed, though I do also run Blink to actually get out of dangerous situations (or catch up with the farm train)

I’m not saying staff is bad, I just don’t see what you gain for open world over just staying on GS. Also GS/Sw+F works without chrono.

Inspiration with Restorative Mantras, Mantra of Recovery+Pain is another good glasscannon sustain setup. Run MH sword in at least one weapon set and abuse Blurred Frenzy to dps while you evade, use MoR while CC’d, using BF or when afflicted with conditions when your main cleanse is on cooldown. Spam MoP against melee-unfriendly enemies and when you need to retreat a bit and heal.

Generally speaking Healing Power is worthless, Vitality doesn’t help much in PvE as conditions are rarely a threat, and Toughness draws additional aggro which can actually get you killed quicker. Classes like Warrior or Necro can get decent use out of defensive stats, but most of our “survival” skills don’t scale with gear at all. If played well zerker gives a greater increase to killing speed than its sacrifice in durability.

Staff is pretty bad when not running chrono, low aoe capability, painfully slow autoattack projectiles, pretty much only good for point-blank 2→F1 and the obvious Chaos Storm.

I much prefer Sw+F for guaranteed cleave, evade for champs/burst spawns and swiftness. iWarden completes a full attack cycle before despawning, which is pretty good for tagging near-instantaneous respawns at a fixed point (e.g. labyrinth doors)

Usually these “build recommendations” are made for a full 5man group with permanent fury uptime, and often include warrior banners, ranger’s spotter and/or highest quality food and nourishment. Without those you’re easily 30-40 percentage points lower.

No one regularly updates the math on the ideal layout for running solo/PUG btw. People just assume the theoretical ideal for organised speedrun teams is close enough to optimal. And really, under these conditions your personal skill and knowledge of the encounters is worth more than 40% crit chance…

Add several actual crafting mats to that list, several even list non-scribe professions. “rare drop” mats from plants/mussels, stabilising matrix from fractals (you can buy stuff with it, so technically a currency, also listed as a crafting mat), “bag of blue pigment” whatever that is used for, and some other random junk you can get from airship crates.

Healing Power sucks, period. Actually the entire gear loadout is terrible and designed around a standard trinity MMO. What GW2 would need is uncapped boon/condi/CC duration as main gear stats, including full glass “support” sets like boon+precision+healing or CC+condi duration+precision. Maybe utility/elite cdr as a rune bonus or something.

The new stat combos rectified this a bit, but all I managed to look up had defensive stats on them, which is absolutely worthless since mix-and-match exists.

Actually we DO have perma regen, one of the easiest applications in fact. It’s only viable with organised, educated groups though, as Illusionary Inspiration stacks it around your phantasms.

Distortionshare is insanely good in some circumstances, especially with traited signets. Projectile reflect trivialises some fights, but is highly encounter-specific.

Mantra heals have pretty good base output for supplementing zerker builds, but just like II regen you need to stand right next to your allies, so good luck with that in any situation where you actually need the heals.

Scepter would be a decent condi weapon, and the AA wouldn’t hurt all condi builds since you’d want to spam shatters for confusion+torment unless running pistol bleeds.

Unless I missed something Mistrust can be deleted entirely now due to breakbars, the other traits are all right for build choices, if a bit undertuned for PvE condi.

We do have condi utilities if we work for it, just not very interesting ones: Signets of Domination/Midnight (don’t use active unless you’re about to die, -yawn-), Feedback/Nullfield+multi-hit phantasms (+leap finishers for staff cdr, chaos armor itself is useless though); and of course any illusion-summoning utility can be used as “why kitten filter here? worthless junk, same as forty-five-seconds…” shatter fodder.

The tools are all there, it’s just that the numbers are far too low for a PvE environment: torment and confusion are designed as “control” conditions, giving you a tactical advantage by forcing the enemy to behave in a certain, predicatable way or else put their life in immediate danger. Which mobs simply don’t do, and if I had the healthbar of a random champ mob in a PvP match I wouldn’t mind 25confusion+torment very much either…

Since AI is a lot of work, just up the damage and/or duration on these “damaging control” conditions such that the sustained dps is on par with bleed/burn. Mobs don’t post “OP condi meta” whine threads :P

PvE condi mesmer has far worse problems…

Staff isn’t so much a condi weapon anyway, more of a defensive/utility weapon that doesn’t deal top damage regardless of your build. Staff condi would be great if the MtD+CD nerfs were reverted for PvE, you get tons of hybrid damage and most of it is AoE.

The real problems for any condi mesmer spec are that Anet “balances” us around being “a bit too strong” in 1v1 PvP, and all our condi mechanics are much more effective against players than dumb mobs: Confusion/Torment WRECKS players, but still deals less dps than a zerk ele even under ideal conditions (and said ele would die instantly in PvP, hence “balanced”), spammable bouncing projectiles are a nightmare in 1v1+pets, because you will get hit at some point, but have no cleave or AoE. Illusions die when the target dies, which is good for PvP to reduce clutter and give the next opponent a fair start, but facing a bunch of mobs minions, traps and AoEs don’t just randomly despawn when one of them dies.

Essentially, to fix almost any mesmer problems, just split the numbers between PvP and PvE. We already have different stat caps, enemy health pools and large differences in enemy intelligence/behavior, so why not adjust the condi stacks accordingly?

Regarding the iWarlock itself, one nice suggestion was making it lengthen durations for all other condis on the target with each attack. Actually I would like it to lengthen condi and boon durations with some form of AoE if that could ever be balanced, mainly to fit the dual nature of all other staff/“chaos” skills. Right now it’s just “summon on world boss, make forum post on record crits”.

You don’t have to be afflicted with conditions, and probaby don’t even have to be in combat. Mender’s Purity procs regardless of such conditions.

I have verified the no-condi bit, ooc is an extrapolation.

Morfedel.4165:

I think some of you aren’t getting it. It was pretty clear that mantras were not working as intended, that they didn’t intend for them to recharge in the background. Was it nice? Of course! But it wasn’t behaving as intended.

Say that to the pre-specialisation traitline swap on HM. At this point there’s no way of distinguishing between a genuine bug, an intended change that didn’t make it into the published patchnotes, and an intentional nerf malevolently “disguised” as a bugfix.

When in doubt, don’t trust anything and assume Bugnet has even less of a clue than you do, seems about right so far…

Crippling maybe, buff Mistrust/MtD(PvP) and staff/scepter auto(PvE) instead of the others. Clone death condis combined with PU makes for a very annoying build that allows for little skilled counterplay unless you happen to be an ele, engi or similar AoE-spammy build.
Not necessarily OP mind you, just not fun to play against and contributes little to nothing for your team (in any game mode) beyond drawing undeserved aggro.

Pre-patch was 3 bounces without the trait, and 4 with it. That’s the entire reason the extra bounce was added in the first place, because iElasticity was made baseline.

And the change is utter garbage, because the 1200 range instant-cast stun plus inflated stats are the problem, not some random damage skills that can even be dodged.

DHawk.2687:

are you kittenn kidding me xD

Look at what ele can do in PvE/WvW zergs. What can we do instead? 1v1 noobs so they cry for more nerfs.

PowerBottom.5796:

Ele not getting nerfed is weird, but I think they wanna use ele as a baseline now

Lol good one, where is our +50% damage buff on all skills? Where is our ability to support teammates both offensively and defensively in one build, without ruining our damage output? Where is our viable WvW zerg damage build? Where is our compensation for the burning changes, they didn’t even adjust staff auto?